TITLE: 9 Minutes
AUTHOR: mad martha
ARCHIVING: Gossamer, yes; all others please ask.
SPOILERS: The Pilot/Fight The Future
CONTENT: S
RATING: PG
CLASSIFICATION: V
SUMMARY: So what *did* happen during those nine missing minutes?  Just a
very minor contribution to the movie-fic archives ....
 

DISCLAIMER: "The X Files" and all the characters etc. associated with it
are the property of 20th Century Fox and 1013 Productions.  I am not
making any profit from this story, and no infringement is intended.
 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Gerry Hill, as always.  I'll wager you weren't
expecting me to post *this* tonight!
 

NOTES:  I was planning to write a companion piece to this, telling the
other side of the story, but due to pressures of work etc. it hasn't
even been started yet.  I thought I'd post this one anyway.  I'm aware,
by the way, that the final scene isn't exactly how it appeared on
screen, but I hope you'll forgive me just a smidgeon of artistic license
in this case ....
 

Comments would be welcome, as always.
 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
9 MINUTES
By mad martha
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
 

Part 1/1
 

   "I want to go back there," Scully said.
 

   Mulder wasn't listening to her.  He peered out of the windshield at
the thrashing rain, convinced that he recognised this strip of road they
were travelling along, and on an impulse he fiddled with the radio.  A
low, discordant hum threaded out of the speakers, not as violent as the
screech which had issued forth the day before, but similar enough to
grab his interest.
 

   "Mulder?"
 

   Mulder dug out the compass he had used in the forest and glanced
quickly down at it.  The rain was far too heavy to risk more than that,
but even that short look showed him that the needle was moving wildly.
 

   "Mulder, are you okay?" Scully frowned.
 

   "I don't know, " he began, when abruptly he was cut short.  The car
was filled with an excruciatingly bright glare.
 

   Scully gasped, squeezing her eyes shut and turning her head away, and
for second the world faded away ....
 

XXXX
 

   The glaring light faded and Scully blinked at the sudden return of
near-darkness.   But it was a different near-darkness.  She was no
longer sitting in the passenger seat of a rental car, with her wacky new
partner at the steering wheel.  Instead she was standing ... somewhere. 
The surroundings were strange enough for Scully to be unable to come up
with a ready identification of them.
 

   "Mulder?" she called hesitantly, but there was no reply.  The echo
reverberated around her hollowly, and she had the inescapable feeling
that she was - one way or another - utterly alone in here.  Wherever
"here" was ....
 

   She was standing in a dark, low-ceilinged corridor, and the air was
frigid.  Under her feet was a narrow metal grille that was more a
walkway than a floor; it clanked dully when she moved.   Above her head,
however, was a ceiling which *looked* as though it might have been
tunnelled out of something, rock, ice or metal, but it was difficult to
tell.  And on either side of her, the walls were lined with
floor-to-ceiling structures which looked a little like gigantic glass
bottles held in clamps.  Scully hesitantly approached one to examine it
more closely; it was a translucent green, like recycled glass, and
semi-coated in a thick frost.  She brushed the ice away gingerly with
her fingertips - and was confronted by a staring human face.
 

   Scully recoiled, horrified, for a second then steeled herself to take
a closer look.  It was hard to tell through the thick glass, but it was
a man and there seemed to be something wrong with him, as though his
flesh was becoming as translucent as the glass he was encased in.  There
was a tube feeding into his throat, but it was impossible to tell
whether he was alive or dead.  Revolted, she walked a few steps down the
walkway and scraped the ice off another bottle.  This time it looked
like a woman, but she was in the same condition as the man.  Scully
brushed more ice off the bottle to see if there was any other evidence
of a life-support system inside.  There wasn't - but there did appear to
be some other, unidentified organism sharing the container.  With a
start, she realised that this organism was actually *inside* the woman's
body, and its flesh was pulsing faintly.
 

   Stepping back, she had to fight nausea.  This entire corridor was
like some grotesque giant's larder, stocked with huge pickle jars.  The
unexpected comparison was enough to make her gag and look for an avenue
out.
 

   The passage was huge, stretching out for what seemed like miles, and
was lined with hundreds of containers.  Scully walked along it for a
while, listening to the dull background clanking of machinery, until she
came to a turn-off.  Bending at the waist to get through the narrow
aperture, she emerged into a vast coliseum that seemed to stretch
upwards into infinity.  The place was full  of machinery and rows upon
rows of the glass bottles.  Scully gazed around her, wide-eyed, then
approached one collection of bottles reluctantly.  They were newer,
coated in a chilly film of condensation rather than ice, and she was
able to see that the bodies inside appeared newer and were suspended in
a translucent green fluid.  There was no sign of other organisms
inhabiting the bodies here.  Slow clanking above her head made her look
up, and she saw that more of the new containers were being transported
on a conveyer belt  to some other part of the structure.
 

   Scully looked down again, and her eye was caught by something. 
Abandoned in the middle of the walkway was a cryolitter - something she
had only seen once in her entire medical career.  They were used to
transport individuals with contagious diseases, or who had been exposed
to a deadly pathogen, and had their own carefully regulated and
contained environment.
 

   It seemed odd to see such an object in the middle of all this alien
machinery, so she went to take a look.
 

   The litter had clearly been used and abandoned.  She lifted the heavy
glass cover, noting in passing that the environment controls had been
set for a near-freezing temperature, and found a heap of women's
clothing lying on the padded base.  Scully fingered the finely tailored
black suit and cream silk blouse; the latter was still inside the
jacket, as though its wearer had been removed from her clothing without
actually undressing, and further investigation showed that even the bra
and panties were still inside.  A pair of neat black leather boots lay
primly on their sides at the foot of the slacks.  The label inside the
blouse collar bore the name of one of Scully's favourite outfitters and
as she examined it, noting that the size was also her own, she made a
disturbing discovery.  Just inside the neck of the blouse lay a small
tangled gold chain and cross.
 

   Scully's fingers flew to her own neck, where an identical cross,
given to her by her mother on her fifteenth birthday, lay against her
skin.  What the -
 

   Her thoughts were suddenly jerked away by a distant scrabbling sound,
barely audible above the noise of the machines around her.  She held her
breath, eyes searching the dimly lit chamber, when she heard it again. 
Then she heard a distinct cry of "Oh shit!"
 

   Scully jumped to her feet.  That voice had been familiar.  "Mulder!"
she shouted, hearing her voice echo horribly.
 

   No reply, but there was a series of thumps and grunts, brought up
finally by a loud thud.
 

   Silence.  Scully held her breath, waiting.
 

   Finally, there was more scrabbling, a dull clang of boots on a metal
walkway, and her partner appeared - dishevelled, wet, and sporting a
nasty wound on his temple.  He was dressed in heavy cold-weather gear
and looked decidedly the worse for wear.
 

   "Mulder, thank God!"  Scully hurried to his side.  "What happened? 
Where have you been?  And what *is* this place?"
 

   But he ignored her, rushing past as if he hadn't seen her.  Puzzled,
Scully watched as he headed for the cryolitter and subjected it to the
same examination she had.  After a moment or two, he located the cross
and picked it up, studying it almost reverently before tucking it
carefully inside his pocket.  Then he stood up again, studying the rows
of new containers a few feet away.
 

   "Mulder, what are you doing?"
 

   He headed for the nearest bottle and studied it carefully under the
beam of a small flashlight he was carrying.  Then he moved on to the
next one.
 

   "Mulder?"
 

   Mulder continued to ignore her, and Scully finally began to realise
from his behaviour that he genuinely couldn't see or hear her. 
Frightened, she followed him as he worked his way down the rows of
containers.  Shortly he stopped by one, and she could see in the chancy
light that his face had turned pale.  One hand reached out to brush the
surface of the glass almost caressingly, then he was examining the
container with desperate urgency, his face filled a gamut of emotions;
relief, despair, horror, distress ... and determination.
 

   Scully was stunned, watching him as he failed to find a method to
open the bottle and resorted to hammering on the glass with his
flashlight.  She would never have believed her casual, careless new
partner could harbour so much feeling, let alone show it.
 

   "Mulder, you'll never break it with that," she told him helplessly,
aware even as she said it that it would do no good.  He could neither
see nor hear her, and she wasn't sure if this was a genuine inability on
his part, or whether he was simply ignoring her.  Either way, the effect
was the same.
 

   Mulder abandoned his attempts to break into the container and darted
off again, heading for the cryolitter.  Meanwhile, Scully stepped closer
to the glass to see who was trapped inside that was motivating such
efforts on his part.
 

   To her horror, her own face stared back at her.
 

   Scully let out a muffled cry of dismay, stumbling backwards.  Now
that she had a clear view of the glass pod, she could see the body of
her other self trapped inside the green fluid like a fly in amber, with
a thick tube forced into her mouth and her eyes staring in mute
anguish.  Shock held her frozen as she realised that somehow this other
woman must really *be* her ....
 

   Then Mulder returned at a run, carrying one of the oxygen tanks from
the cryolitter.  Hefting the steel tank up to shoulder height, he swung
it at the pod with a shattering crunch.  The glass fractured slightly,
and he swung the tank again.  This time the glass shattered and a thick,
pale  green slush poured from the container.  Mulder dumped the tank on
the floor and reached into the inside pocket of his thick polar jacket,
pulling out a small felt pouch from which he extracted a hypodermic and
vial of some amber fluid.
 

   Scully shook of her paralysis and made herself go to his side, trying
to see what he was doing.  Mulder filled the hypodermic from the vial
and with shaking fingers stabbed the needle into the other Scully's
shoulder.
 

   The reaction was almost instantaneous.  In front of Scully's stunned
eyes, the tube leading into her counterpart's mouth seemed to shrivel. 
And simultaneously, the structure around them seemed to shudder
violently, throwing both of them backwards to the ground.  Mulder
scrambled quickly to his feet again, and hurried back to the pod,
glancing nervously around him as he did so.  Then he reached inside and
pulled at what remained of the tube inside the other Scully's mouth. 
Grimacing, he drew on it hand over hand until finally the end was yanked
up out of her throat.
 

   Nothing happened, except that the structure gave another, more
violent reverberation.  Steam began to ooze through the grating under
Scully's feet.
 

   "Breathe!" Mulder commanded the other Scully sharply, desperation
edging his voice.
 

   The woman blinked.  Then her chest heaved and she coughed up a foul
globbet of the green liquid.  The relief on Mulder's face was
indescribable as she spluttered rackingly and dragged in a breath.
 

   A tiny, shaking whisper emerged from her lips.   "C-cold ...."
 

   Mulder seized the oxygen tank once more and pounded on the remaining
glass of the pod until there was a hole big enough to pull her out.  The
other Scully's body collapsed gracelessly forward, and he caught her
easily, lowering her naked, shuddering form gently to the metal
walkway.  Then he set about stripping off the outer layers of his
clothes to wrap her in.
 

   Scully crouched down beside the other woman's head, studying her. 
This other Scully was recognisably the woman she saw in the mirror every
morning, but different; the hair was shorter, and the face leaner, more
sculpted.  It was the face, in fact, of an older woman.  There were
tiny, almost unnoticeable lines here and there which Scully knew she
didn't have; most notably, she could see faint creases of pain at the
corners of the eyes and on the brow.
 

   *Is this what I'll look like five years down the line?* she
wondered.  It was only then that it struck her; this was Mulder and
herself, apparently still together somehow.  Maybe this *was* her five
years down the line.  *But ... here?  In this place?  What on earth
happened to us to bring us to this,  under these circumstances?*
 

   She took one final lingering look at the other Scully - herself - and
stepped back, watching as Mulder tenderly wrapped her up in his thick
jacket and leggings.  The expression on his face was indescribable, and
one she felt sure he would never let her see under ordinary
circumstances.  Like the other Scully, he was recognisably himself, but
Scully could see now that he too was older, and his face bore lines of
weariness and despair that were too deeply engraved to be new.  She
particularly noted the imprint of bitterness around his mouth, which was
completely at odds with the mischievous man she was coming to know.
 

   Something had happened to them which must have been terribly painful,
she realised.  And yet they were both *here*, together, at this point in
time and Mulder was wrapping her counterpart up in his clothes, with
*that* look on his face, having just staged a pretty impressive rescue.
 

   Scully watched as Mulder finally zipped up the front of the thick
parka and scooped the other Scully up into his arms.  He set off down
the metal walkway, hurrying as best he could as the structure around
them shook with increasing violence, and pausing only once to transfer
the woman in his arms to a slightly easier fireman's carry.
 

   Scully saw his figure dwindle into the distance, but stayed where she
was.  Her mind was in turmoil at all she had seen, and as she fought to
make sense of it all the alien structure faded away.
 

XXXX
 

   The engine dead, the Taurus drifted to a gentle halt  in the middle
of the road.  The rain was still hammering down on the roof and
windscreen, but the glare was gone.
 

   For a second the two of them sat still, breathing a little
irregularly.  Scully blinked rapidly, confused at a startling skelter of
images which, even as she tried to claw on to them, were drifting away
from her mind like a dream upon wakening.  In a fraction of a second
they were all gone, except one which clung persistently.
 

   A sense of intense, almost blistering cold on her bare skin; the vile
aftertaste of a tube down her throat; and an image, as clear as
daylight, of Mulder - an older Mulder - staring intensely into her eyes,
shouting "Breathe!"
 

   Then it too was gone, leaving behind only a curious sensation of time
having passed.
 

   Scully blinked, sucking in a deep breath and taking a cautious,
almost fearful glance sideways at her partner - her *new* partner.  A
man she had known for less than three days.
 

   "What happened?" she demanded shakily.
 

   Mulder attempted to start the car and failed.  "We lost power,
brakes, steering, everything."  He looked at his watch.  "We lost nine
minutes."
 

   "What?"
 

   "Nine minutes!"  In a bound, he was out of the car and hurrying up
the road, studying the asphalt intently.
 

   Scully exited the car more reluctantly, for the rain, far from
diminishing, was thrashing down in thick sheets.  Mulder turned to her
as though he'd never doubted she would follow, and his face was lit with
almost ludicrous joy.  He seized her shoulders.  "Nine minutes!  I
checked my watch before the flash and it was nine-oh-three.  It just
turned nine-thirteen!  And look!"
 

   He pointed at the ground and Scully was stunned to see orange X he
had spray-painted on their arrival in Bellefleur.
 

   He didn't wait for her comments, but carried on, his words almost
tumbling over themselves in his haste to get them out.  "Abductees,
Scully - people who have made sightings, they often report strange time
loss."
 

   Feeling more than uneasy, she tried to get a grip on the situation. 
"Come on - "
 

   He wasn't listening.  "Gone!  Just like that."
 

   "No, what a minute. You're saying that, that time disappeared.  Time
can't just disappear, it's - it's a universal invariant!"
 

   It was almost as if Mulder didn't hear her.  "And now we've lost nine
minutes!"  He released her, but only to punch the air with both hands in
an excess of excitement.  "Oh, YES!  Thank you, God!"
 

   Scully could only stare at him, dumbfounded and suddenly barely aware
of the freezing rain plastering her hair to her face.
 

   Only nine minutes?
 
 

Finis