A/N: I hope everyone enjoys this final installment. Thanks for reading and reviewing!

…

Wednesday
July 31st, 1996

Unnamed Road
Southeast Coconino County, Arizona
1:30 a.m.

He shifted in the backseat, trying to find a position that didn't leave him contorted. No such luck. He leaned forward for a moment to check that Scully was still securely strapped into the passenger seat.

Mulder sighed and clenched his eyes shut, wondering what the hell he was doing out here and if it would even matter.

Perhaps if he didn't think about sleep, he'd be able to fall into it. But what if that distracted him from the task at hand and only kept him awake longer?

The quiet had become disconcerting, making Mulder's attempts at falling asleep even more difficult. It was beginning to look like a hopeless cause.

His mind could not cease indulging its whirling tangents.

He'd have to find another way.

An alcoholic stupor was looking good right about now, at least compared with the alternative of bashing his head into the car door until he passed out.

It wasn't until he slowly opened his eyes that he realized there was darkness and silence where it shouldn't be. The gritty flow of static over the radio waves had ceased, and the illumination of the dashboard and headlights had gone with it.

Confused, he jerked upright.

No rain.

No partner.

Mulder climbed over the front seat, catching his shirt on the gear shift in his haste. The doors were still locked. For a terrified moment he wondered if somehow he had just made things worse.

Scully should still be here. He unlocked the passenger side door and climbed out, realizing for the first time that not only had the storm passed, but all evidence of it had disappeared with his partner.

The road was dusty and dry beneath his shoes. Even the air seemed parched.

This was it. He must have fallen asleep. Had to be.

Mulder started walking back the way he'd come, fairly certain that the car was at least in the same place he'd parked it and that he was moving in the right direction. There had been a full moon tonight. Granted, that moon had been heavily obscured by the storm, but now the sky was perfectly clear.

There was no moon in sight. Even during the storm, the desert had been overwhelmingly hot and stifling. The temperature seemed to have dropped considerably. Not cold, certainly, but only hinting at its previous warmth.

He started down the dirt road, walking in the centre. No cars came, but he didn't expect them to. The second body recovered had been found curled up in the sleeper of his semi, looking for all the world like he'd just pulled over for a rest. Then never woke up.

For whatever reason, the phenomena was focused here, the intersection of two sandy roads in the middle of nowhere. The timing had been bothering him, however. There seemed to be no discernible pattern, no common temporal bond that tied the victims together. Hundreds of vehicles must have driven through here over four years. Why weren't they all targeted?

Mulder continued forward until he could no longer see the car behind him.

The man Scully had autopsied the night before had rested against the steering wheel of his car, about thirty feet off the road. Who knew how many drivers had passed by while he had lain in his car slowly dying until the sheriff eventually found him.

The road was hypnotic. Empty, quiet, completely unremarkable. If the man had fallen asleep at the wheel, and just happened to have done so in that particular area, maybe that was why he'd been so unlucky. The first victim, a woman that had been found in a similar state, her foot still on the gas pedal and her tank empty, could have done the same.

Maybe they didn't even fall asleep. Perhaps their eyes just drifted shut for a moment, a brief lapse in conscious awareness, and that was all it took. It could have been purely chance that any of them had ended up here.

That left the question of just where the hell here was. Same location, a dream, some sort of strange hole in the laws of physics? What if he was still lying in that car in the rain, slowly slipping into a feverish coma while his extremely ill partner gradually drifted away in the front seat?

Mulder desperately hoped this wasn't a mistake.

He couldn't think about that now. He had to find her.

The looming structure of the motel came into view twenty minutes in. Mulder was certain she would be here somewhere. She had to be. They just needed to wake up. Mulder called out Scully's name, moving faster now.

He heard the sand shift behind him and stopped dead.

A deep, threatening snarl followed.

The creature encroached. Mulder was torn between making a break for it and remaining perfectly still so as not to provoke it further.

A shrill howl made the decision for him, and Mulder drew his weapon and spun around in one move, firing off a shot in the direction of the noise, then another. The barking only increased until he was almost certain there were two—maybe more—and his flight response kicked in full force.

…

Unknown Time
Unknown Location

Scully broke into a sprint.

The muffled sound of paws ripping through the sand behind her urged her forward. She reached the office, pulled the door open, and slammed it shut. Her heart was pounding as she leaned back against the door. She turned to lock it and it suddenly occurred to her that she'd left the door open the last time she'd been in here.

Scully wasn't sure what to make of that, but for now there was no vicious animal tearing at the door to get in, no sound to indicate that it was still out there. Her relief was cautious. She locked the door and stepped away from it.

The room was pitch black.

She'd dropped the flashlight, she realized. Shit. And the candles—which, incidentally, had not been one of her best ideas. Her hand landed on the weapon still at her hip. At least she hadn't misplaced her gun.

Scully moved behind the counter and dropped into the chair there. This was insane. Ridiculous. What the hell was going on? Oh god, Mulder was probably somewhere right now getting mauled and bleeding out and where was she? In no position to help him, that was for sure.

Something was bothering her about this case that she couldn't quite put her finger on. It was more than the usual lack of explanations, the absence of a tangible logic that she could wrap her fingers around.

Here, in this place, in these victims, there was a disturbing stillness. The only thing that seemed to move around here was the wind.

The people, they stayed the same. Sydney Bell looked like she had been frozen in time for the last four years. Her parents, the motel. None of it ever changed.

The unexplained deaths still weighed on her. No matter how many clear threads she could unravel to make sense of each death, the fact of stillness remained. How could one be still through death? What could possibly prevent a person from escaping a boiling hot car when they were otherwise in good health? Why would they wait to die?

She propped her elbows up on the desk and dropped her head into her hands. A jolt of pain shot through her arm. Scully flinched, looking down at it. Now that she'd calmed enough to remember it, the injury hurt like hell. She didn't feel lightheaded, though, and doubted she'd managed to nick any major veins.

Scully could barely see it without any light, but blood trailed down her forearm like a small river, pooling on the wooden desk.

She thought about rabies. Infections. Communicable diseases. Sepsis.

No, she calmed herself. None of that mattered right now. The wound couldn't be that bad. She ran her other hand lightly over it, feeling the grit of sand and slick blood. It looked like black oil in the darkness.

Standing, she unbuttoned her blouse, stripping down to the camisole underneath and easing it off. There wasn't much that could be done right now, not without proper supplies, but she could at least stem the bleeding. Scully wrapped the material around her arm, just tight enough to add some pressure. It would have to do for—

"Scully?"

Her head snapped toward the door.

Had she imagined it? She stood perfectly still, listening. It was Mulder's voice, she knew it was.

He sounded distressed.

Nothing followed.

He was out there. She had to get to him.

She lifted her gun and went toward the door. "Mulder?" she called.

No reply. Scully hesitated, but she knew what she heard.

She eased the door open slowly, waiting for any sign of approaching animals. No movement. The voice had come from the direction of the strip of motel rooms. What if she'd trapped him inadvertently in the burning building?

Scully panicked and ran back toward it only to encounter a closed door. She knew she left that open. No smoke rose from the building, not even the scent of it lingered in the air. It was impossible.

She moved closer to the unbroken window in bewilderment, carefully touching the glass. Cold. Solid. What the hell was going on here? What was this?

She hastily unwrapped the cloth from her arm, wrapping it instead around her hand and trying the door handle. Locked, but not hot. She touched it with her bare fingers, and her skin was not singed like it should have been.

He could still be in there. She briefly holstered her gun and pulled the keys from her pants pocket, re-selecting hers by touch and sliding it in. The lock turned. She switched the keys out for her gun again and pushed the door open, moving cautiously inside.

...

Unknown Time
Unknown Location

He ran toward the building closest to him, the single row of rooms that he and Scully had been occupying, firing off rounds behind him to keep them back. He rattled the first door, the second, banging on it in frustration. The next three were no better and his gun was clicking uselessly.

It was suddenly right in front of him, so black that it blended into the darkness and he could hardly see its lithe form as it lunged. He stumbled back into the wall just as it latched on to the leg of his pants, tearing at the skin of his ankle. The wall suddenly disappeared and he fell into it, hitting the ground heavily.

Another bullet cut through the air and the thing let go of his leg for an instant. He scrambled backward and realized as it slammed shut in front of him that the wall had been a door.

He gasped for breath, partly shocked and partly confused at how quickly his plan had gone to hell, when his mind finally caught up and registered her presence.

A light clicked on and he could see his partner's face.

Mulder stood unsteadily and Scully immediately put a hand on his shoulder, looking him over for injuries and saying something too quickly for him to translate.

"Mulder," she demanded. He blinked. "Are you hurt?"

This must have been a question she'd already asked, judging by her tone of voice. Exasperated, he thought, and smiled at the familiarity.

She's here. She's alive. He found her. And she'd saved his ass in the process.

Mulder embraced her without preamble and Scully teetered a bit, unprepared. She wrapped an arm around him after a moment and returned the hug.

She was solid and real against him. He had missed her even more than he'd realized.

She pulled back, holstering her gun and asking, "Where the hell were you, Mulder?"

There was a note of urgency to her voice, a slightly tainted tone that he didn't quite recognize.

The flashlight she held was pointed at the ground, illuminating just enough for him to see the tiny splatters of blood that dripped to the carpet below.

He grabbed her arm carefully, holding her still even as she self-consciously tried to pull away.

The light revealed still-bloody marks that trailed angrily from elbow to wrist, cutting diagonally where she had twisted away.

Here, the wounds were redder, deeper.

Here she was real, and that was the most surreal thing of all.

"Mulder, it's not that bad," Scully said, gently pushing his hand away. He had been staring, he realized.

His pants were torn along the hem of one leg, already stained, and he wondered just how much was transferable between here and there; how much could be endured in one reality and survived in the next. Perhaps he'd have a limp when they got back. If they got back.

"Hey," she whispered to get his attention. Obediently he looked up at her. "What's going on? Where were you? I looked everywhere."

"Not quite," he replied, unsure of how to answer. "Scully, I...I think we're asleep."

She stared at him blankly.

"Look, I know how it sounds, but you were. We were driving and you fell asleep."

"I remember. I woke up in the car and you were gone."

"That's just it, Scully. You didn't wake up."

Scully continued to stare at him, as though he'd just told her the moon was made of cheese and she could not even begin to comprehend how someone could believe something so ridiculous.

"So we're asleep," she said slowly.

"Yes."

"As in dreaming."

"Yes. I mean, possibly. I haven't quite figured that part out yet."

"Well are you in my dream, or am I in yours? And how do I know you're you and not some dream state-Mulder, or the end result of some hallucinogenic neurotoxin that's affecting my perception?"

She leveled the beam of the xenon flashlight at him suspiciously.

Mulder's hand landed blindly on her wrist, pushing it down in attempt to salvage what remained of his retinas.

"I don't know," Mulder admitted. He slid down the wall into a languid sitting position to take the pressure off of his now tender ankle. "But wherever we are, whatever this is," Mulder waved his hand through the darkness in front of them, "it isn't real. Scully, it can't be."

Scully joined him on the floor, flicking off the flashlight. Shadows slid across her features.

"Feels real enough to me." She patted the floor then wiped the sand from her fingers. "And getting attacked by Cujo out there was certainly not in my imagination." Scully turned to him abruptly. "Why a dream? By your logic, couldn't this just as easily be an alternate reality that we've stumbled into? Or been sucked into some tiny desert version of the Bermuda triangle?"

Damn, she was so sexy sometimes.

"Could be," Mulder replied. "But I think the Bell's daughter has something to do with it. If you're here, and I'm here, wouldn't it follow that she might still be here, too?"

They sat in silence for a while, which he thought was ridiculous. Of all the times for exhaustion to suddenly over take his body, after years of sleep eluding him, now was far from opportune.

The drywall at his back was marginally cooler than his skin, and the contrast was enough to make his eyes slide shut for just a moment.

Mulder breathed evenly, listening to Scully do the same, and wondered how the hell this couldn't be real when he could see it and hear it and touch it.

Scully was right though, the cut on her arm was real enough. Maybe this was something else. Something larger than a nightmare.

It had briefly occurred to him earlier that rushing into this without a plan was a profoundly stupid idea, but now that he had time to let it sink in, he was beginning to realize just how screwed they were.

"I burned it down," she said.

"Burned what down?"

"This. This room. All of it."

Mulder shrugged, looking over at her. "Looks okay to me."

"Exactly. Nothing ever changes. Maybe you're right. This can't be real."

"I'm right?" Mulder scoffed.

"Don't let it go to your head. Did you come with a plan?"

"Nope," he answered. That would have required far too much forethought and too little impulsively.

"I thought I saw something in that house. Do you think it was her?" she asked, drawing her knees up.

"Only one way to find out," he said. Mulder tossed his spent gun on the floor loudly and reached for the pistol in his ankle holster.

"Those don't seem to do much," she commented. "It does seem strange, though, that the girl would be involved in this. George's recollection of the events didn't exactly line up with what we know of the other attacks."

Mulder considered this, dropping his hand to the floor and setting the pistol beside him. The room was stale and musky. "No, it didn't," he agreed. "She wasn't asleep during the attack, at least that we know of."

"I don't mean that, I mean the animal that mauled her was an actual animal. George saw it, he hit it, he was bit by it. It was a physical thing, something real, not a dream. Why would she be here if he wasn't?"

"Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way," Mulder suggested.

"How do you propose looking at it, then?" Scully shifted to face him, tucking a leg under her. He could still see the shine of blood coating her arm. "Say, for the sake of argument, that this has nothing whatsoever to do with some mystical crossroad-voodoo-dog ritual. We're left with the evidence at hand: An incapacitating neurotoxin and a slow death in a locked car. Despite the mutilation the victims sustained, their deaths were, technically, a natural result of their physical circumstances. Avoidable, but not supernatural. Whatever is causing this bizarre shared hallucination—or whatever you want to call it—wasn't responsible for the death of those people, Mulder."

"So you're saying the kid is an anomaly. Maybe she's responsible for this?"

Wind slipped through the thin crack beneath the door, whistling.

"I don't know about responsible. She's not exactly in a position to be."

"Maybe not physically," Mulder agreed. "But if this is some sort of dream state, if this is her dream state, maybe the same rules don't apply."

"She's only fifteen, Mulder. How could she even be controlling something like this?" she asked.

"Well," Mulder started, "it's not unheard of for people her age to possess psychic abilities. Maybe this is some sort of psychic trap, a perpetual recreation of the trauma she experienced four years ago. Maybe she's just as stuck here as we are."

Scully was silent for a while. "What about the toxin?"

"I thought you couldn't identify it?"

"I can't. Not yet, at least, and certainly not from here—wherever here is," she mumbled.

"Do you think we can make it to the house?" he asked.

Scully stood, offering him a hand up in response as a thin cloud of dust rose with her. "Only one way to find out."

...

Unknown Time
Unknown Location

The door had been unlocked. It was almost too inviting.

Nothing had attacked them on the sprint over here, but her muscles were tense with anxiety. They walked silently toward the back of the house and Mulder branched off to clear the living room.

It wasn't much of a plan, but it was something. Mulder hadn't come here with a scheme of his own, of course. He was the only person she knew who'd jump in head-first on a whim to come to her aid. It was as endearing as it was frustrating, but she wouldn't want it any other way.

Scully led with her flashlight to the ground, waiting for any sign of movement in her peripheral vision. The soft shuffle of their shoes across the stiff carpet was the only solid sound to reach her ears, but despite being unable to see or hear anything in the darkness, she could feel something.

They were being watched.

The wind whispered, skirting through the house through an open window to her left, ruffling the curtains there.

Scully wandered forward, crossing into the small kitchen with her gun held tightly. It was dark, but empty.

She stepped forward, trying to get her bearings, and that's when she saw it. Scully recoiled as a thin wisp of a shadow streaked past her.

As she raised the beam to track the shadow, the door behind her slammed shut, rocking her forward. Scully spun around, Mulder's reassuring presence no longer by her side, and grabbed at the door handle.

"Scully?" Her name reached for her through the heavy wood, followed by the pounding of her partner's fists against the door.

She jerked the handle back and forth. "I can't open the door," she reported, scanning the dim room around her for unexpected visitors.

Scully threw her weight against the wood ineffectively. A low, familiar growl stopped her cold, and Mulder's pounding on the door stopped with her.

A moment's pause and a rapid visual sweep of the room informed her that the sound wasn't coming from her side of the door.

The growl twisted into a jarringly loud barking, joined in chorus by the violent snarls of another dog. Black dogs. Hellhounds. Whatever the hell they were, Scully wasn't particularly desperate for a definitive title, but her desperation to get out of here was reaching a sudden peak.

Of all the rising noise from the other room, it was the absence of any sound from her partner that made her heart slam itself repeatedly into her ribcage.

She was afraid to call out to him now, and risk inciting the dogs. But this wasn't real, couldn't be real.

Yet her arm still throbbed and she'd autopsied one of the victims only this morning—yesterday morning? Oh god.

She stared at the closed door for a moment laying her palms flat against it when she heard him shout—distress, pain, fear, she could no longer tell the difference, but there was a scuffle of movement on the other side. She banged her fists against the door.

The heat was so thick and concentrated in this room, she could hardly breathe. Her breath came in short gasps as her fingers wrapped tightly around the hilt of her gun, faster than she could consider the action. Scully aimed, firing one resounding shot at the doorknob that lit the room in a brief flash, jumping back when all it did was ricochet.

The growling ceased. The deafening sound of her heartbeat replaced it. She was about to call out to Mulder again when something stirred in her peripheral vision. She turned with the flashlight, and this time the beam exposed the stoic face of child.

Scully wasn't sure what to say, or do, so she stared, unable to believe that this was the girl she'd seen intubated and balancing on the constant brink of death. She looked younger now. Her dark brown hair barely touched her shoulders. The scars that had marred her neck were absent. Somehow she had escaped the physical manifestations of the damage she had suffered.

The light made her eyes seem pale and grey, and Scully wondered absently if she had seen any pictures of this girl with her eyes open. The girl moved away, back toward the steps leading upstairs.

"Sydney?" Scully tried.

Sydney stilled.

"Sydney, why are you here?" she asked. Mulder pounded on the door, calling her name, rattling the handle.

The girl turned around. "I live here," she stated indignantly. "Why are you here?"

"I..." Scully trailed off. "I think you brought us here, didn't you?"

She shrugged noncommittally, dropping down to sit cross-legged on the floor. Her small fingers drew patterns in the sand there.

Scully knelt down across from her, setting the flashlight on the ground, its beam still trained on the strange child.

In a small voice Sydney admitted, "Maybe."

"Why?" Scully asked.

Another shrug. "There's no one here to talk to."

"You're lonely?"

She nodded, still running her fingers through the sand.

"Sydney, you have to let us leave. Please."

She pointed at Scully's arm. "The monsters did that to you?"

A fairly apt description. Scully nodded. "A monster hurt you, once, didn't it?"

She didn't reply.

Scully tried again, "I saw what it did to you. What it's done to the other people that have come here. You can stop them, Sydney. They aren't real, they can't hurt you anymore."

Mulder had quieted on the other side of the door.

"I'm scared," Sydney admitted, wiping the smudged dirt from her cheek with the back of her hand.

"You don't have to be. Your mom and dad want you back so badly," Scully replied. The ground beneath them trembled, then stilled.

"Will it hurt?" she asked.

"I don't know," Scully replied after a moment. "Your dad told us how strong you were. That you never give up."

"You found my dad?"

Scully nodded again. A picture frame fell from the wall, crashing to the ground. Scully started, looking toward the sound only to see another one follow.

"Is he okay?"

Scully's anxiety increased. She had to get through to her, but to what point and purpose? She may not even be able to end this. Ending this may not even be the escape back to reality they sought. "He misses you," Scully told her. The floor began to shake in earnest. "They both do."

The kitchen door clicked open and Mulder eased in, holding onto the doorframe for support and lowering his weapon when he saw them.

A window shattered over the sink and Mulder rushed over to her. "We've got to get out of here before the whole place falls down."

The linoleum beneath her lifted and peeled at its edges, ripping like paper down the center.

He pulled Scully up from the floor and held onto her. The flashlight rolled away, crashing into the cabinets on the other side of the room. A thin chorus of barking dogs rose above the noise.

Scully held out her hand for the girl. "It's time to wake up."

Sydney reached out as the walls crumbled and the floor fell out from under them.

...

Wednesday
July 31st, 1996

Unnamed Road
Southeast Coconino County, Arizona
5:44 a.m.

Pink and orange hues spread like thin paint across the horizon, reaching out to push the night back.

For the first time in days the air was still, but the earth was in motion. Cactus Wrens fluttered noisily across the sky. The desert had swallowed the rain, leaving only the drops on their rental car as evidence that it had ever poured in the first place.

This was never how Scully had imagined her life. Yet, here she was, standing in the sunrise in the middle of nowhere with the undeniable sensation that this was exactly where she was supposed to be.

The car door opened and Mulder emerged, moving to stand next to her and lean against the hood of the car. She sat with him, exhausted but alert. Sleep had been far from restful.

They watched in companionable silence as the sun rose slowly over the desert, glinting off the sand.

…

Wednesday
July 31st, 1996

Unnamed Road
Southeast Coconino County, Arizona
7:13 a.m.

When Mulder finally came through the connecting door Scully was laying on her bed, looking comfortably dressed with her hair still wet from the shower. Miles from the pale and fevered deaths-door look she had been sporting.

Mulder set a plate of sugar cookies on the side table and dropped down beside her, shaking the bed frame. He was already envious of the dry sheets—his were still soaked through. She tilted her head to look over at him.

Sunlight streamed in through the window, scattering across the carpet.

"Well?" she asked.

Mulder rolled onto his side, propping his head up on his hand.

"Inconclusive," he announced. "Martha stuck around to hold down the fort, though. She said Sydney had gone into convulsions and started breathing on her own. Fortunately, her doctor had just called for an ambulance, so they got her to a hospital promptly. Apparently he's no longer pissed off about our little impromptu relocation. Not that it would have mattered, anyway, the man had the emotional capacity of a brick."

"You mean when you carried his sick patient off into the dessert during a flash flood after he turned his back for a minute?"

"Yes. That. Cookie?" he offered, holding out the flower-rimmed plate. Scully rolled her eyes and lifted one from the stack. "Do you think she'll recover?"

"I don't know," Scully said, staring at the bedspread. "There was a lot of damage. Rehabilitation could take years, if it's effective at all."

"Still, they got their daughter back. That's got to mean something."

Scully nodded.

They lay quietly for a while, and Mulder watched the faded curtains behind his partner shiver as a breeze passed through them.

"Hey, Scully?" he said, stifling a yawn and lifting an arm to look at his watch.

"Yes, Mulder?"

"You know, if we leave now, we could make it to Meteor Crater by eight."

…
Fin