Dana Scully's Residence
Annapolis, MD
September 15, 1995

The call came at exactly 10:13 p.m.

Scully knew, because she was lying in bed, looking at the clock, trying to will herself into sleep. Her cell phone chimed. Then it chimed again. Scully tucked her hair behind her ears and sat up straight and cradled the phone between her ear and her shoulder. She hadn't expected a call, but it still felt like a relief. Like a part of her had been waiting, and that's why she hadn't been able to sleep. "Mm? What is it?"

Silence on the line.

Scully rubbed her eyes. "Mulder?"

Another long pause. "No. It's, uh. It's Chandler."

A name from the past. Not Quantico. Not even medical school. This was early, early days. She was twenty-two again. Physics at the University of Maryland. Rewriting Einstein. To comprehend the fundamental structure of all that is. Oh, the things you didn't know, she thought at her younger self. She would write a different senior thesis now. That was for sure. "Chandler," she murmured, like it was the answer to a quiz-show question. She cleared her throat, put on her professional phone voice. "Wickham. How are you?" There was no doubt in her mind that he was Chandler Wickham, Ph.D., by now, probably prosperous, with kids and money. He had always been that kind of guy. Traditional. Her investigator's instincts percolated to the surface and she frowned. "How did you get this number?"

"Listen," said Chandler. "You know that favor you owe me?"

"Uh-huh…" said Scully, warily. It had been a little thing, some college thing, but she remembered telling him, You're a lifesaver. She remembered making elaborate college-girl promises. I owe you big time.

"Look out the window."

She sat up straight in bed, her heart suddenly throbbing, and walked over to her bedroom window. She leaned on the sill and peeked between the blinds. There was a car out there, a black Lincoln, idling under a streetlight. Blacked-out windows. Special plates, but from this distance, she couldn't tell if they were taxi plates, diplomatic plates or government plates. None of these would have surprised her. She glanced over her shoulder at her gun, which was sitting on the bedside table. She weighed the slight embarrassment of treating her service weapon like a security blanket against the possibility of imminent violence. She collected the gun, and put it on the windowsill beside her. But she felt a little bit guilty about it. "What's going on?"

"Oh, good, he's there," said Chandler. "It's a cab. It's OK. I already paid the fare. He's going to take you to Raleigh. To the historic capital. It's in a park. I'll meet you."

Scully peeked through the blinds again. "What's in Raleigh?"

"Not a thing," said Chandler. "It's just where I'm going to meet you."

"Chandler—"

"Please," he said. "I can't talk about it on the phone."

"We haven't spoken in more than ten years," said Scully.

"I know," said Chandler. "I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."

"I have to be at work at eight-thirty."

"Not as much as you need to be in Raleigh right now," said Chandler. "Believe me."

Chandler Wickham, Ph.D., Scully was thinking. Even when they were undergraduates together, they had already known where they would end up. She was going to medical school. And Chandler—well, he'd gone to MIT, hadn't he? They'd fallen out of touch after he moved to Cambridge. She rubbed the back of her neck. What had he gone to study?

She froze. It was engineering, of course. Nuclear engineering.

Scully licked her lips. "Where did you get this number, Chandler?"

"From a United States Senator."

"Give me a name."

Silence. "Maxine Claypool. She's on the intelligence committee."

"OK," said Scully. "I need to get dressed. Tell the cabbie to wait."

Chandler disconnected.

Scully stood there in the dark for a moment, then started to dial her partner's number. It wasn't a big elaborate procedure or anything. All she had to do was press the star key and the number 2. It was like that with her and Mulder: speed dial, carpooling, keys to each other's apartments. The city demanded it of you. The job demanded it. If you didn't make good friends and keep them close, you were wide open. Not that she minded. Being woken in the middle of the night, the luxury cab, intelligence committee, be in Raleigh in two hours; that was the kind of thing Mulder lived for. It would be like giving him a present. A surprise.

But before she could press send, the phone rang in her hand.

It was Chandler again. "You can't tell anyone."

"My partner," Scully protested.

"No," said Chandler.

"Look," said Scully. "Whatever's going on, he can help you."

"Nobody can help me," he said, and it sounded like he meant it.

He hung up again, leaving Scully alone in her apartment, with a decision to make.