pustules, tumors, lumps.
The usual.
Dorman ripped away the last of the wall frame 8
T H E X - F I L E S
and the powdery gypsum from the burned Sheetrock to expose the fire safe. He knew the combination well enough, and quickly spun through the numbers, listening to the cylinders click into position. With one meaty, numb hand, he pounded on the door to chip free some of the blackened paint that had caked in the cracks. He swung open the door.
But the safe was empty. Somebody had already taken the contents, the records, and the stable prototypes.
He whirled to look at the dead guard, as if Vernon Ruckman somehow had been involved with the theft.
He winced as another spasm coursed through him.
His last hope had been inside that safe. Or so he thought.
Dorman stood up, furious. Now what was he going to do? He looked down at his hand, and the skin on his palm shifted and changed, like a cellular thunderstorm. He shuddered as minor convulsions trooped through his muscle systems, but taking deep breaths, he managed to get his body under control again.
It was getting harder every day, but he vowed to keep doing whatever was necessary to stay alive.
Dorman had always done what was necessary.
Sickened with despair, he wandered aimlessly around the wreckage of DyMar Laboratory. The computer equipment was entirely trashed, all of the lab supplies obliterated. He found a melted and broken desk, and from its placement he knew it had been David Kennessy’s, the lead researcher.
“Damn you, David,” Dorman muttered.
Using all his strength, he ripped open one of the top drawers, and in the debris there he found an old framed photograph—burned around the edges, the glass cracked—and stared at it. He peeled the photo out of the remnants of the frame.
antibodies
9
David, dark-haired and dashing, smiled beside a strong-looking and pretty young woman with strawberry-blond hair and a towheaded boy. Sitting in front of them, tongue lolling out, was the Kennessys’ black Labrador, always the dog . . . The family portrait had been taken when the boy was eleven years old—before the leukemia had struck him. Patrice and Jody Kennessy.
Dorman took the photo and stood up. He thought he knew where they might have gone, and he was sure he could find them. He had to. Now that the other records were gone, only the dog’s blood held the answer he needed. He would gamble on where they might go, where Patrice might think to hide. She didn’t even know the remarkable secret their family pet carried inside his body.
Dorman looked back to the guard’s dead body.
Paying no attention to the horrible blotches on his skin, he removed the guard’s revolver and tucked it in his pants pocket. If it came down to a crisis situation, he might need the weapon in order to get his way.
Leaving the cooling, blotched corpse behind and taking the weapon and the photograph, Jeremy Dorman walked away from the burned DyMar Laboratory.
Inside of him, the biological time bomb kept tick-ing. He didn’t have many days left.
TWO
FBI Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
Monday, 7:43 A.M.
The bear stood huge, five times the size of X an all-star wrestler. Bronze-brown fur bristled from its cable-thick muscles—a Kodiak bear, a prize specimen. Its claws were spread as it leaned over to rip a salmon from the rocky stream, pristine and uninterrupted.
Mulder stared at the claws, the fangs, the sheer primal power.
He was glad the creature was simply stuffed and on display in the Hoover Building, but even still, he appreciated the glass barrier. Mounting this beast must have been a taxidermist’s nightmare.
The prize hunting trophy had been confiscated in an FBI raid against a drug kingpin. The drug lord had spent over twenty thousand dollars for his own personal hunting expedition to Alaska, and then spent more money to have his prize kill mounted. When the FBI arrested the man, they had confiscated the gigantic bear according to RICO statutes—since the
The usual.
Dorman ripped away the last of the wall frame 8
T H E X - F I L E S
and the powdery gypsum from the burned Sheetrock to expose the fire safe. He knew the combination well enough, and quickly spun through the numbers, listening to the cylinders click into position. With one meaty, numb hand, he pounded on the door to chip free some of the blackened paint that had caked in the cracks. He swung open the door.
But the safe was empty. Somebody had already taken the contents, the records, and the stable prototypes.
He whirled to look at the dead guard, as if Vernon Ruckman somehow had been involved with the theft.
He winced as another spasm coursed through him.
His last hope had been inside that safe. Or so he thought.
Dorman stood up, furious. Now what was he going to do? He looked down at his hand, and the skin on his palm shifted and changed, like a cellular thunderstorm. He shuddered as minor convulsions trooped through his muscle systems, but taking deep breaths, he managed to get his body under control again.
It was getting harder every day, but he vowed to keep doing whatever was necessary to stay alive.
Dorman had always done what was necessary.
Sickened with despair, he wandered aimlessly around the wreckage of DyMar Laboratory. The computer equipment was entirely trashed, all of the lab supplies obliterated. He found a melted and broken desk, and from its placement he knew it had been David Kennessy’s, the lead researcher.
“Damn you, David,” Dorman muttered.
Using all his strength, he ripped open one of the top drawers, and in the debris there he found an old framed photograph—burned around the edges, the glass cracked—and stared at it. He peeled the photo out of the remnants of the frame.
antibodies
9
David, dark-haired and dashing, smiled beside a strong-looking and pretty young woman with strawberry-blond hair and a towheaded boy. Sitting in front of them, tongue lolling out, was the Kennessys’ black Labrador, always the dog . . . The family portrait had been taken when the boy was eleven years old—before the leukemia had struck him. Patrice and Jody Kennessy.
Dorman took the photo and stood up. He thought he knew where they might have gone, and he was sure he could find them. He had to. Now that the other records were gone, only the dog’s blood held the answer he needed. He would gamble on where they might go, where Patrice might think to hide. She didn’t even know the remarkable secret their family pet carried inside his body.
Dorman looked back to the guard’s dead body.
Paying no attention to the horrible blotches on his skin, he removed the guard’s revolver and tucked it in his pants pocket. If it came down to a crisis situation, he might need the weapon in order to get his way.
Leaving the cooling, blotched corpse behind and taking the weapon and the photograph, Jeremy Dorman walked away from the burned DyMar Laboratory.
Inside of him, the biological time bomb kept tick-ing. He didn’t have many days left.
TWO
FBI Headquarters
Washington, D.C.
Monday, 7:43 A.M.
The bear stood huge, five times the size of X an all-star wrestler. Bronze-brown fur bristled from its cable-thick muscles—a Kodiak bear, a prize specimen. Its claws were spread as it leaned over to rip a salmon from the rocky stream, pristine and uninterrupted.
Mulder stared at the claws, the fangs, the sheer primal power.
He was glad the creature was simply stuffed and on display in the Hoover Building, but even still, he appreciated the glass barrier. Mounting this beast must have been a taxidermist’s nightmare.
The prize hunting trophy had been confiscated in an FBI raid against a drug kingpin. The drug lord had spent over twenty thousand dollars for his own personal hunting expedition to Alaska, and then spent more money to have his prize kill mounted. When the FBI arrested the man, they had confiscated the gigantic bear according to RICO statutes—since the
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