The X-Files: Antibodies Read Free Page A

drug lord had funded the expedition with illicit drug money, the stuffed bear was forfeited to the federal government.

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    Not knowing what else to do with it, the FBI had put the monster on display beside other noteworthy confiscated items: a customized Harley-Davidson motor-cycle, emerald and diamond necklaces, earrings, brace-lets, bricks of solid gold.
    Sometimes Mulder left his quiet and dim basement offices where he kept the X-Files just to come up and peruse the display case.
    Looking at the powerful bear, Mulder continued to be preoccupied, perplexed by a recent and highly unusual death report he had received, an X-File that had come across his desk from a field agent in Oregon.
    When a monster like this bear killed its prey, it left no doubt as to the cause of death. A bizarre disease raised many questions, though—especially a new and virulent disease found at the site of a medical research laboratory that had recently been destroyed by arson.
    Unanswered questions had always intrigued Agent Fox Mulder.
    He went back down in the elevator to his own offices, where he could sit and read the death report again. Then he would go meet Scully.
    She stood between the thick, soundproofed Plexiglas partitions inside the FBI’s practice firing range. Special Agent Dana Scully removed her handgun, a new Sig Sauer 9mm. She slapped in an expanded clip that carried fifteen bullets, an extra one in the chamber.
    She entered the code at the computer keypad at her left; hydraulics hummed, and a cable trundled the black silhouetted “bad guy” target to a range of twenty yards. She locked it into place and reached up to grab a set of padded earphones. She snugged the hearing protection over her head, pressing down her red-gold hair.
    Then she gripped her pistol, assuming a proper 12
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    isosceles firing stance, and aimed at her target. Squinting and focusing down the hairline, she squeezed the trigger in an unconscious reflex and popped off the first round.
    She paid no attention to where it struck, simply aimed and shot again, firing over and over. Expended casings flew into the air like metal popcorn, clinking and rattling on the cement floor. The smell of burned black powder filled her nostrils.
    She thought of those shadowy men who had killed her sister Melissa, those who had repeatedly tried to silence or discredit Mulder and his admittedly unorthodox theories.
    Scully had to stay calm, maintain her firing stance, maintain her edge. If she let her anger and frustration simmer through her, then her aim would be off.
    She looked at the black silhouette of the target and saw only the featureless men who had entwined themselves so deeply in her life. Smallpox scars, nose implants, vaccination records, and mysterious disappearances—like her own—and the cancer that was almost certainly a result of what they had done to her while she had been abducted. She had no way to fight against the conspiracies, no target to shoot at. She had no choice but to keep searching. Scully gritted her teeth and shot again and again until the entire clip was expended.
    Removing her ear protection, she punched the button to retrieve the yellowish paper target. FBI agents had to requalify at the Quantico firing range at least once every three months. Scully wasn’t due for another four weeks yet, but still she liked to come early in the morning to practice. The range was empty then, and she could take her time.
    Later in the day, tour groups would come through to watch demonstrations as a special agent forced into tour guide service showed off his marksmanship skills with the Sig Sauer, the M-16, and possibly a Thompson sub-machine gun. Scully wanted to be long finished here antibodies
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    before the first groups of wide-eyed Boy Scouts or school-teachers marched in behind the observation windows.
    She retrieved the battered target, studying her skill, and was pleased to see how well her sixteen shots had clustered