Duncan's T-Bird pulled up into the deserted parking lot of a strip mall. The rain had subsided, and a fresh, new dampness hung in the air. The clouds had parted in several places and the stars glimmered in between the looming gray cloud masses.
A lone black sedan sat at the far end of the parking lot, adjacent to a K-mart. As Duncan's T-Bird slid up next to it, the passenger door opened and a man Duncan recognized as Carlson stepped out.
"Hey, Joe," he said, as the two stepped out of the T-Bird. "Glad you could make it," Carlson attempted to sound friendly, but there was an underlying tone of malice buried under his amiable facade.
The undertones weren't lost on Joe or Duncan.
"What do you want, Carlson?" Joe asked, pulling his trenchcoat tighter around him. Normally he would trust his fellow Watcher... but something didn't feel right. Maybe it was just him, but Joe had a bad feeling creeping up the back of his spine.
"What do I want?" Carlson repeated without emotion, as he slowly drew a gun from inside his coat, "You know, I've been wondering that for awhile, myself, Joe, but I think I've finally figured it out."
Before either the Watcher or Immortal could make a motion, Carlson leveled the gun on Duncan and fired a round into the Immortal's chest. Duncan slumped forward onto the wet pavement and died, the blood from his wounds welling up though the heavy cloth of his shirt and staining it a muted red color.
"Mac!" yelled Joe. "You bastard! What do you think you're doing?" Joe's eyes reflected the look of utter betrayal that loomed in his soul.
"I suggest you cooperate," Calson said, waving the gun at Dawson, "unless you suspect that you might be immortal, too. Get in the car, Dawson."
Joe, impeded as he was with his cane and his mortality, was forced to comply. Joe tripped as he was getting into the sedan, and knocked the base of his cane on the door. The white rubber stopper, which had a Watcher symbol on the base of it, was knocked off into a muddy puddle. Joe climbed into the back seat of the sedan, and Duncan's body was unceremoniously dumped into the car with him by a young man.
Carlson climbed into the front seat, and gunned the engine. Looking out the window to the young man, he said, "Get Ryan... and get rid of that car."
Nodding, the sharp looking kid climbed into Duncan's convertible. The cars sped off into the clearing night, leaving the wet parking lot behind them.
Richie glanced at the clock for what seemed like the hundredth time. Chance, acutely aware of Richie's tension, sat down by the young Immortal.
"He's only been gone fifteen minutes, Rich, Mac can take care of himself -- he's been doing it for four hundred years, after all."
"I know, Chance, but I have this weird feeling -- like, I dunno, like something bad's going to happen . . . I keep telling myself it's nothing, but I can't shake it."
"Guys, MacLeod's immortal," Mulder said, flipping is cell phone shut. "Right now I'm more concerned about Scully. She's not answering her cell phone. I''m going over to the police station to find out when she left."
"I want to come," Richie said, jumping off the couch. Richie didn't trust Mulder one iota, and he wasn't about to leave the agent in any position to disclose the secret of Immortals. Maybe after he got to know Mulder better, his opinion might change, but right now Richie wasn't taking any chances.
"I don't know Richie, MacLeod you to stay put."
"No, he told *us* to stay put -- something you're not doing anyway. What's the worst that could happen anyway? We're just going to a police station, you have a gun, and I'm Immortal. Seems fool proof to me."
Mulder sighed, "Okay, Richie... You coming Chance?"
"Yea, I might as well. Somehow I always end up coming anyway," Chance said as the three headed out the door.
Scully's eyes opened slowly and a blast of white light assaulted them. Groaning, she sat up slowly on the hard bed and rubbed her sinuses. She sat still for several moments, lest the sickening throb return to her head.
"Careful," came a voice next to her, "that looks like one hell of a headache."
Scully whipped around to see who had spoken, and her field of vision promptly clouded over in a wash of black spots. She shut her eyes for a moment, and then slowly focused on who had spoken.
Sitting off to the side, on another spartan hospital bed, was an older man, Scully judged him to be in his late forties or early fifties, with graying hair and a pepper flecked beard.
"I'm agent Dana Scully," she said, but it came out in more of a weak tremble.
"Joe Dawson," the man said, "Am I correct in assuming that you're agent Mulder's partner?"
"Yes. How you know Mulder?"
Dawson's lips twisted in a rueful grin, "It's a long story."
Scully nodded, and took stock of her surroundings. They were in a relatively bare room. With two beds, and a wooden simple table and chair in one corner it seemed more like a hospital room than anything else. The walls were a dull white and a large metal door adjacent marred the otherwise unbroken blankness close to where Dawson was sitting. A strong white light blared down from the ceiling, making the room seem starker than it was. It felt too familiar to... her mind abruptly rebelled at the thought, and instinctively shied away. She had only reacted that way before while trying to remember things from her "missing time," and that reaction now unnerved Scully.
She was about to ask Dawson more about how he knew Mulder when the cell door banged open and two men came in, and pushed a tall, rustic man whom Scully recognized as Duncan MacLeod, into the cell.
MacLeod's long ebony tresses had obviously seen better hair days, and there was a mixture of blood and grime on MacLeod's face. Nonetheless he was enough to make Scully catch her breath and stare before she remembered who this man was, and what he was suspectedness of doing.
After Duncan had been shoved in, the men quickly exited and slammed the metal door behind them.
Duncan hauled himself to his feet.
A loud gasp escaped Scully when she saw Duncan's chest. His shirt had several bullet holes ripped in the blue fabric and there were auburn blood stains on the edges. Where there should be gaping wounds in MacLeod's impressive chest, however, there was only unmarked, smooth flesh.
"You're Duncan MacLeod," Scully gasped, staring at his bullet riddled shirt.
Trying to ignore the fact that Scully's attention was focused on his healed torso, Duncan responded with his usual charm.
"It seems you have me at a disadvantage, Ms --?" Duncan said, trying to divert Scully's attention for the moment, but knowing full well that he would have to explain Immortals a third time, regardless of how much he impressed, or distracted, Scully.
"Scully, -- Agent Dana Scully."
"Fox Mulder's partner?"
"How is that everyone knows Mulder? What *exactly* has he been *doing*?"
"It's a long story," Duncan said.
"Oh, you're a big help -- that's the same thing *he* told me," Scully said, gesturing to Joe.
"Carlson didn't hurt you did he, Joe?"
"Naw," Dawson said, pulling himself to his feet. "I'm too old and tough."
Duncan grinned at that. Scully supposed that it must have been some sort of inside joke between the two of them, because she saw nothing humorous about it.
"I know that this is going to sound incredibly blunt, but would someone mind explaining MacLeod's shirt?" Scully asked, her curiosity finally getting the better of her.
Duncan and Dawson exchanged looks.
"I think that the important thing right now is to figure out a way out of here," Duncan said.
"You're avoiding the issue," Scully pressed, "I want to know how the hell you can have bullet holes in your shirt, and not a mark on your skin -- and don't tell me that it was that way when you put it on, because there's still blood smeared on your skin." Duncan sighed.
"Do you want to do the honors or should I?" Duncan asked Joe.
"So what did you find out?" Richie asked Mulder as the FBI agent climbed back into Chance's car and slammed the door.
"Nothing much. The officer I talked to said Scully left right after calling me. Her car's not in the parking lot," Mulder said, twisting around to look at Richie in the backseat.
"So what do we do now?" Chance asked from his seat next to Mulder.
"Do you think that your Watcher friends could help?" Mulder asked as Chance started the car and pulled out onto the slick, dark night street.
"I don't think so," Richie replied.
"I'd like to try them anyway. If I were a Watcher, and there were people investigating Immortals, I'd keep a close eye on them."
He certainly adjusted quickly. Richie had never met anyone else who was able to get into other people heads as fast and as well as Mulder did.
/Too bad he wasn't here during the episode with Garrick... Mulder would have gotten a kick out of that,/ Richie thought.
"They might," Richie shrugged, "But Mike doesn't like to discuss Watcher business in detail over the phone. We'll have to drive up to Joe's... Take a left up here on Oak street, Chance."
The trio drove on in silence, the water on the road spraying from the tires and catching in the light on the lonely road
Mulder frowned. This was not looking good. He was confident that Scully could care of herself, but like a father teaching his daughter to drive, it was the *other* people that worried him. So far this case seemed like a routine X-File, if you could call X-Files routine, but there was no telling what could happen. It had taken Mulder quite a while to get over Scully's return from her "alien" abduction and for him to stop acting overprotective. In fact, he still wasn't totally over it.
The Caprice slowly found it's way out of the inner section of the city.
"Turn right up here," Richie said from the back.
Chance approached the intersection. "Can't," he said looking up at an orange "detour" sign.
"The hell--??" Richie said, a puzzled expression crossing his face. "Well, guess we'll have to follow them and take the scenic route."
Chance turned onto the Detour route, and sped down a steep hill. At the bottom he found yet another detour sign. Shrugging, the turned and followed in the direction it indicated. After clattering over four sets of railroad tracks, the car stopped at an intersection with a third Detour sign, only this one looked as though it had been bent in the wrong direction.
Not wishing to second guess the sign, just in case it was correct, Chance turned another corner onto a long street which was briefly lit at scattered intervals with dim street lights.
The silence in the car began to loom like an approaching thunderstorm as Chance drove for another ten minutes without encountering another Detour sign.
"I think we're lost," Richie announced.
Mulder took a long sidelong glance at Chance.
"Hey, don't look at me that way, Mulder. It's not like I can't help it. I've learned that there's usually there's a reason for it, and I just kind a follow the flow of events and do whatever I have to."
"Well, I never was one to follow the flow. Pull into that K-Mart over there. I can remember the way back, but let's see if we can figure out a way to Joe's without all the Detour signs," Mulder said.