Tithonus
“Look, Ritter, don’t sweat the math. It’s him. Just get there and find Agent Scully.”
“All right. I’m on it.”
He didn’t even ask permission before leaving. It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway; he was going, regardless of whatever Kersh might’ve had to say about it. Scully wasn’t answering her phone, and no one knew where she was – like hell was he going to sit around twiddling his thumbs in Washington.
He spent the whole flight trying to convince himself her phone had just run out of batteries. Or got switched off accidentally. Or she’d dropped it somewhere, maybe left it in a car. Any one of the perfectly reasonable explanations he could come up with for why she wouldn’t be answering.
It didn’t help much.
When turned his own phone back on after landing, there was a missed call and one new voicemail, and he nearly dropped the phone in his eagerness to play the message. His stomach clenched when it was Agent Ritter’s voice, not Scully’s, in his ear.
“Agent Mulder, this is Peyton Ritter. There’s, um, there’s been an accident. I thought you’d want to know. Agent Scully was, uh… she’s in surgery right now for a gunshot wound–”
The world seemed to tilt sideways for a moment.
“–NYU Medical Center. I’ll, uh, I should have some more information for you in a few hours.”
Damn it.