The X-Files: The Truth Revealed

Chapter 17

Massachusetts Oceanographic Institute - Woods Hole, MA 

Gibson poured over satellite images doing year-to-year comparisons dating back fifteen years. His focus... anything within a five-hundred mile radius off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. If the coordinates Langly provided him with were accurate, then something had to be recorded that would show the location of where Agent Scully was being held. 

Agent Scully... Gibson never felt comfortable calling her Dana or Scully. He'd met her when he was a young boy. Calling her anything but Agent Scully just didn't feel right to him. He never told anyone, but he'd had a crush on her back then. He knew it was stupid, but his heart raced all the same whenever he saw her. 

Gibson resumed reviewing the images. It was slow, tedious work, but he knew it was vital in their efforts to locate her. As a student at Woods Hole, he had full access to the types of records he needed. However, after beginning his search, he quickly realized it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. 

Hours passed before he came upon what appeared at first to be a shadow - a disc shaped area of darkness beneath the ocean's surface. He checked the date of the image where it first appeared... July 1998. When he backtracked one month, the shadowed area wasn't there. 

Out of curiosity, he accessed the same data image for 1999. The same disc-shaped shadow was present. However, there was a new area of darkness, a branch or arm, relatively one-half mile in width leading from the disc towards the Massachusetts coastline. Each successive year, for a three-year period, the length of the arm increased. At the conclusion of three years, it had simply stopped ten miles from Cape Cod National Seashore. 

Gibson decided to overlay each year's image with the next year, learning that the increase in length was exactly the same each year, thus concluding, it was intentional growth. He also learned that the circumference of the disc area increased as well over a four-year period. Thus, there was some type of continual growth in the same area over the course of seven years. 

Calculating the size of the disc to be approximately fifteen miles in diameter, Gibson couldn't make sense of what could possibly be that large and go virtually undetected. The arm was no small feat either. It was over four hundred miles in length extending from the shadowy disc to the Cape. As an afterthought, he checked the ocean levels for the same time period - levels which had been recorded at the institute itself. From 1998-2005, there was an increase in levels over and above the normal increase. 

Transferring the files and research notes to his flash drive, Gibson exited the library. Amanda watched him leave and then made a phone call when he was out of earshot. Gibson hesitated outside on the library steps. Feelings of regret plagued him. Had it not been for him, Amanda would still be interested in a relationship. However, she was no longer that same sweet young lady he'd known last semester. She had become someone's pawn... 

A super-soldier. 

Outskirts of Colby, KS 

The fog had lifted, driven away by the arrival of a warm southern breeze. In the quiet of the night, crickets sounded, skillfully orchestrating their song. But they stopped abruptly, and the night grew unnaturally still. 

A bright light roused Mulder to consciousness. His attempt to block it failed. He was paralyzed, head to toe; his arms and legs refused to obey. Try as he might, there was no recognition of body, and so he lay there motionless on the Kansas floor. When a shadow moved over him, Mulder opened his eyes to a blurry image. 

"Skinner?" he mouthed. 

Three beings came into focus, their large dark eyes peering down at Mulder. He tried to speak, but couldn't. His only option was to lie there, and even that seemed challenging.