written October 8 & 9, 1999

This is a crossover, and yet I only have to beg off to one company in my disclaimer. That's never happened before. Fox, 10-13, Carter, not me.

Summary: If aliens abduct women and harvest their ova in a matter of hours, why was Scully gone for 3 weeks?

by Megan Reilly

It was her eyes that haunted him most. They'd been wide, confused. Unsteady. She wasn't military. That had been obvious at first glance. Once he got close enough tosee those wise blue eyes though...

Mike Pinnochio woke with a start and groaned. Dreaming. He had no use for dreams here. Just electric sheep, he thought, sitting up and finding his muscles cold and stiff. Hobbes was curled into the corner, not resting, staring. It must have been seeing Hobbes with Sophie that made him think of her again, when he'd sworn she was banished from his mind for good.

"Come on," he snarled and Hobbes looked at him before obediently rising to his feet. Pinnochio shouldered his duffel and hoped it wasn't raining.

"I hate the rain," he commented to no one in particular, drenched a few minutes after stepping out of his lair. Hobbes wasn't listening. "Going to get us killed," he said in a loud voice over the constant din of raindrops. He glanced at the younger man, who ambled like he was out for a wander in the woods. Danger could come from all sides, at any moment. They had to stay alert.

She was the only person he'd ever met in Harsh Realm that wasn't military. Person meaning someone from the other side, the so-called real world rather than a virtual character. That alone was enough to make her intensely special. But it wasn't the only thing.

"So...how do you find glitches in the system?" Hobbes asked gamely.

Pinnochio was angry at the question. Hobbes was thinking smart and he himself was lost to daydreams. There was no room for dreams in the Realm. He increased his pace and when he was ahead, he looked back over his shoulder at Hobbes, who was still waiting for an answer to his question. "People say I'm lucky," he smirked.

His stomach tightened and growled and he wondered when Hobbes was going to get hungry enough to be cured of his ridiculous attachment to his dog. He was tired of being hungry and wet and cold and on the run all the time. But the only other choice was death, and anything was preferable to death. Pinnochio hadn't liked it when he tried it.

He picked up a rock and hurled it, watching the air around it bend as the rock disappeared. Glitch in the system. "Damn lazy programmers," he said, showing off for Hobbes, who looked less than impressed even as they stepped through the portal into Santiago City.

+ - +

Florence always knew when they were sending someone into the Realm. She knew a lot of things the rest of them didn't. She never mixed with the scavengers, who attacked for the miliatary goody bags. She hung back, hiding herself in the woods, waiting. He got the odd feeling she told them when someone was coming not so they could steal the guns and supplies, but so she could be there. In case the person needed help.

He didn't understand Florence.

He'd been alone that time. In retrospect, he was glad. Otherwise they would have killed her when she came through. The only reason he hadn't killed her was because he was so surprised to see a petite lost woman in a medical gown standing in that horrible room. He thought she was a child at first, who'd somehow wandered into the Realm by accident. But that was impossible.

He threw her over his shoulder when she wouldn't break into a run away from the helicopters that always came. He usually let the weak ones be killed by Santiago, but he hadn't been willing to let them have her. His hand dug into her thigh and he ran like hell.

+ - +

"You looked like you were a million miles away," Hobbes taunted him.

"You've got chicken in your teeth," Pinnochio barked, turning away. He had to get her out of his mind. Especially in a place as dangerous as this. He never liked using the system against itself for something as simple as food. He was a mercenary, true, but he always felt like the system was going to turn on him one of these days.

"You don't need to eat my dog," Hobbes told him, loading his pockets full from the restaurant pantry they were violating. It was late and Santiago City had a curfew, so they should be safe as long as they got out before the military patrol swung by.

"This is damn risky!" Pinnochio yelled at him, grabbing his shirt and ready to fight. An apple fell from his hand and rolled across the floor. "This isn't fun and games, Hobbes. This is your life now and it could end in a heartbeat." Hobbes still had that cocky Top Gun look on his face. Pinnochio released him, throwing him back against the wall, because his next words were better than any punch. "You saw what happened to Sophie."

He turned away, shoving bread and fruit into the pockets of his jacket to take back. He was still hungry, even though his stomach was so full he thought he'd be sick. Hobbes shoved another roll into his mouth, barely chewing it. "You know all the shortcuts," he said with his mouth full. "You don't have to be hungry or -"

Pinnochio rolled his eyes. The kid didn't get it. "It worked this time, Thank Esther."

"Who's Esther?"

"A little polytheism never hurt," he said and Hobbes looked at him like he was speaking Greek. Which, in a manner of speaking, he was. "She lives in the mainframe. Legend has it she used to be real. But she wanted to be virtual."

"Imagine that," Hobbes drawled. Pinnochio grabbed his arm and shoved him through the wormhole before following him out. "She finds the glitches for you, or she creates them?"

Pinnochio shrugged. He didn't know or care.

"Do the glitches ever change?" Hobbes asked, finding his thinking cap again and pulling it on.

Pinnochio just stared at him, an affirmative answer. Hobbes didn't want to know what happened when a glitch was debugged on human flesh. "Come on," he said, leading the way back to the Church Bar to share their riches with the others.

"You're just giving this away?" Hobbes asked incredulously before Pinnochio started to distribute the food piled into his pockets. "You're not saving it for yourself?"

"These people are hungry. When they get something, they'll share. Survival's not a one-man show."

+ - +

She was the first person he'd ever taken to his lair. "Think you can handle yourself, Princess?" He let her slide to the ground. One of her knees buckled, but she didn't fall. He was so busy marvelling at the angry fire in her eyes he didn't see her fist coming toward his face. "What'd you do that for?" She had a mean right hook.

"I've seen monkeys do a better Han Solo impression," she informed him.

So she was mad about the grope. "I was saving your life!" he yelled at her.

"From?"

"From the men who were sent to kill you, that's who!"

"I can take care of myself," she informed him.

"Maybe you'd better have another look in the mirror, sweetheart, because you forgot to finish getting dressed this morning," he told her, but she was already twisting the material of her hospital gown between her fingers, staring at it like a foriegn artifact. "Not only do I have a gun, I'm wearing underwear."

"Thanks for sharing, sailor," she sniped.

"Marine," he corrected.

"Ex-Marine now. This is it, isn't it?" she asked. He just looked at her. "The game. Harsh Realm. I'm inside it now."

He drew the gun on her then. He was going to regret blowing her beautiful Raphael painting head to kingdom come. But he'd let her best him. She knew exactly where she was, and why.

+ - +

The rest of the food paid off his tab at the bar. Annoyingly, Hobbes wouldn't go away so he could drink in peace. He remained leaning against the bar, just to one side of Pinnochio's peripheral vision. "So this is it? A typical day in Harsh Realm?" Hobbes asked.

"There is no such thing as a typical day in Harsh Realm. Not on this side of the fence." He glanced at Hobbes. "You sound like a damn tourist. Sit down and have a drink. Help you forget."

Hobbes did, taking a seat on one of the stools and having a look at the locals. It didn't look too different from Friday night at any one of a hundred military drinking holes across the world. Except maybe that everyone was dressed like an extra from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. "So, who are you trying to forget?" he asked.

Pinnochio almost choked on the smooth alcohol burning its sweet way down his throat. He rolled his eyes, smashing the shooter onto the bar. He stood and turned to walk away, but he tripped over the damn dog. The floor was right where he'd left it. "I think you're too drunk to leave," Hobbes suggested, laughing at him.

"I can drink any man here under the table of your choice," he said, picking up another of the perfect little glasses and letting the liquid slide down. Hobbes gave him a challenging look, knowing Pinnochio had never backed down from a challenge.

+ - +

"I think it's time for you to tell me what a nice girl like you is doing in a shithole like this," he ordered, eyeing her down the line of his arm, right over the barrel of his gun. She didn't say anything and wore an unreadable expression on her face. He fired a warning shot millimeters to the left of her head. She jumped, the wrong way, startled by the sound that made her cringe. He knew her ear would be ringing, and waited for an answer.

"I was abducted by aliens three days ago."

"Stop before I laugh so hard I wet my pants." His delivery was deadpan. She raised an eyebrow at him.

"It's true. There was a bright light...loud sounds...I don't really remember," she admitted with a pained shrug. "I only remember today. They said they wouldn't kill me if I could master a simulation for them. Something about finding Santiago...?" She shook her head, like she didn't know all the details. Then her gaze sharpened, her eyes finding the sticky dark spot on his shirt. "You're bleeding."

She took a step toward him, hands reaching. He made a warning growl in the back of his throat and didn't lower the gun, which was now mere inches from her perfect little nose. "Aliens?" he asked.

"Military," she admitted. "Doctors."

"Why?"

"Why this?" she asked, still staring at the darkening fabric. "I'm a doctor."

"This gets better and better."

"What happened?" she asked.

"I was a dead man. Now I'm back."

She shivered like someone was walking over her future grave, but didn't make another move. Her eyes never wavered.

"Touch me and I'll kill you," he informed her, moving slowly backwards toward his makeshift bed, where he climbed in with his back to two walls. He kept the gun pointing toward her.

+ - +

"So, if Santiago can pass in and out of the Realm, why doesn't the military just grab him on the outside?" Hobbes asked.

"Why ask why." Pinnochio glanced at him. The blond young man's face had flushed a darkening red, but he was holding his liquor.

"Well?" Hobbes asked.

At least she hadn't asked a thousand and one stupid questions. What haunted him most about her were her lips...

+ - +

"Oh my god," she murmured on a sharp intake of breath, leaning over him on the bed so he could almost touch the soft skin peeking above the loose waistband of the pair of his pants she wore. "What did they do to you?" Her fingers swirled over the large, angry wound on his upper chest. "It's infected."

He shrugged.

"This is your life I'm talking about," she informed him with all the alarm of a schoolmarm.

"Yes'm," he replied. He made the mistake of looking into her eyes then, and they were truth serum. "I couldn't see what I was doing very well."

"You did this to yourself?" She turned away and started rifling through his duffle bag with both hands.

"Leave my stuff alone."

"Come over here and stop me," she challenged, aware that he was weak with the fever of infection. "Besides, I don't think you'll miss it." When she returned to his bedside, she had a large bottle of whiskey in her hand.

"I don't think you understand that's my savings account."

She leaned over him again and he couldn't resist slipping his fingers underneath the fabric of her borrowed pants, down against her cool skin. "I don't that's gonna happen, considering the size of your savings account," she told him gently.

"I haven't made a withdrawal lately," he said gamely, but the next moment his universe exploded into agony as she poured alcohol on the inflamed, ripped patch of skin on his chest. "I thought you were a doctor," he rasped when he was able, grabbing the bottle from her and downing a considerable amount of booze.

"Forensic pathologist, actually," she replied charmingly as her hand snaked out to wipe away the liquid dribbling down his chin. Her thumb caught the corner of his mouth and for a second he forgot she was a one woman torture squad.

"Then can you let me die in peace?" he begged.

"Then I wouldn't have any friends," she said.

"You don't have any friends now," he warned her.

"Just for that, we do this the hard way." She jumped up on the bed, straddling his body and pinning his hands with her knees.

"This is the hard way?" An instant later he regretted his words because he saw she had his lighter in her hand. The flame only seared for an instant. After that, his mind came free from his body. The skin he watched turn black seemed like it belonged to someone else. He tried to say something, but the only words that would come out were, "Oh, shit."

He thought he heard her whisper, "I'm sorry." She tipped her head back to take a long swallow from the bottle herself. Then she moved away.

"What was the easy way?" he managed to whisper, his tongue bitter with the taste of pain.

"I was going to hit you on the head with the frying pan," she confessed.

"Would you...please...?" he requested. Her eyes darted to the frying pan, but then she realized his hand was stretching toward the bottle she still held. She looked at it, and then at him. Sighing, her shoulders falling forward, she handed it to him and let him drink himself into welcome oblivion.

+ - +

"So, Santiago doesn't want us dead," Hobbes mused. Pinnochio looked at the glasses in front of the newcomer and then at the glasses in front of him, mentally counting them. He regretted entering a drinking contest with him. The guy never quit talking. "If he did, we'd be easy prey out here in the woods, gathered here in this bar."

"He never comes here," Pinnochio confirmed.

"Why not?" Hobbes asked.

He shrugged.

"There has to be a reason."

"Things don't happen with no reason. Not in a game of skill," Hobbes argued.

"Who said this wasn't a game of chance?" Pinnochio demanded. "The same nice guys who told you all you had to do was win the game and then you could head home?"

"Everything in this game was written. It's only as smart as the man who wrote the program."

"Santiago's not a virtual character. He's a real guy. Are you thick in the head or something? I told you that already." He was starting to slur his words. When had he ever cared about winning?

"Then this game is only as smart as he is. It shouldn't be that hard to take him out." Hobbes cocked his head when he looked at Pinnochio, who had to laugh because he looked exactly like his dog when he did that. "Are you sure no one's ever succeeded?"

He stopped laughing.

+ - +

Her fingers twined through the chains he wore around his neck, making the metal tags at the ends of them clank together. She read one, first with her fingers, and then twisted it around to get it in the light to read the raised metal letters stamped there. "Hey, Pinnochio, you want to be a real boy?" she snickered.

"No, but I've got something made of wood that grows," he whispered darkly, expecting her to sock him again.

"You've got a filthy mouth," she informed him, moving away.

He grabbed her wrist before she got too far. "What're you going to do about it?"

"Maybe I should find Santiago myself."

"You wouldn't last an hour."

"What the hell do you care?" she asked pointedly.

"Watch your fucking language," he chuckled, but she didn't take the joke. "You know you have to kill Santiago in order to win the game. No one ever has, though hundreds have died trying."

"Hundreds?" Her voice was quiet and grave. "How long have you been here?"

"What day is it?"

She shrugged. She didn't know. "It was October of 1994 when I was abducted, only a few days ago."

"Two years," he was shocked by the realization himself.

There was a long pause while she assimilated the information. "You haven't even tried to escape?"

"I tried every way I could, sweetheart. It only got me here. There is no escape."

"You said Santiago goes in and out of the game. That he knows where the doorway is. All we have to do is find the doorway, so we can go home."

The excited look in her eyes made his heart ache. "There's nothing at home for me."

"Anything has to be better than this place," she told him. "I am going to go home." She tried to smile. "Tilt. Game Over."

"Good luck and good riddance," he said, but when she gave him that look and he knew he would follow her anywhere. Even back into Santiago City.

+ - +

"What's that noise?" Hobbes asked.

Pinnochio turned his head to listen and the room swam. It was empty, and they were drinking out of bottles now, trying to finish each other off. Hobbes was sweating. "I don't hear any noise."

"Sounds like rain. Or mist." Hobbes got up, heading for the door.

Mist? Shit. "Don't!" Pinnochio yelled at him, freezing Hobbes with his hand on the knob. "Bio weapons," he said. Hobbes looked horrified, although he had to be too young to have served in the horror of the Gulf War and seen the soldiers with their skin hanging off, their bodies burned in an explosion the military deemed an "accident" of "friendly fire." Just another in a long line of coverups. "It's okay, kid," he said, sitting back down at the bar. "Good thing we've been drinking so much."

"Why's that?" Hobbes joined him.

"Alcohol kills germs." Without meaning to, he slid off the stool. He passed out before he hit the floor, a stupid grin still on his face.

+ - +

She was the one who discovered the glitches in the system. "I always wanted to ride in the Batmobile," she sneered as she climbed into the bucket seat of his car.

"It runs," he informed her.

"So did my '84 Chevette but that doesn't mean I want to drive it -" She stopped when he stomped on the gas. She was too busy grabbing for a seatbe lt, a hand strap or anything else she could hang on to.

He skidded to a stop outside the electrified fence and looked at her, not stirring from the driver's seat. "It's like breaking into prison."

She shrugged and gave him that look again. The one he couldn't help following. She filled her hands with rocks and started hurling them at the fence, showering them with sparks. But she didn't give up. She kept at it with quiet determination.

He almost missed it when the rock slid through the electromagnetic field. He bumped into her because she didn't move on, but turned to him and grinned. "Look!" She threw a whole handful of rocks and they all slipped through. She giggled. "I knew it!"

"You don't know that's safe for you to go through."

"The rocks are on the other side. They're fine."

He looked and he could see them. He could also see there was no way he could talk her out of this. "Look, Scully, there are some things you're going to need to know before you go in there," he told her earnestly, touching her cheek with his hand to ensure he had her attention, brushing back a strand of hair that had escaped her flame colored ponytail. He'd never seen anyone as beautiful, or as fearless.

She shook her head.

He opened his mouth to argue with her.

"You're coming with me." She grabbed his hand and dragged him through the portal before he had a chance to protest.

+ - +

"How long do we have to stay here?" Hobbes asked, his eyes going to the door.

Pinnochio didn't answer, just sighed and shifted position in front of the large fireplace along one wall, to the side of the bar, where there must have been an altar once. Now it was filled with shards of glasses, as the tradition was to throw them into the fire before departing on a mission from which you would not return. One way or the other.

Hobbes rolled onto his back, tucking his arms underneath his head and staring at the ceiling. "What happens to them, do you think? When they...you know. Die."

Pinnochio let his eyes drift closed, welcoming the blackness behind his eyelids merged with the heat of the fire bathing his face.

"I can't get that picture out of my head. When she went zap...and crackle..."

"Don't do this to yourself, buddy," he cautioned without opening his eyes.

"That blue light was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Like in the East, when the bodies are burned on a funeral pyre. But I can't help wondering...if she was afraid."

Pinnochio opened his eyes, chilled to the bone. It wouldn't help Hobbes any, but the words slipped out. "She was."

+ - +

"Oh my god. Oh my god." She couldn't stop saying it and her wailing was getting louder. She was going to attract attention and she was going to get them both killed. He put his arms around her shuddering body from behind, even though it meant his gun was no longer at the ready. His other hand clapped over her mouth and she struggled.

She'd killed men, or so she'd told him. Shot them in cold blood at close range with a pistol not unlike the one in his hand. But those men had been real, crafted of flesh rather than telemetry and energy. And there was something intensely horrifying in that flash of blue light. "I know," he murmured into the cinnamon of her hair. "I know."

He released her when she stopped shaking. They couldn't be seen again, or he'd have to kill again and she wouldn't be able to stand it. Which meant he had to find them a safe place, and quickly.

The Temple of Santiago was the best he could do. Someone in the neighborhood had beaten a rug earlier in the day and he draped it over them in the back pew where they crouched, only occasionally disturbed by the sound of a penetent entering or leaving the state-mandated house of worship.

"I told you there were things you needed to know," he whispered to her.

"I can't get it out of my head," she said. "Why -?"

"They're virtual characters. Everyone here who isn't military is. Some of the military, too. They're part of the game. They live their lives under Santiago's rule. They don't know it's not real."

"What happens when they...?"

"They're deleted from the program."

"Is that a nice way of saying that they die?" she asked, but recanted. "That isn't death. Deletion...they completely cease to exist. No heaven, no hell. Just a sudden ending in a flash of light." She turned her eyes to him and they were luminous in the candlelight. "Doesn't it affect you?"

"It is the thing I am most afraid of in my life." He told her the honest truth. He wrapped his arms around her then, as much for his comfort as for her own.

+ - +

He'd dozed, in front of the fire. When he woke, Hobbes was snoring softly into the crook of his arm, sprawled on the floor with a frustrated look on his face. Dreaming of Sophie, no doubt. His one lost love...who still lived in his dreams.

The fire had gone out and the former church was cold. Maybe that was why he'd dreamed of the end. Sitting there, he couldn't shake the hovering blue light. It seemed to linger just outside the field of his vision, eluding him when he tried to look directly at it. It was as though death was hovering there in the room with him.

Which wasn't possible. Fuck, he'd drunk more than he'd thought. No wonder he'd woken, he thought, stumbling to his feet and lurching heavily toward the bathroom in the back. The blue light followed him, like a memento mori. Or a bad omen.

+ - +

"Are you one of them?" she asked, her fingers brushing lightly over the still-tender skin where she'd cauterized his wound. Her eyes met his. "Only they -"

"They don't know it's not real. I know this is not real," he informed her.

"But...you don't remember the world outside the game."

He didn't answer her. He moved her hand away, and then moved his body away from his.

"It's okay," she said. "It doesn't mean anything."

He glared at her and her face fell. Maybe it did mean something after all.

"When I find the portal, you won't come with me."

He pushed his lips together, not quite pouting, but close. He wanted her to stay. She was the only thing that made Harsh Realm seem like a real life. He didn't want to watch her die when she failed...and she would fail. There was no way out. If there was, someone would have found it by now. Maybe him, maybe not. But someone.

"I am going to find it," she whispered to him. "You can't stop me."

"I wouldn't try. You look cute...in that."

"I can't believe the word cute is in your vocabulary," she informed him, tilting the burgundy beret a little more deeply over her eye. But then her manner grew serious. "What happens when someone finds the way out?"

"They're free."

"Does all of this cease to exist?" she asked, her eyes concerned. She was worried about sentencing an entire virtual world to that sudden blue flash of deletion.

"Santiago goes in and out all the time," he said. She didn't look convinced. But her eyes brightened and he knew she had her sights on the master of the game. "Be careful."

She nodded.

"I have a very bad feeling about this," he told her.

She almost smiled, by accident. And because she leaned toward him when he was already reaching for her, he didn't know exactly who kissed whom. It wasn't a real kiss anyway, just a hard smack on the lips...more for luck than anything.

And to say goodbye.

She didn't look back as she slipped into step behind Santiago. Why the leader of an entire world didn't have bodyguards was beyond Pinnochio, who hung back. Maybe it was because Santiago was leaving, to do whatever he did in the real world. He wasn't wearing camoflouge and his raspberry beret.

It happened so fast his eyes couldn't process what they saw. One moment Santiago was there and the next he was gone. Pinnochio's fists balled in on themselves, his nails digging into his palms. She turned and met his eyes for barely a second, and then she disappeared, too.

He didn't even make a decision; he just started running. He could taste freedom and her and the world all in that moment, when he half expected to fizzle into nothingness. At least he would know.

Nothing happened. Pinnochio stood in the exact spot where she had crossed over, and nothing happened. Except they were gone, and he was left behind.

+ - +

"So, what happens when I take out Santiago?" Hobbes asked, cocky in the morning light. There was a fine silt of poison lingering on everything, so Hobbes had his dog in his arms, to protect him.

Pinnochio just looked at him, because it was an impossibility.

Hobbes knew. "Theoretically," he added.

Pinnochio shrugged. "Tilt. Game over. The end."

They kept walking.

the end