J. Edgar Hoover Building
FBI Headquarters
Washington D.C. – 9:36 am

“Mulder.”

He rolled the sunflower seed shell around in his mouth, up against the back of his incisors, mouth pursed in a weird expression as he fixated on the computer screen before him.  Should he say something or not?

“Mulder!”  Scully’s voice became more insistent from the other side of the monitor.  “Are you going to answer me?”

Fox Mulder, the FBI’s most unwanted agent, lifted his eyes from the monitor to see Dana Scully step up to the side of his desk, arms folded, eyebrows arched slightly in that school-marmish way that always made him fear he would be asked to stand and

recite the Gettysburg address for the class as punishment for not listening.  But he’d been taking so long to answer her because he was debating whether or not to mention the e-mails he had been getting from a (somewhat) reliable informant. 

He had, of course, heard her offer to bring him something from the commissary, but the wheels had been turning on the words in the e-mail that popped up not five minutes before Scully walked in. But it wasn’t the tone of her voice that had finally pulled him

from his reverie.  Dressed in a wine-colored skirt and jacket, Scully was softer-looking today, the deep red of the outfit making the color of her eyes more prominent and clear. 

This story continues from the NanoCorp SubSIDiary stories titled "Lost in the Empire."  A team of specialists have traveled inside the movie "Gladiator" to retrieve the main character of Maximus for the purposes of which the nanotech, Sid 6.7, knows completely, and the entire venture ends in near disaster as a competitor shows up and takes one of the team himself, Cort, who was retrieved from the movie "The Quick and the Dead" and has become lover to Rachel Keirs.  Terry and Deidre find they have problems of their own once Rachel leaves to regain Cort (see - "My Heart in Stone"), the least of which have to do with getting Maximus away from Sid.  The following story begins the morning the team arrives back from their trip into "Gladiator."

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Emerald City
Gym 2 Office No. 3
Saturday afternoon

Tom Exton, fencing instructor, warp program specialist, had been tipped off by the very alarm that announced their return from the foray into “Gladiator;” they had arrived in loud protest and chaotic anger, so he began the final phase of his download with a speed that would have astounded his coworkers had he displayed it in less frantic moments, taking advantage of the confusion to pull other data that otherwise would have alarmed the control commander. He watched with detachment as the warp techs scrambled to assist Sid, who merely barreled his way through into the hallway, the newly-acquired gladiator and an unexpected addition, a tall blonde lady, in either arm; raised an eyebrow as Terry bellowed after him and Deidre tried to drag a keening Rachel to her feet. Med-techs were rushing into the room and the control commander screamed something about a computer virus spreading rapidly through the system, with subsequent yelling in return from the warp techs that they couldn’t keep track of it. In the midst of that, he held firm to his own station, with an air that might have shown great control of self in dire circumstances, a demeanor that the control commander accepted without question.