Water dripped steadily outside the window in a cheerful gurgling rhythm, splashing in the already saturated earth. A fresh, wet, pine smell was blowing in the open doorway on a chilly mountain breeze. To him, the cold fragrant air felt like heaven. It blew inside the tiny space, clearing the stale winter odors out of the corners and setting the frayed cloth they used for a tablecloth gently swaying. He watched the movement with a small smile on his mouth.

The coming of spring would mean many things, most of them bad, but for now he just wanted to revel in the fact that winter was over. Soon enough they were going to have to find another place to hide, soon enough the Shredders would make their way up the warming mountainside. He didn't know what they were going to do next, knew they were looking to him for the solution, knew that he was going to have to reach into his top hat and hope he didn't pull out a dead rabbit.

Peter gurgled something unintelligible and he returned his attention to the tiny infant and away from the hypnotic sway of the faded red tablecloth, tugging the massacred and resewn scrap of wool they'd fashioned into a cap down on his head.

She had been right, of course. Everything had been fine. Not a single one of the nightmarish complications he had conjured in his imagination had come to pass. Certainly, it had been a difficult and long birth, Scully wasn't built for something that size to pass through her, and there had been some tearing. She'd told him what to do in that same tone of voice that she used in a crisis, that hard-as-nails, do-exactly-as-I-say *when*I-say-it voice. And he had, of course. She'd passed out not soon after he and Cissy had attended to the red-faced, purple infant and he'd gingerly tended to her poor torn body. She wasn't superwoman...but she was damned close.

"There you go, Butch. All the women will want your number now." He grinned down at the baby who blinked back at him with wide, measuring green eyes peeking out from under the oddly shaped cone of what had once been one of his best wool socks. Scully had cut them up and sewn them back together into a lumpy, gray *thing*. At least there was something Scully wasn't good at. Sewing.

If his admiration for her could grow any more after that hellish night of labor, he wasn't sure what it would take. Perhaps she could construct a television out of pine cones and mud.

"Mulder!"

Scully's voice was calling to him from outside the cabin, excitement evident in her voice. Listening for her, he was suddenly aware of a new sound. One he hadn't heard in a long time.

The sound of a motor.

Slinging the baby up against his shoulder, he stepped out into the crisp air of the afternoon, his boots squelching in the slushy puddles of melting snow and mud. Scully was waving imperiously at him from over past Howie's cabin, disappearing behind it as soon as she saw him coming.

The alien sound grew louder as he approached and he finally recognized it as the generator. They'd found the thing rusting away in a back shed when they'd first arrived, but hadn't been able to make it work. Then winter had come and the shed the old chunck of metal was kept in had been thoroughly snowed under. Melchor had claimed that he could get it working once spring rolled around and his assertion was the prime reason Mulder had dragged the HAM radio up the mountain several months earlier.

As he rounded the side of the cabin he saw Scully, Melchor, Roz and Howie standing around a warped and splintered picnic table, the HAM set neatly on a faded tarp.

And it was happily humming static at them.

The grin that consumed his face was echoed by every last person around the table. They stared at the metal box like it was spouting the word of God and not just white noise.

"Have you tried to find an active channel?" he asked, handing Peter over to Scully when she wordlessly held out her arms.

"We were waiting for you and the others." Howie said. Behind the smile, Mulder could see fear. It was the same fear they all felt. That the radio would find nothing at all.

It took Cissy five minutes to appear, Anna, Shan, and Chris behind her.

The small crowd gathered around the table, suddenly silent while Melchor began to fiddle with the dials. It seemed like hours of screeching static, but Mulder thought it was more likely five minutes. He felt a touch on his knuckles and without looking, he opened his fingers to fit Scully's free hand into his.

And then they heard the faint distorted sound of a distinctly human voice through the noise. Melchor's hands were trembling slightly as he adjusted the knobs and there it was.

"...Sand Point, Idaho." The voice said. "Take I-80 to Boise. North on Rte 34. This is a recording. If you can hear this, please respond on channel 45. Someone will pick up. We have the power running in Sand Point, Idaho. Take I-80 to..."

The recording ran through almost 5 times before the cheer finally went up.