Balducci sighed, and slipped another piece of paper out of the folder. A similar shot, similarly degraded, but… I put the two next to each other and planted my hands on the table, staring down upon them. After a moment I saw it: the head of a snake in the design was three links past the belt of the chain in one, and five in the next. It was moving.

"This is magical," I said. "This tattoo is moving. It's a magical mark."

"Told you," Rand said triumphantly.

"Holy-" Balducci breathed. I looked up, and saw him not looking at the flash, but at my hands. "Hers are doing it too. I swear the fucking butterfly flapped."

"What, did you think they only moved after?" Rand asked.

"What do you mean, after?" I asked. No one said anything, and my stomach suddenly clenched up. "What do you mean, after? You don't mean, like, after death-"

"I can't discuss the details of an ongoing investigation," Balducci said.

"Why did we bring her here if not to discuss it?" Rand said.

"It was your idea," Balducci said. "She's your old partner's daughter-"

The side door opened.

The dark-suited Fed I had seen in the hall walked out. His crisp goatee and short wavy hair made him look more like an evil Johnny Depp than a laid-back agent Mulder. One hand was in his pocket, the other still holding the cup of coffee. In his dextrous fingers, the Styrofoam cup looked like alabaster.

"Show her," he said, with unassuming authority. "Or quit wasting our time."

Balducci looked up, at a loss. "You've got 'it,'" he said.

The Fed just looked at me, mouth quirking into a smile, at which point Balducci touched his head in a "senior moment" gesture, then hit the intercom. "Rogers," he said. "You got 'it'? Yeah. Bring 'it.'"

After a moment, a tall, drawn man stepped out of a back door I hadn't noticed, gingerly holding a large, white plastic envelope with the same Fed logo on it. The cadaverous man paused in the white light of the doorway for a moment, eyes twitching as he saw me- not unfriendly, but… in pity? Then I noticed a long plastic tray in the man's other hand, and saw the padded envelope bulging with something.