Alessa

Part One

Washington, DC
8/22/93

She stood in front of the narrow IKEA bed, watching the man she'd drugged sleep a peaceful coma-esque sleep.

Dana Scully was royally pissed.

She had searched the entire house for that rat-bastard CIA NSA FBI KGB mole for any one the above organizations or more and had found nothing. She'd followed his tracer to this apartment, found the occupant in bed, shot him up and started the interrogation. Krycek had to be hiding somewhere, someplace where the waves wouldn't register.

The guy in the bed was cute. Red hair, blue eyes, a real sweetheart with most likely no idea who Alex Krycek was or what he was capable of. But that didn't mean he had to die. Not unless he coughed up.

They'd almost had him.

Key word being "almost".

The guy (the guy asleep in the bed that was) was Pendrell, Daniel something. He was a lab tech at the FBI, probably harmless. Most likely a good Samaritan who'd bought some cock-and-bull story from Krycek and was harboring him in the apartment. Her instructions were to kill Pendrell immediately if he admitted complicity in harboring a known felon. Scully wasn't that cold. She hoped the Ativan would keep him under for awhile, while she searched. It hadn't taken much of the drug. He should be able to get up for work in the morning, and it would all be a hazy bad dream.

She watched Pendrell sleep. He snored a little, lips parted, his face relaxed in an expression so perfectly boyish and under-eighteen that Scully began to wonder how old he really was. A fifteen year old whiz kid? The file said he was twenty five. She doubted it.

She also sometimes doubted she was twenty-seven when she saw her reflection shining back a well-groomed thirty-seven.

Scully shook her head to clear it and rose, watched Pendrell's chest rise and fall regularly, and headed into the kitchen, wondering how Harry or Edgar would have handled it. Probably a lot less delicately. No wonder they' d sent her.

The kitchen was (like the rest of the apartment) astonishingly tidy and done in good taste (white tile with deep green trim, butter-colored wood and brushed steel) compared to most other bachelor pads Scully had seen. And she 'd seen a lot of them.

She started searching for Krycek.

In the attic, Alexander Krycek was crouched and listening. The CIA agent, Sarah, or maybe it was Lana, something-or-other, was moving around quietly in the kitchen.

He'd met her once, back in Calcutta, when he'd thought he was spying on her and she, on him. She was a lovely girl. Hard, cold, and with emotions (if she actually had any besides hatred and lust) hidden under a nuclear bomb shelter, but lovely and a fine actress. They hadn't got anything from each other. Attempting to interrogate a suspect over wine and expensive pasta while smiling wryly and making sly innuendoes was one thing. Attempting to interrogate a suspect while frolicking with savage intensity in bed with her was rather a different matter.

She moved through the kitchen and he heard her tapping delicately on the walls with her long fingernails.

He held his breath and listened, hearing the faint rat-tat-tats landing alternately on wood and drywall. He waited for her to start on the roof, or at least notice the loose panels. She would have a gun. She might even take him, if he were caught by surprise.

He didn't intend to be caught by surprise.

Alex leaned back for a moment as the tapping faded away. He waited, then exhaled. He thought about Pendrell.

Poor, poor Daniel Pendrell.

Lonely lab rat locked up on the third floor of the FBI.

That was where Alexander Krycek intended to step in.

But.

Krycek had been skulking, hiding, watching Pendrell closely, clocking his hours, observing his friends, anticipating his actions and reactions. Lab boy was floating along cheerlessly and pointlessly and occasionally dating the odd woman from his RPG groups. Not a problem. There were ways and ways of changing men. And what better mole for he, Alex, to plant in the Bureau? A perfectly unassuming red-haired blue-eyed doe-faced lab-rat idiot.

Not that Pendrell didn't have his more...attractive, intelligent side.

So far the kid was only a pawn for Alex, one more ivory piece for him to move. The blonde below him would be moving fast, though, shifting her ebony chess bits, both to cover her trail and uncover his. She was already far too close to completely pulling off the safety blanket for his comfort. He didn' t want her around, didn't need her. She'd already blown what he'd considered a perfect cover in less than three days, and he hadn't been sleeping with her at the time. She was too fucking sharp to keep around safely and there weren't any margins for error this time; if she found him again, it would be over for good.

That wasn't part of his plan.

Soft thumping. Of course, she was wearing sneakers. The sound of her footfalls faded away. A door opened and shut. Further footfalls down a carpeted hallway fading to nothing.

She was gone.

Why would she leave the apartment? It didn't make sense.

Alex shrugged to himself and began to pry the first roof tile up. Light, and with it, fresh air, began to spill into the stifling attic.

The J. Edgar Hoover Building
8/23/93

Agent Pendrell went to the lab at six in the morning as usual, having nothing better to do. He felt slightly less coherent than usual and chalked it up to over-imaginative dreams. Something about a gorgeous blonde woman coming into his room in the middle of the night, injecting him with something, and questioning him about some guy he'd never heard of.

Probably just his mind telling him that he needed a life. Badly.

Agent Leah Cohen, the six-foot brunette who lifted weights in her spare time, had come in half an hour later and pinched his butt hello. Pendrell suspected she'd left a bruise. The woman's biceps were bigger around than his thighs.

Pendrell wasn't interested in Leah, but they were good friends and she acknowledged his acknowledgment of the rules: no relationships between agents. She couldn't be faulted for trying, though.

"So, what've we got?" she asked, chewing gum and redolent with scents of fresh deodorant, Elizabeth Arden and cinnamon.

Pendrell was leaning over a microscope and squinting. He popped his jaw once and relinquished the scope to Cohen, who also squinted narrowly through her thick glasses. She looked up at Pendrell with wide eyes, large hazel eyes which looked even larger through her magnifying horn rims.

"Weird," she said, then gave him room to see again. He moved back in front of the scope and peered in as she asked, "A sample from the luscious Agent Mulder?"

Pendrell only turned an intense shade of crimson, and she nodded.

"Of course. Who else?" Cohen began to back away, hands up. "I don't want anything to do with it. You say what you want."

"But..."

Cohen was already fleeing rapidly, her footfalls making test tubes and beakers rattle in the cupboards.

Pendrell sighed and started mentally typing up yet another thrilling report on the green viscous pulsating blob of stuff that Mulder had left in the lab fridge the day before with his name masking-taped to it. Mulder was completely unaware that such an entity as Daniel B. Pendrell existed, and Pendrell didn't really mind. He caught his occasional glimpse of the handsome agent on his rare trips to the lab to process evidently alien material, and that was enough.

He booted his computer and opened his program. He knew the report would be buried; his name hadn't materialized in "Scientific American" once yet and the last year of weird stuff from the agent in the basement had certainly warranted it's appearance. As usual the sample contained protein links unseen and unheard of on good old terra firma. Also as usual, several DNA sequences in it matched up with corresponding human female mitochondrial DNA. Big surprise.

He whistled as he began the gene mapping sequence for the third time to fully confirm his findings. Regardless of whether the work was fruitless and destined for the dust-collecting bin at the bottom the FBI file drawers, it was his job, and it was something he was determined to do with pride and enthusiasm.

The lab was empty at twelve-thirty, with everyone gone for lunch but Pendrell, who wouldn't be drawn from his report if he were chloroformed, gagged, and bound.

Unfortunately, the methods Alex Krycek utilized were far more interesting.

Krycek sneaked into the J Edgar Hoover building amongst the maintenance crew as the new guy.

Unbeknownst to him, however, he was also being followed.

He rode the elevator to the fifth floor with the workmen, all standing silent and sullen with their tool belts slung about their hips and their lunches in brown paper bags. Krycek had the same equipment as the other men and a few items they didn't happen to have.

He trooped out with them and observed their destination: the fifth floor bathrooms. No wonder at the dark looks.

He slipped away down a stairwell and quickly made his way back down to the third floor, where he knew the labs to be. There was a certain young man down there whom he intended to get custody of within the next half hour.

He'd been watching Pendrell for several weeks now. So far the stalking had gone well. Daniel was cute. Easy to track, too: he hadn't an iota of suspicion in his entire body.

Unfortunately for him, the stalker himself was being stalked.

The tracker in his jacket relayed both Krycek's position and a computerized image of what the man was doing.

Agents Harry Lockspeiser and Dana Scully, CIA (or Secret Service when necessary) watched the movements of the 3D mesh image on the screen intently.

"Turning left, moving down the third stairwell," Scully murmured into her headset. One of their men was planted in the J Edgar Hoover building and was following Krycek's movements, keeping his eyes on doorways and remaining as close to the tracking locations as Scully provided the wayward spy's every movement.

"Opening the door on the third stairwell," Scully continued, watching the figure on the screen reach forward and grasp the purple-colored image of the door which winked into existence as soon as the figure made contact with it. "Moving inside."

The image winked out abruptly, no static, no noise. Just clean disconnection.

Harry stared at the screen for a split second. Scully was already ripping her headphones off while barking into the speaker, "Dell! We've lost contact. He's in the third level lab in the decontamination unit. The whole place is lead lined with plastic to prevent radiation leaks because it's where they deal with hazardous material. Get your ass down there, I'm coming right in."

She had already slipped her suit jacket on over one of the ultra thin kevlar vests which she and Harry wore at all times during stakeouts. Scully was heading out the double doors of the van, buttoning her jacket over her shoulder holster, calling back to Harry to remain inside and try to see if his movements would go beyond the decon unit or if Krycek was on to them. She tucked an earpiece into her left ear and slammed the doors behind her while Harry nodded and slipped his headset back on, listening to the hoarse whispering of a confused Patrick Dell, who had heard Scully's instructions but wasn't moving fast enough to respond to them.

"Get up to the third level lab, Pat. It's close enough to lunch; no-one'll notice you."

"We've lost radio contact? Is that what she said?"

"You betcha."

A pause. Then, softly, "Shit on a stick."

"Just get your ass up there and try to find him."

Part Two

Dana Scully stepped into the front doors of the JE Hoover building with her fake pass clipped on, prominently displaying special agent status. She walked confidently up to the next set of detectors, removed her pistol from her waist holster, and calmly strolled through the small gate.

The guard didn't give her a second glance as she reclaimed the Sig Sauer and went down the hall.

She took the fire escape stairs.

Patrick Dell was running.

He'd been on the fourth floor when contact was broken and now he was attempting to navigate his way through the maze of post-modernist corridors to find the target. He didn't want Scully getting there first but knew with a sinking certainty that she would. She was uncanny that way. She'd been tracking this fucker for over a year and she knew the man inside out, down to the brand of underwear he bought and how often he clipped his fingernails. He hoped it would be enough. Kessler wanted this guy bad.

Harry was muttering in his ear like a nightmare Jimminy Crickett, directing him down hallways when Pat grew confused and barking at him to move his ass.

"For fuck sakes, Pat, it's the fourth fucking level labs! Just find it!"

Sweat beaded his forehead and slicked his palms. He had to find the shit and find him before Scully decided to freak.

In the end, neither of them would find him.

He found them.

Scully hammered up the stairs, legs shooting up and down like pistons, found the very door Krycek had stepped through (she could still smell his cologne and aftershave) and slammed through it. Her pistol was holstered and her eyes were cold, fingers itching to go for both her guns and cut Alexander Krycek in half with two precise shots to the belly and waiting to check for other lab rats in the area who might raise an alarm.

He came up from behind her with a scalpel tray.

The brushed stainless-steel surfaces of the cupboards and tables were dull, but not so dull as to prevent Scully from seeing the movement behind her.

She whirled as he fell on her and they tumbled to the floor in a spaghetti of arms and legs, completely entangled.

A lab tech stepped in through the main doors, saw them, and backed out immediately, looking very apologetic.

"Bastard," Scully growled between her teeth, and her hand shot down to her hip for her gun. Krycek's own slammed down on it and his other hand cracked against her chin.

Scully's head fell back and cracked in turn against the linoleum. A split second of the strangely pleasurable pain of being hit on the head shot through her, and she sat up, dizzy, but managing a kick at Krycek's shins as he stumbled to his feet.

He had a weapon in his jacket and was groping for it when her heel caught the side of his leg and sent him down again. Scully crossed her arms over her chest and reached under her armpits. She came up with two small flat black plastic automatics and aimed, eyes narrowed.

Krycek had regained his balance and found his gun, drawing simultaneously with Scully. He stared at her down the blue metal barrel at the twin Glocks.

Krycek clicked off the safety.

The pistols didn't waver. Both were aimed at his stomach.

She felt horribly disadvantaged, sprawled on the floor the way she was, but she couldn't get up and he couldn't get away. They were deadlocked.

He was aiming at her forehead.

"Shoot me, and I'm dead," she said calmly. "Which is alright, since I've been expecting it for the last five years. But you remember that massive brain trauma causes nearly all of the muscles in the body to convulsively flex, and I'm packing singlet oxygen. You know what kind I'm talking about."

"So," he said evenly, catching his breath, astonished that no-one had walked into the lab yet after all the commotion. "Quick and painless for you with a hollowed-out skull, four or five hours of agony for me. That right?"

"Try twenty. One of my men is in the building, and he knows where you are," she lied. He knew she was bluffing. She didn't care. "Only a matter of minutes before he finds us. Shoot me, I shoot you. You get dragged out of here to the van waiting outside and pumped full of drugs that'll keep you alive long enough for one of my associates to make sure you pay in full for everything." Her breathing came in quick pants which she took at first for the rush of almost losing again. It didn't matter. Patrick would be up here soon.

"That's bullshit," Krycek said carefully, examining her face. His eyes calculated and cogitated and kept flicking to her left side. He was confident. "What do you want, anyway?"

"Where's Alessa?"

He froze then, stared at her in astonishment.

She only smiled at him, tried to sneer, didn't quite make it.

Something was wrong.

She was trying not to shake, and she realized that she felt light-headed, weak.

"You're bleeding," he said.

She felt her grip, which was whitening her knuckles, start to slacken. A faint, dull throbbing made itself known to her, in her side. She hadn't felt it for the adrenalin pumping through her veins, the all-encompassing thrill of pulling her guns on the piece of walking filth she'd been hunting for what felt like an eternity.

Now she felt the wound.

She didn't risk glancing down, but knew what had happened. He'd hit her with a scalpel tray. She'd fallen. She'd landed on one of the blades somehow and hadn't felt it.

"What do you care?"

He adjusted his stance, pressed his pistol more firmly against her forehead. "You're my insurance policy," he said pleasantly. "Of course I care. If you' re dead-"

But he didn't finish. The door burst open, a wide crack rippling down the center of the cheap fiberboard. Patrick Dell had finally found Scully.

"Drop yer weapon!" he barked at Krycek, a hint of his native Irish leaking out under the strain. He held his service pistol in a double-handed grip.

Scully dropped her right gun and it fell to the linoleum with a sharp plastic clatter. Both Patrick and Krycek jerked-

...and then Krycek was up and bolting, already out the swinging door before Patrick could move.

He was staring at Scully.

"Go!" she snarled at him hoarsely. He hesitated for another moment, eyes widening at the rapidly spreading patch of blood.

"Go, dumbass!" she tried to shout, and with more effort than she liked to admit she raised one of the Glocks and aimed it at him.

Patrick ran.

Scully pinched her collar and croaked, "Agent down, Harry, get a medic up here. I think I'm bleeding to death."

"What happened?" Harry was getting better. There was no hint of concern in his voice. She knew he'd already speed-dialed the medics; they would be up to the labs in under two minutes.

She wondered if she had that long.

"I caught up to Krycek, sent Dell after him. He got me."

"Don't try to move."

But Scully's grip on her collar monitor had loosened, slackened, fallen. Harry was talking to air.

Three medics in business suits stormed up to the labs with a stretcher. They didn't bother checking anything besides pulse when they got to her; it was so weak that they didn't have time.

Two of the medics bundled Scully on the white stretcher, which quickly developed spreading deep red spots. The third used one of the linen blankets to mop up the blood. He scooped the scalpel tray and it's contents up, placing it quickly and neatly on the counter even as he hurriedly wiped blood from a few of the glistening blades. A few squirts of solution from a small bottle in his jacket pocket finished the job. The DNA in any traces of blood left behind was breaking down even as he sprayed it.

Then he pocketed the spray, tucked the bloodstained linen under his arm, and ran after the two men with the stretcher.

Agent Sam Rathbone liked Agent Scully. She was bright, ruthless, and occasionally charming if you got her away from the office and the rookie partner who seemed chained to her elbow. He didn't want to see her die.

Rathbone applied pressure to the wounds as soon as the medics got her outside and in the jeep. The FBI building wasn't quite chaos, but close. Word that an agent was down in the sci crime labs spread quickly. Rathbone knew the blood had already dissolved into an unrecognizable brownish mush by that time, something resembling mud, and no-one would notice it.

No-one important, at least.

Harry threw the van into gear, stuck one of the revolving police-light globes on the roof, and sped into the late afternoon traffic.

Scully was not treated at any normal hospital.

She entered the emergency room at CIA headquarters less than ten minutes after being almost fatally stabbed. One of the blades had punctured a lung. The other had slipped between her ribs and gone astonishingly deep, unnoticed by the rushing paramedics.

Sam Rathbone stood in the viewing room above the operating theater, smoking a cigar and watching. He didn't wince as they extracted the long steel blade and handle from her left side.

A second, older man entered, a cigarette between his lips. He exhaled a cloud of bluish smoke and glanced down on the scene.

"Spender," Rathbone nodded acknowledgment.

The slightly stooped gray-haired man peered through the glass. "She'll live?" he asked.

"Most likely."

"Then you know what has to be done."

Rathbone closed his eyes. "We should wait until she regains consciousness."

"Of course. Whatever is suitable in your opinion, doctor." CGB Spender pursed his lips slightly in a smirk, which Rathbone considered his most distasteful expression. Nonetheless he nodded. Spender slipped out of the room, surrounded by a cloud of smoke.

Five minutes later the door opened again, admitting a tall young man with long blonde hair and grey eyes.

He came up and stood next to Sam. "How's she doing?" he asked, wrinkling his nose at the smelly clouds of cigar smoke.

Rathbone let out a long stream of bluish fumes, puffing out a single ring just before his breath ran out. "Don't know," he said thoughtfully. "They just pulled a second knife out of her back."

The blonde man peered down and watched the surgeons open up her right side, in order to stitch up the punctured lung. He reached into his jacket with a hand that only trembled slightly and removed a pack of Marlboro smokes, tapping one out into his palm. He thought he could easily light the remaining ten cigarettes in his pack, lining them up in his mouth and taking a deep drag.

Jesus.

Her face was in profile on the pillow, eyes closed, hair in sweaty tangles foreign to her usual neatness. She was too damn pale. If not for the soft steady beeping audible through the thick glass of the window, he would have thought her dead.

"She looks like a side of beef," he remarked, observing the pale skin peeled back to reveal the shockingly red flesh beneath. Another nurse was flushing and vacuuming the exposed area, and bright blood traveled up the clear plastic tube to a disposal bag. The rest of her was mercifully covered by the rapidly working doctors and the small green surgical tents.

"Mmm hmm." Rathbone glanced at the other man as though seeing him for the first time. "You aren't a medic, are you? You're Scully's partner."

"Harry Lockspeiser." They shook. "I understand you're part of the cleanup crew."

Rathbone shrugged. "They aren't going to figure out who got stabbed in that lab of theirs," he agreed, taking another puff. This time he let loose a long string of smoke rings, one after another with impressive ease.

One of the surgeons looked up at the audience in the viewing room. She gave them a thumbs up.

"She'll live," Rathbone sighed. "Lucky for you, too."

Harry nodded. He took a last deep drag on his cigarette, then tossed the butt to the floor and ground it out under his heel before turning and striding out the door.

Krycek had no trouble escaping the joke of a federal building that the J. Edgar Hoover headquarters happened to be. He slipped out a side door, stripped off his industrial wear, and headed for his getaway car: a large dark blue van, completely nondescript in every way...except for it's driver.

He pulled onto the freeway and headed for home, a small house in the suburbs he rented by the month and rather liked. None of his previous associates was aware that he lived there, yet. And when he caught the first hint of trouble, he was out of there and on to the next hiding place, the next rat hole.

He pulled up in the driveway and emerged in a white t-shirt and jeans. So far as his neighbors knew, he was a part-time janitor in one of the big DC buildings, but none of them knew his well enough to ask exactly where he worked. And if they did, he had a fictional name and fictional address that would squelch their curiosity.

Now he quickly made his way into the house, keys already out and dangling.

His mind was not on the botched kidnaping.

His mind was on the successful one.

Pendrell lay bound and gagged in the back of the van, fast asleep. Or not precisely asleep, perhaps, but rather in a very deep coma. Krycek had opened the garage; now he got into the van again and steered it inside. He quickly yanked the large door shut again and opened the sliding door of the van, hoisting the unconscious Pendrell over his shoulder and hauling him that way into the house.

The house itself was also nondescript in every way, with a small kitchen leading into a small living room to the left of which was a small bathroom. Krycek had purchased the house for its basement, which was huge. He carried Pendrell down there and cuffed his arms and ankles to the large wrought-iron bed he kept there just for such purposes. The lab boy would be asleep for a few hours more. He had to get moving.

Krycek bounded back up the stairs and headed straight for the fridge. He wondered if the girl was dead, the spy who'd tagged his heels for three weeks in Calcutta, in India. It would be a shame. Since, after all-

Calcutta, India.
4/03/89

-they had such a wonderful time.

Alex Krycek, then masquerading as Alex Carson (not too much of a name difference, but easy to remember) hadn't known immediately what she was. She had known immediately what he was. That was part of her mission. But that wasn't important. That wasn't what mattered right now.

She had come up behind him at a bookstore, one redolent of incense and the gentle jabbering of the Indian tongue.

"Excuse me," she said hesitantly. "Are you an American?"

He turned, smiled. She was lovely.

He wondered that she hadn't been attacked yet, though.

The small woman was wearing a halter top and extremely short shorts. He would remember later that she looked extremely uncomfortable in this apparel, and he would also later learn that Lana spent most of her time in either baggy sweaters and jeans or loose-fitting suits. For the time being, he didn't notice anything odd about her face. He was too busy admiring her admirably displayed cleavage and genuine blonde hair.

"I don't speak Hindu," the girl said hesitantly.

"I don't either," he smiled, and she smiled back widely, evidently reassured by his clear precise and unaccented English.

"Great," she murmured. "Do you want to get something to eat?"

He would think later that there was something odd about this girl, who was somewhat more muscular than he liked in his women (women soft and mild and easily taken, usually blonde if he could manage it, men precisely the opposite, since the struggle and chase were so very pleasurable) but for the time being he decided that he didn't mind being picked up by pretty blonde American girls in India. This one was clearly a tourist. A camera rested prominently against that wonderful chest (he suspected that quite a few men had probably stopped to admire the "camera") and a knapsack with an American flag stitched on the flap was strapped securely to her shoulders.

They left the small bookstore and came out into the searing heat.

"I didn't catch your name," she said as they emerged into the blinding sunlight.

"Alex Carson," he lied easily. "And you are?"

"Lana O'Bannon," she lied back. She shook his hand succinctly, and her grip was firm and dry. A business woman back at home? he wondered.

"What brings you to India?" he asked as she easily kept pace with him. He knew a fairly reputable restaurant that served some palatable forms of Western cuisine.

"Same thing as you, I expect," she replied, hoisting her camera for a moment to take a snapshot of several people, obviously male, who were dressed in saris and flirting with other men. She tilted her chin at them. "Hijras," she said. "Dedicated to the mother goddess and castrated, by their own volition."

He knew this, but nodded with an interested look. Since the men were, after all, flagrantly interesting.

She had a hint of an English accent, and he wondered where she had grown up.

Or how old she was, for that matter.

It was only later, after he realized what she was, that he recalled she had not answered his question.

Part Three

It hadn't taken long to get her into bed.

They ate at the small restaurant, shared a bottle of red wine, and she stumbled a bit on the way out, face flushed and giggling.

"Where are you staying?" he asked curiously.

"Bombay," she snickered, "but I missed my train."

"Look here," Krycek said, pretending to be taken over by a moment of gallantry. "I'll take you back to my place. You're in no condition to catch any train. And it's getting cold."

She smiled up at him, a beautifully open smile. "You're such a gentleman," she murmured, then burst into another string of twitters and held his arm. "I told you I was a cheap drunk," she whispered conspiratorially, her chest still occasionally hitching with giggles.

Lana, or Dana, if you prefer, was not the least bit drunk. Drunkenness was a state of mind, and her mind was not there. She watched Krycek coldly through her killer's eyes even as her body did its job of pretending.

And she thought, just for a moment, that perhaps he wasn't quite as unattractive as she'd first thought.

Scully liked blondes, tall and muscular and with blue eyes if that could be arranged. This slim dark man was exactly the type she avoided.

But nevertheless, she would go to his apartment, and she would fuck him, and when she was done she'd start digging around the edges of his all-too-obvious mask and find out exactly what she wanted.

He took her home, no surprise there.

His apartment was a tidy French affair complete with the wide glass windows and gossamer coverings and the rough French linen sheets.

He led her inside, poured her another glass of wine from the small fridge.

She accepted it. Jobs like these drove her nuts. She hated screwing around with strange men (and occasionally, women) whose only appeal was the information they had. She hated selling herself this way.

It was odd.

But Alexander Krycek would have said exactly the same thing.

She drank the first glass down rather quickly and Alex gently relieved her of it.

He looked at her darkly, a menacing look she didn't notice since the dim light of the room concealed his face.

He placed the wine glass on the table, took her chin in his hand, and kissed her.

The first contact was gentle, light, non-threatening. His lips brushed gently over hers, tasting wine and a hint of pasta, the linguine with cream sauce that she'd eaten. He thought of how her lips had looked just for the moment before she licked them clean, the white sauce messy and unbearably erotic over that soft red mouth just before the small pink tongue darted out to lick it up in an equally sexy fashion.

She drew away for a moment, looked at him. Blinked once. If not for the dim light, Alex Krycek would have seen astonishment, and he would have known why.

But it was dark, and he did not see.

Then they were tearing at each other, nothing gentle in this seduction, tongues battling for dominance in each other's mouths, fingers scrabbling for purchase over clothing, finding buttons, yanking and tugging and unzipping with feverish haste.

Her hand slid boldly down the front of his pants, easily unbuttoned and yanked down the zip of his jeans, pushed coolly past his boxers and closed over his already-hard cock, squeezing gently before she began to pump it, her thumb gently pushing over the crease, spreading the droplets of pre cum over the head of his cock and making him almost painfully hard.

He'd managed to yank her halter over her head, expose her breasts and they were as perfect as he had hoped to find them, soft and rounded. He bent his head to the left one first, gently sucking on the nipple-

Scully's mind reeled and sought for purchase somewhere in the realms of sanity, which were becoming increasingly distant. She grasped for reason and found she'd lost it. It wasn't supposed to be like this, she wasn't supposed to enjoy it this much-

Alex's hands slid up to her breasts and his lips began to kiss and suck at her neck, exposed in a clean white line with her head thrown back and her pale gold hair strewn over her shoulders.

"You're so perfect," he whispered helplessly as he kissed and nibbled at her delicious throat. "So beautiful..."

She moaned involuntarily and tightened her grip around his cock. No, it wasn 't supposed to be anything like this, none of it was supposed to be like this, she was supposed to hate it...

They found themselves in the bedroom and she wasn't for the first time in a long time the first one to reach for condoms. He pulled one from his jacket pocket and she took it from him, unrolling it down over his cock, still stroking it with one hand.

He'd eased her panties down her thighs and over her knees and now one hand started to caress her opening, pleased at the dampness and heat already there, already wet from a few kisses and touches.

Scully lay back on the bed and drew him forward, closing her mouth over his cock. There. Here was something she hated doing, always had hated doing. Here was something that would bring her back to herself.

Krycek threw his head back and moaned softly, then drew forward again, wanting to see her go down on him, see those delicious soft red lips wrapped around him. It had been a long time since he'd picked someone up just for sex and no other reason, no intrigues or covert intelligence behind any of his motives. It had been a very long time.

She heard his moan and felt the coldness which had started to gather between her legs melt again in searing heat. She was enjoying it, enjoying him, watching him moan and writhe because of her, watching this beautiful man in ecstasy because of her. She sucked harder, drew more of his length into her mouth, let him fuck her mouth, loved every second of it.

Her hand went down her body, fondling herself, before reaching for the damp triangle of dark blonde hair, before sliding her fingers into herself to relieve the mounting ache between her legs.

He reached down, pulled her up. "Let me take care of that," he whispered, and the throaty tones of his voice brooked no argument.

She drew back up, turning him onto his back, and lowered herself on him.

Then she lost her mind.

He thrust into her not the least bit gently at all and she threw herself back at him with equally savage intensity.

They both surrendered themselves, and when it was over Alex kissed her once, gently, on the corner of her mouth, before tucking the sheets around her.

She fell asleep with his arms around her and her legs curled around his.

Somewhere in between the desire-wracked madness of her body and her equally lost, passion-hazed mind, she remembered that hating this kind of sex was vital. It was important not to play James Bond, to pretend that one could enjoy making love with a person who might have to be killed or betrayed in the morning. She remembered that it was important to need a fantasy to warm her skin, to imagine others to manufacture lust, to keep well in mind that she was being a whore, being ravaged, being treated as an object, purchased and used.

It was important to hate it.

Krycek would have understood.

She woke in the morning not knowing where she was.

The roof was a pale sun-washed cream, the white gauze curtains fluttering in the breeze from the opened French doors. She blinked and looked around, unused to such opulent surroundings.

Then she remembered.

Alex had risen in the night, somehow doing so quietly enough not to wake her. That was quite a feat, especially around an CIA agent. She touched the slight indentations in the bed where he had been. Cold.

Frowning, Dana (Lana, she reminded herself, my name is Lana for now) swung her legs over the edge of the bed and strolled into the bathroom. She examined her skin carefully in the mirror. There were two small dark marks on her neck from his lips and teeth, a few other ones on her chest and arms. She smiled at them, practically beamed at them (how long had it been since she'd had love bites from an attractive man?) then splashed her face with some cold water and grabbed the tube of toothpaste on the side of the washbasin, squeezing some on a fingertip and brushing with that.

She gave her corkscrewed hair a desultory rake with her fingers and headed back out into the bedroom stark naked. One of Alex's shirts was draped over a chair and she slipped into it, inhaling it's scent and smiling to herself.

Then she froze.

He was standing in the doorway, holding two paper bags and smiling at her. He had been standing there for some time.

She wondered if he had seen the scar on her belly, the small one removed incorrectly with plastic surgery, the bullet scar.

He hadn't.

"Good morning."

She smiled back and strolled up to him and kissed him, enjoying the smell of sleep and her on his skin.

Screw the assignment.

"I brought bagels," he said against her hair, enjoying the smell of sleep and him on her skin.

He'd forgotten how much he hated assignments.

"Great," she murmured. "My favorite."

She reached for him and twined her fingers in his collar and he was kissing her again, enjoying the feel of her sharp little teeth against his tongue, the lingering tastes of both toothpaste and sleep in her mouth. His hands were roving all over her again and as they stumbled back into the bedroom he wondered what had possessed him to leave her so early in the morning to buy bagels for Christ's sake and she wondered why he had left, why he hadn't just wakened her with a hand between her legs or on her breasts and then they fell into bed and forgot coherent thought for another hour or day or two.

When Lana's vacation time ran out, Krycek accompanied her back to the States.

A week later, they moved in together.

The Pentagon.
8/23/93

Sam Rathbone stood in the small private room Scully had gotten after her surgery. There was a small bouquet of red roses from Harry already standing on the dresser. He stepped closer to the bed and took the small, pale hand resting on the coverlet. It felt stiff and cool in his hand.

"Dana." It was barely a whisper, and not intended to wake her, but Scully opened her eyes. She blinked at him, then smiled.

"Sam," she rasped, and winced. He grabbed the tall glass of ginger ale from the night table, nearly spilling it. "Here." He tucked the straw between her lips and she sucked, eyes closed, swallowing rapidly. He drew it away when she coughed.

"What happened?" she asked curiously, licking her cracked lips and awakening to the strangeness of the situation. "Where's Alex?"

"He got away," Sam said softly, "he was seen driving off in a blue van..."

"You don't understand. Where's Alex?"

Sam squinted. "What do you mean, Agent Scully? I just said..."

She sighed. "He should be here. He told me he would be there when I woke up, if something ever happened to me." Scully opened her eyes wide, stared at Rathbone. "Where is my husband, Sam?"

Sam. She was thinking of a different Sam.

"Dana-"

She shook her head. "No, no, no. That was a clerical error, on the paperwork." She gave a frighteningly genuine smile. "I guess I wasn't very coherent during my labor, and my husband wasn't too calm either. Didn't Alex tell you? I'm Lana. Lana Carson."

"Lana." Rathbone's heart pounded a deafening tattoo in his chest, echoed in his ears, made his words sound far away. "Lana, what's my name?"

"Why, you're Sam Drovar, my obstetrician." She smiled up at him with such wide open confidence that Rathbone's pulse tripled. "Why don't you bring Alex in? I'm sure he's eager to see the baby."

"The baby." Rathbone's lips felt numb.

"Yes." She laughed, a tinkling sound so unlike Scully's harsh, cynical bark. Her face, though still pale and streaked with sweat and tears, was open, wide open, innocent, beautiful. Not a shadow of the darkness the agent had carried for the last three years. "The baby. I haven't even seen her yet, the nurses tell me it's a girl. We both agreed on names, and the girl was to be Alessa and the boy was to be Trent. Let me see her, please?"

God.

The baby.

"Lana, Alex left a message saying he had to go, business," Sam said, his voice trembling only slightly, "but he'll be back as soon as it's over. You can see the baby when he gets back, alright?"

She stared up at him, eyes filled with confusion. "Why not now?"

"It's late," Sam muttered. "Alessa's sleeping."

"Oh." She appeared to consider this. Then she gave him another brilliant smile and nodded. "Of course, she needs her rest."

She looked down. "Sam, tell me, what's with all the extra bandages?"

Oh dear God. Sam wracked his brains. "There were complications; you had a cesarean section birth. But everything seems to be alright, you should heal up nicely."

She nodded. Her eyelids seemed heavy.

"Now get some sleep. You can see Alessa in the morning," Sam assured her, noting that his finger's tremor was minute.

She murmured something, eyes already closed.

Sam Rathbone slipped out of the room.

He leaned against the wall outside, eyes closed, panting.

Jesus.

To continue concealing her cover, Dana Scully had married Alex Krycek over four years ago. She had had his child.

And she had regressed.

Only it appeared that this time, she believed the lie of her cover.

He began to stride down the hall, removing his cell phone from his pocket as he did so.

Only when he reached the exit did he allow himself to run.

Washington,
DC 5/07/89

Alex Carson had married Lana O'Bannon three weeks after meeting her in the bookstore in Calcutta. They had exchanged vows using their false names, both knowing that it made the marriage null and void, neither knowing the other knew it.

Three weeks was enough time for Krycek to screen Lana's background. Her parents were dead and their grave was in a small plot in Tennesee. Her only living relative was an aunt in Glouchester, Iowa, just another isolated farming town. She worked as nurse at Washington's Mercy Hospital.

The wedding, Alex reasoned, provided an excellent cover for him from the Consortium. They would be looking for a single man, with dark hair. Despite Lana's protests, he'd lightened his hair with peroxide and had pulled off a passable sandy blonde.

Mr and Mrs Alexander Carson were married before a judge with a janitor and the judge's wife as witnesses. The groom wore his customary black leather jacket and tight black jeans; the bride wore a light blue sun dress and white flats.

Initially, after the first two weeks of the mission, Scully had protested formally to her boss, Director Kessler, that marriage (which Alex had proposed) was out of the question. Sex was bad enough. A union of this kind was a complete fallacy.

Exactly, Kessler had replied. Which means you'll be that much closer to your target and you'll be able to collect that much more information.

Besides, it wasn't like she hadn't been sleeping with him already.

So Scully agreed, while Krycek examined his reasons for marrying this pretty young innocent thing and found them disgusting.

They moved into her apartment. He sold the lease on his and brought over his few belongings. They grinned and teased and giggled like a pair of lunatics or newlyweds, whichever you might prefer, for the first month.

Then Dana got pregnant.

Part Four

Washington,
DC 6/02/89

She was lying next to her new husband of three weeks, listening to him snore softly and smiling at his profile, enjoying the luxury of sleeping in. She didn't have to be at the hospital until three o'clock that afternoon, just to fill in a few hours for a friend. And he didn't have to be at the patent office at least until lunch. With his eyes closed and his dark hair loose over his forehead he looked all of eighteen years old, and she smoothed her fingertips over his cheek before leaning forward to kiss him.

A strange feeling came over her then, one of dizziness, then nausea.

Scully bolted out of bed, startling Alex awake. He blinked fuzzily, looked up after her. "Lana? You OK?"

Her legs felt weak and shaky as she forced them to propel her across the bedroom floor.

Jesus...

She made it to the bathroom just in time, retching the last little bit of the previous evening's supper. The overpowering urge to vomit passed as quickly as it had come, and she rinsed her mouth and slowly padded back into the bedroom, dazed.

<I only missed one period,. she thought uneasily, all the more apprehensive for the odd feeling of delight that stole over her at the very idea which her sudden sickness suggested. <They're never very reliable, and they're always late...>

Alex was looking at her curiously, sitting propped up on one elbow. She smiled with some effort. "Last night's crab must not have agreed with me."

He looked concerned. Her heart clenched and threatened to suffocate her at the sight of such genuine distress for her, Delilah, liar, cheat and whore.

"Are you okay?" he repeated.

"Fine," she murmured, pulling the sheet back and sliding into bed. "Think I' ll catch a few more Z's before I go back to work."

His fingers twined through her hair, and she closed her eyes. When he kissed her forehead, she prayed that the tears wouldn't slip down her cheeks.

Krycek already knew what was going on.

She hadn't been using the pads under the sink, though he knew her last period had had to be at least six weeks earlier. And they had both been tested, she was on the pill, there was no reason to use condoms, no reason to be careful.

A baby.

He stared at the ceiling and listened to his wife murmur softly in her sleep, his arms protectively wrapped around her waist.

She knew too, even if she didn't want to admit it.

A baby.

He closed his eyes and tried to control his emotions. Unrestrained horror reigned in one corner. Would it be normal? After all of his exposure, all of his family's exposure to the Consortium? Unbridled delight rejoiced in the other. A child. *His* child, *their* child. A miniature of themselves which they could raise, which he could shield from the hell his life had become...

But it wasn't hell anymore, was it? He had Lana, this new sheltered life they had created for themselves in her little upscale apartment, sharing meals, sharing a bed, each wearing the other's ring.

She didn't know. She couldn't have a clue. She couldn't possibly know how little she really was, what a pawn she had been made into.

But she wasn't a pawn. He couldn't treat her that way anymore.

He had married her.

She was going to have his child.

Krycek closed his eyes and clenched his teeth and listened to the soft gentle breath of his wife and cursed himself from hell to back even as he wondered-

(a name, a name...Trent for the boy, something else for the girl...Kaitlin?...Alexandra...?)

-how the hell he was going to take care of a child.

The Pentagon.
8/23/93

"Harry? It's Rathbone, Sam Rathbone. Do you remember me? That's right, the medic. Yeah. I was just in Scully's hospital room. She's, ah, she's not quite herself, I'm afraid. Well, maybe you better come up here and have a look. She thinks she's Lana. You remember...no, wait, you weren't at the CIA at the time, were you? Anyway, you should come here, talk to her. You might snap her out of it. No, she's not asking for anyone but her husband, Krycek."

Harry Lockspeiser stared at his phone for a full minute before slinging on his topcoat and running for the door.

"Harry?" Julia stood near the kitchen, eyes wide. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, honey. I'll be back soon."

He slammed the door behind him.

Edgar was already in the taxi cab, waiting, smoking and filling the small cramped space with filmy blue fumes.

"Dana Scully joined the CIA in August of 1987, quite a while before you did," Edgar began as Harry buckled up. "Her biggest mission to date, in April 1989, was to track a Russian spy named Alexander Vladimir Krycek, while he was on leave in India. It was a deep undercover job. Krycek was apparently one of the few accessible spies who knew the location of Spender' s kid, the one he had with Cassandra. We wanted some leverage with him, something to keep him from proceeding with the Greys without consulting us. Scully met up with him in Calcutta, took him home, and found out absolutely nothing. A few weeks later they ended up getting married."

Edgar recited all this past history calmly, as though it hadn't happened to one of Harry's best friends. "She had a baby about ten months after the marriage, a little baby girl."

Washington,
DC 6/02/89

"If we have a girl, we'll name her Alessa," Alex whispered to her as she pretended to sleep, tears rolling down her cheeks in the dark, body quiescent under his touch, his hand rubbing slow, gentle circles over her still-flat belly. "It'll be a mix between Alexandra, my mother's name, and Melissa, your mother's name."

The Pentagon.
8/23/93

She was sitting up in bed, staring at Sam and shaking her head. "What do you mean, no-one knows where he is? Why can't I see my baby?"

Sam folded his hands carefully across his lap as some form of comprehension dawned in Scully's feverish eyes. "He's gone missing, hasn't he? They've caught up with him."

An expression suspiciously akin to paranoia rose on Scully's face. Paranoia, and some form of understanding.

She began to draw away from Sam, her fingers stealing under the sheet. They traveled over the miles of bandages wrapped around her. "Alex warned me about this," she whispered hoarsely. "He told me they might catch up to him, and if they found out that I was pregnant...I did have a cesarean section, didn't I? And she didn't make it!"

Rathbone didn't like where this was going.

"She didn't make it because you aborted her!" Scully was screaming now. "You work for them! You stole my child, you bastard!"

She threw the sheets back and hurled herself at him.

Washington,
DC 7/28/90

Scully came home to the small apartment to find it empty. Unusual, since Alex rarely worked past five o'clock. Shrugging to herself, she slipped out of her work clothes, dialed an unlisted number, said simply, "Everything's fine," and hung up.

She washed up and started preparing dinner.

Five blocks away, Alexander Krycek flipped through a stack of files while he sat in the passenger seat of a black Lincoln. His eyes did not widen and his hands did not shake.

He looked up after a moment, disbelief printed clearly across his face.

"You don't believe your own eyes, Mr. Krycek?" the handsome black man behind the wheel asked. His voice was flat and uninflected.

"This is impossible. I checked her background."

"Not well enough. I suggest you get rid of her. She jeopardizes everything you have been working towards in the last three years."

Alex was silent, his eyes skimming the briefs and computer reports and memos, the subject always him, the reporter always Lana.

But her name wasn't Lana, was it?

"What about the kid?" he asked, voice remarkably steady.

But X didn't really have to answer that question. Instead, the ghost of a smile touched the corner of his mouth. "It ends this way every time, doesn't it? Alone, as always."

Krycek glanced up, startled. X was no longer looking at him; his gaze was focused on the darkened road. His cue for Krycek to get his ass out of the car.

Scully stood at the kitchen counter, chopping cucumbers for the salad she was making. She didn't hear the front door open, didn't hear the soft footfalls of her husband crossing the room.

He was behind her, fingers lightly tracing arcane signs on her back.

She started to turn her head. He gently but firmly placed his hand against her cheek, silently ordering her to face the wall. His fingers began swirling over the back of her neck.

"Alex?" She put down the knife and his other hand slipped forward with greasy speed, snagging the large steel blade.

His lips replaced his fingers on the nape of her neck and she sighed.

Then he whispered, "I'm pleased to meet you...Dana."

The knife replaced his lips on the nape of her neck and she gasped.

"Dana Scully, CIA agent and phenomenal liar."

Sharp pressure replaced the coldness of the blade on the nape of her neck and she moaned.

"Liar, cheat and whore who bore my child."

"Our child," she whispered.

Warm blood replaced the sharp pressure on the nape of her neck and she began to cry.

"How long did you think you could fool me?" he asked softly, and she felt the edge of the blade angle up, dig farther into the soft vulnerable skin, biting into already-raw flesh. She had a horrible vision of him simply peeling her scalp off and leaving her to bleed to death in the midst of the salad while he packed up three-month-old Alessa and vanished into the night.

"How long did you intend to keep lying to me?"

"Not much longer," she whispered and was disgusted to hear the trace of a whiny plea in her words. She would not beg, she would not, she would not... "not until I found out where Cassandra and the kid were hiding out. Jeffrey."

"And Alessa?" The terrible pressure on the back of her neck did not let up.

She did not reply. Alex switched tactics, drawing the blade away from the back of her neck and placing it against her throat.

This was what she had wanted.

Her elbow shot up and snapped against his arm, throwing it out of the way. She whirled, grasping his arm and preparing to break it when cold steel slammed into her belly and sent her crashing against the counter, gasping for breath.

She looked up, still wheezing, and saw straight into the large imposing eye of a Colt .45.

The bloody kitchen knife was still clutched in Alex's left hand, and she watched as a single dark drop quivered at the tip of the blade...and fell.

"Alessa," he repeated tonelessly. "What about her?"

"They were going to take her," she gasped, tears rolling down her face and blood rolling down her back. "They were going to abduct her, because she's your child. I was going to take her with me."

"And leave me here." Alex stared down at her.

Then he pulled the trigger.

Alessa was a shrieking bundle of pink baby clothes. Krycek had already packed most of his essentials into the back seat of the small black Mazda. His arms full of canvas bags loaded with formula, clothes, diapers and a few small toys, he quickly made his way outside and began depositing the supplies into the back seat.

"Mr. Carson?"

His head snapped back, eyes narrowed and one hand already on the butt of the .45. Someone had probably heard the shot.

It was the neighbor, Mrs. Pallone. She was wringing her hands and looked quite concerned.

"Yes?" he asked, holding the wriggling, struggling baby in his right arm with some difficulty.

"I was wondering, Mr. Carson, if you wouldn't mind shutting off your sprinkler. You see, it's starting to soak my dahlias, and-"

Alex was already headed for the outside tap, breathing an inaudible sigh of relief. "No problem, Mrs. Pallone."

The older woman stared, her watery blue eyes fixed curiously on the bellowing beauty Alessa. "Are you planning a trip tonight, Mr. Carson? I don't see Mrs. Carson anywhere-"

"She's sick," Alex retorted sharply. "I just need to head into town, pick up a few supplies, and take Alessa to the sitter."

Mrs. Pallone's faded gaze swung to the car, assessed the goods which overflowed in the back seat. Krycek wondered wearily if he would have to kill her too.

But the old woman simply nodded, commented that babysitters these days never seemed to have any of the right supplies on hand, and slowly steered her way back to her side of the lawn. She clucked over her dahlias for a moment, then opened the screen door of her house and vanished inside.

Five minutes later, Alex Krycek was on the road.

He had left numerous fingerprints at the house; there was no time to wipe everything down. It didn't matter. Good old CGB Spender had already removed both his fingerprints and his photographs from the files at the FBI and the CIA. Everything was registered to Alex Carson. And Dana the double-crossing spy/whore/liar was dead.

For a moment, the sharply defined face behind the wheel weakened, the hard lines softened for a split second.

Then he gritted his teeth and glared over the wheel. He had no time for grief.

Especially not for her.

Part Five

Dana Scully slowly dragged herself over the kitchen linoleum, tears and blood mixing with the saliva in her mouth. She was faintly aware that she was drooling. The fact that she was also bleeding to death took precedence in her mind.

The phone cord dangled three feet above the ground, and her fingers looked miles away, pale and washed-out and bloated, as they floated up and grasped the curling white line and dragged the receiver down.

She punched 911 with her thumb. Her fingers were still clenched around the cord and seemed determined to remain that way.

"911 Emergency Services, this call is being recorded," a crisp male voice informed her.

"....."

"Hello?"

Scully drew in a rasping, hitching breath. "Hhhhh..."

The operator sounded irritated. "Is anyone there?"

"...hhhelp meee...."

"Hello?" The voice was slightly more alert, perhaps concerned. "Hello?"

The pale bloody fingers around the cord relaxed. There was a muffled thump, a faint sigh. And silence.

The Pentagon.
8/23/93

Scully was sedated now, lying inert on the hospital bed. They had changed the bandages and replaced some of the stitches; she had pulled several out when she had attacked Rathbone.

Harry stood in the corner, wishing for a cigarette and early retirement. "Edgar told me half the story," he said quietly to Rathbone. The medic was sitting slouched in the narrow chair next to Scully's bed, scratches on his face and hands neatly bandaged and plastered.

Rathbone glanced up through his mummy wrappings. "Oh? Why half?"

"He says he doesn't know where Alessa ended up."

Rathbone rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. "You don't know what's in store for her, and that's probably best. So long as Scully doesn't remember the baby or Krycek, all should be well."

"What happened to her?"

"The kid," Rathbone said slowly, "is dead. Krycek took her with him the night he nearly took Scully's head off. During the three months he was being tracked, she apparently died of SIDS."

"Sudden Infant Death Syndrome," Harry said dully. "So what did he do, smother her?"

Rathbone shook his head. "I don't think so. The medical examiner was pretty certain death was purely accidental. And the father was clearly broken up."

"You're lying," Harry said. It was not an accusation.

Rathbone shrugged.

"You aren't a medic, are you," Harry said. This was not a question, but a statement.

Rathbone only shrugged again.

"What are you going to do to her?"

"Maintain her original cover and make it reality."

Harry snapped away from the wall with a single jerk. "Don't you think you've layered on enough covers?"

Rathbone closed his eyes. "You don't understand."

"Enlighten this ignorant CIA agent, then." Harry had drawn uncomfortably close and Rathbone released a resigned stream of air.

"Scully's a registered medical doctor. She graduated four years ago and so far as her family knows, she's been teaching forensic medicine at Quantico, for the FBI."

"Why not just tell them she's at the CIA?"

"Because she's an undercover agent, half wit," Rathbone said without malice. "It's simple. We'll implement a program we've been working on for some time, give her the selected memories she needs, and send her into the field again."

"What about Krycek, then?"

"CGB'll call a meeting with him, do a few similar procedures. He was planning on abducting a lab tech, some guy named Pendrell. He did manage it, but the cleanup crew's already handled it. They got him back to his own apartment. Pendrell's not part of the plan until later."

Harry wondered just what terrible things were in store for poor agent Pendrell. Rathbone was still talking. "Krycek'll have his chance to infiltrate the FBI soon, maybe next year, maybe the year after. The Consortium's planning on planting him as a legitimate agent. As for Krycek and Scully...they might meet up again. They can't know each other when they do."

"Why?" Harry stared down at his partner, reached forward to smooth the curling blonde strands from her face, her pale, pale face.

For a moment, he thought Rathbone wouldn't answer, because Krycek's part in the plan was so much smaller than Scully's, and because Harry's part was that much smaller than Krycek's, and because the little men like him need know nothing.

Rathbone surprised him.

"For her protection." He looked all too grim. "She already knows too much about the Syndicate and their plans, about colonization. And both of them will still be useful to us. There's a problem agent at the FBI who could use a little hindrance."

Harry nodded. "You're thinking of Mulder, aren't you."

"Fox Mulder. He's gotten a little too close. Throw him and scientist Scully together, instant roadblock."

<And me? What about me and my partner?> Harry wanted to ask. He said nothing. Because he was little, and out of the need-to-know.

"Of course, one of the memories we'll have to remove is those of you." Rathbone wouldn't look at him. "I'm sorry."

Harry glanced at the hospital bed, felt a faint thread of surprise at the sight of the small pale woman on the bed who really wasn't all that small at all, if only she knew it. She lay there, silent and somnolent and still, while her former partner and his superior casually discussed the horrors her future held. Harry ran his fingertips over her wan, cool cheek, listened to her soft breathing, pushed blonde strands aimlessly around on the sterile pillow.

"What's going to happen to her?"

Rathbone still wouldn't look at him. "They tell me that as long as she keeps Mulder under wraps, nothing will happen. Her original role in colonization will be replaced by someone else."

Harry closed his eyes, felt tears sting his eyelids. "And if she doesn't?"

"Terrible things," Rathbone said softly, so softly that Harry had to strain to hear him. "Everything they schemed and more."

"You know she won't."

Rathbone did not answer. He didn't have to.

Harry gritted his teeth, then turned on his heel. Over his shoulder he grunted, "I quit."

"I'm sure that's how you feel now, Harry. But you'll never know how it turns out if you leave. And I'm sure Scully would have wanted you to know."

"I think," Harry said, "that I hate all of you. Every one of you." There was no emotion in his voice.

"This is for her own good."

"Losing her daughter is for her own good? Losing the last four years of her life is for her own good?" The disbelief in Harry's voice was pure acid.

Rathbone did not answer for a moment. He sat facing the bed, Harry stood facing the door. Neither would look at the other.

"Alessa is dead, Harry. You must understand that."

"You're lying."

Rathbone did not speak.

Harry stepped quietly out of the room, knowing that if he ever did see Scully again, she wouldn't remember him. He had never met Fox Mulder, didn't even know what the man looked like. But he already hated him.

Scully was released from the small private hospital at the CIA one week later. The techniques borrowed from the Greys proved successful and she moved into her new apartment in Washington a month later, young, fresh-faced, and clueless.

She never saw Sam Rathbone or Harry Lockspeiser again.

FBI Headquarters
9/10/93

Harry Lockspeiser sat on a low park bench near the J. Edgar Hoover building and watched her go in, dressed in a conservative grey suit and looking all of twelve years old. Her hair was an improbable shade of red now. He wondered how long that would fool anyone. She had an appointment with Blevins, a man that the CIA was already losing faith in. He would get the job done. And CGB would be there, to make sure things went over smoothly.

Alessa was not dead, Harry knew that. She would be three years old or so now, a cute chubby little toddler with dark hair and pale skin suffering tortures completely beyond human imagination. And there was nothing he could do, no-one he could tell. Her parents no longer recalled her existence, and what did it matter if one lonely man did?

Harry folded up his newspaper, examined the faces passing him. A tall, lanky man grabbed his attention almost immediately, eyes squinted against the sunlight, unruly brown hair trimmed short, suit already rumpled with a slept-in look at eight in the morning.

Harry's sharp grey eyes watched the man as he bounded up the steps, moving with the easy unconscious grace of a swimmer, or a dancer.

*I've never met you, Fox Mulder,* Harry thought, eyes boring holes into the other man's broad suit-clad back. *But I hate you already.*

Completed May 30, 1999. Comment and criticism to kc_misu@yahoo.com. Small clues you might be interested in: Harry is the name of the main character in the Playstation game Silent Hill. Alessa is also a main character in this game, a daughter with an unfortunate fate in store. The story of the game Silent Hill (and the attractive mystery of it's characters) inspired Alessa. Dr. Sam Drovar's last name comes from a very talented fanfic writer whose name just happened to come to mind. Scully started out as my favorite agent Selina Sawa (who stars in my personal original fiction as an agent of the IDCS), but the pathos is so much greater if the girl happens to be our favorite natural blonde.