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Part One "I an old man, Signs are taken for wonders. "We would see a sign!" "The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Prelude. FBI Headquarters Harry Lockspeiser sat in front of the J. Edgar Hoover building in the same place where he had sat so many times around noon, his gray bull-shooter's eyes narrow and hard. The green-painted bench he reclined on was still clean, smooth and free of graffiti. Quite a remarkable anomaly in the city. They had re-sanded his old bench less than a month ago, and finally replaced it three days ago. Harry smoked a cigarette, ostentatiously read the Washington Post, and looked placidly at the large ugly post-modernist construction, a monolith of concrete, steel, and glass. Harry had approached his superior at the CIA, requesting permission to be placed as Mulder's new informer. He was told that the informer slated for the position would probably be killed within a year or two of receiving the post and therefore they wouldn't want a younger agent such as himself in that position. They had already decided to code-name the poor sap Deep Throat. Harry (who had Harry had then requested, rather hesitantly, that he be placed as Scully's informer. For obvious reasons his request was flatly denied. So today he sat before that hideous building which now contained, at it's lowest level in status, respect, and physical location, his former partner. He had listened in on her first terse meeting with the official nuttier-than-fruitcake renegade agent at the FBI, Mr. Fox William Mulder ("Nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted!"). He had heard the youth and vitality in her voice, the eagerness which had left her after two years at the CIA. He had seen where she took lunch, a small cafe three blocks from the building. She ate salads and drank seltzer water. Nonetheless he could see the tell-tale thickening at he waist, though the drugs they had given her would prevent her from realizing it's purpose. She would be taken soon, the child would be removed. The second child to be taken from her. But she wouldn't know her loss, the first or the second. Neither would the man who had married her, the man known as Alexander Krycek, a free agent now under the control of the smoker. Tomorrow, perhaps, or the day after. Some repeat abductee would draw her out, he knew that much. Rathbone wouldn't confirm anything else. Perhaps it was better this way. Harry let the butt slip from his fingers and tumble, end over smoldering end, to the otherwise pristine sidewalk. He ground it out viciously under his heel and began to fold the newspaper, to leave. She was scheduled to meet Krycek today, but it didn't look like she was coming out. A glint of red caught his eye, and he turned. Scully. She was walking swiftly, purposefully. Harry had learned to gauge her walks and knew she was going to meet someone for lunch. She was late. She had intended to be early. He watched her pass him, close enough to ruffle his newspaper with a breeze redolent of her shampoo and a hint of her flowery perfume. She didn't give him a second glance. Harry was just part of the scenery to her. Everything else was scenery to him. Everything but Dana Scully. She was thinking about Alex Krycek. What a stiff, she thought smugly, mentally reviewing his conservative tie, his cheap suit, his scrubbed young face and his repellent slicked-back hair. She wondered what he'd done to be stuck with Mulder. She sometimes wondered what she'd done to be stuck with Mulder as well, but not as often. Not as cheerfully. Krycek came across more like traveling salesman than FBI, friendly smile plastered across his face, squeamish at the sight of Grissom's charred (but not dry) corpse being dissected on the autopsy table, reaching for her gloved and gory hand anyway. She smirked to herself, a self-satisfied smile that felt thoroughly comfortable on her bee-stung lips. Behind the sweet sway of the otherwise very businesslike woman strolling down the sidewalk was a tall man in a neatly-creased charcoal suit. The man, who also had sandy hair and sharp gray eyes, rose from his seat. He did not look old; a passerby might peg him at a well-groomed thirty. His face was so, but his eyes were decades beyond their time and the dullness starting to gather in them foretold an early death. The old/young man dusted his pants lightly and gazed off in the distance while folding his newspaper. Nothing in his manner indicated anything out of the ordinary. He easily slipped into the crowd and began to follow her. Scully went to her cafe as usual, a small quiet place called the Four Seasons. Harry stepped in and spotted an empty corner seat. He moved past Scully's table, casually brushing his hip against the surface and depositing a bug beneath the lip of the booth. Krycek came in next, looking like any of a number of fresh recruits from Quantico: young, bright, avid, restless and a little foolish. He spotted Scully almost immediately and practically bounced over to the table. Harry ordered a club sandwich on rye and a beer, suppressing a smirk as he took in Krycek's eager greeting and Scully's rather lukewarm response. The woman's back was to him; he couldn't watch her face go through it's famous calisthenics of expressions. But it would be easy enough to see what she looked like in Krycek's eyes. They looked like strangers, sitting awkwardly across from each other, fumbling with water glasses and menus, avoiding the other's gaze. Harry allowed himself a moment of sympathy, and sadness. Then he pressed the earpiece more firmly in his ear, pretended to read the newspaper he'd brought in with him, and set himself up to disdain Alex Krycek. "So, um, Agent Scully, what do you think of Agent Mulder's theories regarding..." there was a slight cough, "...extraterrestrials?" There was a long silence, long enough to 1) ensure that Krycek was well aware of the faux pas he had faultlessly executed, and 2) ensure that Krycek was also aware of his distinct inferiority to the small, slightly plump woman seated before him. "Well, Agent Krycek," Scully replied while exhaling through her nose at the same time, "I'd have to say that while Agent Mulder's theories may sometimes seem... irrational," Harry pursed his lips in amusement at the delicacy his ex-partner employed; she would never have been so pussy-footed around him, "he has the uncanny habit of being extraordinarily accurate. More often than you would believe." "So the rumors are true." "Rumors about what?" "That his knack at profiling's actually kind of...spooky." Behind them, Harry wished he could see Scully's face. Scully's reports on His Majesty's Documented Insanity Mulder were usually dissectional dissertations on her partner's idiocy. They were popular reading material in the coffee room at the Pentagon, always good for a laugh. Their Scully was performing to a marvel. Except now, Harry realized as his laughter dried up mid-chuckle, she was compromising her so far admirable performance. She was starting to accept Mulder's theories, which were for the most part correct. That meant trouble. He had to try to redirect her. Make Mulder look an idiot. It was going to be hard. Because Mulder was right, at least ninety percent of the time. And because Scully might remember. *** Part Two "'You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you I remember Interlude. Moscow, Russia. For the brief time that I've known him, I never would have expected him to bring me here. Russia. Moscow. I guess surprise was a mild way to put what I felt; Alex wasn't too fond of recalling the childhood he'd passed here and I wasn't too fond of pushing it. He'd smiled sardonically when I'd asked his reasons, said it was business and it was never good policy to mix business with pleasure, but I'd be safer here than at home. Right. We took a commuter flight from Dulles International and landed at JFK, spent a half hour layover sipping horrible reheated New York coffee, then snagged the next flight to Sheremetyevo. A brief encounter with customs and a phone call barked in Russian saw us on a brief jostling drive to the small house outside the metropolis. It was snowing. Naturally. Every American prejudice I'd developed watching James Bond movies and grainy late-night television came to life during the short ride through the city on the way to the house on the outskirts of town. Smoking street grates, men in those ridiculous furry hats with the ear flaps, women with their heads wrapped in colorful kerchiefs and bodies swathed in voluminous fur coats. Small clusters of teens shouting jubilantly in harsh guttural glottal stops, all dyed hair and glittering rings and wide, starry eyes desperate for acknowledgment as unique, as new, desperate to escape the futures their parents foreboded and that they already knew by heart. Old rusty cars, mostly European, with mismatched tires and backfiring engines. The occasional Ford, cruising amongst a few sinister shining black sedans. Crappy weather and crazy cabbies (not that that's anything new). Black clad foot soldiers pretending to be cops. And the snow. The never-ending snow. I pressed my nose up to the glass in the cab, my breath leaving small patches of fog that didn't melt away in the roaring cold breeze from the car heater, my eyes wide and trying to catch every nuance of the first really foreign city I'd ever seen. My job didn't really require that I venture out of the office, except occasionally to sleep and attempt to maintain whatever farce of a life I choose to fabricate. And catch planes at all hours of the night to places like Dustball, Nebraska, chasing after my partner and his UFOs. Alex sat stiff and still beside me, his eyes fastened on the back of the driver's head, his left hand folded under his right in a reasonable facsimile of repose. He looked about as relaxed as a molting crab. He remarked, amused by my wide-eyed gaping, that the city wasn't much. Of course it wasn't. He'd probably seen every common corner of the world, and probably a few uncommon ones as well. I'd seen...Idaho, Arizona, Alaska, bits of the Arctic. And the inside of the basement at Washington. I asked him if this was where he was born. He said no. I asked no more questions. We rode in silence to the small house nestled in the snow and a multitude of skeletal trees. The driver removed our luggage from the trunk and Alex insisted on having him carry it inside. He pulled his gun on the driver as soon as the front door closed, got him to drop the bags, and herded him back out the door. He barked at me to stay inside when I tried to follow. I closed my eyes and held my ears. The gunshots rarely cut through the twin shields of my index fingers stuffed in my ears; Alex almost always used a silencer. After what I deemed to be a safe time, I drew my hands from my head and picked up the bags, lugging them up the stairs. Alex would be outside for awhile. When he'd first met me, he was polite and kind and tried to shake my hand, despite the mess of charred human guts covering the latex gloves I wore. He suppressed his squeamishness and reached forward to shake. I snubbed him and thought he was so wet behind the ears it was anyone's guess as to why he wasn't drowning. Mulder had been attractive to me then, years ago. The tall handsome dashing agent. Not that Alex wasn't just as handsome and dashing. He seemed more staid to me. Badly dressed, cheap suit, an even uglier tie than Mulder's. Hair slicked back...ugh. Mulder was always so debonair, Armani and fuzzy hair with nothing on it. Working with him during that madness with Duane Barry later wasn't bad. He was quick, responsive, polite. Everything Mulder tended not to be at all the wrong times. He let me know exactly where he was going when he left the room. He never left me stranded without a car. He was considerate. He brought me coffee. He was boring. I continued to thoroughly ignore him. After we found out who he was working for, after I realized he had known I would be taken and hadn't lifted a finger to help, I felt as though...as though my brain had split in two, one half active during the day, the other at night. I saved his life then, shot Mulder in favor of him when they were poisoning my partner's water. I shot my partner. Alex had looked at me for a moment, then ran. The nightmares started then. I lay awake on the operating table in the train car, staring at the Japanese man and wondering why the pain is gone, the constant gnawing agony has vanished. I turn my head for the first time and see my surroundings and I am not in a train car, but on a ship, on the ship, the one that contains that little girl I've seen before and yet I don't know her... She sits on the floor in a light blue nightgown, her face dark in the shadows, her hair black as a raven's wing. She has small white hands. They are always toying with the lace hem of the nightgown, as though she is frightened to look up. I look at the Japanese man to ask for her name and he is gone and there is only the Gray, one of the Grays that speaks to me, that tells me they don't want to hurt me, that I should just relax and they will let me go back soon. I sit up. They let me sit up. "Hello," I whisper but no breath passes between my lips, it's only my mind that speaks to the silent little girl. She says nothing as she looks up from the lace hem and it is my face I see, my face thirty years ago when I knew nothing except white rabbits, vanilla ice cream and the absence of something I would forever try to fill. My face. But she hasn't my face, not quite. She has the look I have seen in my own eyes, the bitterness buried in the aquamarine blue that speaks of both pain of experience and absence of recollection, horror at those lost weeks, that white space in which anyone could have seen me, touched me, that white blank of white noise where nothing can be retrieved, that white noise where the tape of memory has been wiped out with a mental magnet. That space. That look. That bitterness. She is only three years old, not even three years old. Behind her in the mind-obliterating whiteness is the figure of a man, a lean man in black, arms folded, watching me. Watching her, the little girl. He stands away from the wall he was resting on and draws closer, strolls closer. He draws closer to the girl, crouches and runs his fingers through black locks that match his own. "Do you remember me?" he asks, and the unlined beauty of his face, the openness of his green eyes, draw me to a false conclusion first, because I don't know him. "Krycek?" He rises. "You called me Alex once." He looks down at the girl, then glances at me. "Her eyes look blue. But in the dark, you'll see they're green." He leaves with the walk of a man in a park on a summer day, a man without a care in the world. The only thing marring the illusion is the steel stiffness in his back, the lack of the proper lazy sway. He fades into the darkness of the white. "Mommy," she says, and there is pain in her voice that shouldn't exist in the lowest being on this earth. "Mommy, why did you leave me here?" And then I wake. It meant something, I knew it did, each time I woke with a name on my lips that I could not remember and my sheets wrapped in circulation-cutting coils around my legs. Emily? Could that girl have been Emily? But she was dead, and her hair was auburn, not black. I kept seeing Krycek in my dreams, Krycek on the alien ship, Krycek with a look in his eyes that I couldn't catalogue tidily in my series of tidy catalogues. But there are many things that don't fit in those catalogues. Many things. Like Mulder. I couldn't tag him as a madman and file him away, much as I'd have liked to. Though it was growing easier and easier to do so. He wasn't what I could define as my best friend, not anymore. Like Catholicism. A belief in something against all my other principles, my scientist's mind. Melissa. Melissa. She appeared in my dreams, too, a silent presence never speaking her breathy words. I knew that Krycek had known her in some capacity before she was killed. I believed him when he said he hadn't killed her. I shouldn't have. But I did. He didn't kill her. It was Luis Cardinale. I had to believe him. Now I knew more than I could ever have cared to know about the plans of self-interested men and the plots of unearthly minds. I found Alex again. If I could find him, I could find her. We would find her. Outside the snow continued to fall. He came upstairs less than ten minutes after the shooting, red-faced and puffing. "You took the bags," he said reproachfully. "I was bored," I said, equally reproachful. "You didn't have to kill the driver." "Yes, I did. He's one of Mulder's." I gaped at him. "He wasn't anyone you knew," Alex capitulated after a moment of guilty silence. "He worked for the Consortium, too." "So do you." "Well, you know me." I frowned at him. "Do I?" He came to me, enfolded me the way I liked him to, his right arm snug around my back and drawing me in to him. He let the prosthetic left hang by his side. I hated the feel of it. "They're looking for Alessa," he said at last, having let me stand for a moment with his fingers in my hair, having let me rest. He still thought he was stronger than I was. Considering what he had gone through, I let him. I snorted. "They think we have her?" "She's gone missing from the ship, you know. No-one knows where she is." I smiled at him confidently. I had to be confident. I had no other choice. "We'll be the first to know." *** Part Three "We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, Fugue. Broken Arrow, Arizona. Somewhere within the haze of semiconsciousness and misery I can feel fingers wrapped in mine. They must be fingers. That is what my mind tells me; they feel the way my hand feels in my own, though the digits are considerably longer and rougher than mine. It feels strange. Foreign. But not frightening. The Grays let me hold a hand once, a tall man with dark hair and deep black eyes that swirled like marbles. His fingers were cold and stiff, and his eyes had nothing behind them. Like the Grays' eyes. Nothing behind them, either. There was a woman once, with hair like fire and eloquence in her gaze. But she is long gone. The fingers wrapped in mine now are warm and undeniably human; the Grays have a slick skin the color of their namesake and all the warmth of the steel tables I am so familiar with. But the warmth of the hand is mixed almost irretrievably in the haze of thick unnatural sleep oscillate and now somewhere piercing the darkness I can see a beacon, a narrow shaft, a sign...light. A light that I can clutch and claim unsteadily as my own. There has been a voice, a real voice, not the insidious raping rasp of the Grays and not the mad screaming of another...patient. This voice has been what I hear in my mind when I comfort myself. This voice is my light. "Sarah..." The name is unfamiliar but I know it to be that of someone I should know, someone important, someone big. The name is not the vital point. The voice is the point. The voice- Voices. "Jesus Christ, Harry, would you look at this mess?" The tone is strident and irritated, not genuinely upset. Just...exasperated. The voice of a mother berating a particularly slow and errant child. "I haven't exactly had a lot of leisure to housekeep." It's the voice I'm used to, the one I There is the scratching faint and dim to the left, that fantastically maddening sound oscillate that has plagued my ears in intervals to the soothing soft counterpoint of the voice. I dare to open my eyes. She has her back to me in a room filled with pink light from an open window framing a sky with clouds the color of a healing bruise and the setting so unfamiliar and yet so very familiar that the dissonance in my mind snaps my eyes closed before I can oscillate truly realize what has happened here and when I open my eyes again the light in the room is dim. He is facing me. He is tall and thin and his hair is the color of the sun I glimpse through the window. His eyes are large and gray and framed with a network of fine lines that do not age him. The lines deepen as his eyes narrow. There is a woman in the room, the same as before though her clothes are different, and she harangues him. He is quelling his irritation with her, perhaps already so accustomed to doing so that he no longer realizes what he is doing. Perhaps she doesn't either. He glances over her shoulder at me, jerks his chin. "She stirs," he says. The voice that was my lifeline touches my ears, caresses them, kisses them. She turns. Her body is hard and fit beneath her loose t-shirt and jeans, her face is a series of planes and angles hard enough to cut paper and I realize she must be lovely when anger isn't stretching her hide across her bones tighter than drum skin. Her eyes are a pair of black ice chips set in that face of muted gold. She glares. "This had better by worth all the trouble," she snarls at no-one in particular, then stalks out of the room. He draws closer, smiles apologetically. "Harry Lockspeiser," he says by way of introduction. I reach for his hand and he clasps my fingers briefly. It is the same warm anchor of touch that drew me back up as surely as the gentle voice of this man. I open my lips to speak, then close them. I have...I have no name to give him. He appears not to notice my moment of indecision. "I'm sorry about Sarah, you should just ignore her. She's a bit...ah...petty sometimes." I am mesmerized by the beauty of his gold-flecked gray eyes. He clears his throat, suddenly awkward. "You must be hungry. Do you think you could handle some soup?" I do not speak, but nod. He leaves briefly, returns with a tray. Vegetable soup, crackers, a tall glass of orange juice. I have never seen these things but recognize them instantly. None of it calls to my stomach. He looks at my face and understands. "Try," he urges nonetheless, and his reassuring smile takes all age from his face. "For me, won't you, Alessa?" The name is foreign and for a moment I think he is trying to say Alex and Melissa simultaneously. Such strange, senseless baseless thoughts... I have finished the juice and he is helping me with the soup when he says, "What do you remember?" "I was always light," I say and believe that he must understand, how could he not understand? And like he reads my mind he whispers, "I don't know what it was like for you, but it must have been horrible." Yes. It was horrible. He draws the sheet covering me down and I realize that I am tucked into a real bed; why didn't this strike me before? Not one of the steel tables with the clamps or the steel chairs with the restraints, but a bed. The sort I had seen in many dreams. I look. I expect scars where I was cut, marks where I was burned. There is only unmarked white skin. No trace. No memory. And... "No evidence," I whisper. I am not surprised when he nods. Evidence is what they want and I am not it. "You're wrong," he says, again reading my mind. "You are the evidence." I look at him, confused, and he says, "I knew you would be brilliant." My stare is uncomprehending now. "I knew your mother," he says by way of explanation. "She...isn't herself anymore. But she would not have been disappointed, I know." He looks pensive. Then he rises. "Don't leave me." I grasp his hand and beg and plead, try to make him stay. His is the first face I have seen outside that place and I have fixated on him, I know. He is so very perfect. So kind. So good. "I can't," he says, and I know he is lying. "You're going to find Pendrell," I say and he is not surprised. He presses his lips to my pale little hand, a gesture that makes me lightheaded and weak and exultant simultaneously. "Alessa." I look at him. That is my name. His gaze is thoughtful now and he is calculating my worth. "I knew I would find you," he says softly. Then he leaves me. *** Part Four Boba Fett is an invention of George Lucas and I know the Planet of the Apes belongs to someone else too... "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Theme. Manhattan Island, New York. It had been three years since the initial attack, and the inhabitants of earth had given very little resistance. Whatever resistance occurred, it was, as the trite saying went, futile. Diana Fowley stood with her back to the door, blessing sweet fortune that she was on the right side. She was waiting for a new arrival. There was a small window across from her, a circlet of light in the nearly seamless steel globe she stood within. She could see the shadows of trees, and the thick Plexiglas let no sound seep into the room. She could see the edge of a spike on the crown of the Statue of Liberty, liberty, well, what a laugh that was, ha ha, in the shadows of the city, half-buried in the sand the way she had been in *Planet of the Apes. Well, the joke was on you, Taylor*, she thought, ha ha. It wasn't apes, or nuclear war, in the end. It was little green men. They hadn't destroyed the city. They had only taken away the symbols of hope, the monuments meant to stand so that they could look upon my works and despair. She thought about Shelley and Ozymandias and again blessed fortune, but with a little less ringing enthusiasm as before. There were three small, thin aliens on her left side and one tall, bulky guard on her right. A circular landing pad was the focal point of the room; it was where any deliveries from the ship would arrive. She stared intently at the plain white circle, waiting, keeping her hands resolutely at her sides despite their twitching desire to twist and wring each other. She would get the girl, acclimatize her a bit. Then she'd take her to Spender. One of the Grays approached, small and impossibly thin-looking. She stared down at it. It gazed placidly up at her, waiting for the room to flood with light. The bounty hunter stood nearby, face blank and stoic, the familiar blunt planes and intelligent eyes reassuring her. When the light came it was almost an anticlimax; the tension in the room so palpable that Diana ended up unbuttoning her shirt collar in a vain attempt to ease her lungs. The girl sitting in the middle of the floor seemed none the worse for wear after transport. Fowley strode forward, a large smile fixed firmly on her face. No need to frighten the child. "Hello," she said softly. The child looked up. Though they had briefed Fowley, she still took a step back. The small oval face was Scully's, Dana Scully as she must have looked as a child. The girl stood up and advanced on Fowley. Diana checked herself and froze. She reached for the girl's hand but the girl ignored it. She came up to the tips of Fowley's polished heels and stared up, blue-green eyes wide and inquisitive. After a moment of scrutiny, she looked away, as though she had lost interest, and began to approach the Gray. Fowley was mildly amused to see the Gray's eyes actually widen. It backed away from the little figure in the nightie. Fowley grasped the girl's hand and pulled her out of the room, nodding at the Bounty Hunter, whose stoic plank face didn't so much as twitch. "Boba Fett," she muttered to herself as she practically dragged the child down the narrow corridor. She looked at the shivering, frightened thing that the light had vomited up. It didn't look like much. Fowley found it difficult to grasp that this child was a threat to the entire structure of the new order, a creature capable of toppling colonization like a toy castle. Well, her job was to ensure that never happened. The child didn't have a name. She was referred to simply as "the child" in higher circles, or "it". No-one called her Alessa. And certainly no-one called her Scully or Krycek. A daughter. Fowley suppressed a snort of laughter. They left the girl in a small holding room, deep in the bowels of the Pentagon. There was a cot screwed to the floor and a small blanket covering the mattress which contained no springs. That was the only furniture in the room. The girl had been heavily sedated; some of the brass thought she might be able to do a few more tricks than Gibson Praise and if that was the case, there was no harm in drugging her. Fowley had agreed. She had felt the girl *in* her head, sorting and reading the way a child might flip through the card files at an old-fashioned library, and she hadn't liked it. Fowley went to a meeting. Two guards were left standing before the door, both in the standard gray uniforms. One was a woman with gold skin, black ice chip eyes and curly brown hair. The other was a tall thin man with sandy hair and bull-shooter gray eyes. The moment the corridor was empty, they began to move. Ma per cio giammai di questo fondo "But since, if what I hear is true, none did ever return alive from this depth, I answer you without fear of infamy." Variation. Washington, DC. Smoking, CGB Spender reflected, was a filthy habit. Killing was, too. But it was always so hard to quit. The old man pursed his lips and frowned at the window, gazing out at a city that was not razed to the ground or crushed to rubble. The buildings were pristine, the sky perfect, the air clearer than it had been in centuries of human interference. But the streets below were dead, devoid of movement or human life, the small earth plots geometrically cut in the cement for trees breaking into the rest of the street and insidiously filling it with greenery. It was November; there was frost at night, but the plants flourished, almost as though they knew their growth would be unchecked. A few years and the place would resemble one of the Aztec ruins, he thought. A handful of statues had been pulled down, some museums carefully selected and burned. Art seemed to be the main target for destruction. Human expression, human faith. Churches. The Mona Lisa, the Pieta, the roof at St. Paul's cathedral, Westminister Abbey, David, a thousand Picasso's, no longer existed. He always found that point hard to believe. Yes, the Statue of Liberty was gone too. But the Chrysler Building remained. The climate was slightly cooler now, with the city heat of water pipes, vehicles, and nuclear power plants rendered defunct. He was continually amazed by how far into the distance past the spires of D.C. he could see, the bluish shadow suggestions of far-off mountains. There were times when he would have preferred the stink and disorganization of bustling human life and the blinding smog it produced. But one had to adjust. There was someone behind him. Fingers rested lightly on the backrest of the wingback chair he had dragged up to the glass of the window. A puff of some expensive perfume wafted over him. It was unusual for him to smell a scent he recognized; Ici, probably. It had been three years since the human race had indulged in something so frivolous as perfume manufacture. But Marita Coverubbias just wouldn't be right without her French parfum, her icy eyes and her flat, cool voice. "The child is missing." That did not draw his attention. He continued to stare at the street through wide, blood-rimmed blue eyes, the bluish puffs of smoke not bothering him in the least. He lifted the cigarette to his lips and drew deeply, though the lungfuls of nicotine weren't satisfying anymore, only a dirty necessity that brought no pleasure. The plagues of addiction. He sighed softly and the woman behind him shifted, impatient. So many times he had been certain that she would shoot him as soon as look at him. Well. He had his back to her, he was seated, he had no weapon. Some part of him begged her to draw. Another part was complacently sure she would not. She had a question, this woman did. A question she never asked. "What should I do?" "What makes you think you should do anything?" His voice was laconic and she drew away slightly. He felt the faint rill of cool air slide down the back of his starched white shirt collar as she backed off. And the scent she wore was stronger. "You're worried," he said. "Of course I am. Our bargaining chip is gone, and they can only suspect us." "They will only suspect Diana." Marita was silent for a long time. They remained that way for awhile, she standing straight and slender behind him, the muzzle of the snub-nosed revolver lightly brushing the fine leather of the wingback chair, he seated and relaxed with his knife-crease trousers and his ever-present cigarette smoldering in one hand, both gazing out the window at a city reduced to an empty, perfect architectural shell. *Did you set up the whole thing just to get rid of Diana? Did you set up the whole thing just to save your own skin? Did you order what they did to me? To your wife? Your child? Do you even know what they've done? Is Samantha your daughter? Is Mulder your son?* Questions, questions. *Ask, Marita,* he thought, steepling his fingers, drawing in smoke and letting it's bitterness rest on his tongue. *Ask and ye shall receive*. "Have you ever loved, Spender?" It was not the question he had expected, but he answered anyway. "Yes." "Your parents?" Her voice was remarkably steady. "Your family?" "I...didn't know my parents." The war was over. He had nothing left to hide. "Cassandra?" "Yes." "How could you let her go if you loved her?" "She was our only hope." Marita's breath came fast and harsh. "You lie." He looked up finally, looked at her. A bit of blood ran from one nostril, stained a pink lip rose red. Her sickness had largely passed; she was immune. But the yellowness in her corneas, the delicate tremor in one eyelid, testified to the lasting effects of terrible, terrible things. The gun was up now and he stared down the black lidless eye. "Why should I lie?" His voice did not tremble. He was proud. He'd had a gun stuck in his face too often to be frightened by it anymore. He wondered if he had gone mad and didn't care. She pulled the hammer back with one skinny thumb. She had never been heavy and now she was barely holding it together. There were dark bruises circling her eyes; her once-spectacular hair was stringy and limp. His son had saved her to let her reduce herself to this. He saw blood rimming the edges of her eyes and winced. His son had saved her, yes. His son was dead. And he had to die, so his father could try to save the world. "Did you kill your son?" *Oh, anything but that, Marita.* Spender closed his eyes. "Have you ever loved, Coverubbias?" One last mind game, one last chance to toy with a young one's brain. Though it didn't look like she would stand for too much more. She did not answer. She snarled at him. "Did you kill Jeffrey?" He spread his palms. Blew smoke. There were two gunshots, flat, undramatic in the ringing silence of the room. Then there was nothing. *** Part Five "But there was no information, and so we continued March. Virginia. Krycek stood with his back to the wall, staring into the darkness, his prosthetic left arm tucked in the pocket of his jacket and his gloved right hand resting on the butt of his gun. Not that it would do too much good against *them*. He was waiting. The silence settled over the empty city was unnerving; it was like standing in an extremely large unoccupied bomb shelter. Everything was covered in a thin layer of gray dust; residue, from the sterilization. His breathing did not echo. Nothing echoed. Everything was softened. He thought of empty rooms lined entirely with thick shag carpet. The man emerged from the other side of the alley, wrapped in a hooded parka, shadows covering his face. "H.D.S. sir, and how are you this afternoon *allllllll* righty then?" The man giggled. Though his face was hidden Krycek recognized the light, slightly nasal voice emerging from the hood, even when it was distorted in a bad Jim Carrey imitation. "I have a package for you." He produced a bulky parcel from the depths of his coat and thrust it at Krycek. Krycek accepted it and slipped it into his jacket. "You're supposed to shake it and say, 'Sound's broken,'", the other man scolded sternly. "Don't you ever watch movies?" "No," Krycek said. He drew a rust-red plastic bag from his inside jacket pocket. "Here." The other man practically snatched the morphine injections and stuffed them into his parka. They didn't allow pain killers on the base. This man had been shot over five years ago and the healing process had left a twist in him; the end result was continual stabbing pain in cold weather. Krycek expected the man to shoot up right there. He was surprised when the man simply pushed his mitten-clad hands into his pockets again. "Any news?" Krycek asked, both of them leaning against the once-filthy and pissed-on wall in the ghost town that was D.C. Krycek understood that much of the rest of the world was like this: clean, sterile, absent of humans and filled with other things. The colonists had reasoned well. Why destroy human structures when all that needed to be destroyed was the humans? The brick behind them was crumbly, bare of any residue that might suggest primate occupation. Krycek felt a vague sadness and held it. It reminded him that he was alive. "News, news, news..." the man in the parka mused, occasionally breaking into another of his little bubbles of unhappy giggles. "Well well well. Why does everyone seem to think I have news?" "Because you work for *them,* Pendrell." Krycek found himself lifted off the ground, his leather jacket ground into the powdery brick wall behind him, his lapels crushed in the mitten-clad hands of Daniel S. Pendrell, PhD. Pendrell's face emerged from under the parka hood, his eyes two glittering blue gimlets, pupils contracted to needle-points of blackness. His lips were drawn back from his teeth and the freckles on his nose and cheeks blazed, hectic spots of blood against his white skin. The trademark red hair was corkscrewed and dirty. "Shut up," Pendrell whispered, "shut up shut up shut up." There was a peculiar goatish odor about the man and Krycek recognized the smell as one heralding schizophrenia. Scully would have known it as trans-three methyl-two hexanoic acid. "I'm sorry," he said, managing to sound reasonably natural and contrite. "I forgot." Pendrell sighed once, a deep sound that seemed to emanate from the man's toes upward. He dropped Krycek and the man stumbled a bit, surprised. He'd been lifted a foot and a half off the cement. Pendrell swiped an arm across his face, leaving a smear of dirt across his cheek. "I'm sorry," he said. "They said I'm not Pendrell anymore. They said it over and over again, please please don't call me that." "I know." Krycek shrugged his shoulders, rolled them, patted the jacket back into place over his metal and plastic left arm. "I'm sorry." "Go see the fortune teller," Pendrell said after a moment, not acknowledging the apology. His face had retreated in the anonymous shadows of the parka; small puffs of steam left his lips and dissipated on the air. "What?" "There are things in the back of your mind, aren't there," Pendrell replied sagely, and for a moment he sounded almost sane. He suddenly, drunkenly leaned close to Krycek and the other man was overwhelmed by his strange smell, his sterile scent carried from the base. Pendrell's mittened hand jabbed at Krycek's forehead. "There are things you dream about that you don't understand." "Everyone has dreams they don't understand," Krycek said uneasily. "Of course they do." Pendrell peered at the other man. "Listen, though, listen." Around them the empty city echoed. The red haired man stood still for a moment in the darkness of his parka, frighteningly still in the hurricane of his jittery madness. "Madame Sosostris," Pendrell snapped suddenly. "You know. Go see her. She'll tell you, she will." The man in the parka turned and began to trot away. "Hey!" Krycek kept well in mind not to call him Pendrell. "Where can I find her?" "Find your wife," Pendrell cried. "Find the things in the back of your mind, drag them into the light." "What?" But the man in the parka was gone. *Find your wife.* Goddamn riddles. "Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, Overture. Virginia. In a building across the street, Dana Scully was watching. She lowered her field glasses and rubbed her eyes. Pendrell was still alive, that was nothing new. Everyone knew that. He was head of the colonist field, working for them, helping them adjust to their new environment. Some said the work had driven him mad. Others said that the shooting had done it to him, the bullet he'd taken in the bar, the wound she'd tried to seal by stuffing it full of cocktail napkins. Whatever explanation you accepted, the shooting had allowed them to take him and hide him away and force him to do the work. It was her fault, in the end. She hadn't been requisitioned to the field for medical assistance; so far as the colonists were concerned, the sooner she was shot down the better. Krycek didn't seem to be working for them, but she still wasn't sure. Pendrell was borderline schizoid and perhaps the voices in his head weren't entirely fabricated by his mind. No need to ridicule people lining their windows with aluminum foil to keep out the mind-reading rays; the mind-readers had landed. The city wasn't entirely empty, as he thought. There were crucifixions on a regular basis now, men and women and children suspended on telephone poles, offerings to the visitors from outer space. There were cults worshiping aliens, cults worshiping their ships. There were madmen everywhere and in many ways Scully envied them, envied their sweet mindlessness and unshakeable belief in whatever faith whatever charismatic leader decided to fixate on. They didn't have to think about what had happened. They just did their rituals and existed and went on. She touched the gold cross at her throat and sniffled once. The nosebleeds had stopped. There was no need to keep the chips in the necks of abductees functioning anymore; now that they had taken over, what need would there be? She wasn't dying. She was still sterile, still having nightmares of them taking her, but she was healthy. She had not seen Mulder for two years. Fox Mulder had left her in the lurch once again, just before the invasion and the bombing and the mass graves began. He had seen his sister again, was certain she'd been brainwashed, and was after her. She had seen him drive off in the motor pool car, leaving her stranded on an empty stretch of road in Nevada for the last time. Nevada Scully stood on the shoulder of the dusty dirt road, hands on her hips, feeling the first trickle of sweat start to break on her forehead. She was wearing her good black suit and her good black high heels, the ones that took a little strain off her neck if she had to look at Mulder. They didn't do much for her back, though. Or her feet. And now she was stuck in the middle of nowhere without so much as a nickel. They were heading back from a case in Texas. Headed for the airport. They were going to meet Skinner at the airport. He'd gone down too. Hostage situation, Texas again. He'd left her in the middle of no-where because of a hallucination. She tried the phone and wasn't within a thousand miles of a cellular tower. She closed her eyes. "Fox William Mulder. You and I are quits." She whispered it. The words were drowned out by droning bees and cheerfully chirping birds and the wind in the tall grass. "Mulder, you prick!" she screamed this time, and a flurry of wings erupted from the ditch beside her. "You motherfucking prick!" She sighed, flapped her arms once, and took off her jacket. She wore a tight white t-shirt underneath and knew she was going to burn. She held the jacket over her head. As soon as she got back to Washington she was going to hand in her resignation from the field office and go back to Quantico, she swore to God she would- The sound of crunching gravel and a smooth engine made her turn her head. It had been three hours, three hours of mindless, painful trudging. She turned shakily, stuck out a thumb, blew a strand of sweaty hair out of her face. She was certain that her feet were bleeding. The car came into view, a mirage gone blurry in the shimmering heat waves. It was powder blue...one of the new Trans Am's. Scully decided she was hallucinating. It pulled up closer and slowed, and now she could see the driver. Alexander Krycek. Scully closed her eyes and decided she was definitely hallucinating. She felt suddenly cold, though when she pressed a hand to her forehead she was still baking as ever. "Shit." Heat stroke. Of all the times he could have chosen to appear... The car drew up and the passenger window went down. "Agent Scully?" She swayed only once. Krycek threw the car into neutral and jumped out. Scully's face and neck were an alarming shade of red; she had sunstroke. He yanked the passenger door open and rushed over to her, checking her pulse, carefully lifting her. It was easy; she had lost more weight since he'd last seen her. One-armed it was a bit of a job but he managed. When she was buckled in he resumed driving, turning the air conditioning up and the music off. If Scully was out walking then he was on the right track; Mulder had to be nearby. Numb fuck had probably abandoned her out here after an argument. Krycek glanced over at Scully, who was regaining consciousness. She looked at him fuzzily, then sharply, then tried to go for her gun. Fortunately Krycek had seen this coming. Her gun was gone; one wrist was cuffed to the handle of the passenger door. The other was cuffed to the bar he'd had installed under the dash. "Feeling better, Agent Scully?" She said nothing. "Are you thirsty? There's some water in the glove compartment. She didn't take her eyes off him as she opened it. There were four plastic bottles of Evian lined up in the compartment, and she took one. The chain was long enough for her to sip if she leaned forward. She drank carefully, knowing she was severely dehydrated, and firmly stamped down the desire to chug it. "Did Mulder leave you out here?" She still didn't answer. Krycek sighed, reached over to the radio, and turned it up. "Are you looking for him?" she said finally after they had driven for about an hour. "Yes. Why the hell else would I be out here?" They sat in silence a moment longer. She was on her second bottle of Evian and was starting to get a bit uncomfortable. He looked at her sideways before she could decide to announce anything. "You know, if you need a bathroom break, I'm going to have to stand over you with a gun so you don't try to run. You'll die out here." Scully held her tongue and crossed her legs. They drove awhile longer. She wouldn't ask what he was going to do to her and he wouldn't tell her. Within a half hour a dusty, abandoned-looking gas station trundled into view, and Krycek pulled up to one of the pumps. She could see the polished wood handle of a .38 police special tucked into his jacket. He leaned over her, lips close enough to her ear for her to feel his breath. He unlocked the cuffs expertly with one hand and dropped them on the floor, instructing her to kick them under the seat unless she wanted a new hole in her head. She complied. There were two men sitting in front of the gas station. One wore a plaid shirt buttoned to the throat. The other was bare chested, wearing only tattered oil-stained overalls. Scully stared at them. "Now, if you need to go, I'm going to follow you to the rest room and I'm going to lead you back to the car. Don't try anything." "I'm not stupid," she said coldly. "Glad to hear it. I'm going to head back down to the station. Let me know if there's a problem," Krycek called down the street after Pendrell's retreating back. Virginia. Scully blinked. She shook herself out of her revere and re-entered the present. Krycek was leaving. What she had heard was interesting; whoever Pendrell was calling Sosostris could be looked up. Something flickered in the back of her mind, something about unreal cities, and she pushed it away. She stuffed her binoculars into her knapsack and trotted down the dusty plaster steps to the ground floor in time to catch the glint off the zipper on Krycek's leather jacket, vanishing in the alley across the street. She tried to be quiet, groaned to herself when she looked back and saw her small sneaker prints very clearly on the asphalt; the plaster dust had stuck to her shoes and made the street look like a dance step instruction sheet. She pressed on anyway, breathing carefully, chasing down the alley she'd seen him go. Again she wondered about Mulder. If he had found Samantha, if he had cared enough about her to go back for her only to find her gone and only an abrupt end to the trail of high-heeled footsteps she'd ground into the dusty red Nevada road. She didn't care. The alley was deserted and she cursed silently. The back entrance provided three possibilities; left, right, or up the ladder. She slowed down, drew out her little pen light to examine the ground for a hint as to which way he'd gone. The bug she'd planted was on Pendrell; there was no way to track his position- There was the distinctive *snick-snick* of a revolver next to her head and she froze. "Krycek?" He reversed the butt and brought it down on her head. *** Part Six "..... I will show you something different from either He watched her sleep for an hour, sat by the bed and read a battered purloined paperback for another two hours. He glanced at the cover to remember what he was reading: something by Jonathan Kellerman. New books were nonexistent now and the stack of pulp he had was rapidly aging. The colonists didn't think stimulation of the human brain by such activities as reading were necessary, or desirable. It looked as though she would be awhile regaining consciousness. He hadn't meant to hit her hard. Not that hard, anyway. Krycek flipped through the contents of the package Pendrell had given him. It smelled of clean, fresh paper, both the package and the material. For a split second Krycek envied the luxuries that work for the base provided. Then he remembered his mission and felt the desire for those luxuries drain away. He examined the stacks of photographs. A young Scully, a youthful Krycek, a nonexistent life he didn't remember but couldn't ignore. These had been taken long before any computer tampering could be seamlessly performed; the backing of the film was old and yellowed, dated and the fading colors proved the negatives had not been faked. But there was a tickle, wasn't there? Just a little bit of prodding from the dusty vaults of memories which he never wanted to flip through. He examined the picture more closely, almost hoping for evidence of forgery. A light line along the edges of their figures, perhaps. An incorrect shadow. He saw nothing but stiff Polaroid plastic and smelled nothing but age. And the corner of one of the pictures had a smear of red lipstick on it, where she'd kissed it for luck before he'd gone on another trip. Or so Pendrell's still-tidy hand claimed on the sheets of yellow legal paper crammed in with the pictures. Krycek read a little jealousy and a great deal of intelligence in those notes, narrow lines of fine handwriting done in dusty blue ballpoint. He remembered the crush Pendrell had had on Scully. He wondered how painful it was for him now, with half his mind gone. People were willing to do a lot for their contraband and Krycek was willing to do a good deal himself to get their stuff for them. Painkillers were the main market. He also got them tobacco, books, coffee and some recreational drugs. Pendrell would never be on the receiving end of those, even if he asked for them. And if he did, Krycek was reasonably certain it wouldn't be to get high. Pendrell was at the end of his fraying rope, he knew. He would have to work faster. His breath fogged the air as he flipped through the photos. Scully and him on the lawn, grinning at the camera, wearing shorts and tank tops, her smile unbelievably sweet and true, her hair blonde, long, and strange. She wore it in a French plait over her shoulder. He had bleached his hair almost as light as hers and he looked odd in his future's eyes. It had grown out quickly and he had worn it long until...Krycek shook his head and the thin wavering memory vanished. So far as he remembered, he'd dyed his hair after a short trip to Russia. With his family. Not his wife. He flipped more photos. Scully and him on the sidewalk, waving to someone. Scully and him at a party, she in a stunning pale blue satin gown, he, looking dapper but a little awkward in a rented tux. Shots of Scully with a distended belly, face radiant and shining, and a ring glistening bright on her finger. Krycek's hands began to shake. Shots of her in the hospital, pale and sweaty but smiling, he paler and sweatier beside her, not smiling at all, clutching her hand as though he were the one in labor. Shot of Scully's head bent over the pinched-looking red-faced thing in the hospital blanket, already sporting a head of black hair. The newborn's eyes were squinted and her mouth was wide open, displaying toothless gums. She was obviously squalling. Shot of both of them beaming at the camera, the prune-faced little baby between them. "You were so beautiful, even all wrinkly and red," he whispered to the picture. In the dark, in the room where he sat and flipped through celluloid memories he'd almost completely and involuntarily lost, nothing stirred. Shot of Scully, slender again and dressed in her hospital scrubs, holding a bundle wrapped in pink. A gorgeous face peeked out, aquamarine eyes, the delicate features covered in Scully's lily white skin, the glossy black hair fine and light, floating in a cloud about the face. Krycek closed his eyes. Shuffled the pictures, stuffed them back in the envelope, grabbed his book again and immersed himself in the fantasy world of the eighties which he could barely recall as real. He had just put his book in the other narrow room he'd managed to get in the inner city when he heard her groan. *** When Scully woke, she was lying on an unfamiliar cot in an unfamiliar room. When she tried to get up, she found that she was neatly bound to the unfamiliar cot with equally unfamiliar leather restraints. "Kinky," she muttered and was nearly able to keep the tremor out of her voice. He heard her faint cursing as she struggled and went to check on her. "Really, Krycek," she said lightly when he appeared in the doorway, "shouldn't we get to know each other first?" "Why were you spying on us?" She shrugged. "I worry about Pendrell. He's showing too much of his ass for you and they're going to catch up to him soon if you don't leave him alone." He looked at her through narrow slits of eyes. "You don't work for the insurgence. What do you care?" "I'm still looking for Mulder." Not precisely true, but... "Mulder's dead," Krycek said flatly. "Oh." Scully smiled sweetly, angrily. "Gee. Well, now that you've told me so, I'll be sure to toddle on home and forget all about it. Thanks for taking a load off, Krycek, you're a real pal-" He pushed off the wall with enough force for her to see the small dents his clenched hands had made in the moldy plaster. He strode forward with an object concealed in his right fist, and when he opened it, a small puff of dust burst up that made his hand seem to smoke. She squinted, neck raised and straining against the restraints. Half of her fear was already forgotten; he wasn't going to hurt her. Not seriously, anyway. "What is it?" It was a locket, a tarnished silver locket with two heart-shaped pictures inside. One was a small baby's face, a child with white skin and shockingly dark hair. The other... "Where did you get a picture of me?" Scully asked calmly. "Who's the kid?" "You don't remember her at all?" "Should I?" Scully was getting exceedingly uncomfortable in her shackles. "She's our child." She laughed out loud and he struck her across the face with the trinket still clutched in his hand, as she had expected him to. She jeered at him through a mouthful of blood and snickered. "You should stop dyeing your hair," he said abruptly, changing the subject as she shook the blow off. "It looks fake." She spat to one side and a line of red drool stretched across her face and down the pillow. He watched the thin line settle on her skin and spread out in a string of tiny glistening dots. "Where did you get that locket?" Her voice was only slightly mushy. "I got it from the Pentagon, from a guy who says he's an old friend of yours." "Who?" she giggled, and he saw something broken in the lines of her face, something cracked in the smooth facade lined with bloody spit. "Deep Throat's ghost?" "Said his name was Lockspeiser. Harry A. Lockspeiser." She stopped laughing. *** He left her there, silent, examining the locket he'd hung on the bedpost before leaving. Scully wasn't Mulder or Houdini; she wouldn't find a way to escape even if he'd supplied the keys. He went back to the pictures and the small tickle in the back of his mind grew stronger. The pictures were invariably of the two of them together. Invariably. Someone had to have been present to take the pictures, then. Krycek dropped the handful of shots on his desk and grabbed the padded manila envelope. He tore it to pieces, shredded the foamed plastic and paper wrapping. Pendrell hadn't left a note. He walked into the narrow room containing the stacks of books he'd managed to salvage and drew up the drape covering the box in the corner. A pair of pale gray pigeons cooed at him as he did so. There was a pile of paper slips and a short pencil next to the cage. Krycek drew a bird out of the cage and placed it on the windowsill, where it impatiently flapped its wings. He wrote a brief note and rolled it expertly, dropping the paper into the small capsule strapped to the pigeon's leg. He capped it. He picked up the bird, lightly stroking its softly feathered head. The bird peered up at him with bright oil drop eyes. "Pendrell," he whispered to it gently, his breath barely stirring the tight cap of feathers on the pigeon's head. "Daniel Pendrell. Golf. Pendrell. Golf." He slid open the window with one hand and gave the bird a gentle toss. He stood and stared after it as it flew gracefully off. He envied its single-minded stupidity. Krycek shook himself as a dog shakes itself when emerging from a pool. He shut the window and leaned against the glass. He thought about the broken line. Scully's face. She had been broken and didn't remember it; she was one of the few women he knew who was sure she could never be broken. But in some level she remembered. The child. Emily? But Emily was dead. Dead and buried: a faint red-haired memory, and that was the kicker, wasn't it? That the kid didn't bear the slightest resemblance to anyone but Scully. Didn't bear the slightest resemblance to him. Did he want her so badly he was willing to pretend she'd had something with him before he could remember meeting her? Krycek shook his head again. He turned from the window and the endless silent dark beyond. There were no car horns, no sirens, no faint disconnected threads of music wafting up to the apartment. There was nothing. Crickets. The occasional owl. He went to the small pocket tape recorder he carried with him and put on some music to fill the space. *** "Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, "Do you know him?" "You should know him, Alessa. This is Daniel Pendrell, a friend of your mother's." He is a tall thin man, a thin man with a face that would look much better plump. The bones are too sharp for the hide, and it looks stretched and painful. His hair is red, soft, curly, and his skin is white and freckled. His eyes are piercing blue. At the mention of his name he turns to Harry and practically snarls. I extend my hand. "Number 004288721010. You probably know me as subject 2. I'm very pleased to meet you." He looks at me, startled, then smiles. "They told me about you at the project," he says, a little shakily. "You're Scully's daughter, aren't you?" He ignores my hand and I let it drop back on the coverlet. This is a man who does not like human touch. "Yes. You work for them?" He gives a slightly twitchy shrug. His thoughts are mostly chaos, a jumble of alien faces and the burbling hiss of the alien mind. Grays minds, Grays orders. And mathematical conjectures I cannot properly grasp. "I sort of work for them, yes, in a sense," he says, and I understand. "Did you know my mother?" "She was a lovely woman," he says quietly, "but she's very ill, you see. They rewired her brain, and the men who did the work are dead, and we don't know how to reverse the process, much as I'd like to. Well, they wouldn't let me even if I knew how but still there is a way..." "What do you mean?" Pendrell dips his head to one side. "You see. Your mother worked for the Consortium," he produces a manic bubble of laughter, "and of course you know who they are, but you see, your mother, she was put on a case deep undercover with a man named Alex Krycek." "But Alex Krycek hates my mother," I protest. "Yes, he does. But he doesn't. There's something....you must understand. At one time they loved each other." I purse my lips. There is no such memory in either of my parents. And I know so very well. His head suddenly swerves, tilts to the other side. I am not expecting this and it startles me. None of his thoughts precede his movements and this unpredictable aspect makes him terrifying. "I'm sure you don't believe me, missy, but it's true. You just can't see it and you can't goddamn accept it because you can't see it, ain't that so, Madame Sosostris?" Contempt drips in his voice and I had not expected this mood swing either. I sit stunned. "Please don't call me that," I say. "That's not my name." "But it is." His voice changes again, becomes more plaintive. "The men who organized the whole thing, you see, they didn't let Spender in on it because he was going to deal with Krycek later, he knew who Scully was and that she was going to have her brain wiped but he didn't deal with Krycek, see." Pendrell stops long enough to take a hitching, gasping breath. He speaks the way nervous children speak, in awkward pauses and run-on sentences. "Then, they, you understand, the men who decided on the plan, the colonists killed them, while you were in stasis." He giggles again. "I know you could understand lots from where you were, up there, on the ship, but you can't catch everything and they said you'd definitely miss that little bit, those men don't think loudly and there were only a few of them, you see." Over my shoulder, Harry starts to look a bit agitated. There are murmurings in the back of my head, and these are far noisier than the rumbling in Pendrell's screwed-up wiring. "Harry? Someone's here." "I know," he says, his eyes darkening from gray to nearly black. "Listen, Pendrell, you've got to get her out of here." "Harry?" He starts to wave a hand at me to shush me and then remembers something. My head is starting to pound. He leans closer to me, over Pendrell's shoulder. Harry is not dark, but his skin is still deeply tanned in comparison with Pendrell's graveyard complexion. "Alessa, who's outside?" "Fowley. And the blonde woman. Marita." Both of them and their small army, but it isn't the army either of us is worried about. The two women will be the major force here. "Pendrell." Pendrell lifts a fist and sends Harry against the wall, face livid and straining in rage. Plaster dust explodes from behind the wood paneling. Harry makes a choked noise but otherwise is silent. Pendrell's hand is clamped over Harry's throat. "Please. I'm not that anymore." His voice is strange, calm despite the horrible fury in his white face. I had not predicted the sudden violence at his name. I should have. "004288721010." He looks at me curiously. "Please do as he says. It's important." Pendrell dips his head again, moves away from Harry. Drops him. Harry sits for a moment, rubbing his throat. Then he's on his feet when Pendrell whips the blanket off me. There is no time to be embarrassed by the pink pyjamas Harry bought me in anticipation of my arrival. Pendrell scoops me up out of the bed while my head explodes in pain and carries me out of the room, down an unfamiliar hallway carpeted in fraying dull maroon and papered with a pale pattern of ivy leaves and then his feet are hammering down the iron rails of the fire escape in the cool night. The pain in my head, the intensity of the migraine, is enough to silence the racket outside. I flop bonelessly in Pendrell's arms. I think of Gibson Praise and his beloved chess, his cartoons, how he lived his free life on earth while I lay on a dissecting table. Behind us, Harry's cry is swallowed by the first burst of gunfire. *** In the bedroom, Scully heard the faint murmurings of her captor, followed by an explosive flurry of wings. Carrier pigeons. It was amazing, what they had been reduced to. Scully was carefully exploring her gums with her tongue. She drew the tip of her tongue along the edges of her front teeth, then around and up farther, searching carefully. The thing she sought had irritated her for the first little while; now her mouth was numb to it, and finding it was difficult. At last she felt a faint, sharp prick on her tongue and stopped. She nudged the object slightly, drawing it forward, down between the cheek and gum. At last she felt it fall into the hollow of her mouth. She stopped for a moment, careful not to swallow, not to choke. Now the hard part. Scully leaned her head towards the restraint on her right arm and found it almost disgustingly easy to reach. Her fingers didn't reach her mouth, though. Not a problem. She manipulated the thin metal pick in her mouth until the sharp end pointed out and the thicker blunt end was grasped firmly between her teeth. She stopped and listened. The chair in the other room creaked softly as Krycek settled into it. She heard him rustling through something: a canvas bag, from the sound of it. She strained her ears and heard the snicking hard plastic sounds of a cassette tape being removed and replaced in a recorder. Schubert filled the room; the dark depressing double-bass strings of the Unfinished. She remembered Mulder commenting on the piece once when he'd heard her playing it on the stereo. He reminded her, smiling, that it was the music on the Smurfs cartoon that came on whenever Gargamel and his cat Azrael appeared. She couldn't remember if she'd swatted him or not. Scully felt a thin thread of annoyance worm its way into her appreciation of Krycek's taste. She wouldn't be able to hear him now, his steady soft breathing in the other room, the occasional squeak as he shifted or flutter as he turned a page. She wouldn't know if he was standing in the doorway. She wondered if his playing the last symphony Schubert had written before death meant anything. There was no time to wonder. Scully re-focused on the task at hand; the lock-pick, and the lock. Slipping the ratchet was also disgustingly easy; the restraints had simple handcuff mechanisms. When her wrists were free she flexed them, rotated them, made sure both were limber and painless, before starting on her ankles. *** In the next room, Krycek had fallen asleep. Scully peered around cautiously, walking on the tips of her toes, carefully easing her weight over the old wood floor. Krycek was a dark silhouette in the straight chair, a lean figure slouched over, lap full of pictures. His gun was nowhere to be seen. There weren't any weapons anywhere. Scully briefly thought of searching him and decided against it. He could be shamming. The deep breathing of sleep was probably easy for a worm like him to fabricate. She approached him from behind, sliding one hand under his chin and cupping the other over the top of his head. He awoke with a jerk and froze. "Houdini," he said. "Not quite." She twisted gently and heard a satisfying crackle as his neck bones settled. "Y'know, you can break someone's neck doing that," Krycek remarked, sitting perfectly still. "I know. Hands on your knees, where I can see them." He shifted and the pile of pictures on his lap fluttered to the floor. He reflected that he should have known, after all. She had bled from the mouth all too easily. He hadn't hit her hard enough to send the cutting edge of her teeth so deep into her cheeks. She'd concealed a weapon and though he'd searched her clothes and examined her mouth while she was out he had missed it. He deserved what he got. "What are you after, Krycek?" Scully dug in a bit and drew him back to the present. "What Pendrell sent me after." "And is he always worth his word?" "He's as good as the morphine I give him." "And as good as what I'm going to get out of you, right?" "I'm on your side, Scully." Her grip was tightening steadily around his neck, her keen nails digging into the soft flesh just under his chin. That vulnerable spot. He'd had an opportunity to have a thin nylon plate implanted in that spot a few years ago, as protection. He knew others who'd had it done and could sustain knife stabs to the throat with minimal damage. Krycek could not remember why he had refused. The nails threatened to punch through skin. Krycek gave his full attention to the woman wielding them. "Prove it." "You were pregnant with a child." He spoke quickly, but not nervously. "Our child. You have to understand that the girl called Emily was a blind. She was created with DNA taken from you when you were abducted. But you've had at least two children, one before you joined the FBI and one after, when Duane Barry-" She stopped digging with her nails and started gouging. Soon one of her fingers would punch through his cheek and fill his mouth with blood. Her fingers were strong. Doctor's fingers. Both of them knew she could do it. "You're lying," she said dully. "Don't lie to me, Krycek, or I swear to God-" "You'll peel off my face with a staple. Yeah, I know the drill." Krycek managed to sound bored. "I'll peel it off with your boot lace if you're not careful." The staple would be merciful, she thought. At least it was a little sharp. *** Diana Fowley paced her narrow room and resisted the urge to bite her carefully manicured fingernails right off and spit them out. When she had helped Fox Mulder with the X-Files all those years ago at the Bureau, she had known nothing of the Consortium, nothing of Spender's plans for any of them. Gibson's appearance had been a bit of a shock to them. He was a natural phenomenon, apparently. That was what Spender had told her, anyway, and for her own sanity Diana Fowley believed what she was told. He had asked her to create a gap between Scully and Mulder, had her placed on the case. She'd had one look at the diminutive red-head, examined the tall handsome son she would be working with, and agreed immediately. The whole job looked like cake. It was turning out to be one tough burnt cake, riddled with nuts hard as rock. Scully had seen through her, and even if Fox had taken some convincing, he too was on his little red head's side. She hadn't seen Fox for ages. Hadn't heard from him. Not that she expected to. Fox Mulder was not one to approach the opposite sex first without ample invitation from the enemy lines. And even then he was likely as not to remain skulking in his den, nose buried in his tail. Idiot. Jeffrey was dead now, killed and vanished, not even a pool of blood or a cryptic sentence written in that blood left behind to dignify his murder. Killed by his own father for reasons the old man was unwilling to face. Poor Jeffrey. She was certain that her pacing was beginning to wear a ring in the carpet. Fowley's hand vanished inside her jacket. It came out holding a slimmer version of the bulky rust-red plastic packages Krycek had passed to Pendrell two years ago and continued to pass to him, as well as to others who offered the right kind of currency. Fowley had no need for Krycek's services. She had other channels. She opened one end with her nails and extracted one of the long, sealed syringes. She tucked the rest of them back into her suit. Fowley carefully set the shot on her narrow desk. She sat down and made herself comfortable. There was a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some cotton balls in the top drawer. The two items could easily be explained away. The length of rubber tubing could not be, however, and she kept it taped to the underside of the second, less interesting drawer. She strapped the tubing around her left arm expertly, then picked up the syringe. She grasped the white surgical sealer with her teeth and yanked, exposing the steel needle underneath. Her exposed arm wasn't yet a mess of needle tracks and collapsed veins. There were only a few punctures, and most were healing. Lightly, Fowley slapped the pale skin of her inner arm, waiting for a vein to surface. It didn't take long. She cleaned up and checked her face, her eyes. Her pupils were slightly dilated and her skin bore a mild sheen. But no-one human would notice in the dark, and none of the Grays would care. Fowley resumed pacing, but now her steps were less sharp and rapid. She walked almost languidly, andante. She relaxed. She wondered if the two guards attending Alessa's room had been found yet. She doubted they would be. Her steps slowed until she was no longer pacing, but strolling. Taking a leisurely walk. Idly wondering how long it would take her mess of a right arm to heal. End Of Part Six |
Arianeby K.C. Nagai |