Equilibrium Part 5
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Chapter 13
Tunisia
A safe house 20 kilometers from Strughold's compound
As so often happened, the choices available to them quickly narrowed to one.
Krycek watched in disgust as Skinner and Marita hunched over the map
of the compound. Pointing first at one possible entry point, then
weighing the merits of other possible approaches. Around them, the
three clones--whom he would have dearly loved to dub the Three
Stooges, except he had a hunch that each of them would answer to
Moe--watched with anxiety.
After the bustle and turmoil of Mulder's deus ex machina like return
by the aliens, the remaining players had stood stunned on the hilltop,
trying to decide what to do next. They could see that there was now
heightened activity occurring around the buildings on the far side of
the corn fields.
They had been arguing about various options, when yet another
red-haired clone had come scurrying up to the group. He had not
brought good news.
While Mulder was being returned to Scully, a group of aliens had
delivered some large cases to Strughold. From the clone's
description of he contents, it sounded very much like the same sort
of weaponry that Krycek and Scully had seen being delivered in Alaska.
That, however, was not the worst of the news. Strughold had met
privately with a group of aliens for a few minutes and when they left
again, he'd quickly called a meeting of all the section leaders in
the compound and announced that the timetable had been stepped up, and
that a new phase of testing would begin in the morning, with the
addition of new "materials" that he had just received. It was also
not at all clear which group of aliens had come calling.
Marita and the clones hadn't been able, or perhaps willing, to fully
describe the potential consequences of this change in Strughold's
plans--it was only clear that this had changed everything for her in
terms of what she and her collaborators were trying to accomplish,
and her sense of urgency about the dangers involved.
So, they adjourned back to the current safe house to try to come up
with a plan of action.
By Krycek's estimate, they had now been arguing for a good four hours.
Fuck this shit. There was only one viable entry point to the lab
they needed and they all knew it. They were simply delaying the
inevitable. He strode over to the table, and slapped his palm against
the diagram.
"You're just delaying the inevitable." It felt good to snarl, to act
without censoring his words or tone. "There's only one fucking way
in, through the south door. If we approach from the west, we have to
move through way too much open space, and we'll get spotted because
we've established that there are guards. And the north was never
really an option unless you," he glanced at Skinner, "have some
buddies in the Third Infantry who just happen to be vacationing in
this area along with a battalion or two and lots of light armor."
Skinner muttered something, and rolled his head on his shoulders.
But he looked up at Krycek, and just shrugged, a grudging respect in
his eyes. "You're right. The southern route is the only viable
plan." Skinner then turned to Marita, and a minute softening in his
tone was discernible. "Okay? We're going in on the southern approach."
The air of command was unmistakable.
Marita bridled a little, Krycek was amused to see. He knew how much
she hated being out of control, and he was also intrigued by the
shift in dynamics that he saw between the former AD and Marita.
Clearly something had happened, and the scandal hunter in Krycek was
pretty damn sure what it was. Well, well, well, that was certainly
an interesting twist. He was going to have a hell of a lot of fun
with this little development.
He listened while Skinner laid out the details of the operation.
Details they had discussed a half-dozen times already, as they ran
through their narrowing list of options. He half-expected one of the
clones to whip out a notepad and take detailed notes.
Damn. It was going to be amateur hour. Skinner, he knew, would do
everything by the book. And he'd long suspected that Marita in the
field would be a fearsome and ruthless creature. But these fucking
scientists were the wild card. He had no idea how they'd react when
the pressure was on, and no one, but no one had yet addressed what
might happen to all of them if bullets started flying.
He was really, really getting too old for this shit. In his next
career, he was definitely picking an organization with a decent
retirement plan.
He looked around the anonymous room, and thought tiredly that safe
houses had a certain sameness to them the world over. They all had
an air of captured despair and surrender. A capitulation to the
inevitable.
He heard Skinner wrapping up the meeting. The agreement was to hit
the place at dawn. On paper, at least, it was a surgical strike
operation. In and out, low and quiet. They would hit the main lab,
retrieve the disks from the data storage room on the far side of the
building and obtain the "specimens" from the central testing
facility. He hadn't asked what the specimens consisted of because he
really didn't want to know. He'd volunteered to run point for Clone
#1, who was in charge of getting the disks.
He asked again, more for the sake of argument than anything else.
"Shouldn't we involve Mulder and Scully in this? We really need two
more people who know how to shoot, and we know that Red, at least, is
a dead shot."
Skinner glared at him, and Krycek shifted under the knowledge that the
man could probably reach across the table and break his neck long
before he could reach his gun, or the palm pilot.
Skinner's tone, however, was surprisingly reasonable. "No. That's
not negotiable. She's...They need to get out of here and get back to
safety. Kevin will meet them at the house where they're staying and
get them to the airstrip in time to meet up with us. They'll be in
the other plane, with the engine running. That increases our odds of
at least some of us getting out of here and the information getting
back to the right hands."
Krycek was left with two thoughts: Skinner wasn't entirely sure to
whom the information was going, and wasn't entirely sure it was the
right hands, but he seemed to have run out of ideas and options. He
was also sure that Skinner was hiding something about Mulder and
Scully.
It was nearly midnight, and they would need to leave at 5 a.m. to
start their assault on the compound.
The clones were returning to the compound for the night, so they
would be in place in the morning. One of the clones from this project had
remarked wryly that one of the advantages of everyone looking exactly
the same was that it was easier to hide the fact that someone was
missing. Krycek had barely refrained from replying that it also made
it way more fucking difficult to tell who was actually on your side.
The safe house, he realized with a jolt, only had two bedrooms. On
the theory that the best defense is a good offense, he headed into
one and closed the door. Let Skinner have the very short and very
lumpy couch. When he stumbled out a couple of hours later, for a
bathroom run, he was not really surprised to see the other bedroom
door firmly closed and an unoccupied couch in the living room.
Dawn came all too early. He'd never been a morning person, and
waking up to a glowering Skinner shaking his shoulder was definitely
not his idea of a good wake-up call. He growled back, "I'm up, I'm
up already. Just give me five fucking minutes, ok?"
There wasn't a hot cup of coffee waiting for him. Yup, in his next
life, a job with a retirement plan and accommodations with room
service. He grimaced to himself. It was the small, accomplishable
goals that made life worthwhile.
Sometime while he'd been sleeping, Marita had managed to secure an
impressive armory of weapons. There was range of pistols, light
mortars, grenades, flash-bang grenades, and canisters that looked
like they contained something considerably more lethal than tear gas.
When he started to ask her about it, she brushed him aside with the
retort that someone in the group needed to think about logistics. He
almost asked her which of Skinner's logistical needs she'd met last
night, but at the last minute thought better of it.
As they were loading up the jeep, he managed to pull her aside for
just a second. "Tell me again why we fucking have to do this here
and now?" He hoped he wasn't whining.
For the first time since they had all come back together, she fixed
him with that too lucid stare--blue eyes of endless calm depths gazing
through him, finding him wanting. Then she relented. It seemed to
him later that she wanted to share the weight with someone, and he
was the only other one there who had walked through all of the same
darkened alleys that she had.
"Do you want several hundred Gibson Praises loose in the world? An
entire generation of them? That's what the tests in Florida and Italy
were aiming at. They nearly succeeded, too. There's a mop-up
operation going on right now in Italy. If this new material that
Strughold received is what I think it is, the next tests will be 100%
successful."
At first it didn't make sense to him, and then he shuddered as he
considered the implications. The Consortium hadn't been able to
finish all the tests on young Gibson, but they had learned enough to
know that he was a dangerous variable. His ability to communicate
with The Greys was undisputed. The working theory had also been that
he might be an agent or creation of the rebel forces. That there
might be something in his hybrid or enhanced physiology that was an
advantage to the faction that sought to overthrow the group of aliens
that had made the pact with the Consortium back in the 1940s.
She saw him realize the problem, and nodded at him. "If Strughold
succeeds, and Aston was right with his theory, then earth becomes a
battleground in their civil war."
"Fuck that. We need to move." It occurred to him that they might
only be delaying the inevitable, but when faced with a crisis, it
always seemed to him better to do something, rather than wait to see
what would happen next.
She nodded again. "Yes, we do."
The initial phases of the operation went smoothly. They parked the
jeep at the rendezvous point. There were two clones waiting for them
there. One would wait--keeping the engine running, while the other
took them in through the south entrance.
They hiked in silently, through rows of eerily perfect corn, trying
hard not to brush any of the stalks, to give any evidence of their passage.
The hallway into the lab building was long, sterile white, leading off
into an endless series of closed doors. From the diagrams, Krycek
knew that the data storage area was at the far end of the hallway,
behind a set of double swinging doors, and the specimen lab was
behind the third door on the right.
He gestured impatiently to "his" clone, mouthing "Let's go." They
set off down the hallway at a quiet trot.
The door to the storage unit was locked. It threw him for a loop.
He was reaching for his gun to shoot out the lock, when the clone
suddenly grabbed his arm. He gestured toward the security card
reader and number pad by the doorframe. The clone quickly slid a
card through the reader, and then punched in a complicated series of
numbers. A breathless moment of waiting, and the door clicked and
hissed open.
The room wasn't a room, it was a goddamn warehouse, and it was full of
disks. Row after row of 10-foot metal racks stretched out in front of
him, and each of them was packed with neatly and cryptically labeled
disk storage containers.
He glared at the man standing next to him. "Don't fucking tell me
we're supposed to take all of these?"
The clone shook his head. "No, there are 10 disks we need to
get...but I've never been in here before, and I'm not sure..."
"Shit." Resignation and a certain anxiety settling low in the pit of
his stomach. "What will the label say?"
"We're looking for any disk that has a 22-F code in the first part of
the serial number."
"How long do we think the security cameras will be off in this room?"
"Uh...about 10 minutes?"
"Fuck, fuck, fuck." He looked about helplessly. "Let's do this."
It took more than 15 minutes to locate all the disks. He felt
ridiculous, like some college kid on a scavenger hunt in a library.
Jogging up and down the rows of disks, muttering to himself "22-F,
22-F...."
Finally, they had all the disks. Just as Krycek glanced at his watch,
and realized that they had blown their 10 minute window, he heard a
klaxon sound in the distance. Swearing, he stuffed the disks into his
jacket.
"Let's blow this popcorn stand." They took off down the hallway,
sprinting as though the hounds of hell were after them. Which, as it
transpired, they were.
The others were just running from the lab, as Krycek blew through the
double doors. Skinner yelled at him. "Why did you set off the
alarm?"
"Fuck you. It wasn't me--must have been your girl." He glanced back
at Marita, who didn't bother answering, just ran past him.
They flew out of the building, and headed into the cornfield.
There was an ambush waiting for them at the jeep. As they rounded the
corner, he heard the crack of a rifle and something went stinging past
his cheek.
Instinct took over, and he stopped and dropped, making himself as
small a target as possible. Looking for cover, any sort of cover.
There was very little between the edges of the corn field, and the
small grouping of trees and rocks that blocked his view into the
clearing where the jeep waited.
Behind him and beside him, he could hear Skinner and Marita . He
looked back, and saw two of the clones, stunned looks on their faces.
He motioned frantically at them. Get down, you stupid jerks, get down.
It grew quiet. Too quiet.
Skinner low-crawled up to where he lay. "Marita thinks this might be
some of the rebels." Perfect. Just perfect.
"So what now?"
"If it is the rebels, there will only be two of them."
"And if it's not the rebels?"
A shrug was the only response he got.
"Any chance of a flanking maneuver? No, I suppose not."
He had the half-hysterical thought that they were Butch and Sundance,
and he was clearly Sundance, but all he could remember was the final
scene in the movie and the cold reality of what happened to the
robbers turned folk-heroes in that small town in Bolivia.
He looked over at Skinner who regarded him steadily. "Straight in."
"Unless you've got the Third Infantry in your back pocket."
"Uh uh--that was your job."
A death head's grin. "Then straight in it is."
It was two rebels, but they were Tunisian, militant Christian
separatists, not aliens. Krycek recognized the insignia from his
stay in the penal colony, and was trying to remember the correct pass
phrase that would indicate that he was a brother in arms, when a
third rebel jumped out from the left.
Before he could react, Skinner pushed him to the side, nearly knocking
him to the ground. Skinner dropped to one knee and took out the rebel.
The rebel squeezed off a burst from his gun before collapsing, and the
whistle of projectiles through the air was cut off by the sickening
thud of bullets burying themselves in human flesh. He heard a
surprised grunt from Skinner.
Without stopping to think, Krycek pulled himself up, and screamed out
the phrase that had finally surfaced in his overloaded mind. The
remaining two rebels stopped, puzzled by the unexpected display of
solidarity, and just as they began lowering their weapons, grinning,
Krycek raised his gun and killed them. With extreme prejudice.
He turned to find Skinner laying ashen-faced on the ground, his chest
a spreading bloom of horrible red.
Marita dashed into the clearing, her gun drawn, and he heard her
sudden gasp, and she dropped to Skinner's side. She pulled her shirt
off over her head, pressing it into the wounds, trying to staunch the
bleeding. "Skinner, can you hear me? Can you move?"
Skinner opened his eyes and nodded faintly. Marita yelled something
at the clones and they took off running, although not toward the
compound. Krycek and Marita levered Skinner from the ground, and
helped him to the jeep.
The drive to the airstrip was surreally long. He drove, and Marita
shouted instructions to him from the backseat, where she sat trying to
hold Skinner as still as possible.
Finally, they were there. Two small planes sat on the runway, engines
running. She screamed at him over the noise and wind. "Take the
disks to the first plane and tell them to go. They have a 30 second
window left to take off. GO!"
He ran toward the plane, which began slowly taxiing, even as he drew
near. He had to run along side to see Mulder and Scully where they
sat near the open door, nervous tension evident in each line of their
bodies. Scully was on the far side of Mulder and slightly behind.
Her presence suggested more than fully seen. He hurled the disks at
them; Mulder caught them in mid arc. Mulder stared at Krycek's
blood-stained clothing.
"What the hell happened to you? Did you get shot?" He was shouting
at Krycek over the roar of the propeller, and the door, which was
beginning to close, a panel sliding up from the bottom.
There was no time to explain. Krycek could only yell back, "No. Not
me." He thought he saw the sickening comprehension begin to spread
across Mulder's face, but then the door finished slamming shut, and
the plane picked up sudden speed.
He paused for a microsecond, watching the small jet pull away, and
then he sprinted back to the other plane. Marita and the pilot had
somehow managed to lift Skinner up into the craft. Krycek threw
himself through the door, slamming it behind him.
The plane's interior had been stripped down. Where there would
normally be a dozen seats, there were only four left, all at the back
of the cabin. Marita sat with Skinner's head cradled in her lap,
leaning against the wall of the front part of the plane.
Beside her two large crates were web-strapped in.
The pilot looked back from the cockpit, and Marita motioned to him.
"Go. Now!"
They began to taxi.
Krycek looked over again to where the other two were. He had
witnessed death too many times to misinterpret the signs. Skinner's
blue lips, the grey pallor of the skin told Krycek everything he
needed to know. That, and the ever-widening pool of blood in which
Skinner lay. He watched the big man laboring to breathe, watched his
chest rising and falling, knowing that soon it would fall, and not
rise again.
Krycek had long ago given up any illusion that there was anything
noble or dignified about death. What he had forgotten was the sense
of outrage that could overtake him when death came too soon. He
hadn't felt that in so very long.
Skinner opened his eyes, looking around startled, lost, as a spasm
wracked him. Marita tried to soothe him, her hand gentle on his
forehead. She seemed to be speaking to him, her low tone drowned out
by the sound of the propellers. He couldn't see her face, which was
curtained by her hair.
Skinner locked eyes with him--a moment of lucid infinity--and Krycek
could do nothing but look back, knowing that all his guilt and
uncertainty and weakness were there for Skinner to see and assess one
last time. Nothing left to hide. All the secrets that were knowable
had been exposed.
He thought he saw an infinitesimal movement of Skinner's
head--something almost like a nod, and then he looked back up at the
woman who held his head on her lap.
Skinner's lips moved, and Marita bent low to try to hear what he was
saying. Krycek felt like he was watching some kind of tableaux, a
drama that he didn't want to see unfold, but whose ending he had to
endure.
They cleared Tunisian airspace. He found he could think of nothing at all.
Somewhere over the Mediterranean, Skinner's chest stopped moving. The
blood on the floor of the plane shone shocking red, bright, garish
under the harsh sunlight streaming through the windows.
A brief shudder shook Skinner's body, and then he was still.
Krycek watched Marita carefully close Skinner's eyes, her hand slowly
brushing over his face in a silent benediction. When she looked up at
him, he was not at all surprised to see her face scored with the
glistening tracks of ceaseless tears.
Chapter 14
Arlington National Cemetery
The crack of the rifle shots ricocheted through her, echoing in the
vast empty chasm in her heart. The open wound that refused to begin
healing.
Scully flinched as the second volley thundered. CRACK!.
And again. CRACK!
The reverberations of the 21-gun salute still wavered on the air when
the bugler, off in the distance, began the plaintive call of "Taps."
Surrounded and constrained by the formal pageantry of a military
funeral, there was no space to cry, to rail at the gods. No room to
do anything but stand at attention at Skinner's graveside, holding
the flag that had been presented to her just moments earlier.
Nothing to do but stare straight ahead, trying not to see the quiet
polished coffin in front of her.
Her vision blurred, caught in the endless blue of the cloth in her
hands--the stars melting under her tear-dimmed gaze into meaningless
white symbols.
She drew a deep shaky breath and looked up the mocking perfect blue
sky. It should have been raining.
The service ended, and she was vaguely aware of movement around her.
Hushed conversations starting and fading into meaningless jumbles of
sound as people began drifting away from the grave. Finally there
were only the sounds of the birds in the distant trees and the cars
rushing along the highway to the east of the cemetery.
When she could see again, she realized she was staring out over the
endless rows of white markers that stretched out forever across the
serene green lawn. A silent sea of whitecaps, breaking on an inland
shore.
It was fitting that he come here. That he should be laid to rest
among this fellowship of the nation's fallen heroes. This corps
would welcome him, they would understand the sense of honor and duty
that had driven him to the very end. This was fit company for him.
And yet. And yet, she couldn't shake the sense of unfairness.
Her initial shock had left her numb, uncomprehending that such a thing
could happen. Then after a day or two, all the numbness had been
burned away by her anger. The rage that welled in her chest in the
middle of the night. The clear knowledge that this was so wrong. It
shouldn't have been him. No victory was worth this price.
She could feel Mulder standing behind her. Waiting, simply waiting
for her. She appreciated more than her grief-struck heart could say
that he didn't rush in and try to comfort her, offering her
meaningless words of consolation. That he respected her need for
private mourning. That he understood that for now no words he could
offer would help her comprehend this injustice.
He waited for her. And he was there in the middle of the night to hold
her when she couldn't stand it anymore.
She knew her grief would eventually ease. But it was still too raw,
stinging in the unfairness of all that had happened. She couldn't
even find words to put shape to all that she was mourning. To
describe her loss. She had always known that Skinner was more than a
colleague, but until his death, she'd never tried to put into words
what he had been.
She thought again, of their brief embrace on the hillside in Tunisia,
just before she saw him alive for the last time. Her chest tightened
at the memory, breath harsh in her lungs. Had he known? Had he had
some premonition? Had he seen his avatar one last time?
Skinner had obviously known something might happen. The surprises
that awaited them in DC after they'd returned had proved that. But
maybe that was simply the habits of a life-long warrior, who
understood that death can wait for you anywhere. The careful
preparations of a man who lived by the rules, even in the midst of
lawless game.
She would not find her answers here.
"Damn you, Skinner," she whispered. "I miss you."
She walked out into the midst of the sea of gravestones and stood
listening to the wind for a long time before turning back to meet
Mulder and go home.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
He watched her black-coated figure seem to recede into the distance,
although at first she didn't physically move at all. He desperately
wanted to go to her, to cross the 10 feet that separated them, and
rock her in his arms until all her grief washed away. But he knew it
was impossible. All he could do for her right now was wait. So he waited.
It gave him time to continue to sort through all that had happened
since he'd been gone, since he'd been back. So much water flowing
under so many bridges, and so many cross-overs washed out to sea.
He thought that maybe, just maybe, if he replayed all the facts and
events often enough he might find the pattern, the reason for how
things had ended as they had.
The trip back from Tunisia had been surreal--a slowly unfolding
nightmare that refused to end.
He was suffering some kind of amnesia from his time away. He wasn't
entirely clear if he'd been somewhere in outer space, on a space
craft, or exactly where. For now all his brain could recall were
hazy images of lights and humanoid shapes with no distinct features.
Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night with the sense that he
had learned something vital, but just as he would try to speak that
thing outloud, the words to describe it would evaporate.
The first distinct memory he had after leaving Skinner in the Oregon
woods was waking to find himself jolting along a Tunisian road, his
head cradled in Scully's lap, and discovering that her eyes still
spoke to him in their private, exclusive language.
Then there had been the fever and tangle of their reunion, followed by
the news that reshaped his world around him.
He still trembled when he considered the implications of their child.
Their child. The words struck strange, resonating chords in his soul,
and he was only gradually coming to terms with all that it meant. The
impossible hope.
What felt like just moments after she'd told him, and his passionate,
joyous reaction, they'd been roused from their bed by an urgent
pounding on their door. A breathless and clearly agitated clone had
told them to pack "immediately" and come with him. He could tell
them only that "something was going down" and that the others would
meet them at the airfield. He added that Skinner had said to "get
their asses in gear."
There were no choices but to follow the directions.
Then the awful montage of images began: the banality of waiting in an
airplane interrupted by a bloody Krycek hurling something at him, the
cryptic statement that he had just begun to decipher when the plane's
door shut and they flew into yet another unknown, and the fight all
through the flight to keep the panic from his face, so that he
wouldn't alarm Scully unnecessarily.
But then there was Malta, and meeting up with the others, and his
worst--their worst--fears were confirmed.
They touched down at a private airstrip about 20 minutes ahead of the
other plane, and as Mulder was hesitantly trying to explain to Scully
what Krycek had said just before they'd left Tunisia, the other plane arrived.
Mulder and Scully sprinted in unison across the tarmac to the plane,
tugging at the door, even before the plane had drifted to a full stop,
and when the door finally pulled away, they were so unprepared for
what they found.
Of the many images that would haunt him until he died, Mulder thought
the one he might most like to repress was Skinner's too-bloody,
too-still body lying on the cabin floor.
Scully's gasp of horror and instinctive move forward to help Skinner
was stopped by Alex's snarl.
"He's dead. Has been for over an hour." Then Alex threw himself from
the plane, striding past them without another word, his face a mask of
some dark despair that Mulder couldn't begin to interpret.
Marita had been sitting with her back against the far wall. She
stared unseeingly at Skinner, until Scully climbed into the plane.
Then she'd looked up at Scully and simply shaken her head--her face a
mask not of her usual composure, but a living anguish that hurt to
look at.
It seemed that Marita had contacts everywhere. In mere hours, she
managed to obtain transit papers for Mulder, arrange for a coffin to
ship Skinner's body in, and secure their passages back home.
Once they were all back in the US, Marita disappeared.
Mulder and Scully spent most of their initial days back trying to
explain Mulder's reappearance, what the hell they had all been doing
in Tunisia, and how Skinner had been killed.
They spent their nights alternating between trying to explain the
events in Alaska and Tunisia to the Lone Gunmen, and trying to come to
understand for themselves what had happened to them. All that was
going to happen.
Then one day the FBI's questions stopped. At the 800th (give or take)
hearing that Mulder had been called to testify at, a somber
Department of State official, accompanied by a somber and
uncomfortable AD from the international terrorism unit of the FBI had
suddenly walked into the room, presented a series of documents to the
hearing panel. Then the panel and the two officials had a long
urgent conversation in hushed tones.
He couldn't hear the exchange, but it was clear that no one was happy.
It seemed some sort of irrefutable document or evidence had surfaced
that was screwing up everyone's day. He thought he caught the phrases
"insurgency," "deep cover," and "national security."
After much muted debate, the two men left just as abruptly as they'd
arrived, and the panel chair made the surprising statement that the
inquiry into the death of former AD Walter Skinner was closed.
Specifics about the conclusion of the investigation of Skinner's death
were never disclosed, but plans for his full honors military funeral
in a week's time were announced the next day.
Mulder resigned from the FBI the same day.
Mulder shook his head--so much to try to comprehend. The reality of
his present circumstances shouldered its way into his consciousness.
He was standing beside Skinner's grave.
Skinner. There was another mystery, as it turned out, that he would
never fully fathom. Skinner who had been more than a friend in life,
had managed to surprise them in death as well.
Once the inquisition into his death was closed, his lawyer had
contacted Scully. It seemed that Skinner had left nearly his entire
estate to her. An educational trust had been established for the
child a distant cousin. Everything else had been left to Scully.
She had been shocked, disbelieving, but there had been a letter
addressed to her from Skinner that gave her some explanation. He
still didn't know what that explanation was, because she'd read the
letter twice, and then burned it. He'd known, from the look on her
face, that he shouldn't ask what the letter said.
Skinner had left a gap in their lives that he was still trying to
understand. The funeral this afternoon should have offered
"closure"--whatever it was that psychologists meant by that--but it
seemed to Mulder that it would take more than the drama of uniformed
soldiers and a horse-drawn caisson to close this story.
He watched Scully move further away from the open grave behind her.
Saw her slowly walking with no real sense of direction or purpose.
She seemed weighted with all that she carried.
He would let her journey only so much further alone, and then he
would go to her. He could wait for a little longer.
Scully was still at the FBI. Her status was pending reassignment. AD
Jameson, to whom Scully now reported, had offered her the X-Files, but
Scully hadn't decided what to do. Mulder refused to provide any input
into her decision. He told her that he was in no position to advise
anyone on their careers. Look where he'd ended up, after all. She'd
laughed at him, and hadn't asked again.
He marveled a little at how quickly her apartment had become home for
him. He still kept his place in Alexandria, but he hadn't slept there
more than two nights since they'd come back. Particularly once
Krycek had shown up.
Both Marita and Alex had disappeared somewhere between Immigration and
Customs at Dulles Airport when they'd all arrived from Malta. Mulder
had assumed that they had gone off somewhere together. All he knew
is that they'd both disappeared, which made sense in Krycek's case,
as Mulder assumed there were multiple warrants out for his arrest.
But on the third day after they'd been back, Mulder went over to
Scully's to find Krycek skulking on her couch. The first of the
interrogation's over Skinner's death had begun that morning, and
Mulder had needed to run to blow off some the fury and sorrow the
questioning had raised in him. He'd gone home, run, showered and
picked up some spare clothes before going over to Scully's.
The run had cleared his mind, and the anticipation of evening
lounging on the couch with Scully had him smiling as he entered her
apartment. He'd even jokingly called out, "Honey, I'm home."
He had not been prepared for Alex's voice to respond. "Ward, I'm so
glad you're back--the Beav had such a bad day."
"What the fuck are you doing here?" Mulder's snarl had been
instinctive.
"Aren't you glad to see me?"
"Where's Scully? Is she ok? Is the ...." His panic kicked in almost
immediately. But he managed to stop himself before blurting out
anything about the baby.
"Relax--she's getting groceries. She left you a note." Krycek
indicated a scrap of paper on the coffee table.
The handwriting was hers, and as he read the note he remembered that
she'd said something this morning about needing to pick up some things
tonight.
"What the fuck are you doing here, Krycek?"
"What? Can't a guy drop by and visit old friends?" The mockery in
his tone nearly disguised the hurt that Mulder saw flashing through
the changeable green eyes.
Scully had arrived home at just that moment, and somehow the three of
them wound up having dinner together, around her comfortable kitchen
table, like some mutant family gathering.
As the evening grew late, Mulder began to glance meaningfully first at
his watch, and then at the door, but Krycek wasn't taking the hint.
Finally, Scully began yawning and stretching and smiling with quietly
smoldering eyes at Mulder.
She stood from the couch, and offered Mulder her hand. He took it,
and stood also, but looked quizzically at Krycek who remained
slouched in the armchair. Krycek gave him an impassive stare in
return.
Scully tugged Mulder toward the bedroom. He followed, because his
body couldn't stand not to, but his mind was still puzzling over how
to ask her what was going on. Before he'd formulated the question,
she'd gone to her linen closet and pulled out a couple blankets and a
pillow. She disappeared into the living room, where he heard her
saying something to Krycek, and then she walked back into the
bedroom, closing the door behind her.
"Scully?" He knew she would hear all the questions he needed to ask
in that one word.
"I told him he could stay on the couch tonight." She stopped, and
looked over Mulder's shoulder, seeing something far away from the
present. "I don't think he has anywhere to go."
There was more to it than that, Mulder thought, but she seemed to feel
this was important, and he was in no position to deny her anything.
The next day, Mulder gave Krycek the keys to his apartment, and told
him he could stay there.
Krycek hung around for about a week, seeming to be there everytime
Mulder turned around. An ever-present and annoying presence, like an
unemployed brother-in-law.
Then, one night, they went out to the warehouse, to help the Gunmen
finish dismantling the command center. Mulder arrived to find Krycek
deep in conversation with Scully. He was handing her something, and
whatever he was saying about it seemed to be upsetting her. He
thought he saw her face glistening with tears.
He felt a deep, atavistic rage overtaking him. As Mulder strode across
the floor to where they stood, Krycek finished talking. And then
Mulder had to stop in amazement. Scully reached up and gave Krycek a
sudden, brief hug. She kissed his cheek, and then quickly walked out
the backdoor to the courtyard.
Krycek seemed stunned. He stood frozen where Scully had left him,
staring after her, as uncertain as Mulder had ever seen him.
Then he managed to shake off the spell, and he'd turned and walked
out of the warehouse, brushing past Mulder as though he wasn't even
there.
Mulder hurried to the courtyard. Scully stood, her face wet with
tears, staring up at the skies. It was unusually clear night, and
even with the local light pollution, the display of stars and planets
was breathtaking in its clarify.
"Scully, are you are alright?" He spoke softly, not touching her yet.
She turned to him, and reached out her hand, pulling him close. She
buried her face against his chest, and his arms locked around her.
Although he could feel her tears soaking his shirt, her muffled voice
was level. "Yeah. I'm ok."
"What did Krycek want?"
She didn't answer him for a long time, but then she finally pulled
back a little and reached in her coat pocket. "He gave me this."
And she handed him an oddly stylized Palm Pilot.
"What the...?"
"It was the control for those things in Skinner's blood."
Jesus. He breath left him instantaneously as though he'd sustained a
prize fighter's blow to his solar plexus. "Why....? What..." He
struggled to understand. To control his rage and urge to sprint down
the street after Krycek and beat him to death.
"I don't know why." She watched him steadily, and he was struck by
how calm she seemed. "He said he wanted me to have it. And he said he
wouldn't be back. Frohike got him connected with a group of
mercenaries, and he said he was leaving to try his hand at an old
game."
They had not seen Krycek again, and Mulder thought he'd seen Scully
quietly throw the control mechanism into Skinner's grave this
afternoon, when she'd thrown in her handful of earth.
The wind in the cemetery gusted suddenly, and Mulder pulled his coat
tighter about him. Summer had given way suddenly to fall, and the
wind had a chill to it now that reminded them that November wasn't
far away.
He looked at Scully again. She was standing where she'd been for the
last 20 minutes. Finally she turned and started back to him. Her
tears had dried, and her eyes were clear again, although shadowed by
sorrow.
But she was Scully, and her strength shone through, even when she
could no longer see it.
He met her halfway, and they went home together.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Unknown location
"You failed." Her voice was crisp, unemotional. A casual listener,
although there were no casual listeners within 1000 miles of here,
might have assumed that she was discussing something trivial--a poor
showing in a flower arranging show. The casual listener would have
been very wrong.
"You always see things in such black and white terms. Success,
failure. Up, down. We didn't achieve all our goals, no. But, we
did...."
"You failed." Her tone a little sharper now, as she turned from the
window she'd been gazing out, to look at the man lounging in one of
the leather chairs across the desk. Behind her the setting sun
illuminated her hair, creating a dangerous halo-illusion. "There was
no room for that sort of blunder."
The dark-skinned man straightened in the chair, his sudden
ramrod-straight posture unmistakably military. "I'd be careful, if I
were you in assigning blame too quickly. It's not as though you don't
have some loose ends to deal with. And, we're still missing some data."
"I got all the disks. And you've had four weeks to work on the data."
"I know." His voice shifted oddly, sliding between American and
British inflections. "But, there must have been a secondary data
collection going on, or Strughold deliberately miscoded those disks."
She grimaced. "Well, we're not ever going to know, are we?"
White teeth flashed. "It's astonishing what a kiloton or three of
explosives will do."
Her stare was level, neither impressed nor appreciably amused. She
seemed to be assessing the man in front of her, weighing his fitness
for some impossible task. She found him wanting. "And Alaska?"
"Same story, different cover. There's been an earthquake." Now he
seemed hesitant. "I still haven't found that bunker you told me about."
She nodded. Unsurprised. So little surprised her.
"So what are we left with?" He seemed to understand that it was a
rhetorical question, as he offered no response. She swiveled 90
degrees, facing the expensive oil painting over the fireplace on the
right side of the room. She continued, "We have the data, or at least
most of it. The experiments have been halted. We have had initial,
successful contact with the other faction."
She was quiet for a long time then, and finally he cleared his
throat. "I was sorry to hear about Skinner. He seemed like a good man."
She sighed almost noiselessly. "Mistakes were made. They always are."
Her voice was level, and only one man might have heard the
undercurrent that trembled far below the surface.
She turned back to him then, fully focused. He shifted uncomfortably
under her intense, cauterizing gaze. "So, John Byron Aston, would you
say that we are in the clear to wait for the results of the Epsilon Test?"
"Rodden....I go by Rodden now." His murmured response was only to buy
time, and she paid it no heed. He considered her statements
carefully, no casualness evident in any line of his superbly
conditioned body.
"Yes." He faltered under her unyielding stare. "Probably. He's
always been a wild card, but she's been far more stable than we had
any right to hope. She didn't even quit the FBI..." He considered
further. "Yes, we should be okay. It's a few more months, but we
have people in place to ensure as much tranquillity as we can
manage."
Marita nodded. "I concur. We'll simply have to wait and see
what....develops."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Oh." She sounded startled, and he felt an instant of panic until she
said softly, "Mulder, come here."
He walked over, to find her smiling--a smile of undiluted wonder and
joy, the first he'd seen since their return. She was holding out her
hand. He instinctively reached back. She clasped his fingers
tightly, and then guided them to rest on her gently rounded belly.
"Wait....right there. Did you feel that? The baby just moved."
END
Author's notes and thanks: First and foremost, I owe an enormous
debt to the superb beta talents of the fabulous three--who will have
to remain nameless for various reasons, but you know who are, and I
hope you know how deeply I appreciate your assistance. You were all
utterly wonderful in your support and help with this story. Your
beta, feedback and suggestions are all deeply, deeply appreciated.
Any remaining typos, plot problems or strange characterizations are
solely my fault.
I also owe deep thanks to three others, who were there throughout.
Thank you for the support--it meant the world.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Chapter 13
Tunisia
A safe house 20 kilometers from Strughold's compound
As so often happened, the choices available to them quickly narrowed to one.
Krycek watched in disgust as Skinner and Marita hunched over the map
of the compound. Pointing first at one possible entry point, then
weighing the merits of other possible approaches. Around them, the
three clones--whom he would have dearly loved to dub the Three
Stooges, except he had a hunch that each of them would answer to
Moe--watched with anxiety.
After the bustle and turmoil of Mulder's deus ex machina like return
by the aliens, the remaining players had stood stunned on the hilltop,
trying to decide what to do next. They could see that there was now
heightened activity occurring around the buildings on the far side of
the corn fields.
They had been arguing about various options, when yet another
red-haired clone had come scurrying up to the group. He had not
brought good news.
While Mulder was being returned to Scully, a group of aliens had
delivered some large cases to Strughold. From the clone's
description of he contents, it sounded very much like the same sort
of weaponry that Krycek and Scully had seen being delivered in Alaska.
That, however, was not the worst of the news. Strughold had met
privately with a group of aliens for a few minutes and when they left
again, he'd quickly called a meeting of all the section leaders in
the compound and announced that the timetable had been stepped up, and
that a new phase of testing would begin in the morning, with the
addition of new "materials" that he had just received. It was also
not at all clear which group of aliens had come calling.
Marita and the clones hadn't been able, or perhaps willing, to fully
describe the potential consequences of this change in Strughold's
plans--it was only clear that this had changed everything for her in
terms of what she and her collaborators were trying to accomplish,
and her sense of urgency about the dangers involved.
So, they adjourned back to the current safe house to try to come up
with a plan of action.
By Krycek's estimate, they had now been arguing for a good four hours.
Fuck this shit. There was only one viable entry point to the lab
they needed and they all knew it. They were simply delaying the
inevitable. He strode over to the table, and slapped his palm against
the diagram.
"You're just delaying the inevitable." It felt good to snarl, to act
without censoring his words or tone. "There's only one fucking way
in, through the south door. If we approach from the west, we have to
move through way too much open space, and we'll get spotted because
we've established that there are guards. And the north was never
really an option unless you," he glanced at Skinner, "have some
buddies in the Third Infantry who just happen to be vacationing in
this area along with a battalion or two and lots of light armor."
Skinner muttered something, and rolled his head on his shoulders.
But he looked up at Krycek, and just shrugged, a grudging respect in
his eyes. "You're right. The southern route is the only viable
plan." Skinner then turned to Marita, and a minute softening in his
tone was discernible. "Okay? We're going in on the southern approach."
The air of command was unmistakable.
Marita bridled a little, Krycek was amused to see. He knew how much
she hated being out of control, and he was also intrigued by the
shift in dynamics that he saw between the former AD and Marita.
Clearly something had happened, and the scandal hunter in Krycek was
pretty damn sure what it was. Well, well, well, that was certainly
an interesting twist. He was going to have a hell of a lot of fun
with this little development.
He listened while Skinner laid out the details of the operation.
Details they had discussed a half-dozen times already, as they ran
through their narrowing list of options. He half-expected one of the
clones to whip out a notepad and take detailed notes.
Damn. It was going to be amateur hour. Skinner, he knew, would do
everything by the book. And he'd long suspected that Marita in the
field would be a fearsome and ruthless creature. But these fucking
scientists were the wild card. He had no idea how they'd react when
the pressure was on, and no one, but no one had yet addressed what
might happen to all of them if bullets started flying.
He was really, really getting too old for this shit. In his next
career, he was definitely picking an organization with a decent
retirement plan.
He looked around the anonymous room, and thought tiredly that safe
houses had a certain sameness to them the world over. They all had
an air of captured despair and surrender. A capitulation to the
inevitable.
He heard Skinner wrapping up the meeting. The agreement was to hit
the place at dawn. On paper, at least, it was a surgical strike
operation. In and out, low and quiet. They would hit the main lab,
retrieve the disks from the data storage room on the far side of the
building and obtain the "specimens" from the central testing
facility. He hadn't asked what the specimens consisted of because he
really didn't want to know. He'd volunteered to run point for Clone
#1, who was in charge of getting the disks.
He asked again, more for the sake of argument than anything else.
"Shouldn't we involve Mulder and Scully in this? We really need two
more people who know how to shoot, and we know that Red, at least, is
a dead shot."
Skinner glared at him, and Krycek shifted under the knowledge that the
man could probably reach across the table and break his neck long
before he could reach his gun, or the palm pilot.
Skinner's tone, however, was surprisingly reasonable. "No. That's
not negotiable. She's...They need to get out of here and get back to
safety. Kevin will meet them at the house where they're staying and
get them to the airstrip in time to meet up with us. They'll be in
the other plane, with the engine running. That increases our odds of
at least some of us getting out of here and the information getting
back to the right hands."
Krycek was left with two thoughts: Skinner wasn't entirely sure to
whom the information was going, and wasn't entirely sure it was the
right hands, but he seemed to have run out of ideas and options. He
was also sure that Skinner was hiding something about Mulder and
Scully.
It was nearly midnight, and they would need to leave at 5 a.m. to
start their assault on the compound.
The clones were returning to the compound for the night, so they
would be in place in the morning. One of the clones from this project had
remarked wryly that one of the advantages of everyone looking exactly
the same was that it was easier to hide the fact that someone was
missing. Krycek had barely refrained from replying that it also made
it way more fucking difficult to tell who was actually on your side.
The safe house, he realized with a jolt, only had two bedrooms. On
the theory that the best defense is a good offense, he headed into
one and closed the door. Let Skinner have the very short and very
lumpy couch. When he stumbled out a couple of hours later, for a
bathroom run, he was not really surprised to see the other bedroom
door firmly closed and an unoccupied couch in the living room.
Dawn came all too early. He'd never been a morning person, and
waking up to a glowering Skinner shaking his shoulder was definitely
not his idea of a good wake-up call. He growled back, "I'm up, I'm
up already. Just give me five fucking minutes, ok?"
There wasn't a hot cup of coffee waiting for him. Yup, in his next
life, a job with a retirement plan and accommodations with room
service. He grimaced to himself. It was the small, accomplishable
goals that made life worthwhile.
Sometime while he'd been sleeping, Marita had managed to secure an
impressive armory of weapons. There was range of pistols, light
mortars, grenades, flash-bang grenades, and canisters that looked
like they contained something considerably more lethal than tear gas.
When he started to ask her about it, she brushed him aside with the
retort that someone in the group needed to think about logistics. He
almost asked her which of Skinner's logistical needs she'd met last
night, but at the last minute thought better of it.
As they were loading up the jeep, he managed to pull her aside for
just a second. "Tell me again why we fucking have to do this here
and now?" He hoped he wasn't whining.
For the first time since they had all come back together, she fixed
him with that too lucid stare--blue eyes of endless calm depths gazing
through him, finding him wanting. Then she relented. It seemed to
him later that she wanted to share the weight with someone, and he
was the only other one there who had walked through all of the same
darkened alleys that she had.
"Do you want several hundred Gibson Praises loose in the world? An
entire generation of them? That's what the tests in Florida and Italy
were aiming at. They nearly succeeded, too. There's a mop-up
operation going on right now in Italy. If this new material that
Strughold received is what I think it is, the next tests will be 100%
successful."
At first it didn't make sense to him, and then he shuddered as he
considered the implications. The Consortium hadn't been able to
finish all the tests on young Gibson, but they had learned enough to
know that he was a dangerous variable. His ability to communicate
with The Greys was undisputed. The working theory had also been that
he might be an agent or creation of the rebel forces. That there
might be something in his hybrid or enhanced physiology that was an
advantage to the faction that sought to overthrow the group of aliens
that had made the pact with the Consortium back in the 1940s.
She saw him realize the problem, and nodded at him. "If Strughold
succeeds, and Aston was right with his theory, then earth becomes a
battleground in their civil war."
"Fuck that. We need to move." It occurred to him that they might
only be delaying the inevitable, but when faced with a crisis, it
always seemed to him better to do something, rather than wait to see
what would happen next.
She nodded again. "Yes, we do."
The initial phases of the operation went smoothly. They parked the
jeep at the rendezvous point. There were two clones waiting for them
there. One would wait--keeping the engine running, while the other
took them in through the south entrance.
They hiked in silently, through rows of eerily perfect corn, trying
hard not to brush any of the stalks, to give any evidence of their passage.
The hallway into the lab building was long, sterile white, leading off
into an endless series of closed doors. From the diagrams, Krycek
knew that the data storage area was at the far end of the hallway,
behind a set of double swinging doors, and the specimen lab was
behind the third door on the right.
He gestured impatiently to "his" clone, mouthing "Let's go." They
set off down the hallway at a quiet trot.
The door to the storage unit was locked. It threw him for a loop.
He was reaching for his gun to shoot out the lock, when the clone
suddenly grabbed his arm. He gestured toward the security card
reader and number pad by the doorframe. The clone quickly slid a
card through the reader, and then punched in a complicated series of
numbers. A breathless moment of waiting, and the door clicked and
hissed open.
The room wasn't a room, it was a goddamn warehouse, and it was full of
disks. Row after row of 10-foot metal racks stretched out in front of
him, and each of them was packed with neatly and cryptically labeled
disk storage containers.
He glared at the man standing next to him. "Don't fucking tell me
we're supposed to take all of these?"
The clone shook his head. "No, there are 10 disks we need to
get...but I've never been in here before, and I'm not sure..."
"Shit." Resignation and a certain anxiety settling low in the pit of
his stomach. "What will the label say?"
"We're looking for any disk that has a 22-F code in the first part of
the serial number."
"How long do we think the security cameras will be off in this room?"
"Uh...about 10 minutes?"
"Fuck, fuck, fuck." He looked about helplessly. "Let's do this."
It took more than 15 minutes to locate all the disks. He felt
ridiculous, like some college kid on a scavenger hunt in a library.
Jogging up and down the rows of disks, muttering to himself "22-F,
22-F...."
Finally, they had all the disks. Just as Krycek glanced at his watch,
and realized that they had blown their 10 minute window, he heard a
klaxon sound in the distance. Swearing, he stuffed the disks into his
jacket.
"Let's blow this popcorn stand." They took off down the hallway,
sprinting as though the hounds of hell were after them. Which, as it
transpired, they were.
The others were just running from the lab, as Krycek blew through the
double doors. Skinner yelled at him. "Why did you set off the
alarm?"
"Fuck you. It wasn't me--must have been your girl." He glanced back
at Marita, who didn't bother answering, just ran past him.
They flew out of the building, and headed into the cornfield.
There was an ambush waiting for them at the jeep. As they rounded the
corner, he heard the crack of a rifle and something went stinging past
his cheek.
Instinct took over, and he stopped and dropped, making himself as
small a target as possible. Looking for cover, any sort of cover.
There was very little between the edges of the corn field, and the
small grouping of trees and rocks that blocked his view into the
clearing where the jeep waited.
Behind him and beside him, he could hear Skinner and Marita . He
looked back, and saw two of the clones, stunned looks on their faces.
He motioned frantically at them. Get down, you stupid jerks, get down.
It grew quiet. Too quiet.
Skinner low-crawled up to where he lay. "Marita thinks this might be
some of the rebels." Perfect. Just perfect.
"So what now?"
"If it is the rebels, there will only be two of them."
"And if it's not the rebels?"
A shrug was the only response he got.
"Any chance of a flanking maneuver? No, I suppose not."
He had the half-hysterical thought that they were Butch and Sundance,
and he was clearly Sundance, but all he could remember was the final
scene in the movie and the cold reality of what happened to the
robbers turned folk-heroes in that small town in Bolivia.
He looked over at Skinner who regarded him steadily. "Straight in."
"Unless you've got the Third Infantry in your back pocket."
"Uh uh--that was your job."
A death head's grin. "Then straight in it is."
It was two rebels, but they were Tunisian, militant Christian
separatists, not aliens. Krycek recognized the insignia from his
stay in the penal colony, and was trying to remember the correct pass
phrase that would indicate that he was a brother in arms, when a
third rebel jumped out from the left.
Before he could react, Skinner pushed him to the side, nearly knocking
him to the ground. Skinner dropped to one knee and took out the rebel.
The rebel squeezed off a burst from his gun before collapsing, and the
whistle of projectiles through the air was cut off by the sickening
thud of bullets burying themselves in human flesh. He heard a
surprised grunt from Skinner.
Without stopping to think, Krycek pulled himself up, and screamed out
the phrase that had finally surfaced in his overloaded mind. The
remaining two rebels stopped, puzzled by the unexpected display of
solidarity, and just as they began lowering their weapons, grinning,
Krycek raised his gun and killed them. With extreme prejudice.
He turned to find Skinner laying ashen-faced on the ground, his chest
a spreading bloom of horrible red.
Marita dashed into the clearing, her gun drawn, and he heard her
sudden gasp, and she dropped to Skinner's side. She pulled her shirt
off over her head, pressing it into the wounds, trying to staunch the
bleeding. "Skinner, can you hear me? Can you move?"
Skinner opened his eyes and nodded faintly. Marita yelled something
at the clones and they took off running, although not toward the
compound. Krycek and Marita levered Skinner from the ground, and
helped him to the jeep.
The drive to the airstrip was surreally long. He drove, and Marita
shouted instructions to him from the backseat, where she sat trying to
hold Skinner as still as possible.
Finally, they were there. Two small planes sat on the runway, engines
running. She screamed at him over the noise and wind. "Take the
disks to the first plane and tell them to go. They have a 30 second
window left to take off. GO!"
He ran toward the plane, which began slowly taxiing, even as he drew
near. He had to run along side to see Mulder and Scully where they
sat near the open door, nervous tension evident in each line of their
bodies. Scully was on the far side of Mulder and slightly behind.
Her presence suggested more than fully seen. He hurled the disks at
them; Mulder caught them in mid arc. Mulder stared at Krycek's
blood-stained clothing.
"What the hell happened to you? Did you get shot?" He was shouting
at Krycek over the roar of the propeller, and the door, which was
beginning to close, a panel sliding up from the bottom.
There was no time to explain. Krycek could only yell back, "No. Not
me." He thought he saw the sickening comprehension begin to spread
across Mulder's face, but then the door finished slamming shut, and
the plane picked up sudden speed.
He paused for a microsecond, watching the small jet pull away, and
then he sprinted back to the other plane. Marita and the pilot had
somehow managed to lift Skinner up into the craft. Krycek threw
himself through the door, slamming it behind him.
The plane's interior had been stripped down. Where there would
normally be a dozen seats, there were only four left, all at the back
of the cabin. Marita sat with Skinner's head cradled in her lap,
leaning against the wall of the front part of the plane.
Beside her two large crates were web-strapped in.
The pilot looked back from the cockpit, and Marita motioned to him.
"Go. Now!"
They began to taxi.
Krycek looked over again to where the other two were. He had
witnessed death too many times to misinterpret the signs. Skinner's
blue lips, the grey pallor of the skin told Krycek everything he
needed to know. That, and the ever-widening pool of blood in which
Skinner lay. He watched the big man laboring to breathe, watched his
chest rising and falling, knowing that soon it would fall, and not
rise again.
Krycek had long ago given up any illusion that there was anything
noble or dignified about death. What he had forgotten was the sense
of outrage that could overtake him when death came too soon. He
hadn't felt that in so very long.
Skinner opened his eyes, looking around startled, lost, as a spasm
wracked him. Marita tried to soothe him, her hand gentle on his
forehead. She seemed to be speaking to him, her low tone drowned out
by the sound of the propellers. He couldn't see her face, which was
curtained by her hair.
Skinner locked eyes with him--a moment of lucid infinity--and Krycek
could do nothing but look back, knowing that all his guilt and
uncertainty and weakness were there for Skinner to see and assess one
last time. Nothing left to hide. All the secrets that were knowable
had been exposed.
He thought he saw an infinitesimal movement of Skinner's
head--something almost like a nod, and then he looked back up at the
woman who held his head on her lap.
Skinner's lips moved, and Marita bent low to try to hear what he was
saying. Krycek felt like he was watching some kind of tableaux, a
drama that he didn't want to see unfold, but whose ending he had to
endure.
They cleared Tunisian airspace. He found he could think of nothing at all.
Somewhere over the Mediterranean, Skinner's chest stopped moving. The
blood on the floor of the plane shone shocking red, bright, garish
under the harsh sunlight streaming through the windows.
A brief shudder shook Skinner's body, and then he was still.
Krycek watched Marita carefully close Skinner's eyes, her hand slowly
brushing over his face in a silent benediction. When she looked up at
him, he was not at all surprised to see her face scored with the
glistening tracks of ceaseless tears.
Chapter 14
Arlington National Cemetery
The crack of the rifle shots ricocheted through her, echoing in the
vast empty chasm in her heart. The open wound that refused to begin
healing.
Scully flinched as the second volley thundered. CRACK!.
And again. CRACK!
The reverberations of the 21-gun salute still wavered on the air when
the bugler, off in the distance, began the plaintive call of "Taps."
Surrounded and constrained by the formal pageantry of a military
funeral, there was no space to cry, to rail at the gods. No room to
do anything but stand at attention at Skinner's graveside, holding
the flag that had been presented to her just moments earlier.
Nothing to do but stare straight ahead, trying not to see the quiet
polished coffin in front of her.
Her vision blurred, caught in the endless blue of the cloth in her
hands--the stars melting under her tear-dimmed gaze into meaningless
white symbols.
She drew a deep shaky breath and looked up the mocking perfect blue
sky. It should have been raining.
The service ended, and she was vaguely aware of movement around her.
Hushed conversations starting and fading into meaningless jumbles of
sound as people began drifting away from the grave. Finally there
were only the sounds of the birds in the distant trees and the cars
rushing along the highway to the east of the cemetery.
When she could see again, she realized she was staring out over the
endless rows of white markers that stretched out forever across the
serene green lawn. A silent sea of whitecaps, breaking on an inland
shore.
It was fitting that he come here. That he should be laid to rest
among this fellowship of the nation's fallen heroes. This corps
would welcome him, they would understand the sense of honor and duty
that had driven him to the very end. This was fit company for him.
And yet. And yet, she couldn't shake the sense of unfairness.
Her initial shock had left her numb, uncomprehending that such a thing
could happen. Then after a day or two, all the numbness had been
burned away by her anger. The rage that welled in her chest in the
middle of the night. The clear knowledge that this was so wrong. It
shouldn't have been him. No victory was worth this price.
She could feel Mulder standing behind her. Waiting, simply waiting
for her. She appreciated more than her grief-struck heart could say
that he didn't rush in and try to comfort her, offering her
meaningless words of consolation. That he respected her need for
private mourning. That he understood that for now no words he could
offer would help her comprehend this injustice.
He waited for her. And he was there in the middle of the night to hold
her when she couldn't stand it anymore.
She knew her grief would eventually ease. But it was still too raw,
stinging in the unfairness of all that had happened. She couldn't
even find words to put shape to all that she was mourning. To
describe her loss. She had always known that Skinner was more than a
colleague, but until his death, she'd never tried to put into words
what he had been.
She thought again, of their brief embrace on the hillside in Tunisia,
just before she saw him alive for the last time. Her chest tightened
at the memory, breath harsh in her lungs. Had he known? Had he had
some premonition? Had he seen his avatar one last time?
Skinner had obviously known something might happen. The surprises
that awaited them in DC after they'd returned had proved that. But
maybe that was simply the habits of a life-long warrior, who
understood that death can wait for you anywhere. The careful
preparations of a man who lived by the rules, even in the midst of
lawless game.
She would not find her answers here.
"Damn you, Skinner," she whispered. "I miss you."
She walked out into the midst of the sea of gravestones and stood
listening to the wind for a long time before turning back to meet
Mulder and go home.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
He watched her black-coated figure seem to recede into the distance,
although at first she didn't physically move at all. He desperately
wanted to go to her, to cross the 10 feet that separated them, and
rock her in his arms until all her grief washed away. But he knew it
was impossible. All he could do for her right now was wait. So he waited.
It gave him time to continue to sort through all that had happened
since he'd been gone, since he'd been back. So much water flowing
under so many bridges, and so many cross-overs washed out to sea.
He thought that maybe, just maybe, if he replayed all the facts and
events often enough he might find the pattern, the reason for how
things had ended as they had.
The trip back from Tunisia had been surreal--a slowly unfolding
nightmare that refused to end.
He was suffering some kind of amnesia from his time away. He wasn't
entirely clear if he'd been somewhere in outer space, on a space
craft, or exactly where. For now all his brain could recall were
hazy images of lights and humanoid shapes with no distinct features.
Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night with the sense that he
had learned something vital, but just as he would try to speak that
thing outloud, the words to describe it would evaporate.
The first distinct memory he had after leaving Skinner in the Oregon
woods was waking to find himself jolting along a Tunisian road, his
head cradled in Scully's lap, and discovering that her eyes still
spoke to him in their private, exclusive language.
Then there had been the fever and tangle of their reunion, followed by
the news that reshaped his world around him.
He still trembled when he considered the implications of their child.
Their child. The words struck strange, resonating chords in his soul,
and he was only gradually coming to terms with all that it meant. The
impossible hope.
What felt like just moments after she'd told him, and his passionate,
joyous reaction, they'd been roused from their bed by an urgent
pounding on their door. A breathless and clearly agitated clone had
told them to pack "immediately" and come with him. He could tell
them only that "something was going down" and that the others would
meet them at the airfield. He added that Skinner had said to "get
their asses in gear."
There were no choices but to follow the directions.
Then the awful montage of images began: the banality of waiting in an
airplane interrupted by a bloody Krycek hurling something at him, the
cryptic statement that he had just begun to decipher when the plane's
door shut and they flew into yet another unknown, and the fight all
through the flight to keep the panic from his face, so that he
wouldn't alarm Scully unnecessarily.
But then there was Malta, and meeting up with the others, and his
worst--their worst--fears were confirmed.
They touched down at a private airstrip about 20 minutes ahead of the
other plane, and as Mulder was hesitantly trying to explain to Scully
what Krycek had said just before they'd left Tunisia, the other plane arrived.
Mulder and Scully sprinted in unison across the tarmac to the plane,
tugging at the door, even before the plane had drifted to a full stop,
and when the door finally pulled away, they were so unprepared for
what they found.
Of the many images that would haunt him until he died, Mulder thought
the one he might most like to repress was Skinner's too-bloody,
too-still body lying on the cabin floor.
Scully's gasp of horror and instinctive move forward to help Skinner
was stopped by Alex's snarl.
"He's dead. Has been for over an hour." Then Alex threw himself from
the plane, striding past them without another word, his face a mask of
some dark despair that Mulder couldn't begin to interpret.
Marita had been sitting with her back against the far wall. She
stared unseeingly at Skinner, until Scully climbed into the plane.
Then she'd looked up at Scully and simply shaken her head--her face a
mask not of her usual composure, but a living anguish that hurt to
look at.
It seemed that Marita had contacts everywhere. In mere hours, she
managed to obtain transit papers for Mulder, arrange for a coffin to
ship Skinner's body in, and secure their passages back home.
Once they were all back in the US, Marita disappeared.
Mulder and Scully spent most of their initial days back trying to
explain Mulder's reappearance, what the hell they had all been doing
in Tunisia, and how Skinner had been killed.
They spent their nights alternating between trying to explain the
events in Alaska and Tunisia to the Lone Gunmen, and trying to come to
understand for themselves what had happened to them. All that was
going to happen.
Then one day the FBI's questions stopped. At the 800th (give or take)
hearing that Mulder had been called to testify at, a somber
Department of State official, accompanied by a somber and
uncomfortable AD from the international terrorism unit of the FBI had
suddenly walked into the room, presented a series of documents to the
hearing panel. Then the panel and the two officials had a long
urgent conversation in hushed tones.
He couldn't hear the exchange, but it was clear that no one was happy.
It seemed some sort of irrefutable document or evidence had surfaced
that was screwing up everyone's day. He thought he caught the phrases
"insurgency," "deep cover," and "national security."
After much muted debate, the two men left just as abruptly as they'd
arrived, and the panel chair made the surprising statement that the
inquiry into the death of former AD Walter Skinner was closed.
Specifics about the conclusion of the investigation of Skinner's death
were never disclosed, but plans for his full honors military funeral
in a week's time were announced the next day.
Mulder resigned from the FBI the same day.
Mulder shook his head--so much to try to comprehend. The reality of
his present circumstances shouldered its way into his consciousness.
He was standing beside Skinner's grave.
Skinner. There was another mystery, as it turned out, that he would
never fully fathom. Skinner who had been more than a friend in life,
had managed to surprise them in death as well.
Once the inquisition into his death was closed, his lawyer had
contacted Scully. It seemed that Skinner had left nearly his entire
estate to her. An educational trust had been established for the
child a distant cousin. Everything else had been left to Scully.
She had been shocked, disbelieving, but there had been a letter
addressed to her from Skinner that gave her some explanation. He
still didn't know what that explanation was, because she'd read the
letter twice, and then burned it. He'd known, from the look on her
face, that he shouldn't ask what the letter said.
Skinner had left a gap in their lives that he was still trying to
understand. The funeral this afternoon should have offered
"closure"--whatever it was that psychologists meant by that--but it
seemed to Mulder that it would take more than the drama of uniformed
soldiers and a horse-drawn caisson to close this story.
He watched Scully move further away from the open grave behind her.
Saw her slowly walking with no real sense of direction or purpose.
She seemed weighted with all that she carried.
He would let her journey only so much further alone, and then he
would go to her. He could wait for a little longer.
Scully was still at the FBI. Her status was pending reassignment. AD
Jameson, to whom Scully now reported, had offered her the X-Files, but
Scully hadn't decided what to do. Mulder refused to provide any input
into her decision. He told her that he was in no position to advise
anyone on their careers. Look where he'd ended up, after all. She'd
laughed at him, and hadn't asked again.
He marveled a little at how quickly her apartment had become home for
him. He still kept his place in Alexandria, but he hadn't slept there
more than two nights since they'd come back. Particularly once
Krycek had shown up.
Both Marita and Alex had disappeared somewhere between Immigration and
Customs at Dulles Airport when they'd all arrived from Malta. Mulder
had assumed that they had gone off somewhere together. All he knew
is that they'd both disappeared, which made sense in Krycek's case,
as Mulder assumed there were multiple warrants out for his arrest.
But on the third day after they'd been back, Mulder went over to
Scully's to find Krycek skulking on her couch. The first of the
interrogation's over Skinner's death had begun that morning, and
Mulder had needed to run to blow off some the fury and sorrow the
questioning had raised in him. He'd gone home, run, showered and
picked up some spare clothes before going over to Scully's.
The run had cleared his mind, and the anticipation of evening
lounging on the couch with Scully had him smiling as he entered her
apartment. He'd even jokingly called out, "Honey, I'm home."
He had not been prepared for Alex's voice to respond. "Ward, I'm so
glad you're back--the Beav had such a bad day."
"What the fuck are you doing here?" Mulder's snarl had been
instinctive.
"Aren't you glad to see me?"
"Where's Scully? Is she ok? Is the ...." His panic kicked in almost
immediately. But he managed to stop himself before blurting out
anything about the baby.
"Relax--she's getting groceries. She left you a note." Krycek
indicated a scrap of paper on the coffee table.
The handwriting was hers, and as he read the note he remembered that
she'd said something this morning about needing to pick up some things
tonight.
"What the fuck are you doing here, Krycek?"
"What? Can't a guy drop by and visit old friends?" The mockery in
his tone nearly disguised the hurt that Mulder saw flashing through
the changeable green eyes.
Scully had arrived home at just that moment, and somehow the three of
them wound up having dinner together, around her comfortable kitchen
table, like some mutant family gathering.
As the evening grew late, Mulder began to glance meaningfully first at
his watch, and then at the door, but Krycek wasn't taking the hint.
Finally, Scully began yawning and stretching and smiling with quietly
smoldering eyes at Mulder.
She stood from the couch, and offered Mulder her hand. He took it,
and stood also, but looked quizzically at Krycek who remained
slouched in the armchair. Krycek gave him an impassive stare in
return.
Scully tugged Mulder toward the bedroom. He followed, because his
body couldn't stand not to, but his mind was still puzzling over how
to ask her what was going on. Before he'd formulated the question,
she'd gone to her linen closet and pulled out a couple blankets and a
pillow. She disappeared into the living room, where he heard her
saying something to Krycek, and then she walked back into the
bedroom, closing the door behind her.
"Scully?" He knew she would hear all the questions he needed to ask
in that one word.
"I told him he could stay on the couch tonight." She stopped, and
looked over Mulder's shoulder, seeing something far away from the
present. "I don't think he has anywhere to go."
There was more to it than that, Mulder thought, but she seemed to feel
this was important, and he was in no position to deny her anything.
The next day, Mulder gave Krycek the keys to his apartment, and told
him he could stay there.
Krycek hung around for about a week, seeming to be there everytime
Mulder turned around. An ever-present and annoying presence, like an
unemployed brother-in-law.
Then, one night, they went out to the warehouse, to help the Gunmen
finish dismantling the command center. Mulder arrived to find Krycek
deep in conversation with Scully. He was handing her something, and
whatever he was saying about it seemed to be upsetting her. He
thought he saw her face glistening with tears.
He felt a deep, atavistic rage overtaking him. As Mulder strode across
the floor to where they stood, Krycek finished talking. And then
Mulder had to stop in amazement. Scully reached up and gave Krycek a
sudden, brief hug. She kissed his cheek, and then quickly walked out
the backdoor to the courtyard.
Krycek seemed stunned. He stood frozen where Scully had left him,
staring after her, as uncertain as Mulder had ever seen him.
Then he managed to shake off the spell, and he'd turned and walked
out of the warehouse, brushing past Mulder as though he wasn't even
there.
Mulder hurried to the courtyard. Scully stood, her face wet with
tears, staring up at the skies. It was unusually clear night, and
even with the local light pollution, the display of stars and planets
was breathtaking in its clarify.
"Scully, are you are alright?" He spoke softly, not touching her yet.
She turned to him, and reached out her hand, pulling him close. She
buried her face against his chest, and his arms locked around her.
Although he could feel her tears soaking his shirt, her muffled voice
was level. "Yeah. I'm ok."
"What did Krycek want?"
She didn't answer him for a long time, but then she finally pulled
back a little and reached in her coat pocket. "He gave me this."
And she handed him an oddly stylized Palm Pilot.
"What the...?"
"It was the control for those things in Skinner's blood."
Jesus. He breath left him instantaneously as though he'd sustained a
prize fighter's blow to his solar plexus. "Why....? What..." He
struggled to understand. To control his rage and urge to sprint down
the street after Krycek and beat him to death.
"I don't know why." She watched him steadily, and he was struck by
how calm she seemed. "He said he wanted me to have it. And he said he
wouldn't be back. Frohike got him connected with a group of
mercenaries, and he said he was leaving to try his hand at an old
game."
They had not seen Krycek again, and Mulder thought he'd seen Scully
quietly throw the control mechanism into Skinner's grave this
afternoon, when she'd thrown in her handful of earth.
The wind in the cemetery gusted suddenly, and Mulder pulled his coat
tighter about him. Summer had given way suddenly to fall, and the
wind had a chill to it now that reminded them that November wasn't
far away.
He looked at Scully again. She was standing where she'd been for the
last 20 minutes. Finally she turned and started back to him. Her
tears had dried, and her eyes were clear again, although shadowed by
sorrow.
But she was Scully, and her strength shone through, even when she
could no longer see it.
He met her halfway, and they went home together.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Unknown location
"You failed." Her voice was crisp, unemotional. A casual listener,
although there were no casual listeners within 1000 miles of here,
might have assumed that she was discussing something trivial--a poor
showing in a flower arranging show. The casual listener would have
been very wrong.
"You always see things in such black and white terms. Success,
failure. Up, down. We didn't achieve all our goals, no. But, we
did...."
"You failed." Her tone a little sharper now, as she turned from the
window she'd been gazing out, to look at the man lounging in one of
the leather chairs across the desk. Behind her the setting sun
illuminated her hair, creating a dangerous halo-illusion. "There was
no room for that sort of blunder."
The dark-skinned man straightened in the chair, his sudden
ramrod-straight posture unmistakably military. "I'd be careful, if I
were you in assigning blame too quickly. It's not as though you don't
have some loose ends to deal with. And, we're still missing some data."
"I got all the disks. And you've had four weeks to work on the data."
"I know." His voice shifted oddly, sliding between American and
British inflections. "But, there must have been a secondary data
collection going on, or Strughold deliberately miscoded those disks."
She grimaced. "Well, we're not ever going to know, are we?"
White teeth flashed. "It's astonishing what a kiloton or three of
explosives will do."
Her stare was level, neither impressed nor appreciably amused. She
seemed to be assessing the man in front of her, weighing his fitness
for some impossible task. She found him wanting. "And Alaska?"
"Same story, different cover. There's been an earthquake." Now he
seemed hesitant. "I still haven't found that bunker you told me about."
She nodded. Unsurprised. So little surprised her.
"So what are we left with?" He seemed to understand that it was a
rhetorical question, as he offered no response. She swiveled 90
degrees, facing the expensive oil painting over the fireplace on the
right side of the room. She continued, "We have the data, or at least
most of it. The experiments have been halted. We have had initial,
successful contact with the other faction."
She was quiet for a long time then, and finally he cleared his
throat. "I was sorry to hear about Skinner. He seemed like a good man."
She sighed almost noiselessly. "Mistakes were made. They always are."
Her voice was level, and only one man might have heard the
undercurrent that trembled far below the surface.
She turned back to him then, fully focused. He shifted uncomfortably
under her intense, cauterizing gaze. "So, John Byron Aston, would you
say that we are in the clear to wait for the results of the Epsilon Test?"
"Rodden....I go by Rodden now." His murmured response was only to buy
time, and she paid it no heed. He considered her statements
carefully, no casualness evident in any line of his superbly
conditioned body.
"Yes." He faltered under her unyielding stare. "Probably. He's
always been a wild card, but she's been far more stable than we had
any right to hope. She didn't even quit the FBI..." He considered
further. "Yes, we should be okay. It's a few more months, but we
have people in place to ensure as much tranquillity as we can
manage."
Marita nodded. "I concur. We'll simply have to wait and see
what....develops."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"Oh." She sounded startled, and he felt an instant of panic until she
said softly, "Mulder, come here."
He walked over, to find her smiling--a smile of undiluted wonder and
joy, the first he'd seen since their return. She was holding out her
hand. He instinctively reached back. She clasped his fingers
tightly, and then guided them to rest on her gently rounded belly.
"Wait....right there. Did you feel that? The baby just moved."
END
Author's notes and thanks: First and foremost, I owe an enormous
debt to the superb beta talents of the fabulous three--who will have
to remain nameless for various reasons, but you know who are, and I
hope you know how deeply I appreciate your assistance. You were all
utterly wonderful in your support and help with this story. Your
beta, feedback and suggestions are all deeply, deeply appreciated.
Any remaining typos, plot problems or strange characterizations are
solely my fault.
I also owe deep thanks to three others, who were there throughout.
Thank you for the support--it meant the world.