19 : The Bridge
Title: The Bridge
Spoilers: "Medusa", "The Gift"
Rating: PG
Words: 3891
Summary: Stark's point of view on "Medusa" as she makes an ultimatum with her partner over what is and is not an option in their partnership.
Everything Stark knew about Boston could be summed up in one sentence. The Boston Red Sox played in the American League East, making them division rivals of her Baltimore Orioles. She'd never been there and never really wanted to go. However, they had gotten the call-out from the Boston Transit Authority the night before, and Stark never let any sort of prejudice get in the way of her work.
By now, she had gotten used to the X-Files. As used as she could get, anyway. It had become clear to her that she wasn't going to be able to sit in the back seat and let John and Scully handle all the scary things. She was going to have to get her hands dirty. Little did she know that maybe she should have chosen a different way to phrase that.
That started when they were standing on the subway platform. Bulletproof vests and heavy equipment were things more in her element than inexplicable phenomena, and it provided a measure of comfort. The people they were stuck with, however, left something to be desired.
"What base are they covering?" asked Lyle, the doctor from the CDC, and Stark jerked her head up from peeling out of her jacket to arch an eyebrow.
"Agent Scully is a medical doctor," explained the transit chief. "Who they tell me has a lot of experience with equivocal deaths."
"Equivocal?" chuckled Melnick, the structural engineer. "Hey, I mean you're dead or you're not, right?"
Stark's eyes, now focused more on the people around her than the equipment, caught her partner hesitating. She didn't think anything of it, however, as Scully clarified, "Deaths for which there may be many explanations or for which an explanation may be hard to find."
But that wasn't Stark's element, or her partner's. She finished settling the bulletproof vest on her shoulders and checked the chamber on her weapon, taking up her usual place at John's hip. It seemed to be an instinctual thing with the two of them; she never went far from his side. Especially not when there were going to be five other people in that tunnel, only two of which she really trusted.
"What about you?" Lyle asked, looking at the both of them.
John's face was impassive. "I'm just a good shot."
Stark snorted at that, then added, "I'm just good at finding people. And sticking close to them."
She had a feeling that John might have made some sort of comment about that, if Lt. Bianco, the head of security, hadn't sarcastically interrupted, "Well, good. Now that we're bosom buddies, let's get this show on the road." Not that she could blame him; she was raring to go herself. Once there was a case on the table, she never hesitated to jump right into things.
Not so Agent Scully. After a second, her partner stepped away from her, and went to see what Scully was doing. Stark hadn't really been paying attention, but now that John had brought it to her focus, she noticed the other woman was making no move to join them.
She could only watch and wait as the two of them conferred amongst themselves.
"Yeah, but I'm just tag along here. This is your thing. You've got all the experience," Doggett protested after a few words had been exchanged, eyeing Scully warily.
"You've got capable people with you, Agent Doggett. You have your partner. What I need down there are eyes and ears." When Scully handed him the headset, he knew the discussion was over. He just relented and affixed it where it needed to be.
"Okay. I'll be your eyes and ears," he told her. "But I wish somebody would tell me what the hell it is I'm supposed to be looking for."
Scully had no answer. Stark pretended like she wasn't paying attention as her partner came back to join her. "What's up?" she asked, seeing the unpleased look on her partner's face.
"She's not going," John told her brusquely. "It's just you and me on this one."
That made Stark swallow. Scully was the veteran X-Files agent. She knew the paranormal element inside and out. As much as she respected John, she knew he didn't have that kind of knowledge, and she certainly didn't. And that was one less person she trusted to have her back. But if they had come this far together, she wasn't going to stop trusting her partner now.
"Okay," she said simply.
"You ready to do this?" he asked, sensing the hesitation.
"Yeah," she replied. "We can do this," she said, but didn't look at him when she said it, instead checking the chamber on her gun one more time.
****
The first thing Stark noticed was the heat. Coming from Baltimore, she wasn't used to oppressive heat; she knew friends who lived in Phoenix who always talked about it, but she was a child of cold winters and annoyingly torrential rains. It immediately made her start to sweat, and she just let out a long, slow breath. It was going to be a long afternoon.
"How come it's so hot down here?" her partner asked, voicing the question on everyone else's minds.
"They shut down ventilation last night," Melnick explained. Normally you have almost a million cubic feet of fresh air per minute pushing through here but now we're in a sweatbox."
Lyle snorted. "Aren't we lucky? Hot, sticky and crawling in the dark. All so every commuter in Boston can get home to watch Survivor 2."
"Speak for yourself," Stark replied with a chuckle, "I still have Christmas shopping to do."
Normally that was the kind of remark that would have gotten her bantering with her partner. She would have loved a discussion on whether or not she had gotten him anything yet. But not when they were working. When they were on a case, both of them were focused on the work, and little else. She wasn't even sure John had heard her.
He hadn't. His next words were, "I wonder why they shut down the ventilation if it's a man we're supposed to be looking for."
"You doubt that so much, Agent Doggett, why bring a gun?" Bianco asked.
Stark arched an eyebrow. "Because you would have to be a fool to walk into anything without a weapon," she replied, and felt him glare at the back of her head. She narrowly avoided the puddle in front of them, wishing she knew what, if anything, Agent Scully was saying to her partner. She felt like she was flying blind.
That thought never finished in her head, as Melnick went to his knees with a sudden scream of pain. Turning on her heel, she joined the rest of the team around him. With the help of John's flashlight, the burn on his neck was obvious. So was the sound of his pain as Bianco tried to apply some sort of ointment to the wound.
"Maybe it's not a man we're looking for but some sort of toxic leak," her partner said once things had calmed down again, and Stark just eyed him. "It'd be nice if you were right," she replied, but she knew he couldn't be. If it were something that simple, they wouldn't have been called in.
The dread began to twist at her insides.
****
It all started with the detour.
The fork in the line was due to a tunnel from the old subway system that had been gutted some time ago. That was all Doggett needed to see if the mysterious person they thought they'd all seen had gone that way or not. Stark couldn't blame him; as a former Fugitive detective, she was an expert at people trying to hide.
But there was no one there. Not that she could see, anyway.
"All right, let's get out of here," Bianco said, and for the only time in the entire day, Stark found herself agreeing with him.
Her partner eyed the engineer. "Mr. Melnick, what's your call? You think there's any good reason to pursue this section?" he asked.
"Lots of places to hide in here."
"Dr. Lyle?" John asked, turning his attention to the woman from the CDC.
At that moment, however, Hellura Lyle's attention was elsewhere. Stark saw the movement at the exact same time the other woman did. It was no use warning her partner, however, because Lyle already had, and John drew down just in time to be knocked over by someone that didn't really look like a someone.
It looked more like a something.
She was at her partner's side in seconds, service weapon clutched nervously in her hand. It had all happened too fast for her to get a shot off, but she was still kicking herself. Partners were supposed to protect partners. That was part of the deal.
"John, you okay?" she asked, forcing herself to holster the gun. Her hand was shaking and her aim would be no good.
"Fine," he muttered, politely refusing Melnick's offered hand. "Nah, give me a minute. What hit me?"
"Well, he came at you like some kind of phantom," Lyle replied.
But Stark had caught the difference between the two of them. Her partner didn't think it was human, or hadn't gotten a good enough look at it; the doctor certainly did. At this point, she wasn't ready to rule out either or, or even some combination of both. Especially not when John, pushing himself up and still sucking air into his lungs, laid eyes on the body next to him. As in corpse.
Melnick found three more just moments later.
Four bodies and one thing that just came after her partner. Stark sucked another breath into her lungs, feeling herself a little short of air, and even more short of confidence.
****
Her confidence fell further when Melnick didn't make it out in one piece.
Another attack left his arm badly damaged, as if connected to an electrical current. The decision was made quickly to extricate him, along with Dr. Lyle, from the operation. Melnick left on a gurney, Dr. Lyle in a biohazard suit, and all that was left of the team was Doggett, Stark, and one increasingly agitated Lt. Bianco, whom Stark still didn't trust farther than she could throw him.
Not to mention, John couldn't raise Scully on the radio.
With no clues in front of them and no one to turn to, all they could do was keep going. And keep walking into nothing.
"Come on, Agent Doggett," Bianco urged. "Make a decision. Let's get out of here."
Her partner didn't flinch. "We got to find whoever it is that's still down here, Lieutenant."
"And what if we don't find him? Maybe it'll be us they find lying facedown on the floor, dead."
"Agent Scully knows what she's doing," Doggett replied, an edge to his voice. "This is about saving people's lives."
"Well, it looks like it's about saving her life. If she knows what she's doing why hasn't she figured it out yet?"
"You know, I've about had it with you," Stark started, having held her tongue for too long.
"Yeah?" Bianco retorted. "And what about you, what the hell have you done?"
"Don't talk to my..." John started to jump to her defense, like he always did, but when he stopped in mid-sentence Stark knew something was wrong. He was staring at Bianco, but it wasn't an angry stare. "Lieutenant..." He said warily. "Walk towards me."
"What?" Bianco snapped. "What is it?"
But he did as he was told. The three of them all stared at his arm, and then his face. There was no mistaking that it was covered in a glowing green substance. Stark felt her stomach lurch, but kept a straight face. That was more than the lieutenant could muster.
"The stuff's on me," he said, panicking. "You see that it's spreading. I told you, Agent Doggett-- we should've gotten out."
"You can't do that, you'd just infect more people," Stark told him.
Her partner nodded his agreement. "That's exactly why we got to stay."
"You saw! You saw what it does," Bianco protested.
"Yeah, I saw what it did. But I don't see it having any other effect on you, so just calm down."
"I'm getting out of here. I'm leaving."
Seven dangerous words. From the moment that Bianco moved away from them, Stark knew the decision was out of her hands. It was impossible to let him leave and potentially infect everyone else above ground. Her hand went to her gun, but her partner beat her to the punch, cocking his pistol and taking up first pressure before she could pull hers out of her holster. She kept her grip on hers nonetheless, almost scared to let go.
"You'd do it, wouldn't you?" Bianco said, looking from him to her and back again.
"Not because I want to," John clarified. "But you're pushing pretty hard. So put your weapon down, lieutenant, right now."
It took a moment or two longer than Stark would have liked, her eyes on her partner. She knew that John would shoot without a second's hesitation. A sigh of relief escaped her lips when Bianco laid his firearm down.
"Now, we're going to get out of here," her partner said, and she wondered who he was trying to reassure, "but we're going to wait for the okay."
He knelt down to pick up the gun, and the next sound Stark heard was a sickening crack as Bianco kicked her partner in the head. With an unconscious grunt, he went down, and that was all she needed to draw her pistol and level it at the transit policeman.
"Fucking bastard!" she snapped.
"C'mon, Agent Patrick, don't make me hurt you too," Bianco said warningly, advancing on her.
"You just attacked my partner!" Stark replied. "And that's only one of two reasons I'd like to put a hole in your head."
Bianco just laughed at that, the moment before he advanced on her. She pulled the trigger, but her nerves hadn't subsided; the shot went wide, and only clipped him in the shoulder. His hand closed on her wrist like a vise, and she yelped in pain as he twisted it at an angle it was never meant to be at. The pistol went clattering to the tunnel floor, and when his knee collided with her midsection she felt all the air leave her lungs.
At least, she thought as she crumpled into a ball beside her partner, if I'm going down, I'm going down with John.
****
As it turned out, John had other plans.
She was still half in the fetal position, taking slow and shallow breaths, and trying to reach for wherever the hell her gun had fallen. Her wrist hurt like hell, and she didn't doubt that it was sprained if it wasn't broken. She was so focused on trying to get to the gun that she started when she heard her partner groan into consciousness.
"Thank God," she caught herself muttering, though she had stopped believing in a higher power long ago.
He blinked, his eyes focusing on her as he came around. "Stark, what...are you okay?"
That was the moment Scully chose to came back on the radio. Stark shook her head as her partner briefed the senior agent. "No, I...we got blindsided by...I don't see Lieutenant Bianco. He's infected with something. I saw it glowing on his skin," he explained, watching her and the way she was favoring her left arm. He'd know what was wrong with her well before she'd admit it.
Stark was close enough to hear Scully over the radio: "And what's your condition, Agent Doggett?"
He took a look at his arms and his hands. The glowing green substance had covered him, too. He took one worried look at her, and that was the moment she chose to actually look at herself. The substance had infected the entire side that she'd been crumpled onto beside him. She gave him an ironic look that said, Apparently staying real close to you isn't always the best idea in the world, huh, John?
"I'm going to assume it's not good," he said, speaking for the both of them.
I'm going to send a quarantine unit down to get you, Agent Doggett, okay? I want you to stay right where you are."
But he was already cocking his gun. "I appreciate it, Agent Scully, but I can't do that. If we're going to stop the spread of this thing I got to stop Lieutenant Bianco." He climbed to his feet, extending a hand to help her up. He was already smart enough to figure out that something wasn't right as she climbed to her feet beside him. "How bad is it?" he asked her.
"Sprained, at least," she admitted. "Hurts like hell."
"Anything else?"
She shook her head slightly. "No. Just knocked the wind out of me."
"Good." Her partner's gaze was steady as he pressed her gun back into her uninjured hand. "Cause I'm gonna need you down here."
It's the first vote of confidence she'd had from anyone all day.
****
After being attacked by one of their own team members, and infected with something she couldn't deduce, Stark wanted answers and she wanted them as quickly as possible. The pain in her wrist was distracting and worse was the thought of whatever she and her partner might have been exposed to.
She had never expected the answers to come in the form of a seven-year-old boy.
With no other real choice, they followed the boy further down the tunnels, and right to the source of the infection. The green substance that had latched to the both of them dripped from the ceiling and the walls. There was no doubt this was where it had all started.
"Damn," was all she could think of to say.
"Scully says he's trying to lead us to a tunnel on the main system, about four hundred yards from an access point," her partner explained. "She's gonna roll a hazmat team and we can be clear in about fifteen minutes."
"Thank God," she said. "Somebody better go get the jackass."
"Leave that to me. I don't want you to punch him in the face," he replied, and she cracked a rare smile.
With Bianco in tow, the two of them followed the boy's direction to the main tunnel, but it didn't take a genius to see that the main tunnel was already infected. "We've got big, big problems here," Doggett told Scully, sucking in a breath.
Understatement, John, Stark thought to herself.
She had no idea what to do next. They couldn't simply walk out, not then. Especially not when the roar of the first incoming train made her heart drop into her stomach. It was an easy decision to send the boy and Bianco back down the access tunnel; you protected the children and the wounded. Stark, however, stood her ground. She wasn't going to walk away, not this time, not after what had happened in Pennsylvania.
"You should be going with them," her partner told her brusquely.
She didn't even blink, just met his eyes with an even glance. "Not a chance in hell, John. I'm coming with you."
He eyed her for a moment. "I don't have time to argue with you," he decided, and turned and headed in the direction of the oncoming sound.
Stark followed dutifully after. "Talk to me, John. What are we doing here?"
"I don't know yet, but we gotta do something."
Up ahead is the sign, warning them to stay away from the third rail. She can see the train coming down the tunnel. Of all the ways Stark figured she might lose her life in the line of duty, being hit by a train was not one of them. Before she could ask again what he was thinking, her partner was gone. She thought perhaps he'd gone back for Bianco and the boy.
He'd gone back for Bianco's gun.
"John?" she asked, more than a little worried.
"Agent Scully said she thinks this is some sort of electro-chemical reaction," he replied by way of explanation. "I know where we can find a hell of a lot of electricity." He finally wrested the gun from Bianco, stopping only to submerse one end of it into one of the infected water puddles between them and the oncoming train. His hand on the weapon, he eyed her. "The moment I drop this thing, you get the hell out of the way, understand?"
She didn't bother that with a response. He knew she'd do as she was told, as long as he remembered that he'd better follow his own advice.
Stark just looked at her partner. She wasn't even looking at the train. Either they walked out of there together, or they went down together. Either outcome was fine with her, when she knew what - who - she was living for.
****
They didn't talk about it until they'd both been treated at the hospital.
Stark didn't really listen to the explanation; she had no idea what she'd ever had, but if it was gone, that was good enough. Her wrist was indeed sprained, though she doubted she would ever get an apology out of Bianco for that one. Nor was she interested in one. She wanted to be with her partner, and after she got the all clear to get changed and ready for her discharge, she went to do just that.
She knocked lightly on the door before she poked her head in. "Hey."
"Hey," he said from the hospital bed. "You look better."
"I am better," she told him, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. "How're you?"
"Still waiting to find out. And looking ridiculous," he replied as she pulled up a chair beside the bed. "How's the wrist?"
"Sprained, but at least it's not the dominant one." She sighed then, running a hand through her hair before she fixed him with a serious look. "John, we need to talk."
His brow furrowed as he eyed her. "What've we got to talk about?"
Stark let out a long, slow breath. "This. You. The whole 'leaving me when everything gets crazy' stuff. You did it in Pennsylvania and you tried to do it here." She held his gaze; the two of them rarely disagreed, and she could see the confusion in his eyes. "Look, I know you're trying to protect me and all, and I appreciate it, but...I'm your partner. When things go wrong, I should be there."
There was a long pause between the two of them. "I'm just tryin' to look out for you," he said after a moment. "I don't know what's going on out there. I don't want to risk losin' you over it."
"Then we'll face it together," she said quietly. "Cause you know what, John?"
"What?" he said, reaching for her uninjured hand.
She smiled then, interlocking her fingers with his own. She found it only took one sentence to tell him how she felt. "You might not believe it, but I've found someone worth risking everything for."
Spoilers: "Medusa", "The Gift"
Rating: PG
Words: 3891
Summary: Stark's point of view on "Medusa" as she makes an ultimatum with her partner over what is and is not an option in their partnership.
Everything Stark knew about Boston could be summed up in one sentence. The Boston Red Sox played in the American League East, making them division rivals of her Baltimore Orioles. She'd never been there and never really wanted to go. However, they had gotten the call-out from the Boston Transit Authority the night before, and Stark never let any sort of prejudice get in the way of her work.
By now, she had gotten used to the X-Files. As used as she could get, anyway. It had become clear to her that she wasn't going to be able to sit in the back seat and let John and Scully handle all the scary things. She was going to have to get her hands dirty. Little did she know that maybe she should have chosen a different way to phrase that.
That started when they were standing on the subway platform. Bulletproof vests and heavy equipment were things more in her element than inexplicable phenomena, and it provided a measure of comfort. The people they were stuck with, however, left something to be desired.
"What base are they covering?" asked Lyle, the doctor from the CDC, and Stark jerked her head up from peeling out of her jacket to arch an eyebrow.
"Agent Scully is a medical doctor," explained the transit chief. "Who they tell me has a lot of experience with equivocal deaths."
"Equivocal?" chuckled Melnick, the structural engineer. "Hey, I mean you're dead or you're not, right?"
Stark's eyes, now focused more on the people around her than the equipment, caught her partner hesitating. She didn't think anything of it, however, as Scully clarified, "Deaths for which there may be many explanations or for which an explanation may be hard to find."
But that wasn't Stark's element, or her partner's. She finished settling the bulletproof vest on her shoulders and checked the chamber on her weapon, taking up her usual place at John's hip. It seemed to be an instinctual thing with the two of them; she never went far from his side. Especially not when there were going to be five other people in that tunnel, only two of which she really trusted.
"What about you?" Lyle asked, looking at the both of them.
John's face was impassive. "I'm just a good shot."
Stark snorted at that, then added, "I'm just good at finding people. And sticking close to them."
She had a feeling that John might have made some sort of comment about that, if Lt. Bianco, the head of security, hadn't sarcastically interrupted, "Well, good. Now that we're bosom buddies, let's get this show on the road." Not that she could blame him; she was raring to go herself. Once there was a case on the table, she never hesitated to jump right into things.
Not so Agent Scully. After a second, her partner stepped away from her, and went to see what Scully was doing. Stark hadn't really been paying attention, but now that John had brought it to her focus, she noticed the other woman was making no move to join them.
She could only watch and wait as the two of them conferred amongst themselves.
"Yeah, but I'm just tag along here. This is your thing. You've got all the experience," Doggett protested after a few words had been exchanged, eyeing Scully warily.
"You've got capable people with you, Agent Doggett. You have your partner. What I need down there are eyes and ears." When Scully handed him the headset, he knew the discussion was over. He just relented and affixed it where it needed to be.
"Okay. I'll be your eyes and ears," he told her. "But I wish somebody would tell me what the hell it is I'm supposed to be looking for."
Scully had no answer. Stark pretended like she wasn't paying attention as her partner came back to join her. "What's up?" she asked, seeing the unpleased look on her partner's face.
"She's not going," John told her brusquely. "It's just you and me on this one."
That made Stark swallow. Scully was the veteran X-Files agent. She knew the paranormal element inside and out. As much as she respected John, she knew he didn't have that kind of knowledge, and she certainly didn't. And that was one less person she trusted to have her back. But if they had come this far together, she wasn't going to stop trusting her partner now.
"Okay," she said simply.
"You ready to do this?" he asked, sensing the hesitation.
"Yeah," she replied. "We can do this," she said, but didn't look at him when she said it, instead checking the chamber on her gun one more time.
****
The first thing Stark noticed was the heat. Coming from Baltimore, she wasn't used to oppressive heat; she knew friends who lived in Phoenix who always talked about it, but she was a child of cold winters and annoyingly torrential rains. It immediately made her start to sweat, and she just let out a long, slow breath. It was going to be a long afternoon.
"How come it's so hot down here?" her partner asked, voicing the question on everyone else's minds.
"They shut down ventilation last night," Melnick explained. Normally you have almost a million cubic feet of fresh air per minute pushing through here but now we're in a sweatbox."
Lyle snorted. "Aren't we lucky? Hot, sticky and crawling in the dark. All so every commuter in Boston can get home to watch Survivor 2."
"Speak for yourself," Stark replied with a chuckle, "I still have Christmas shopping to do."
Normally that was the kind of remark that would have gotten her bantering with her partner. She would have loved a discussion on whether or not she had gotten him anything yet. But not when they were working. When they were on a case, both of them were focused on the work, and little else. She wasn't even sure John had heard her.
He hadn't. His next words were, "I wonder why they shut down the ventilation if it's a man we're supposed to be looking for."
"You doubt that so much, Agent Doggett, why bring a gun?" Bianco asked.
Stark arched an eyebrow. "Because you would have to be a fool to walk into anything without a weapon," she replied, and felt him glare at the back of her head. She narrowly avoided the puddle in front of them, wishing she knew what, if anything, Agent Scully was saying to her partner. She felt like she was flying blind.
That thought never finished in her head, as Melnick went to his knees with a sudden scream of pain. Turning on her heel, she joined the rest of the team around him. With the help of John's flashlight, the burn on his neck was obvious. So was the sound of his pain as Bianco tried to apply some sort of ointment to the wound.
"Maybe it's not a man we're looking for but some sort of toxic leak," her partner said once things had calmed down again, and Stark just eyed him. "It'd be nice if you were right," she replied, but she knew he couldn't be. If it were something that simple, they wouldn't have been called in.
The dread began to twist at her insides.
****
It all started with the detour.
The fork in the line was due to a tunnel from the old subway system that had been gutted some time ago. That was all Doggett needed to see if the mysterious person they thought they'd all seen had gone that way or not. Stark couldn't blame him; as a former Fugitive detective, she was an expert at people trying to hide.
But there was no one there. Not that she could see, anyway.
"All right, let's get out of here," Bianco said, and for the only time in the entire day, Stark found herself agreeing with him.
Her partner eyed the engineer. "Mr. Melnick, what's your call? You think there's any good reason to pursue this section?" he asked.
"Lots of places to hide in here."
"Dr. Lyle?" John asked, turning his attention to the woman from the CDC.
At that moment, however, Hellura Lyle's attention was elsewhere. Stark saw the movement at the exact same time the other woman did. It was no use warning her partner, however, because Lyle already had, and John drew down just in time to be knocked over by someone that didn't really look like a someone.
It looked more like a something.
She was at her partner's side in seconds, service weapon clutched nervously in her hand. It had all happened too fast for her to get a shot off, but she was still kicking herself. Partners were supposed to protect partners. That was part of the deal.
"John, you okay?" she asked, forcing herself to holster the gun. Her hand was shaking and her aim would be no good.
"Fine," he muttered, politely refusing Melnick's offered hand. "Nah, give me a minute. What hit me?"
"Well, he came at you like some kind of phantom," Lyle replied.
But Stark had caught the difference between the two of them. Her partner didn't think it was human, or hadn't gotten a good enough look at it; the doctor certainly did. At this point, she wasn't ready to rule out either or, or even some combination of both. Especially not when John, pushing himself up and still sucking air into his lungs, laid eyes on the body next to him. As in corpse.
Melnick found three more just moments later.
Four bodies and one thing that just came after her partner. Stark sucked another breath into her lungs, feeling herself a little short of air, and even more short of confidence.
****
Her confidence fell further when Melnick didn't make it out in one piece.
Another attack left his arm badly damaged, as if connected to an electrical current. The decision was made quickly to extricate him, along with Dr. Lyle, from the operation. Melnick left on a gurney, Dr. Lyle in a biohazard suit, and all that was left of the team was Doggett, Stark, and one increasingly agitated Lt. Bianco, whom Stark still didn't trust farther than she could throw him.
Not to mention, John couldn't raise Scully on the radio.
With no clues in front of them and no one to turn to, all they could do was keep going. And keep walking into nothing.
"Come on, Agent Doggett," Bianco urged. "Make a decision. Let's get out of here."
Her partner didn't flinch. "We got to find whoever it is that's still down here, Lieutenant."
"And what if we don't find him? Maybe it'll be us they find lying facedown on the floor, dead."
"Agent Scully knows what she's doing," Doggett replied, an edge to his voice. "This is about saving people's lives."
"Well, it looks like it's about saving her life. If she knows what she's doing why hasn't she figured it out yet?"
"You know, I've about had it with you," Stark started, having held her tongue for too long.
"Yeah?" Bianco retorted. "And what about you, what the hell have you done?"
"Don't talk to my..." John started to jump to her defense, like he always did, but when he stopped in mid-sentence Stark knew something was wrong. He was staring at Bianco, but it wasn't an angry stare. "Lieutenant..." He said warily. "Walk towards me."
"What?" Bianco snapped. "What is it?"
But he did as he was told. The three of them all stared at his arm, and then his face. There was no mistaking that it was covered in a glowing green substance. Stark felt her stomach lurch, but kept a straight face. That was more than the lieutenant could muster.
"The stuff's on me," he said, panicking. "You see that it's spreading. I told you, Agent Doggett-- we should've gotten out."
"You can't do that, you'd just infect more people," Stark told him.
Her partner nodded his agreement. "That's exactly why we got to stay."
"You saw! You saw what it does," Bianco protested.
"Yeah, I saw what it did. But I don't see it having any other effect on you, so just calm down."
"I'm getting out of here. I'm leaving."
Seven dangerous words. From the moment that Bianco moved away from them, Stark knew the decision was out of her hands. It was impossible to let him leave and potentially infect everyone else above ground. Her hand went to her gun, but her partner beat her to the punch, cocking his pistol and taking up first pressure before she could pull hers out of her holster. She kept her grip on hers nonetheless, almost scared to let go.
"You'd do it, wouldn't you?" Bianco said, looking from him to her and back again.
"Not because I want to," John clarified. "But you're pushing pretty hard. So put your weapon down, lieutenant, right now."
It took a moment or two longer than Stark would have liked, her eyes on her partner. She knew that John would shoot without a second's hesitation. A sigh of relief escaped her lips when Bianco laid his firearm down.
"Now, we're going to get out of here," her partner said, and she wondered who he was trying to reassure, "but we're going to wait for the okay."
He knelt down to pick up the gun, and the next sound Stark heard was a sickening crack as Bianco kicked her partner in the head. With an unconscious grunt, he went down, and that was all she needed to draw her pistol and level it at the transit policeman.
"Fucking bastard!" she snapped.
"C'mon, Agent Patrick, don't make me hurt you too," Bianco said warningly, advancing on her.
"You just attacked my partner!" Stark replied. "And that's only one of two reasons I'd like to put a hole in your head."
Bianco just laughed at that, the moment before he advanced on her. She pulled the trigger, but her nerves hadn't subsided; the shot went wide, and only clipped him in the shoulder. His hand closed on her wrist like a vise, and she yelped in pain as he twisted it at an angle it was never meant to be at. The pistol went clattering to the tunnel floor, and when his knee collided with her midsection she felt all the air leave her lungs.
At least, she thought as she crumpled into a ball beside her partner, if I'm going down, I'm going down with John.
****
As it turned out, John had other plans.
She was still half in the fetal position, taking slow and shallow breaths, and trying to reach for wherever the hell her gun had fallen. Her wrist hurt like hell, and she didn't doubt that it was sprained if it wasn't broken. She was so focused on trying to get to the gun that she started when she heard her partner groan into consciousness.
"Thank God," she caught herself muttering, though she had stopped believing in a higher power long ago.
He blinked, his eyes focusing on her as he came around. "Stark, what...are you okay?"
That was the moment Scully chose to came back on the radio. Stark shook her head as her partner briefed the senior agent. "No, I...we got blindsided by...I don't see Lieutenant Bianco. He's infected with something. I saw it glowing on his skin," he explained, watching her and the way she was favoring her left arm. He'd know what was wrong with her well before she'd admit it.
Stark was close enough to hear Scully over the radio: "And what's your condition, Agent Doggett?"
He took a look at his arms and his hands. The glowing green substance had covered him, too. He took one worried look at her, and that was the moment she chose to actually look at herself. The substance had infected the entire side that she'd been crumpled onto beside him. She gave him an ironic look that said, Apparently staying real close to you isn't always the best idea in the world, huh, John?
"I'm going to assume it's not good," he said, speaking for the both of them.
I'm going to send a quarantine unit down to get you, Agent Doggett, okay? I want you to stay right where you are."
But he was already cocking his gun. "I appreciate it, Agent Scully, but I can't do that. If we're going to stop the spread of this thing I got to stop Lieutenant Bianco." He climbed to his feet, extending a hand to help her up. He was already smart enough to figure out that something wasn't right as she climbed to her feet beside him. "How bad is it?" he asked her.
"Sprained, at least," she admitted. "Hurts like hell."
"Anything else?"
She shook her head slightly. "No. Just knocked the wind out of me."
"Good." Her partner's gaze was steady as he pressed her gun back into her uninjured hand. "Cause I'm gonna need you down here."
It's the first vote of confidence she'd had from anyone all day.
****
After being attacked by one of their own team members, and infected with something she couldn't deduce, Stark wanted answers and she wanted them as quickly as possible. The pain in her wrist was distracting and worse was the thought of whatever she and her partner might have been exposed to.
She had never expected the answers to come in the form of a seven-year-old boy.
With no other real choice, they followed the boy further down the tunnels, and right to the source of the infection. The green substance that had latched to the both of them dripped from the ceiling and the walls. There was no doubt this was where it had all started.
"Damn," was all she could think of to say.
"Scully says he's trying to lead us to a tunnel on the main system, about four hundred yards from an access point," her partner explained. "She's gonna roll a hazmat team and we can be clear in about fifteen minutes."
"Thank God," she said. "Somebody better go get the jackass."
"Leave that to me. I don't want you to punch him in the face," he replied, and she cracked a rare smile.
With Bianco in tow, the two of them followed the boy's direction to the main tunnel, but it didn't take a genius to see that the main tunnel was already infected. "We've got big, big problems here," Doggett told Scully, sucking in a breath.
Understatement, John, Stark thought to herself.
She had no idea what to do next. They couldn't simply walk out, not then. Especially not when the roar of the first incoming train made her heart drop into her stomach. It was an easy decision to send the boy and Bianco back down the access tunnel; you protected the children and the wounded. Stark, however, stood her ground. She wasn't going to walk away, not this time, not after what had happened in Pennsylvania.
"You should be going with them," her partner told her brusquely.
She didn't even blink, just met his eyes with an even glance. "Not a chance in hell, John. I'm coming with you."
He eyed her for a moment. "I don't have time to argue with you," he decided, and turned and headed in the direction of the oncoming sound.
Stark followed dutifully after. "Talk to me, John. What are we doing here?"
"I don't know yet, but we gotta do something."
Up ahead is the sign, warning them to stay away from the third rail. She can see the train coming down the tunnel. Of all the ways Stark figured she might lose her life in the line of duty, being hit by a train was not one of them. Before she could ask again what he was thinking, her partner was gone. She thought perhaps he'd gone back for Bianco and the boy.
He'd gone back for Bianco's gun.
"John?" she asked, more than a little worried.
"Agent Scully said she thinks this is some sort of electro-chemical reaction," he replied by way of explanation. "I know where we can find a hell of a lot of electricity." He finally wrested the gun from Bianco, stopping only to submerse one end of it into one of the infected water puddles between them and the oncoming train. His hand on the weapon, he eyed her. "The moment I drop this thing, you get the hell out of the way, understand?"
She didn't bother that with a response. He knew she'd do as she was told, as long as he remembered that he'd better follow his own advice.
Stark just looked at her partner. She wasn't even looking at the train. Either they walked out of there together, or they went down together. Either outcome was fine with her, when she knew what - who - she was living for.
****
They didn't talk about it until they'd both been treated at the hospital.
Stark didn't really listen to the explanation; she had no idea what she'd ever had, but if it was gone, that was good enough. Her wrist was indeed sprained, though she doubted she would ever get an apology out of Bianco for that one. Nor was she interested in one. She wanted to be with her partner, and after she got the all clear to get changed and ready for her discharge, she went to do just that.
She knocked lightly on the door before she poked her head in. "Hey."
"Hey," he said from the hospital bed. "You look better."
"I am better," she told him, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. "How're you?"
"Still waiting to find out. And looking ridiculous," he replied as she pulled up a chair beside the bed. "How's the wrist?"
"Sprained, but at least it's not the dominant one." She sighed then, running a hand through her hair before she fixed him with a serious look. "John, we need to talk."
His brow furrowed as he eyed her. "What've we got to talk about?"
Stark let out a long, slow breath. "This. You. The whole 'leaving me when everything gets crazy' stuff. You did it in Pennsylvania and you tried to do it here." She held his gaze; the two of them rarely disagreed, and she could see the confusion in his eyes. "Look, I know you're trying to protect me and all, and I appreciate it, but...I'm your partner. When things go wrong, I should be there."
There was a long pause between the two of them. "I'm just tryin' to look out for you," he said after a moment. "I don't know what's going on out there. I don't want to risk losin' you over it."
"Then we'll face it together," she said quietly. "Cause you know what, John?"
"What?" he said, reaching for her uninjured hand.
She smiled then, interlocking her fingers with his own. She found it only took one sentence to tell him how she felt. "You might not believe it, but I've found someone worth risking everything for."