Title:  One Thought

Author: probe

email me with feedback(begging like a puppy)
PalmerDolph@yahoo.com

Classification: post invasion/ Angst 
this was a halloween challenge fic

Thank you! Thank you! to MaybeAmanda who was my beta(she's 
really smart) and also Franthe Wonderhorse who has to 
virtual hand hold with me through every new fan fiction 
experience

Disclaimer:  I'm just a fan with an over-active imagination. 
Please don't sue me!
 

 

(18 months earlier)

February 1999

El Rico Airbase 

West Virginia

 

I had wrapped the alien fetus in newspaper before stuffing it into
my backpack. The truth was that the thing scared the fuck out of
me.  I didn't want it defrosting on my watch, couldn't risk anyone, 
of any species, getting pissed off at me this late in the game.  

I slung my pack over my shoulder and bolted out of that place – the 
faceless rebels would be right behind me and we were all screwed – 
deal off and no survivors if they got the little frozen freak show 
before I did.  

 I had the company car's speedometer 50 miles over the limit
until I reached the hangar doors at El Rico.  If the cops had tried
to stop me, I fully INTENDED to mow them down with the
arsenal piled in the backseat.  But no problems –
maybe there was something in the air that smelled like the end of
the world.  No one gave a shit about my car speeding to the airbase
hangar.

Spender took the fetus as soon as I got there.
It looked like he hadn't bothered to let long lost Jeffrey in on the
big exodus from earth.  I shrugged it off.  That was his business. 


The hangar was damn cold and the looks I was getting from my fellow
space-bound passengers equally icy.  Diana made it a point to avoid
eye contact – to let me know she was avoiding eye contact.
staring me down, then turning away as if she didn't recognize
me.  I guess she wanted it obvious that she considered herself
far above the assignments we'd shared in Europe, especially those
parts where we'd fucked.  She was part of the elite inner circle 
now, 
one of the nameless, and she expected me to act accordingly. Bitch.  

Cassandra Spender got wheeled into the mess.  I guess we were all
ready to go -- me, and a bunch of people who would just as soon kill
me or let me die.  I have to admit it: eternity was already looking
a little tarnished before Mulder and Scully showed up.  

Skinner was behind them, his head shiny, sweat dripping down the 
sides 
of his face.  Mulder nodded at Diana and got the privilege of
a return nod.  Mulder was about to charge in my direction. I have
no idea what he might have said to me -- maybe he just wanted to hit
me one last time before his Close Encounters wet dream was
realized. God forbid I should hit him back and scratch that 
priceless 
alien-enhanced head of his.  

How the hell had they gotten him here? Maybe Diana deserved her
haughty stance near the old boys.  

Mulder didn't quite make it into my face though. A small hand had 
his 
arm, stopped him in his tracks.  

Scully wasn't staying.  

"This isn't right Mulder." Her voice was breathy and low and
absolutely certain.  

"It's the only way to survive," Mulder told her and he sounded
primed for a fight.  Before anyone could blink he had his gun out
and trained on his partner. "You're not going anywhere." 

All conversation stopped and Diana joined Mulder behind the barrel
of his gun.  "Agent Scully, what's the problem?" she said in her
newly awarded voice of authority.  See, this was why it took
someone like Diana, someone willing to do whatever it took to work
her way into this hangar, so damn long to get out of those vague
European assignments – she just can't objectively judge her own
success and failure. I think Diana expected to gun down Scully for
being a party pooper or some such shit.  Which was all wrong, of
course. 

"He won't shoot her," I said calmly. And that was the truth, even
if Scully and I were the only ones who believed it.

"Put down the gun, Mulder!" and Skinner had his out, too.  This was
getting interesting.

I know the bluebloods had to be wondering who the hell
had invited these three to their salvation.  Someone behind me 
actually gasped, and it was all I could do not to turn and stare. 
Give me a break!  Was anyone in this room innocent of spilling 
blood or letting it be spilled for them?  

"Mulder," Scully put her hand on the gun.  Scully looked unafraid. 
Her pale skin was nearly glowing in that gray-lit cavernous room. 
I remember realizing then that there was one innocent person – 
someone who wouldn't climb over a corpse just to save herself.  
Outside, a powerful wind rattled the entire building but the 
low tones of her voice were plain.  

"You go on," Scully said. "You need to see your sister and you 
need to see the truth." 

Watching her give up this escape I'd prized so highly for so 
long - I felt something. It affected me – that's all I can say. 

Diana looked relieved when Mulder lowered the gun and hung his 
head to put his gun back in its holster. He started crying.  
Of course. Pussy.    

I remember thinking – I give him a year, maybe two, without her. 

Then Skinner had her by the lapels.  

"Scully, you'll die. They're all going to die."  But even Skinner
knew he stood less chance than Mulder of swaying Scully's opinion. 

"I want to do what's right," she told him. 

Mulder dragged her into a bear hug.  He was sobbing out loud, by
then -- very pathetic.  Probably Skinner was crying too.  Little did
the bald bastard know that there was no chance in hell his name had
made the guest list for this cruise.  Looks like he could have used
some of Scully's heroism that night.  What a shame.

The hangar doors opened and light spilled into the room.  If Scully
was going to leave then it was time to go.  Mulder gripped her
hard.

I pried them apart. "Come with me," I said and I actually
pulled her from her trench coat because Mulder had it like a vise. 

Don't even ask me what I was thinking – I'd take it back if I
could. 

I nodded Mulder towards the light.  "There they are," I told him. 

Oh, he looked – of course he fucking looked.  I mean, here they
were -- the answers, the truth, the missing sister!  Hell, Scully 
would keep just a little longer.  

Mulder turned and I took Scully into my jacket,
dragged her out of the hangar and out of the light and into the 
darkness on the other side.  And this is the part that continues 
to fuck with me.  Why?  What the fuck did Scully do to me?

Because it WAS her. She fucking blinded me with her fucking 
Idealism Spell. 

I gave up certain survival with the cowards and traitors in that 
hangar.
That hangar was where I belonged!  

Maybe Mulder regrets that moment – turning to the light of the ship
and away from her -- just as I regret not doing the same.  But this 
is
how we wound up:  Me, with all the hell of catastrophe, plague and 
invasion, fighting beside this woman I believe in -- 
the ONLY thing I've ever believed in, but who hates 
my guts, and Mulder…  

Well, I have no idea where he ended up. 

 


Halloween 2000

Camp Four – Human territories 

Eastern Colorado


My mother made a batch of stick figure dolls out of twigs and
strips of cloth for the two of us to give away.  The first group of
children came by at dusk. The last group would probably pass before
the stars came out.  That was when the war and all its fireworks
would take over as the night's entertainment. 

We were all so desperate to act normal – Halloween, whatever it
meant before, was a human celebration, and taking part seemed
interwoven with survival and every act of defiance against the Grays.
 It meant that we were still here.  

The adults in camp scrounged for something to give away. For
costumes, the children turned their clothes inside out, wore them
backwards, switched with friends.  "Trick or Treat!" they whispered 
outside our little shack.  We were close enough to a warfront for 
silence to be mandatory until complete darkness. Whispering would be 
allowed this one evening.  

I let my mother give out the dolls.  The children cradled them in
their palms,  "Thank you," whispered solemnly in return.  It wasn't 
food but it was the best that mom and I had to give. 

The couple living in the tent beside us was giving out goldfish 
crackers. They'd let Mom have one.  Me, they didn't like very much.  

"Trick or Treat!"  

Mom held the twig dolls rolled in the hem of her shirt. I tried
not to notice how thin she was, how the bones of her spine were a
knotty rope beneath the fabric.  One little dark head poked around 
our cardboard door.  "Doctor?"  I tried not to know their names 
and never gave mine while we were in a camp, but I think I melted 
a little at the boy's almond eyes and his plump lower lip.  
0
"Yes?"

"It's me, Adam Treemont.  You set my arm two days ago?" He held up
the newspaper and glue cast I had made him.  He hadn't cried at all
and I bet it hurt like hell when I had to press my fingers into his
arm to feel for the break.  Tough kid.  

"I remember" As usual, my voice was far too flat for my mother and 
she shot me a pained look over her shoulder, One that said, Why 
can't you be nice to them?  
I ignored her.  

Adam dragged a tall girl into our shack.  They were both red cheeked 
and panting from the cold.  "This is my cousin.  She just came 
through."  

"Just came through" meant that before she could enter the camp, the 
girl had been cut and bled to prove she was human. It was usually a 
slice down one arm for the blood and one on the back of the neck for 
the chip, both cuts ideally made quickly and with a clean razor 
blade.  
But no such luck for Adam's cousin.  Herarm had two jagged wounds 
that 
looked like they were made by a saw and on the back of her neck was 
a 
crooked smile cut some 5 inches across.  

"Who did this to you?"  

It came out shrill and she looked back, afraid, and tried to pull 
her 
arm from my grasp.  The children at the door scattered.  

"Dana!" my mother gasped.  

"Look at this!"  I twisted the girl's ragged arm to show my mother
and the girl whimpered.  

"Sorry Doctor Lady!  Sorry!"  The girl was pleading and pulling her
arm from me.  Adam had his hands over my mine. "Doctor!  Please,
just forget it okay?  Okay?"  

I let her go.  "Sorry," just as flat as before but without the
answering criticizing look from Mom. Both she and the girl were
trembling I noticed.  When did I become such a bully, such a bitch? 
I used to believe in this.  I sighed.

"I'll get you something for that," I told her, and I went behind the
curtain where my mother and I slept, where I kept all my
instruments and medicines and the gun I hadn't used
since that night I shot the train carrying Cassandra and
the horrible fate of this world.  

"You're a lucky girl, I actually have clean bandages on hand."  We
boiled cloth in a tea made form onions to kill bacteria and help
prevent infection.  After the cloth was all gone as wrapping on
their heads and arms and legs and stuffed into tooth sockets and
padded over swollen eyes, my mother sometimes let camp children and
women dip their hands in the pot.   It made me sick to watch
children clamor for the pungent stuff like they had for candy or
soda in the days before the war with the Grays.  

If I wasn't treating patients I just kept to myself.  

"What's your name?" I asked Adam's cousin.  

She whispered Cindy or Linda or Sandra. I didn't ask her to repeat
it.  I squeezed the onion tea over her wounds and wrapped her arm
tight.  Once it was clean, the neck wound didn't look so bad.  "Why
don't the two of you go next door and see if they have any goldfish 
crackers left."  Ahh, that perked them up. 

"The man you came with gave us these," said Adam and he held out a
little matchbox car and what looked like a diamond engagement ring.

"Really?" I smirked.  The boy flicked his eyes at my half-smile
with interest. I guess he thought he was on to something that might
make me happy – pay me for my trouble. 

"He had a bunch of things – toys and rings and a harmonica."  

No, I couldn't really smile for Adam, although I appreciated the
attempt he made.  God, he really did remind me of-

- well, the eyes and the lower lip and the general dark haired 
lankiness reminded me of-

He just looked a lot like…him. 

"You better get going." 

My mother said something nice and showed them out.  I went back
behind the curtain and flopped onto the mattress we shared.  She
enjoyed the banter, the attempt at normality but I was just too
exhausted.  My stomach rumbled. I closed my eyes.  

So, Krycek was giving children trinkets from his little tent
guarding us?  Probably the things he found using a metal detector
the last camp had paid us with.  I had started to tell them to
forget it; we didn't need anything metal, we needed food.  But
Kycek never turns down a payment of any kind.  Fine. Let him lug it
through the apocalypse with him.  Whatever.   

Children whispered at the door again and I could hear my mother
scooping up the dolls but I stayed on the mattress with my eyes
shut.  So much for Halloween.  At least this year I wasn't in a
muddy trench waiting to be killed, listening to a recording of
Diana Fowley's voice telling me "The aliens mean us no
harm.  they want peace, just as we do"  The idiots poking their 
heads out in hope were killed immediately of course.  You'd be 
amazed how long a simple trick like that worked - people want to 
believe.

Maybe I dozed off because the trick or treaters were gone. The
cracks in the roof showed the sky glowing red and orange with 
explosions I pulled the curtain aside to find that my mother had
left the shack.  Great, just great.  

I opened the door. Krycek was huddled in conversation with some
other men. No sign of Mom.  I hung by the door and waited for
Krycek to finish.  This camp had wanted my services and I suppose
the men respected that my mother and I were with a man, but you just
can't be too careful.  Better not to draw attention to myself, not 
to  
get anyone started thinking of me as anything other than `The 
Doctor'. 

The men stayed their distance and Krycek strode back over to me.  
The 
cold didn't bother him as much as it bothered me. I rubbed my hands 
together and breathed into them for warmth. He hadn't even zipped 
his battered black leather jacket.

 "Where's my mother?"  I asked him.

 "She said she wanted to go for a walk since the silence
is lifted for the night."  The aliens had some kind of weaponry
that sought targets by the variance in naturally occurring sounds.  A
waterfall crashing against rocks or a thunderstorm might make a
nearby human voice imperceptible to a human ear, but the aliens
could zero in on what didn't belong, no matter how
loud the surrounding natural noise.  The weapons were specific and
deadly – the Grays wanted the planet mostly untouched and the
people eradicated.  

"Do they want you to fight?"  Sometimes this was part of
the deal.  Krycek would have to join with the other men in camp to
sabotage alien outpost machinery or shoot missiles.  

"No, they want you, actually."

I raised an eyebrow.  After over a year together I wasn't too 
worried 
about what that might mean.  "For what?" 

"Hey, it's some equipment they have.  I told them you
were a scientist and used to be FBI. He grinned at me.  The rat.  

"What the fuck did you do that for?"  There was no FBI any more,
 but there were plenty of people ready to blame them and the CIA 
and DOD for the shit we all lived in now.  Military was the only 
large organized presence still functioning in the world – rag tag, 
scattered, doomed to failure.  

 "Scully, just do it.  Okay?"  He leaned in on me. That had been 
bothering me lately - Krycek always hovering and leaning breathing 
into my hair, whispering in my ear.  

"Why should I?"  

 "Because – " the flash of his white teeth again "-I think
they found a message from Mulder."



 

Okay so I'd done more than kick up dirt in search of Halloween
treats.  I'd snooped around, wanted to see what was here.  That
was the great thing about the metal detector; it was maybe the
perfect alibi in this fucked up world we were all dying in. Someone 
comes by - hey you, what the hell are you doing over there? -  
I give him a handful of buttons or a broken army knife or a piece 
of jewelry and he lets me go on my way.  I mean I wasn't taking food 
and the thing just lit up instead of beeping, so it was all good.  
Scully just wasn't one for seeing the potential in things.  

I'd gotten us in this camp because it was close to a front and it
was poor, dirty and over-crowded. And the crime was supposed to
bad here - lots of murders, lately.  Lots of suspicion
that the camp had been infiltrated by shape-shifters, too, so lots 
of cutting and bleeding.  I was desperate because the good camps were
doing her no good.  Scully was losing her faith.  

We were losing.  Well, that was to be expected.  We were going
to lose, we were always going to lose, but it hadn't mattered all
that much.  I mean, I was doing what was right.  I was following
someone I could trust to lead me towards this…rightness…this…moral
ground that I had never stood on before.  Laugh all you want; I had
found atonement. 

And now the bitch was going to fuck the whole thing up!  She'd lost
whatever made her give up life at El Rico, whatever had dragged me 
like a damn apostle behind her. 

I guess I pictured her as the last human on earth – the Grays 
circling 
in on her like a pack of wolves, her saint-like death.  She made me 
believe and I wanted - no, I needed – that belief back.  I was going 
to die clean. 

Camp Four was going to be just the shit hole to perk up my 
floundering 
messiah.  The place had one hell of a stealth operation going on 
against the Grays.  They had stolen all kinds of shit – tanks, 
instruments that they couldn't work, and weapons. 

I'd used Scully's history on the X-Files to get us a pass to see the 
crap and hoped that she might at least know how to turn something 
on – 
impress the camp honchos a little.  She and Mulder must have seen at 
least some of the Gray's hardware in action.

They'd gotten their hands on some of the noise busters –
those things that can pick up a baby's cry in a hailstorm and blast
the thing from its mother's arms. They had even
identified an alien base that they could hear with the thing but –
you guessed it – the mother-fucking Grays don't make a peep. 
Occasionally they picked up really distant sounding human voices
but they were snatches of conversation – nothing.  I could listen
if I wanted.  Yeah. Sure. Why not? I thought I might look around
for stuff to steal while I did.  

The thing is like a VR suit with these clamp on armbands and silver
mittens, no thumb.  Then the helmet clamps on behind your ears.  
These 
giant smoked bulbs lower over where a gray would have eyes – "don't 
even bother looking in those – we can't adapt them to humans"  -- 
fine
by me, right?  We were in the same bunker the camp hid most of it's
food stores and I was trying to make out what they had in the
pilfered clone tanks – popcorn?  Rice?  Was there any chance I
could get in here alone? 

Then I heard the stuff they had been listening to – recorded
silence – like a blank tape or an empty record and then a muffled
word or two… "about"? or maybe "again"? And then more silence….then
the word "please" definitely "please" louder and some kind of
moaning or singing…

Okay so I'm thinking about how they'd blindfolded me on the way
down here but I'd counted the steps, the turns, hell they didn't
know who they were dealing with  -- I would need something to carry
the rice in if I stole it out of the tank….

And then I heard it 

– just a little more clear than the other crap – 

"To thee old cause!  Thou peerless passionate, good cause, 

thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea, Deathless
throughout ages, races, lands after a strange sad war…"  

Son of a bitch!  

It was Fox Mulder quoting from Leaves of Grass.  That poor, pathetic 
piece of shit.  If that was him, begging, moaning, "please" – and I 
could see it now – I had one guess what he was longing for, what he 
wanted.

"Gentlemen," I announced, and what a joke because we
were all filthy, hungry, and longing to kill, "I think I can help
you work this thing."  I yanked my hand from the listening
contraption, gestured at the stock piles of alien bounty. "Help you
work all this shit and even get you inside that base"

I had them. 

 "The doctor I'm with?"  Some of them nodded. "She used to be a 
scientist with the FBI, was trained with listening equipment, 
high tech stuff.  She was one of the ones who tried to stop the 
invasion."  

"No one tried to stop it," someone said from the dirty little crowd 
of men.  

"Some did – this doctor did.  She can help."  We needed to get a 
message to that base, let Mulder know that Scully was here.  

Then start making our demands.


 

"Electronic Voice Phenomenon," I whispered to Krycek once our hoods
were off and we stood in the bunker.  

"What the fuck is that?" he shot back.  One of Camp Four's finest
came forward and ended any chance of private conversation with
Krycek. 

"He says you might know how to work some of this."  I was ushered
to a long row of items they had removed from various raids on alien
outposts.

I didn't feel like explaining EVP to Krycek – one of the
less interesting cases the X-File division never solved.  "'Spirits
in the room caught on tape' is gist of it."  Alien invasion had made
me a believer in all Mulder's theories, even the ones where I once
thought it was perfectly clear I had proved him wrong. 

But Electronic Voice Phenomenon would mean Mulder was dead

I strolled the line of objects.  The big finale to this display was 
going to be the listening weapon.

I shook my head.  Whatever Krycek had planned here wasn't going to
work.  Mulder wasn't at that base; he couldn't be.  Not after all 
this 
time, not so close.  I lifted the silver wand and gave it to the man 
behind
me.  "This will kill the shape shifters – plunge it in the back of
their necks."  The gruff flannelled men circling me seemed
impressed.  "You must be very precise."  That advice hadn't worked
for me. I shrugged and silently wished them luck.  

 


  

I swore I was going to fucking kill that bitch.  Then she picked up
the shape shifter weapon and made the needle pop out.  Damn, that
was slick.  Totally won them over.  

Of course Scully won't work some kind of bullshit on the stuff she
doesn't recognize.  Would it kill her to just grab something and
pretend that it emits poison Gray killing gas or phones up the
rebel aliens, or helps you shit out the alien embryo?  But no, 
Scully's completely legit, doesn't lie, doesn't even stretch the 
truth. 
God damn, if she wasn't my ticket to the big El Rico airbase hangar 
of the afterlife I would seriously fucking kill her.  

So after the alien equipment dim sum party, we got rounded back to
the silver helmet of the listening weapon.  They snapped all the
shit on her. 

The smoked bulbs lowered down, only they lowered way down, like they 
were suddenly automated.  The guy fitting her up said so too.  "I 
think this thing is working better."  

Scully gasped and straightened up like she could really see 
something.  

"What did you do to it?"

All the Camp Four tough guys were jostling the technician.  "I don't
 know!  I don't think I did anything to it!"  

"Well you must have done something because you made it
work," I told him, but I didn't really think that was it.  

Scully had the chip. 

She kept this slice in her skin just below it and mostly no one 
checked to make another slice.  She was the doctor and they were 
busy making whatever deal with us - board and food for doctoring 
and maybe fighting, and she was already cut, so…

 "I see the base," she said. 

We all shut up.  

"Tanks." She was whispering like we were outside and it was 
daylight. 
"Grays….it's a big base"  Her voice is all screwy, hoarse and
cracking.  "There isn't much noise but I can hear some of the
people from El Rico…"

"What's she talking about?" someone grabbed me by my
prosthetic arm.

"I don't know," I said, yanked my arm free.  

Scully was crying, tears dripping down from under the silver 
mask and onto her jean jacket.  "I see Mulder,"  she said.

 "Who the fuck is Mulder?" someone grumbled behind me.

Scully sniffed, started to laugh… "and I think he sees
me."  

 


 

 

It wasn't the right word - he wasn't seeing me but, I think,
feeling me.  I remembered the balled light that I had somehow known 
was
him – his presence.  He seemed aware of me watching him in that
same way.  He had been waiting for me, eyes closed, kneeling in
darkness, waiting for me to see him.  When the helmet came off I was
still reeling from what I had experienced.  It had been like moving
around inside the base and not just watching it or listening in.  

"Does this mean they see us as well as hear us?" a man
said over my head but not to me.  Already someone else was pulling
the weapon from my hands and arms and putting it on.  

"Well you have the weapon trained on the base, don't
you?" I asked him.  All the men looked down at me.  "I don't think
that they see us until after they pinpoint our location by sound." 
I wiped at my tears with the palm of my hand, tried to be as matter
of fact about that as possible.  

"It isn't working again." The newly suited up man said.
 

"I think my partner influenced it somehow," I said but
I was suddenly very aware of the chip.  Mulder seemed like he was
waiting for me to find him using the helmet, but not like he was
powering it or controlling it.  

"Your partner?"  That voice sounded like he had found
new lynching material.  

"She was an FBI agent, I told you, her FBI partner was
kidnapped by the aliens," Krycek was going to try and spin this and
I needed to let him, trust him.  This was his talent after all and
my mother and I had lived by it for all these months since the
invasion.  

"The Grays don't kidnap, they kill," the lyncher talking again.  

"This FBI agent was special. His family let the government 
experiment 
on him – he can talk to them," Krycek was waiting between the 
information he gave them to see how they swallowed it. 

"Then he's a traitor," someone growled. 

"No, he isn't a traitor," I said.  "What my friend says
is true.  The Grays wanted to see how his brain worked.  They
wanted what to take away our successes at understanding them and
they have him there now – watching him, studying him."

Krycek looked at me with astonishment but thank God the
Camp Four men didn't notice.  They were actually considering all
that I had said.  So I lied a little?  Krycek lies all the time and
I don't get all wiggy over it.  

"Johanssen, Vaughn!" it came as a tinny, echoing page
in the concrete bunker.  "Get up here!  There's been another one!" 


There was a scramble to the north end of the room where
a metal door led to a dark stairway to the camp grounds.  It seemed
that Krycek and I weren't going to be blindfolded on the way out. 
"Another what?" I asked the sweating bearded man trudging the
stairs beside me.

"Jack the Ripper," he grunted.  

"What?"  

Krycek breathing in my ear again,  "They've been having
murders here – nasty ones."  

"This is a great place you picked, Krycek."  

He passed me on the stairs, watching me until a missile
flair lit all of us in gold and he found whatever he was looking
for in my face.  "I think it is," he said thoughtful.  God, I think
he was about to touch me, stroke his one living hand down my cheek.
But the shock on my face must have scared him off.  I got the
bright grin instead.  "Yeah, definitely a great place," he said
before loping away in his casual, shit eating way.  His good hand
was in a pocket and his face tilted upward toward the exploding
sky, he looked like it was the most pleasant evening he could
imagine to be out for a stroll.  I shook my head and started back
towards the shack.  

I hoped my mother was back because I really wanted to
apologize to her – what had gotten into me these months?  I felt my
old certainty again.  There was hope - I would die if I had to but
I would have hope.

In the shack my mother was pacing.  "Dana!"  she pulled
me close to her, pulled my face into her collarbone the way she had
when I was younger.  "Dana, something evil is in this camp.  We
need to leave here."

I pulled away, "What are you talking about?"  I wasn't
going to leave now. 

"A murderer – killing women – children" She was hoarse
but still shrill.  Her walk tonight.  Oh God. Jack the Ripper. 

"Mom, one of the camp leaders said something about
murders happening here.  You have to be careful."  I could leave
the theatrical tag that the bearded man on the stairs had offered
until daylight.

Her hands were like ice holding my cheeks. "I've felt
It, Dana, when we first came here and tonight on my walk… places the
temperature drops, the sadness…women were killed here." She let go
of my cheeks and covered her eyes. Her rosary was looped around her
wrist into a tight bracelet.  "I can feel these things, Dana.  I
try not to, just like you, but I can…" her voice broke and she was
crying.  "It's such a terrible gift God's given us." 

"Let's get you in bed, Mom."  She had been through so
much, crossing the country with me and a man I wouldn't let her
speak to.  I had acted so terrible tonight after she worked to
make the little dolls.  All she wanted was a little happiness, a
little normality.  I led her to the mattress and tucked our clothes
and coats over her.  We had one wool blanket and I folded it double
and put that on her to.  I doubted I would sleep tonight.  

"Dana?"  

"I'm right here Mom."  

"Alex isn't a bad man, is he?"  

I stiffened.  I hadn't told her, of course, about Krycek and his 
part in Melissa's death. I couldn't tell her that it made my stomach 
roll to think of her making conversation with Krycek, to think of 
the secret I was keeping from her.  

"It's better if you just let me talk to him. Stay away
from him, Mom, trust me. "Her eyes were closed and she was drifting 
off.  
She looked so old to me right then, the weight loss and the constant
exposure to weather and grief had left her face wrinkled and 
scarred.  

I brought my knees to my chin and watched her sleep, listened to
the sky crackle overhead, flexed my toes inside my boots to keep
them warm.  One thought, under my breast, beat time with my heart.
 
He's alive. He's alive.  He's alive.  He's alive…


****************************************

Early November 2000
Eastern Colorado 
Just outside Camp Four human territories
No Man's Land 
 
 
Here's one of the reasons I always work alone: incompetent assholes. 
Like this big guy, Vaughn, who was smoldering beside me.  There we
were, both face down in the dirt and waiting for the alien hover ship
to pull away.  You don't move, they don't see you.  Easy enough to
remember.  
But the big moron had to look back and motion for Scully to stay
still.  He even whispered, "Don't be afraid, just stay still."  When
they zapped him, that idiot Vaughn probably thought he was dying a
hero.
Don't be afraid?!  It took all my willpower not to crack a smile. For
Dana Scully, 'don't be afraid' was a joke. In all the swarms of
killer bees, exploding cities and baby aliens feasting on human
flesh, I still had not once seen Dana Scully afraid.  It was part of
what kept me at her side, what drew me to her in the first place. I'd
been scrambling to stay alive for so long. I guess I wanted a little
of what she had.    Scully never scrambled.  
The hover ship moved on.  Gotta love that blast of white light.  I
was rubbing spots out of my eyes after the ship took off. It was dark
and I couldn't see a fucking thing.  Please tell me we can go back to
the camp now. 
"Get up." Scully was at my side and yanking 
on my prosthetic. How many times 
do I have to tell the bitch not to do that?
"It's what I said," came the bass whisper of Johansson.  "Women don't
belong out on these hunts." 
Oh fucking great.  
I was on my feet and forcing my pupils wide until I could see again. 
 Johansson was a barrel-chested
Ex cop and he looked at me like I was a punk kid he would have liked
to arrest back when he had a badge and a jail. "Vaughn should have
been minding his own business."
 "Scully was an FBI agent before the invasion. She can handle
herself," I said, but that kind of logic was going
nowhere with old school Johansson.  
"And when she can't, I take care of her."  There was the beat of a
second where I wondered if I'd judged correctly and the macho
posturing would work on these country cops.  I just hoped like hell
that Scully wasn't about to crack up laughing or behind me. 
But it looked like I'd assessed the Camp Four honchos pretty well. 
Johansson and the others nodded with comprehension.  Scully was my
woman as far as they knew and Vaughn had overstepped his bounds to
try and protect her.  
I turned to face the laser eyed hatred from Scully.  It made her
angry to be confronted with any kind of dependence even when the two
of us were getting along, which we weren't at the moment. She
preferred to barely acknowledge that we were traveling together. Too
bad, Bitch; you wanted to come on this little alien base
raid.  
Oh, I knew what she was thinking.  She was going to find
Mulder,and then she was going to drag his poetry quoting
Sappy ass back with us to the murder and starvation paradise that was
Camp Four. 
The tension over the cause of Vaughn's death was pushed aside and we
all turned back to the distant blue glow of the alien base. I made
sure to wait for Scully and look more territorial. 
So now it was Johansson, me, Scully and the three remaining camp
honchos on the raid.  Too big a group in the first place if you ask
me, but hey, my covert operations training on two continents
wouldn't impress the band of small town cops and survivalists who
make the decisions at Camp Four. 
We trudged over the frozen mud and scrub grass. At least the wind
was at our backs.  
Scully stumbled at my side, scowling as usual.  I tried to drop
behind her, save her from some of the wind.  "Listen," I told her,
careful that the others wouldn't hear.  "We should just hang back
this time.  Let these guys think they're showing us the ropes." 
She pursed her lips at me like she had a lot to say and didn't trust
herself not to shout.  We let the others get ahead of us.
"Or maybe you should turn back, let me check things out," I repeated
for the hundredth time that day. "Let me get a feel for what Mulder
wants. " 
I wanted to see what I could deal.  Mulder might have
access to food and weapons,  or maybe he could get us on board with
the winning side.  Oh, I wasn't about to trade him any of that shit
for Scully. She was my talisman. 
I'd earned her, 
and I'd earned the redemption she was going to bring me.  
But I could
let him think I'd trade. The Mulder I'd known would believe anything.

Scully cocked an eyebrow at me. Even angry and dirty the woman was
all control and certainty. And, for the most part, she really did
take care of herself.  When the others were far enough in front,
she finally spoke,  "Do what you want, Krycek."  
"You said he saw you and you saw him."  Facts always got her
attention.  
She nodded at me and stumbled again.  I had to catch her a little
with my good arm and she pulled away so fast she nearly fell again. 
"Okay, so maybe he was looking for you," I said.  "But," and
here was the source of our disagreement "maybe it was the chip he
sensed." 
Her scowl intensified. 
"Or maybe it was just the fact that the listening device was working
that he sensed."  
She stopped to look me in the face and I nearly plowed into her. 
Johansson and the others glanced back at us
 with a few curious looks. 
 I would have bet my next meal that they thought 
Scully was begging me
to be careful or telling me she was afraid OR some such bullshit.  
"So what if it was," she said.  "I found him. We can help
him." She looked down and the wind whipped the ends of her
hair against my face. "Or he can help us."  
This time when I brought my arm around her, I didn't let her step
away or squirm free.  My face was close to hers.  "He isn't on your
side anymore, Scully," I whispered between gritted teeth. I
didn't want Johansson getting too far ahead of us so I released her
from my hold. 
"Mulder wouldn't turn on me," she said.
"He already has." 
Sharp hate from her eyes.
That look might have scared Mulder but it only made me want
to fight. "You haven't seen him for two years.  You haven't heard
from him for two years. You don't know what they've done to him or
who he is anymore."
Even in the darkening sky, I could see that her eyes 
were getting wet and it
made my stomach drop.  I'd seen her cry plenty of times.  In the
beginning when she couldn't save someone she was treating.  Or when
we were cold and hungry in the mud trenches the first year and Diana
Fowley's voice was reassuring us from loud speakers to trust the
aliens.  Or even the first time, in the first camp, when she saw
camp leaders, another band of terrified
men trying to keep order, carve the chip from a young
boy's neck and then execute him.  
She wasn't made of stone.  
I didn't want to make
her cry. Through all this hell I was not to
blame for one tear from Dana Scully. It seemed like a sin to me in a
way, to shake that coolness from her. I was fucking up.  
"Scully," I pleaded.  I could hear it in my voice and I just counted
my breaths until my stomach unknotted. Come on Scully,
please just don't cry.  
"What do you want me to do?"  I finally whispered.  I felt like shit
inside.  I never felt like this before I started trying to save my
soul. Redemption sucks ass. 
She turned away from me and we continued our miserable trek to the
alien base.  "We'll lose them if we don't hurry," she said.  

* * *

Krycek was worried about that listening device.  It hadn't worked 
on anybody but me in the three days since I'd worn it.  It was 
only a matter of time before someone suggested putting it back on 
me and realized why it worked. 
I think his enthusiasm for this raid 
was a way of distracting everyone from trying the device on me again.

Usually they removed the chip, then the host was killed and the 
body burned. 
Because even burning didn't destroy the chip, 
it was left out in an open area for the aliens to find.  Reclaim.

He knew why I wanted to come along. We'd fought about it the 
entire day. 
I'd been so certain when I'd worn the listening device that Mulder 
could see me, could hear me.  But I can't deny 
that Krycek's argument hadn't worn on me all day.  
What had Mulder been trying to tell me when I'd seen him at that 
base?  He had been kneeling in one spot with his eyes closed and 
not acknowledged my "presence" at all.  Was he telling me to stay 
away?  
I shook my head to clear all the doubts. He needed me. 
And I needed to 
find him.  This fight was so hard, sometimes too hard.  And I felt so
alone. 
 
The blue lights of the base shot into the sky in pillars and 
marked the perimeter of the underground base.  I'd been in one 
before, to place explosives in an attack.
An attack which was
ultimately crushed by the aliens, of course. 
 The alien bases were really 
very similar to what I remembered about the ship Mulder had 
pulled me from in the Antarctic: cold, dark, lots of metal 
winding corridors and vast open pits for maneuvering between the 
corridors. 
When Johansson came to the hover ship exit, 
he crouched low and crawled over to the
closest blue pillar.  These 
pillars marked rounded vent shafts leading down into the base.  

At the vent, Johansson kicked aside a trap door made of sticks 
and dried mud and steam wafted up parallel to the blue beam.  The 
aliens detected you in a second if you made contact with the blue 
light.  We were all breathing hard,afraid to even whisper 
as we waited our turn to slide in. 
The vent shaft was wet and muddy at the top and the blue 
light lined one side. We had to flatten to the far side of
the 
shaft as we slid down.  Krycek was behind me and then on top of 
me, shielding me from the light and sending me down faster into 
the base than the careful progress I'd been making.  Even with 
that prosthetic arm he was more agile than any of us making 
the descent. I thought about the 
training he'd had to make him so good at stealth work and the
terrible ways he'd used that training. 
I think he read it in my face 
because he was grinning at me like he always does when he 
realizes he's offended me.
Inside, the base was like the others I'd been in:
A freezing, 
barely lit, near empty maze of metal and dripping water. Johansson
motioned for us to follow him and we crept along in single file. 
Krycek was so close behind me that I could feel his breath on my
neck.  
We spiraled downward as we followed the 
corridor.  Finally, We came to a ladder leading about
ten feet up 
towards a door and Johansson started up it.  This must have been
where they were salvaging, 
actually stealing, all the junk they had taken.  
"Storeroom" whispered Krycek.  I didn't want to see 
in a storeroom full of alien appliances.  
"I'm going to," 
I nodded towards the corridor. I wanted to check things out. 
 Krycek's face went white with anger.  He gripped 
my arm and tried to force me up the ladder in front of him.  The 
others were already inside the metal door and it was creaking 
closed.
I'd gotten in plenty of these physical struggles with Krycek in 
our two years together.  He tried to force me to take 
shelter in 
 bombings or tried to pull me back into the 
trenches when I had leapt up to stop others from going to
the 
aliens, or even to keep me from the injured during bee attacks.  
So I knew it was a losing battle; he was stronger and a
better fighter than I was.  
I let myself be carried up the ladder and 
through the metal door and he tossed me on the floor like it had 
hardly cost him any effort.  
The room was just what I'd pictured: a big damp space, piled 
with things we humans either didn't know how or couldn't use. 
I rubbed at my arm while Krycek stood between me and the door 
with that same furious stance.  
"Don't worry," I grumbled.  "I won't make a run for it if that's 
what you're thinking."  
Underneath me the floor began to rattle like an earthquake.  
"Shit!" Johansson yelled.  "Take cover!"  The men dove
into the stacks, trying to hide.  I hate to
agree 
with Krycek about anything but they really were idiots.  
Kyrcek and I both dropped face down on the muddy, wet floor, and 
tried not to breathe. The juvenile aliens were just like the 
hover ships outside: don't move and you won't be seen.  They 
stepped on Krycek like he was garbage. It had to hurt but he 
didn't make a sound and let himself get tossed over on his back 
without blinking.  The safest thing would be to close your eyes 
but neither of us ever did.  
Behind me, Johansson and the others were screaming as they were 
ripped apart.  Rivulets of blood made their way to where I sprawled
on 
the floor and soon I was face down in gore.  
At least it was warm.
 
* * *
 
Fucking Hell my back hurt!  
How long can it take a pack of those things to finish off four guys? 
If I could have just pulled the damn prosthesis out from under my 
spine then my outlook on life would have been so much better.  
They'd left me face up looking at the ceiling and from where I was
left by the dripping alien brat-pack, I couldn't see Scully.  She was
behind me somewhere, closer to where those things were dining on Camp
Four's finest. 
She was worrying me some.  Finding Mulder had brought back a little
more of the old Scully than I would have liked. .  I'd forgotten how
rabidly devoted she could be to 
that sap ass Mulder.   I stared at the corrugated ceiling and 
thought, Please GOD don't let her sprint for the door 
trying to get to him.

The aliens were out the door before I could fully consider what 
clout a request from me would have with God.  

When I turned around I saw Scully was still on the floor, but
now 
covered in blood.  No, no, come on God . You can't do this to 
me, Dude.
"What are you looking at?" she snapped at me. She was having a 
hard time pushing herself up because of the blood and alien slime.
"I thought you were hurt," I said simply.  
What WAS that shit the alien's dripped?  
When I went to help her up, I tried to scrape some of it from her 
face. It was gooey and stuck to my hand.  
"I'm fine."  
"Good," I shot back.  I like this "fine" thing she does.  It 
would be such a pain in the ass if she needed me to baby her or 
even to really talk. I like how she always seems as contented as 
I am to just move on from whatever nearly kills her. 
She pulled off her denim jacket and then her sweater. 
Underneath was a tight 
black t shirt she didn't look half bad in. The sweater got
most 
of the gunk off her face but she had to be freezing.  
"You want my jacket?" I asked her.
"No, I'm fine." 
See what I mean?  
We both moved slowly from the room and down the ladder.  Neither 
of us looked once in the direction of the alien monster feast. 
Back in the corridor I pulled her into my leather jacket and 
and she didn't resist.  Her teeth had been
chattering and I'm not a bad guy.  Or at least I was trying not 
to be.  
We weren't headed back to the vent but I didn't hassle her.  The 
place was so empty I thought maybe it was alien naptime.  I wanted to
look 
around myself.
When we heard voices,
 I pushed us both to the slimy dripping wall.  
Human voices, it sounded like.  Maybe someone screaming or 
shouting?  Then, more voices.  From my past experiences I would 
have identified it as an interrogation of some sort.
"Can you tell what their saying?" I asked her.  
She had this 
strange look on her face. Her forehead making those worry 
creases I had learned to recognize as proof she was distressed.  
She didn't answer but shrugged out from my jacket and just kept 
moving down the bend of the corridor.
"Scully!" I whispered as harshly and loudly as I dared.  That 
pack of the juvenile aliens was 
still in my mind and probably not so far away.  She was 
around the next bend and out of my sight without even looking 
back.
"Fuck!"  
From behind me came the scuffle of the pack moving across
the grated metal floor. 
If she hadn't heard me then I would have bet 
she wouldn't have heard them either.  The floor was already shaking.
   
"Scully!"  I rounded the bend in front and plowed over her and onto
the 
floor. 
Even though my body was on top of hers, I could feel the 
trembling grates of the corridor floor. In moments they'd be 
nearly on top of us.  
Up ahead of us the talking and the shouting had stopped and I could
hear the heavy clank of a metal door being slammed.  Don't move
Scully, I thought.  Don't blink.  Don't breathe hard. 
Cold slime dripped onto the back of my neck. 
One 
of them was checking us out. It gingerly placed his claw on my 
back.  FuckFuckFuck. Scully had goose bumps on her flesh.  
Don't let your teeth chatter, Scully.  Don't shiver.  
There was a burst of steam from above and the monsters scattered 
and pressed back from us.  The metal door clanged open again and 
white bio suits came at us.  In back of us, the alien pack was 
riled up but the steady bursts of steam kept them away.  Arms 
pulled me off of Scully and hauled her up from the floor.  
I tried to grab her, but the heat from the steam was fucking 
killing me.  My eyes were tearing and I choked on the
shit.
It felt like getting maced. 
I reached out towards a flash of red hair and clutched the stuff 
like a lifeline.  The biosuits dragged us ahead through the clanking 
metal door.  I had finally shut my eyes against the chemical 
steam but my grip was still hard in Scully's hair.  The door shut 
behind us and both Scully and I gulped in clean air. 
 
 My hand was still tight in her hair when 
I puked.  

* * *

My eyes cleared before Krycek's eyes did.  I'd finally freed his 
hand from my hair but he held on to my arm like he expected them 
to wrench us apart. The two men in biosuits had deposited us 
near the door and shed their masks.  They had gone back to a 
vertical table where I assumed they had their interrogation 
subject strapped down. I could only see the raised back of
the 
table and the top of the man's head.  
"Then who are these two?" One man yelled as he gestured
towards 
Krycek and me.  "They're here to rescue you, aren't they? 
They're 
part of your force here on the ground?" 
"I'm alone," the tortured man strapped
to the 
table choked out.  
It couldn't be who I thought it was.  I moved 
forward to see but Krycek's hand held me in place.  
"I'm alone," the tortured man repeated. 
I didn't like the sound of 
defeat in his voice.  Something about his voice had reminded me 
of the past, of the person I used to be: capable, strong and
sure 
of the rules of the world around me.
Krycek wobbled a little and I thought he was going to vomit 
again. Instead he sniffed back his streaming nose and stood up 
straight and a sour smile twisted impossibly at his mouth.  He 
let me lead the two of us forward.  
"Stay back you two!" one of the interrogators yelled.  But I 
didn't need to come any closer. 
I could see the face of the man on the table. 
His eyes were blackened and he had lost weight but 
he was still every inch the imposing man he had been.
The biosuited interrogator slapped him hard across the face.  
"That's enough!"  it was out of my mouth before I could 
think. 
The man's head lolled to the side and he saw me.  "Scully?"
I thought he might cry.  I tried to move towards him 
but both Krycek and one of the biosuited men held me back.  
"Sir," I said and my voice cracked.  "Skinner. it's me.  I'm right 
here."  
"Scully," he said again but it wasn't a question.  It sounded 
like a prayer.    
The two interrogators looked at me then and I felt like I had 
offered up whatever information they had been trying to beat from 
Skinner.  
"So you are working with him," one accused.  
"No, we aren't," said Krycek.  "We came down here looking for 
food."
"Right," said the man and he smiled a tight oily smile that said, 
"You're lying."
I shook my head. 
"No one comes down a base for food.  You are food down here," he 
said. He had gray hair and eyes and a pinched look about him.  
The other biosuited man was heavy set and younger looking.  They 
both looked too soft and well fed to have spent much time in the 
world above ground. In back of them a set of glass doors opened 
and more biosuited men appeared.  I didn't recognize any of 
them. 
I don't think they could have pried Krycek's hand from my arm if 
they'd tried, but they didn't.   When the needle went in my arm I 
felt him latch the belt loop of my jeans to something on his 
jacket.  I don't know why he thought they wouldn't just detach us 
once we HAD passed out.  
I kept my eyes locked on Skinner's as long as I could,
tried to will him some of my determination.  Then I remembered, 
"Mulder?" I asked him, but he just stared back at me. 
"Scully, Scully " he said.  I'm not sure if he knew I was there or 
he thought he was dreaming me.  
Mulder's name did catch the ears of all the biosuited men. The 
one who'd shot me full of whatever was taking me under drew back 
in surprise.  
"What did she say?" 
"She asked for Mulder,"  marveled the man with the syringe.  
I was too fuzzyheaded to say anything else and they knew it.  
"Are you sure it was Mulder?"  
I never heard the answer:  I fell back into Krycek and we both 
slid to the ground. 
"I got you.  I got you," he whispered into my
hair.  
 
* * *
 
"God Damn!" 
My stomach heaved and my eyes felt like were on fire 
but that wasn't what I was yelling about.  
Diana Fowley's pointy toed shoe got me right in the 
balls.  
"I'm awake! I'm awake!"  
In her pressed white suit and expensive heels, she looked like
something from one of my "Bad Heaven" dreams. Like this one I have
where I make it through the 
pearly gates holding on to the edge of Dana Scully's shirttails 
but get booted out at the next ID checkpoint.  Wait, should Diana 
Fowley be running Gestapo operations in the after life?  And what 
the fuck was holding my ear?
"Okay! I'm awake!" I repeated. I tried to stand.  Bad idea.   
"Just," 
I slapped her polished nails off of their twisting fix on my ear, 
"Give me a second here."  
It looked like I'd been dumped in a 
padded psych cell: no windows, no furniture, nothing I might 
injure myself on or make into a weapon. The walls and floor were 
spongy mats like I'd once trained on for hand-to-hand combat.  
White of course. Someone had taken my clothes away and hosed me 
down. The prosthesis was still on but wet inside.
Very uncomfortable. 
 "Where's Scully?"  
Diana nudged a metal crate with my clothes inside towards me. 
They looked laundered, and the laces on my hiking boots had been 
replaced.  I tried not to gape at the miracle of clean clothes.  
"Get dressed," Diana said.  But I wasn't sure I could comply with 
that right away.  I was dizzy and nauseous. What the fuck had 
been in those syringes?
"Where's Scully?" Yelling was not helping my symptoms die down.  
I rubbed my hand over my face.  "Just answer, you fucking whore," 
I whispered. 
Diana's face turned red.  Ah hah, some color in all this 
antiseptic white.  "Listen,"  I thought, maybe I should play 
nice.  Maybe I should make sure they aren't just cleaning me up 
so they don't have to hold their noses when they kill me.  
"Diana"  I used a contrite inflection that I can do very well.  
"Come on, baby"
(Can't we just forget about that "fucking whore" comment?)
 "Scully and I aren't a part of whatever Skinner 
was getting beaten out of him." 
She crossed her arms and managed a look with a little less 
hostility.  Surely she wasn't just going to take my word for it?  
"We just came here with a bunch of idiots in a shanty town close 
by; we came to see what we could pinch." I shrugged.  Now
this 
she has to believe.  
I was trying to pull my thermal underwear on 
and my t shirt.  I thought if I could just get dressed and stand 
I might be able to kill her, find the way out of the padded cell 
and to where they had Scully 
"Hey, it wasn't personal.  I know you're probably fighting on a 
different side than those guys were and"  the boots, the jacket,
almost there " I got no problem with that.  I can respect that." 
Now I just 
had to stand
"Don't move, Alex."  
I was looking into the barrel of a 45.  Fucking great.  
"No problem," I slid back down. If I hadn't still been semi-
loaded on the tranquilizer I would have rushed her and been on my 
way.  But the world was still a little fuzzy.  For the life of me 
I couldn't come up with a Plan B.  
However, I could see Diana more clearly than at first. I have to 
say, alliance with the aliens did not seem to suit her.  I mean, 
compared to girls above ground she looked pretty good. There was 
the tailored suit and the washed and styled hair and,
could it be, perfume? 
I'm sure I smelled perfume.  
But her eyes were shadowed and nervous and her lips were tight on 
her face.  She'd aged the way that people under stress do.  It 
wasn't attractive on her.  And she must have known it because she 
didn't like me sizing her up.  
"Were going to let you go," she said.  
This couldn't be for real.  "You are," I stated back to her. 
 She didn't move or answer.  Was she afraid?  "Okay then," I 
opened my hands, palms up to her.  "We'll leave."
She shook her head and made a taut line of her lips.  She was 
afraid, I was certain.  But not of me, no way.  The Diana I knew 
would have coolly blown my head off. No, scratch that. 
She would have had it 
blown off by someone else.  Then, "Just you, Alex. Scully stays." 
 
"No deal."  I did stand up then and she backed up enough to keep 
the gun aimed at my chest.  I felt pretty stable.  I suppose 
killing her was worth a try.
"It isn't a deal, I'm telling you what to do."  She let the gun 
drop to her side.  What the fuck was going on here?  "If your 
thinking of trying something, killing me even, it won't work.  
Scully's with Mulder and you'll never get past him." 
I think the room was spinning. All that God Damn white made it  
impossible to know for sure.  That indention in the padding, had to
be the door right? "Let me out of here." 
"You should leave, Alex."
"Should?"  I turned to face her.  She really didn't look good.  
Her makeup was too heavy on the bags under her eyes.  "I thought 
you were giving me an order."
Diana shoved the gun towards me.  I stepped back in shock but 
then grabbed it away from her.  "What are you afraid of?  What's 
gone wrong here?"  
"It's Mulder," she said.  
Mulder?  Pansy ass Mulder, who I could throw to the ground with
one arm just as easily as with two? Mulder the cry baby, the 
poetry quoting love sick feebie.
I shook my head and smiled at Diana.  "You knew what he was,
the things done to him when he was a blob in a Petrie dish.  Don't
tell me it worked?"
"Of course it worked.  It was Spender's pet project. The best 
geneticists in the world engineered him."
I waved her away and started for the door again.  "I've heard it, 
Diana. I was assigned to boy genius myself once, remember?"  
"Mulder controls the juvenile aliens. He can talk to them."
"No shit?"  What, like they follow simple commands: sit, heel, 
shake, play dead?
"He's the only one the aliens will communicate with.  He 
negotiated our role helping them eradicate the population
in exchange for our lives and comforts."
"Wasn't all that in the bag already?"  
Oh man, the expression on her face was priceless after all the 
double crossing she'd done in her life.  I couldn't help my smile. 
Payback is a bitch, Diana.  Didn't anyone ever tell you that?  "So
they went back on the 
deal?"  
 

* * *

At first, all I could do was sleep.  
It had been two years since I'd been in a real bed with sheets 
and pillows. Clean sheets, clean pillows.  When I could keep my 
eyes open, all I could see were shadows.  I was in someone's 
darkened bedroom.  In someone's bed.  I didn't think beyond that
reality.  
Mulder was sitting beside me when I woke.  "Two days," he 
whispered.  
"That's how long I've been sleeping?"  It was, perhaps, the most 
ridiculous conversation we had ever begun.  After all that had 
happened in the world around us, the horrible fate of everything 
we knew.  I couldn't seem to say more than this.  
He looked older, more that the two years could account for, and 
he looked even more haunted than when we were on the worst
cases, even worse than the times he'd been teased with Samantha
and tormented with the 
tangles of conspiracy and Mulder family history.  
"Mulder?" 
He was chewing at his lower lip, his jaw working the way I'd seen 
it a million times before.  His eyes were filled with apology. 
"You're going to have to go back to the camp.  Krycek's waiting there
for you."  
I sat up.  I was still in the filthy jeans and black t-shirt that 
I had been caught in.  I brought a hand up to my face and brushed 
back some of my tangled hair. 
"I'd forgotten how beautiful you are, Scully." 
He had never spoken to me like this before the 
aliens.  I let my hand drop down to the bed again.  I felt 
foolish to care about my looks when people were starving and cold 
in the camp I had just come from.  
Mulder smiled at me and tapped between my breasts where my heart was
beating like mad.  "Here is where you're beautiful.  Inside," he
said.   
We both reached for each other at the same time and crushed the 
other into a hug. 
The tears came to me first for all the days that I had fought a 
losing battle above ground.  And then I was sobbing because I'd 
had to fight it alone.
"I'm sorry.  I'm so sorry," he kept saying.  My face was against 
his far too prominent collar bone and when I pulled 
back and held his face in my dirty hands, I was finally aware
that 
something was wrong.  
"Mulder, what is it?"  
"Scully, I'm what you've been fighting against these two years.  
The aliens don't know this planet or us.  They spent so 
long studying us and infiltrating our most powerful governing 
forces but they still couldn't determine the best way to wipe all 
of us out."  
I let my hands drop from his face and he clutched them in his 
own. He looked like he had when they had drugged his water and 
he'd been manic and raging.  
Mulder tipped his forehead against mine and closed his eyes 
but I was tense and afraid.  
"They put me in charge of the war here on the planet," he 
whispered.  
I drew back.  "I don't believe you," I told him. "Open your eyes, 
look into mine and tell me that it isn't true."  
He shook his head.
"Open your eyes Mulder.  I know you.  I know you would never 
agree to that."  
He did open his eyes, his beautiful eyes, and they were as hard 
and as cold as I had seen them interviewing suspects.  "You saw 
what they were doing to Skinner?"  
I nodded.  His grip on my hands was so strong that it hurt and I 
tried to pull away.  
"I gave that order.  I had him beaten. Skinner's been working 
with the Alien Rebels to end the takeover."  He let go of my 
hands.  "I gave the order to torture him until he revealed his 
contact with my people."  
"No, Mulder, I don't believe you."
He stood up. "I'm telling you the truth." he said. 
 
I looked at him. He was dressed in gray wool slacks and dark sweater
that 
looked like the expensive cashmere I had always loved in my 
previous life.  
Where I'd been sleeping the sheets were streaked with blood and 
dirt.  Had he given up everything we'd believed in for these 
creature comforts?  I thought that he must be congratulating 
himself for abandoning me at El Rico now that he could see the 
filth I had brought with me, that I was literally covered in.  I
thought 
he must be disgusted that I had ruined his pristine sheets.  When 
I looked at him he winced as if in pain.  
I remember him telling me in his apartment hallway that he didn't 
know if he wanted this fight if I wasn't by his side.  And now I 
didn't know if I wanted it either.  
Had he ever been the man I'd thought he was? 
Krycek told me every day that we were going to lose, 
that I was a fool for risking my neck to save people who were all
going to die.  
"You're not a fool, Scully. Don't give up."   
I started a little at the tone of his voice, flat and sure, more 
than his words.  I'd heard that sad and certain tone before. In 
Gibson Praise, I thought. 
"You can hear me?"  
He nodded sadly.  
"Is that why you were made the leader of the war here?"  
"They trust me," Mulder said simply.  "I was one of the first 
test subjects.  Samantha too, only she was a disappointment to 
them."  He had the cold look 
in his eyes again.  "The aliens consider me one of them."  
 I couldn't help myself.  I gasped. 
But your not, I was thinking.  You're not one of them.  I thought
then about his first words to me, that he was sending me back. 
He nodded and I could tell he 
was grinding his teeth. His old habit from a different life.
  
"Then, you'll kill me if we cross paths above ground?" I asked 
him.
He nodded again.  "And you should try to kill me.  We aren't on the
same side 
anymore, Scully."  
I didn't believe him, I couldn't.  No matter what he had done, or 
given up to survive, I could never believe that Fox Mulder
would 
be my enemy.    
 
* * *
 
Back at the camp, Skinner had his wits about him enough to sit by 
Margaret Scully's bedside, make that sleeping bag side, and hold 
her hand while she died.  
I'd had to drag him from the alien base for the first hundred yards. 
When the bastard finally came to he actually tried to punch me.  
"What are you doing, Krycek?" he'd snarled at me.  His eyes were 
both completely blood shot and his nose was broken. The human 
captors had ripped three of his fingernails out of his left hand. 
He looked the worst I'd ever seen him.
"I'm saving your ass, man."
"Take me back."  He spat onto the ground, blood and snot.  I 
laughed at him.  There was sleet coming down and the temperature 
was dropping.  Already I couldn't feel my toes.  
"You're fucking nuts, Skinner.  They were getting ready pull your 
Goddamn teeth to get you to talk."    
I was panting. Dragging Skinner hundred yards took a lot
more effort than carrying Scully twice that.  
"Mulder," Skinner said and spit more blood onto the frozen scrub 
grass. "Mulder shouldn't have let me go.  I need to go back."  
I wanted to shake him.  "Have you noticed that it's fucking 
freezing out here?"  I said.  "They're way better in this stuff 
that we are."  
"They'll know he's been working with the Rebels," Skinner choked 
out.  I have to admire the loyalty Mulder had inspired in his 
previous life.  Skinner would rather get tortured to death that 
have the aliens turn on Mulder.  
"He said he can lie to them now." My teeth started chattering.
 
"He's more than they counted on." 
Fuck, it was cold.  "Come ON, Skinner. "  He had dropped to one
knee. "Get up!"  
I didn't think I could drag him much 
farther. 
 "Scully." I said, yanking him up and pulling one arm over my
shoulders.  I said it 
just the way he had when he saw her, like it was something sacred,
like a prayer.  "If the aliens find out they can use her against him,
they will.  He's going to send her back 
and then we have to take her away from here,
away from him."

Because Mulder couldn't stop listening to her when she was so close. 
He'd been blocking 
her by reciting poetry, humming, counting to a thousand but it was
too big a temptation.  
"Eventually they'll look into my head again," Mulder had told
me,  "and they'll find her there.  And they'll use her."  
The poor bastard, after the things they did to him, El Rico 
didn't matter.  He'd never had a chance.  
"I'll always hear her." He'd said it like it was a threat and
I wasn't 
about to scoff at this new Mulder. 
 "It just won't be so strong. 
Everything she touches and hears and 
sees." 
He put his hands on hips and turned away.  Must have been
Torture  to have her so near, to be living inside her and 
have her completely unaware.  
She was sleeping in his bed in back of us.  He hadn't let anyone
near her so she was still as dirty and disheveled as I'd last 
seen her.  
But even filthy with tangled hair and ragged clothes, 
she was still Scully: honorable and decent and the one person I 
believed could grant me absolution.
"When she wakes up, I'll bring her back to you," Mulder told me.  
He looked like he was going to cry then. His face crumpled and 
his breath hitched. I guess some things never change.  
Skinner seemed to get better the closer we got to the camp.  He 
stopped spitting blood and he walked on his own more easily.  The 
guy had become the muscled Marine again since the invasion.  
 I had a hard time trying to recall the softer bodied 
assistant director he had been.  "How'd you hitch up with the 
rebels, anyway?"  I asked him.  
"That night at El Rico."  Up ahead we could see the camp gate and 
we both sped up a little now that we had our goal in sight.  "The 
rebels showed up after everyone had gone.  No faces," he said.  
"Right, no face on the rebels," I said.  Then, "So they left you 
behind."  
"Must have been my lucky night," he grumbled.  
I have no idea if he meant it as a joke or not.
We were trying to get warm by a smoking fire at the camp when 
word came about Margaret Scully.  She'd been acting really flaky 
since we'd come to this camp and in her last hours of 
consciousness she kept repeating, "the evil, the evil."  I 
thought that pretty much summed up all we had seen.  She also 
asked to be buried outside of the camp fence. I figured the evil 
could get her just as easily no matter where we dug her grave, 
but Skinner promised her that he would see to it.
I tried to stay away. Scully had warned me often enough that I 
was to keep my distance from her mother.  In two years I'd hardly 
spoken to the woman. Still, I regretted seeing her die.  It would 
hit Scully hard.  
I left Skinner in the dark, holding Margaret Scully's hand while 
she chanted about the evil and I went back to the fire. The smoke 
burned my eyes and lungs, but it gave the illusion of warmth. 
Camp Four was a shit hole. I would be glad to leave and take Scully 
somewhere Mulder couldn't feel the tears slide down her cheeks  
the rocks under her sleeping bag, or the scalpel slice just under 
her chip so we could sneak through camp checkpoints. Mulder 
sending her away would hit her hard too.  I frowned thinking 
about dragging her out of here. 
Through the campfire smoke I caught flashes of other dirty, 
hungry faces and they were all frowning at their own dejected 
thoughts.  
I'd put a lot of faith in the possibility of something waiting 
after this crappy existence we all had. Something for me, Scully,
Camp Four, and the rest of the fucking miserable human race. 
But at least I had faith now. 
I'd never had faith before.  
I looked up at the sky.  The damn explosions started again: 
our side, their side. It was hard to tell who was firing at who 
with the heavy sleet still in the air.  
I flipped up the collar of my leather jacket, nudged the prosthesis
back in place, and waited for Scully to come home.  


******************
 
 
Camp Four
Human territories 
Late November 2000
 
I gave Skinner the little amount of food I'd managed to hide from
Camp Four's gate guards – some beef jerky and a Ramen noodle package.
 Mulder had tried to give: flashlights, matches,
Candles and everything else he knew I needed and had been
living without, but I only took food and medicine for the
camp, nothing for myself.  I even refused the warm bath he'd
run for me. 
His bathroom was beautiful – something out of a hotel brochure,
with marble and gilt and fat, expensive looking towels.  All the
rooms belonging to him were unexpectedly luxurious considering the
otherwise antiseptic cold of the base. God, how I'd wanted to climb
in, close my eyes, and pretend I
still didn’t believe in the aliens
Instead, I'd shaken my head. "Mulder, this isn't you."  
"What choice do I have?"  He trailed his long fingers through the
water. "I don't belong out there with the human race. I'm not one of
them anymore."
"That isn't true."  
"It is, Scully. My fate was decided a long time ago."
I held his gaze, my lips pursed, my eyebrows raised.  It was the old
standoff -- he believed in something that I refused to
accept.  He nearly smiled at me.  He must have been thinking it too. 
 

He shook the water from his fingers…  
"Leave this place, Mulder." 
"This is where I belong." He strolled from the opulent bathroom,
maybe still hoping I would take advantage of it and assuage his
guilt.  
I slammed the bathroom door back open. "I'm ready to leave." 

His eyes were dark and his bottom lip jutted forward in
a pout that had once meant he might cry.
I wondered what it meant for this
Mulder, this Mulder who had abandoned humanity in exchange 
for every creature comfort.  

"Scully-" He reached for me but I stepped back from him, 
something I don't think I'd ever done before.  
"Mulder."  My voice was hard and sharp and his name was all I could
say.  If he could really see inside me then he knew all the things I
left silent.  
Still, I couldn't turn down things that I knew other's back at the 
Camp needed.

I made the return hike to Camp Four alone.  Mulder had the
Hover ships grounded, and the juveniles locked up
 so there was nothing to fear.  
The gate guards at Camp Four took the pack and
Everything I'd carried in my pockets: 
medicine, powdered milk, freeze-dried
vegetables and rice. 
I'd tucked the jerky and the Ramen noodles under
my shirt for my mother but I was too late to give them to her.  
Or to tell her good-bye.  
 
    *
 
Skinner stayed long enough to help bury my mother in the nearly
frozen ground outside the camp.  "Thank you, Sir," I told him.  
He was dirty and sweating in the freezing air, leaning on the shovel
for a moment of rest.  His eyes had filled then.  "Walter," he
corrected me. "I don't think I've been worthy of 'SIR' for a long
time." 
"BUT -" 
"I let you down at El Rico," he said, his voice gruff.  "I was a
coward, Scully, and everything I've done since has been a
kind of penance for that one decision."  
 
"I've survived to fight them." I said.  "And so have you."  
He nodded. 
He replaced the last of the dirt and tapped it tight again
with back of his shovel.  We both stood silent while the sky
darkened.  
 
"Mulder didn't give up, Scully, not completely," Skinner said.
"He's been doing what he can for the Rebels and for earth. I'd 
been ready to die when you and Krycek interrupted 
the interrogation. Keeping Mulder's role hidden from the aliens
is more important than my life."

Still, I wasn't ready to forgive Mulder's betrayal.  
"He could join with the Rebels the way you've done. 
He could fight them openly, give
the people left alive strength and hope to fight too."
I hated the way my voice shook. I was determined
not to cry. "He could fight beside me."

"Scully, I've seen him communicate with them.  He can do almost all
the same things they do. Maybe he's where he belongs." 
 "I don't want to hear this." 
Skinner wiped the sweat from his face with the edge of his t-shirt.

"What about the Rebels?  He could fight beside you." 
"No."  
He gathered his sweater and coat from the ground. 
"He couldn't."
I crossed my arms.  "Why not?"
I said, hoping to trigger
the part of him that had once been my boss.  
Skinner stood and grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me around,
one finger tapped hard onto the back of my neck, finding the spot I
kept cut as a decoy for the gate guards to check. The chip was safely 
beneath the cut. Skinner felt the tiny bump that he knew I couldn't 
live without.  

"Here, this chip that keeps you alive? This chip you have to hide
from the humans you fight beside? The aliens changed your DNA and
then marked you like this for a reason."  
I whirled to face him again, "Why?  What do they want with me?"
"Spare parts. They can't survive here anymore.  They've already
adapted to their other planets. When Earth becomes toxic to
them, they can harvest what they need."
It was too horrible to hear.  "That's enough."  
 "All of you who have the chip, Scully… "
"Stop it!"  I slapped him hard in the face before I could help
myself.  
He didn't even flinch.  "The Rebels want all of you killed or the
chip removed. Either way, Scully, you die."
I couldn't hide the tears then but I was too angry to really be
crying.  "Then I picked the right side to be on," I told him.  "I'm
not fighting for the aliens or the rebel aliens, I'm fighting for
Earth."  
Skinner stuffed the food I'd given him, some matches and a bottle of
water into the deep pockets of his navy pea coat.  It reminded me of
the coats issued to my father and brothers in the time before the
invasion.  
I'd dropped to my knees at the foot of my mother's grave
and tried to pray but there was so much to pray about and I wasn't
sure what to ask for.  
I knew it wouldn't be long before Krycek came
back outside to bring me back to the hut.  It would be
just the two of us now.  
"I'm going now, Scully."  Skinner put his hand on my shoulder and I
looked up at him. "One day, I'll come find you again," he
added.  But I wondered how likely that really was.  
He helped me stand.  "But if I die before then, I want you to know
something."
I braced myself for whatever he'd held back from all the awful things
he had already said.

Skinner pulled me to him and kissed me hard on the mouth.  
I was speechless.  He turned to go then. 
At some point twilight had
turned to dark night and the bombing had started.  
I watched his
progression into no mans land by the strobe flash of the alien
attack.  
 
 
*   *   *   *
 
 
"Can't a guy take a piss?"
The last two Camp Four honchos, Simmons and Waller bum rushed me
before I could get my fly opened.  
They held  my face flush to the cement perimeter wall.  Waller had
his hands in my jacket and under my shirt.  "You two want to tell me
what you're looking for?"  Food? Weapons?
"He's got a fake arm!"   
I could have over-powered them easily enough, fucking amateurs.
Still, killing these idiots wouldn't help our situation any.
 
We'd been getting a lot of squinty-eyed appraisal; I could
practically see the word "traitor" in those perusals. 
We'd started
having problems the minute Scully got back.  
She had that fucking
unbelievable tale of the former partner 
who had given her all the
supplies she could carry and then just let her go.  
Someone who still had good inside of him 
but had lost his way enough to be a big shot
with the alien side.  I'd been cleaned up.  Skinner talked about his
connections to the "good" aliens.  
It was all too suspicious.  Time to go.  

"He doesn't have anything," Simmons grudgingly admitted. Waller gave
me another shove as he took his hands from my jacket.
"No, I don't fucking have anything," I echoed. "I'm the same as any
other cold and starving bastard in this camp-" I turned back to the
perimeter wall "-except I have to take a leak."  
"And you got someone at the alien base," said Waller.  "And some of
our guys got killed there."  
Well, I couldn't really whip it out after that, could I? 
 I turned back to Waller.  "He isn't her partner anymore.  She told
you that."  
Inwardly I was wondering why the hell Scully had to tell them the
truth about how she got her pack of goodies.  "Vaughn and those
others would have come back too if they hadn't panicked when the
alien monsters attacked." 
"Yeah, funny how you and her made it out and not Vaughn and
Johansson.  Those guys used to be cops, ya know," Simmons cut in.   
It was like dealing with children.  "Scully was an FBI agent." 
Simmons sniffed. "What about you? CIA?  Secret Service? Or some kind
of secret soldier?"  He actually slapped Waller on the arm, he was so
pleased with his joke.  
If they only knew, I thought. "I told you, I'm just another poor
bastard trying to survive, same as you." 
Simmons was basically an idiot. Waller was the one I was worried
about.  He had his head down and was chewing over everything that I
said, watching me.  
"He let her go," said Waller. "No, wait, he actually helped her
first, didn't he?"  His voice made my body tense into all the things
that Simmons had jokingly called me. "Gave her all those things she
asked for first?"  
Simmons couldn't tell the difference but I could read the
understanding in Waller's cold eyes.  He took a few slow steps
backwards like he had a little more idea what I was capable of.  
"Hey, down there!"  Some kid was running towards us, yelling.  "Hey!"
 
Only Simmons turned towards the breathless little kid. "Go on
home.  It's almost dark.  You aren't allowed to play after dark." 
"Hey!  Please!"
"Go home kid!" yelled Simmons.
"Please!" Even from the corner of my eye, I could see the kid's shirt
was soaked in blood and he was hysterical.  "Not me, it's my cousin. 
She's hurt.  She's cut."  
Waller looked over his shoulder at me.  "Get Scully."  
I knew where to look for her.  I'd helped dig Margaret Scully's grave
and then left her alone with Skinner.  
After he'd told me about the Rebel aversion to the chip in her
neck[COMMA] I decided I could trust him.  The sad fuck had it bad for
her, still, and at first I'd worried that he would try taking her
away from me.  I wasn't giving up Scully or my sacred spot at her
side. She was my salvation, I'd killed for less. Maybe it was better
if I didn't think it through too much.  
HER chip saved me the hassle of having to kill him. 
Skinner had already left when I found her.  She looked shaken, and
shaken by more than her mother's death, but she jumped right back
into the business of being the camp doctor.
Scully knew the kid who had flagged Waller and Simmons and
me down.  "Adam, are you hurt?"  Scully checked the kid's pulse and
his pupils. "Get a blanket for him and some hot water to drink."
The kid shook his head. "No. Not me. My cousin.  Come on!"  

She must have been alive when he found her, but by the time we got
there, all Scully could do was pronounce the girl dead.  
Her neck had been sliced open and she'd suffocated on her own blood.  

Adam started to cry.  Poor kid. 
I wrapped Scully in my arms and lead her back to the hut.  She was
really exhausted and didn't fight me when I took off her boots and
wrapped her in a sleeping bag.  Mulder had sent her back with her
sweater and jean jacket cleaned but she must have refused anything
more.  She must have stuck to her principles.  I brushed the long
tangles of her hair from her face and she opened her eyes. 
"When you look at me like that," she whispered, her voice hoarse,
"what are you thinking?"  
"I don't know," I whispered back. "I really don't know."
 
 
*    *    *    *
 
 
I wasn't sure if he understood that his cousin was really gone, so I
wanted to be there when Adam woke up.  I wanted to know what he had
seen. 
Someone had wrapped the girl's body in a piece of burlap. She'd bled
out and the cloth had hardened into a cocoon.  It made a ripping
noise when I separated it from her stiff flesh. 
I was going to stay and catch the killer. I wanted to do that for this little boy. 
 He had trusted me with his cousin once and I still felt
responsibility for her.  

Krycek had told me that Mulder wanted me far away so he couldn't hear
Me, but I thought that was his own conscience he was listening
to. 
 Let him be tormented by the truth.  He should be by my side.  He
should be fighting.
By looking at the corpse, I knew that the killer enjoyed the 'Jack
the Ripper' tag he'd been given and was doing his best to live up to
it.  
The girl's torso had been slashed with a razor in a clumsy
attempt to disembowel her.
"Adam." I sat on the little cot beside him.  His eyes were red and
swollen.  I smoothed his dark hair back from his forehead.  "Can you
tell me about last night, when you found your cousin?"  
Adam nodded.  He was a serious boy with the expression I remembered
on Gibson Praise.  He had seen too much to ever again be completely a
child. 

He told me that his cousin had been afraid of the gate guards after
the way they had cut her arm to check for red blood and sliced the
back of her neck for the chip.  
Adams cousin had been on her way to
one of the camp wells for water. He thought she had probably taken a
lonely route to avoid the gates in the perimeter wall.  Adam had been
sent to hurry her along and he had found her in the last minutes of
her life.  
By the time Adam finished his story, Krycek was at the door motioning
for me. We walked side by side without talking. 
 Krycek's eyes darted to every dark spot
where someone could be waiting to ambush us.  
I frowned at him. "You know, Krycek, the serial killer picks women
who are alone, at night." 
"I'm not worried about the killer," he said.  Then, "Serial killer,
huh?"
"I think he took the girl's water bucket as a trophy.  I bet if we
check into the other victims we would find he took something from
them as well."
"But we're leaving," he reminded me, "so we won't be able to check
into the others.  Right?"
I didn't answer.
"Oh fucking come on, Scully!"  He stopped and turned me towards him. 
"Listen, everyone here is suspicious of us.  They think we handed the
others over to the aliens, That maybe we've been working with them
the whole time."  
I crossed my arms and looked up at him.  "I'm going to find this
killer FIRST."  
Krycek looked towards the sky in exasperation. "Fucking great."  

    *
I'd been to Waller's hut back when Krycek, my mother and I had first
come to Camp Four.  His wife was eight months pregnant and he had a
child with a bad case of eczema.  They both looked to be doing
alright.  The wife had diapers boiling over the small fire in front
of the house.  
"Doctor's here!  Doctor's here!"  A little group of children ran
ahead of us.  Waller came out and sent his wife inside.  
"What do you two want?"  
Krycek stepped up ahead of me with my theory about the missing
water-bucket and other trophies taken from victims.  
I knew he liked to do the talking because he liked to gage whether to
use lies or tell the truth – something he didn't trust me with.  
Waller nodded us to follow him into the hut he shared with his
family.  There was a small table in the front area and a sheet
blocking out what I assumed was a sleeping area.  This was how my
mother and I had arranged ours.  
Simmons sat at the table rubbing at his face.  "The one armed
assassin!" he said when he saw Krycek.  
"Shut up," Waller told him.  Simmons face went red and angry.  
Krycek and I exchanged looks.  There was a chair that Waller motioned
towards and I sad down. Krycek leaned back against the wall by the
doorway.  His black leather jacket and black sweater and jeans made
him nearly invisible in the dark hut.  He was tensed and watching and
he reminded me of a panther.  When he smiled at me I knew that he
could sense my aversion.  
We let Waller talk. "If this guy has these so called, trophies, then
they're in his hut or on him.  Should be easy enough to catch him."
"We can't just go around, hut to hut, and check for the stuff!"
Simmons barked.  
"Why the hell not?" Waller wanted to know.  
"I think that we should get a group together now." I told them.  "We
need to do it quickly, before the killer can get the trophies out of
the camp or discard them in a common area."  
"This is bullshit!" Simmons shoved at the table as he stood and a
neat stack of ceramic bowls crashed to the floor. Waller's wife
appeared from the hidden half of the hut to clean the mess. "What
about these two?" Simmons gestured towards Krycek and me. "What about
her boyfriend leading the aliens?  What about Vaughn and Johansson?"
"Vaughn, Johansson and the others are dead," Waller countered.  
A few men in the neighboring huts came to help conduct the search. 
We split up.  Two teams on opposite edges of the camp moving inward. 
The gate guards were told to seal the entrance.  The killer was
trapped.  
 
 
*   *   *   *
 
 
By the time my team reached the center of the camp, I had stolen so
much stuff that my jacket felt like it weighed as much as I did.  I
had shoved as much as I could into the lining of my sleeves and the
back.  
No sign of the tin water bucket. Waller was getting pissed off.  He
had promised the people in the camp that rummaging through all their
things would produce Jack the Ripper.  I could see that he meant to
have something to show for his efforts, even if he had to drag
forth an innocent man.  His role as the leader was at stake.  
There was a big commotion outside the little hut I was
digging through.  
I slipped a couple packages of licorice
someone had hidden inside of a pillowcase into my pocket and wandered
outside.  Our team, headed by Waller, had finally met up
with Simmons.  
All these low little fires going near the doorways of each hut were
starting to make my eyes sting.  Maybe there is something
primitive at work in us humans that makes us crave this initial
discovery, fire.  
I wanted to take Scully south.  The cold didn't bother me as much as
the constant presence of smoke. 
"I think your friends the aliens sent you back here to cause
trouble," Simmons boomed.  The fucking
asshole was dragging Scully by the arm from a little tarpaper and
stick hut like the one I had just left.  There was a crowd made of
the two teams and all the stragglers that we had collected.  
Scully and I had split up and I'd taken Waller who was the more
ambitious and I figured the more dangerous.  Looks like I'd made a
mistake.  
I was by Scully's side in a flash, my shoulder under Simmons arm.  I
could feel the pop as his collarbone snapped.  Another mistake.  
Waller and the others pulled me off him and pinned me to the ground. 
 
Simmons looked rabid. "They've been lying to us! They're with the
aliens! They're traitors!"  
The smoke was right in my face. "What the fuck is going on?" I
yelled.
Scully's voice, "Simmons won't let us check his hut."  
"Everyone gets their hut checked out," barked Waller.  
"We didn't look at yours," Simmons said.  
He was panting from the pain. 
Considering there was no way to set his collarbone back in
place I probably knocked him out of the competition for Camp Leader.
Too bad for me, Waller was too slow to realize it.  
"What are you hiding Simmons?" I yelled into the gray
sky, into the faces of the stinking men who held me, and the sting of
the fire smoke. "If you aren't Jack the Ripper, then let us in
your hut."
A lot of confusion and yelling, someone holding me loosened his grip
and I kicked free. I couldn't see Scully anywhere. 
Waller was facing down the crooked, gasping Simmons.  
"Were going in," Waller told him.  
Saying it made him in charge even though some men
from the team had already shoved their way to the hut.  We could all
hear them ripping the place apart.  Scully stood by Waller with her
arms folded over her chest.  I moved slowly to her
side, planning to pull her away from here.  
We needed to get the fuck out of Camp Four.  
The men came out of the hut shaking their heads.
 
"Nothing!" sneered Simmons.  He held his one limp arm bent like it
was in a sling.  "I got nothing to hide," he bellowed to the
crowd.  
"Okay then. Calm down," Waller told him.  It was obvious to
everyone that Waller was disappointed Simmons wasn't the killer.  
"How about you, Waller?  That leaves your place."  
Simmons wasn't going to let Waller offer up his place to search.
"That means you're Jack the Ripper!" he said.  
There were some gasps and a circle opened up around where Waller
stood.  "Go check my place. I'm, I'm not the killer," Waller
stuttered.
I had Scully's arm.  She turned toward me.  "Lets get out of here."
"No." She broke out of my grasp and stepped in the open circle
with Waller. "We'll check his hut." 
"This girl has friends at that alien base," he told the jittery
crowd.  "She probably has a chip too."  
I lunged for Simmons but he was expecting me this time and he dodged
out of the way. I was tackled and my face went into the dirt.  
"Let go of me!" It was Scully.  
"Don't touch her!" I shouted.  
Someone ground my face into the dirt.  "Shut up you," he said.
"Don't anyone touch her!" 
The crowd was jostling, angry. The cold, the smoke, the war was
making us all insane and savage.  
"Why should we check his hut?" Simmons yelled.  "We know he's the
killer.  He's the only one left!"
I could hear Scully scream, men and women shout, a baby cried.  The
people holding me down let go.  
I'd have jumped up but the hover ships were above us.  Their while
light poured down suddenly like the voice of God.  
Scully.  It was the only thing I could think.  Scully. 
Even as the men who had held me down turned to ash, even as
the smoke of smoldering human flesh stung my eyes, I knew she was
alive.  
The alien attack, the hover ships…this was Mulder's work.  It
had to be. 
 
 
*   *   *   *
 
 
Simmons, his hand around my throat, had knocked me to my knees. The
crowd was beating Waller to death, ripping at his hair and gouging
his eyes.  Simmons was stronger than I would have thought.  He smiled
while he strangled me.  Killing must be something he enjoyed.  
He released me and I tasted blood in my mouth.  The shoulder that
Krycek had knocked hung at an unnatural angle.  It looked like a
broken collarbone.  "Stop," I gasped.  "Stop them.  They're killing
Waller!"  
Simmons rooted in his jean pocket for something, his face was
different.  He had the serene quality that I had seen on the
criminally insane. 
The flash of something silver in his hand.  He'd
found what he was looking for. A straight razor.  
"You," I choked.  
"Me," he agreed with a smile and held the razor in the air above my
head.  When the light of the hover ship hit it, the glare was
like looking into the sun.  
Simmons was gone in that same instant.  The ash from his body flew
into my mouth and my eyes.  The straight razor, blackened and
twisted, dropped onto the sizzling meat that was left.  
I closed my eyes.  
When I opened them,  Camp Four was destroyed.  Mulder had
killed everyone and burned down every hut.  The perimeter wall had
been blasted to rubble. Krycek pulled me over it, the boulder-like
hunks of cement and scrap iron.  My mother's grave was obliterated
beneath.  
The hover ships had gone and the air was cold, the sky growing dark.
I'd insisted on walking through the camp before we left, 
looking for survivors.    
There was nothing to find.  
The pile of greasy ash in Adam Treemont's bed made me cry.  
Mulder had saved my life but at the cost of people I was fighting
for. 
Maybe not everyone deserved saving: monsters like Simmons or brutes
like Waller and the gate guards.  But life, human life, was
still precious to me.  My mother and Skinner and Adam, they all were
worth fighting for.  
Even Krycek was worth fighting for.  
He dried my tears on his shirt, fed me stolen licorice and carried me
with one arm when I thought I couldn't go on.  
We walked for three days.  
Somewhere far in the distance were the Rocky Mountains, 
in the alien territories. There were no bombs in our
zone.  
There was no one to send them back from the human front.  
On the third day,  Krycek dropped  to his knees.  
"Need to rest, Scully," he said, his forehead on my shoulder. 
"It's pretty cold."  
I put my arms around him.  When the last of the sun was gone we were
probably going to freeze to death.  
Krycek had wanted to go back to the alien base.  We had no shelter or
water. Our blankets and sleeping bags had burned.  
I refused.  
'Stay away from me Mulder,' I repeated again and again in my
thoughts.  'You're a monster. I don't want your help.'  
I remembered Adam looking at me with trusting hazel eyes.  
Diana Fowley's voice promising sanctuary but delivering death. 
Mulder pulling his gun on me at El Rico.  
'I'd rather be dead,' I sent out to him.  
Krycek fell to the side and lay in the snow.  
His eyes blinked at the sky.  
"North," he coughed to me.  "Camp Three is north."  
"Get up, Alex."  
"I don't think I can."  He put his arms around me and we huddled
together.  "After I'm dead -" he started.
"I won't let you die," I told him, but he laughed at me. 
 His chest rattled when he sucked in air. 
"Listen to me, Scully, this is important.  
After I'm dead," he began again.  He was struggling for every breath.
"After I am dead, you can have my leather jacket."  
I smiled against his chest.  
"Did you hear me?" he asked. He lifted his head up a little and then
let it plop back into the snow.
"Alex," I told him.  "You've been at my side this whole time.  Since
El Rico."  
I put my face over his so I could look into his eyes, so I could be
certain he heard me.  
"I used to think you were my enemy.  That you
were the personification of deceit and treachery."  
His face was that look he gave me that I never understood. 
"You don't think that anymore?" he wheezed.
"No." I whispered.  "For whatever it's worth, Alex Krycek, 
you've redeemed yourself in my eyes."  
He closed his eyes and nodded and I lay on top of him.  We were
dying.  
'Don't come for me Mulder,' I chanted inside my head. 
'I won't go to your side.  I don't want your help.'  
The snow fell, blew over us.   
We would be covered soon, then buried.
'I'd rather be dead,' I thought to Mulder.  
'I'd rather be dead.'
 
 
*   *   *   *
 
 
The Rebels have those same underground bases as the aliens we're at
war with.  
The good news being that the place is absolutely smoke free.  
The bad news is that day or night, it's freeze your balls off
cold.  
Skinner says I'll get used to it.  
Another important difference is that the Rebels have the decency not
to feed their babies human popsicles.  This produces a much more
docile monster.  They don't try to eat us when they've been raised on
the food from their own planet.  
Still, Mulder's the only one of us humans at the base who seems
completely comfortable with the things in the room.  
I haven't talked to him that much.  Skinner says Mulder used his
alien healing voodoo on me and now I owe him my life.  
I say that if I don't remember it then it didn't happen.  
I'm heading south first chance I get.  
Mulder came over to the Rebels on a trade:  
They let him keep Scully and he kills every 
living thing in his alien home base.  
It makes me laugh.  
They should have asked for more. 
Skinner warned me that the "killing every living thing" half of the
deal is not to be told to Scully.  I told him she'd figure it out and
that I don't lie anymore.  
"Fuck you, Krycek," he'd growled.  
I just shrugged.  I don't need him to believe me. 
I guess Mulder told her some version of what he'd done that she approved of because I saw
them smiling at each other in one of her brief moments awake. 
Mulder knew Scully and I were dying that last night in the snow.  
While I was carrying her across the plain, Scully was telling him he could go 
fuck himself if he thought she would let a traitor save her life. 
This is in my own words of course.
Whatever she did, she managed to show him that there was a way out of
the hole he'd crawled into at El Rico if he wanted it bad enough. 
And of course he wanted it more than he'd ever wanted his answers, his
truth.
It was the oldest trick in the How to Play Mulder book; 
put Scully's life in peril and have him eating out of your hand. 
I'd have done it myself in my old life.  
I'm a reformed man now.  
Scully is asleep in Mulder's room. 
She's been pretty much out of it
for the last couple days since we were rescued.  
Mulder doesn't leave her side except when the Rebels need him for something.  I'd like to
be here when she is up and feeling better, but I don't think she
needs me anymore.  

And she already gave me what I needed from her.  
Thirteen hours from now, a Rebel transport leaves for what used 
to be the Gulf of Mexico.  
I'm going to start a life there, help the human colonies there rebuilding agriculture. Maybe. 
Do something worth something.   
I knock on Mulder's door. When he doesn't answer I stick my head
in anyway.  
They're both asleep. Mulder's arms circle Scully's waist. Her head is tucked beneath his chin.
I probably won't get the chance to tell them goodbye.
Scully's hair is brushed and clean. 
Her clothes are new.
Mulder healed the frostbite burns and her skin is smooth and white again. 
She looks just the way she did that night at El Rico,
only happy.