Pain Is Real

Yes, we are going to suffer, now; the sky
Throbs like a feverish forehead; pain is real;
The groping searchlights suddenly reveal
The little natures that will make us cry,

Who never quite believed they could exist,
Not where we were. They take us by surprise
Like ugly long-forgotten memories,
And like a conscience all the guns resist.

Behind each sociable home-loving eye
The private massacres are taking place;
All Women, Jews, the Rich, the Human Race.

The mountains cannot judge us when we lie:
We dwell upon the earth; the earth obeys
The intelligent and evil till they die.

--W. H. Auden, "In Time of War," XIV (1938)

Part One
Location Unknown
Friday-Saturday

Krycek:

The only things I was sure of when I woke were that it was dark and I hurt. But hurting was good. Hurting meant that I wasn't dead yet. At least I thought so. My arm still hurt, sometimes.

It was night. What light there was came in through a barred window high up on one wall. I was in a fairly average cell: mattress on the ground, faucet and hole against one wall. Concrete walls, concrete floor, solid metal door. And me. No jacket, no shoes, but I still had my arm. No weapons, although I could unstrap my arm and use it as a club. Not promising.

I was cold and hungry. Worse, I had no idea where I was.

It had started out well enough. The helicopters landed, the armed men jumped out and surrounded us. I knew some of them, of course. I certainly knew their chief, John Davies, although that hadn't stopped him from driving the butt of his rifle into my gut. So much for old drinking buddies. I was vaguely aware of Mulder moving in front to shield me and being shoved away. I managed to stop gasping and say something like "Nice to see you too, Davies." Two of his men were holding me upright. Davies is a coward, I thought to myself, a coward and a psychopath. I was using that thought to push aside the pain while he hit me.

Then he stopped, and I looked up to see what had distracted him. They'd entered into the lab and were dragging someone out. And it was Leilah. Not Jacob, but Leilah. I had a good idea of what she had done. She had persuaded Jacob to go in her place, arguing that he had a better chance of making it. But that he had let her do it... When I saw him, we were going to have to talk about this.

That was when I really started to fight back.

It didn't work. I ended up on the ground while Davies played at kicking me to death. I was slipping in and out of consciousness. I remembered being tossed into one of the helicopters and that Mulder and Leilah were there. The last thing I remember of the helicopter ride was hearing the facility exploding behind us. It was good to know Jacob hadn't lost his touch with explosives. After that everything was dark until we were transferred to a plane. I started to struggle again each time I woke up; I think I killed a man on the airplane before they knocked me out again.

Now I lay still on the mattress, trying to translate the places I hurt into a catalogue of injuries. Mostly bruising, I thought, and some cracked ribs. My hand was more serious: the wrist was sprained. Worst of all was my right knee. I wasn't sure if I could walk or even stand. It was badly bruised, but not broken. I hoped.

I tried to lie still and sleep, but the pain kept me awake. I watched the sky through the window as it got steadily lighter. At one point a car passed quite close, and I heard voices. After that I must finally have dozed off. A commotion outside my window and steps in the hall shook me awake.

The door opened. Davies and five other men entered, all armed. I must have done more damage than I remembered if they still thought I was dangerous. "Get moving," he snapped.

I managed to stretch my face into a grin. "Sorry, John," I said, "I don't think I can do that." He gave an order in German and two of his men came in to pull me upright. They cuffed my hand to the prosthetic, then pushed and pulled me out of the building. From the outside it looked like a stable; we were heading across a courtyard to the main house, a solid old building. The air was even colder out here than in my cell; I could feel the frost as my feet were dragged over the paving stones. I guessed that I was in Central Europe.

Inside, it was blessedly warm. I could hear Mulder's voice, arguing with someone. "Save the world?" he was saying as I was shoved through the door. His voice was rich with disbelief. "You mean, turn it into a graveyard." He and the man he was speaking with both turned to look at me as I stumbled and leaned my weight onto the back of a chair to stay upright. I could tell from their faces how bad I looked. The only difference was that Mulder looked distressed while Strughold looked pleased.

Well, Strughold and Spender were the two main candidates for the role of our captor. I would have preferred Spender, even though he kept trying to have me killed. If Strughold had decided to get involved, it suggested that we were in a lot of trouble.

"Put the Russian in the corner," Strughold said to Davies, who happily manhandled me across the room and onto a stool. Davies settled in next to me, his chest puffed out; his gun was pressing into the back of my neck. I have no idea what kind of action he thought I was capable of, given the state I was in. "You may go," Strughold continued. "I'm sure Alex here knows very well that any misbehavior on his part could damage his charming companion." Davies hesitated, then walked back across the room, closing the door slowly behind him. At least I now knew that Leilah was alive, unless he was talking about Mulder. An idea was beginning to form in the back of my head.

"You know, Mr. Mulder," Strughold was saying, "I am extremely surprised to find you in Alex's company. After all, he is something of a criminal. An assassin. Isn't it true that he is the man who killed your father, who arranged the unfortunate abduction of your partner?" I was oddly happy to see that Mulder didn't look too bad. He had a split lip and a bruise on his left cheek, but seemed otherwise unharmed. "Isn't that the case?"

Mulder remained silent. I forced myself to maintain eye contact with him. "Of course it's true," I answered for him, trying to keep the pain out of my voice. "You don't think Mulder was with me of his own free will?"

Strughold ignored me and continued to speak to Mulder. "Did he tell you he was working against us?" he asked sympathetically. "Surely you know better than to trust anything that comes out of that mouth. Don't you wonder how we found you so quickly?"

I was wondering, even if Mulder wasn't. He wasn't paying any attention to Strughold, though. "Did you, Krycek? Did you kill my father?"

This was not a conversation I had ever intended to have with Mulder. But Strughold would ensure that I told the truth. I swallowed. "Yes," I answered.

"Why?" he asked hoarsely.

"It was a job. Spender gave the order, and I did it." No point mentioning how much I loathed taking orders from the Smoker, especially not in Strughold's presence.

"And Scully?" Now he was really starting to get worked up. I could see him trying to control his breathing. He was looming over me, his hands clenched into fists.

This was rapidly getting out of hand. "I was not responsible for those decisions," I said carefully. It was technically true, although it had been my suggestion that Mulder and Scully be separated. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

"Not responsible?" Mulder parroted back at me. "What kind of an answer is that? Are you admitting that you arranged her abduction? Did you kill Melissa Scully, too? Or did you just happen to be there?" I just stared at him. Was he expecting me to make excuses? "Don't you have anything to say for yourself?"

I did my best to sound reasonable. "What is there to say?"

That pushed him over the edge. "God damn it, Krycek!" he snarled at me. "You betrayed me again!" It would have been funny except for his expression, a mixture of horror and fury.

I needed to reassure him. "Mulder, listen," I said urgently, "I swear I didn't--" I was cut off by his fist.

"You lying sack of shit!" he shouted at me. If this was acting, it was pretty damn convincing.

Strughold stood beside him, the two of them looking down at me. I raised my head, licking the blood from my lips and staring defiantly back.

"I expect he told you that the vaccine would help the Resistance," Strughold said, as if considering some abstract problem. "Perfectly untrue, of course. The lack of an effective vaccine is all that is holding back Colonization. Did you find one, Alex?"

I took a deep breath and spat at him. Maybe the blood would stain that pretty suit he was wearing.

"What do you mean?" Mulder asked. I was hoping for an explanation as well. The Brit had never told me anything about this.

"Alex had two tasks, first to find the vaccine and then to bring it and you to me," he began.

"That's a lie, Mulder," I objected. "I wasn't even in contact with Strughold!"

"Weren't you?" Mulder asked me. "How did they find us then?"

"I don't know! I don't know anything about this!" Mulder's behavior was beginning to worry me. I had told him to betray me if offered the chance, but I didn't think he would do it. And I had meant him to pretend to betray me, not to go over to them for real.

Strughold continued, "Alex is a useful tool, Agent Mulder, as you will realize if you stay with us. But he really can't be left to his own devices for very long. He needs to be reminded of his place in the greater scheme of things." I hate the way these old men talk about people as if they aren't real.

Mulder had turned his attention back to Strughold. "What makes you think I would ever join you?" he asked.

Strughold bared his teeth in what he must have thought was a smile. "You may not have a choice, Mr. Mulder. Once I have explained the situation to you, you will undoubtedly accept that my way is the only alternative. My greatest victory was to persuade the aliens to work with us, not against us. I'm sure I can do the same with you."

"I wouldn't be so sure." Only Mulder can manage to sound both bored and confident at the same time. I was trying to sort through what Strughold had said about the vaccine. The Brit had assured me that the vaccine could stop Colonization and that working with Mulder and Scully would enable us to distribute it. He'd been pretty persuasive. Now Strughold was telling me that the vaccine was necessary for Colonization. How? Was it like the hybridization program, a way of ensuring that the conspirators themselves survived? Or was Strughold lying to us?

"Make no mistake," he was saying to Mulder, "the fate of the world lies in the balance. Our only chance is to cooperate with Them."

It was time to jump back in. "Cooperation didn't save the US division," I pointed out. "You're fighting a losing battle, Strughold."

This time, he slapped me. "Silence!" Damned Nazi, I thought to myself. "You only live as long as you are useful, remember that." He went over to the door, opening it to allow Davies and his goons back in.

"Listen, Mulder," I hissed, "whatever he tells you, I didn't know about this!" He just looked at me, expressionless, as they dragged me out.

Mulder:

In some other universe, this would be a nice place to come for a vacation. It was a beautiful old country house, high up in the Austrian Alps. I could imagine skiing in the winter and hiking in the summer.

In this universe it was my prison. Our arrival late last night had been chaotic. Leilah and I were stood in the front hall of the house for nearly an hour after we got there; they had just dropped Krycek, still unconscious, in a corner. The man in charge--Krycek had called him Davies--refused to answer any of my questions. "Wait for Mr. Strughold," was all he would say. Then Mr. Strughold phoned and the action resumed.

They picked Krycek up and took him back outside, and Leilah and I were herded up the stairs. I ended up in a bedroom overlooking the courtyard. Comfortable enough, but there were bars on the window and a lock on the door. I paced through the early hours of the morning and was rewarded after dawn when a black Mercedes came through the gate. A tall gray-haired man got out and came into the house.

Half an hour later I was taken downstairs and introduced to the man who gave the Smoker his orders. He had a proposition for me.

I didn't see Leilah until dinner that night. We ate at a long table in a formal dining room; Strughold sat at the top like some kind of demented paterfamilias, with the two of us at either side. One course after another was served by thugs.

This trip seemed to be marked by surreal dining experiences and this was no exception. Leilah and Strughold carried on a conversation half in German and half in English about Goethe and Schiller. She sat excruciatingly straight, her head held high; looking at her it was hard to remember that she was wearing a dirty t-shirt and jeans, and no shoes. I was impressed by her nerve, but Strughold just looked amused. She didn't smile at all.

When the last course had been taken away Strughold nodded to one of the men, who came forward and pulled Leilah's chair out for her. Standing by the table with his hand on her arm she looked uncertain for the first time that evening. It occurred to me that she might not know where Krycek was, or even if he was alive, and I tried to think of some way to let her know that he wasn't dead. Before I could, she allowed the guard to lead her out.

The rest of the guards followed them, leaving the two of us alone. Strughold got up and brought a decanter of port from the sideboard. He poured himself a glass and passed it on to me. I had a sudden flashback to formal dinners at Oxford, but couldn't remember if there were special rules for drinking port with megalomaniac mass- murderers. Probably not.

Strughold had told me quite a story after he'd had Krycek dragged away. He'd claimed that it was he who'd negotiated the settlement with the Colonists, persuaded them to postpone Colonization and allow some humans, at least, to survive.

He was expounding on the same theme now. "Their nature makes them vulnerable," he explained. "They rely on other species to act as hosts for their reproduction, but in doing so they destroy the host species. But I saw the solution: if a large enough population of humans could be rendered immune to their infection, a breeding population could be maintained. Both of our species could survive."

Not only did Strughold believe his vision, he wanted me to believe it too. He was painting a terrible picture of a world in which a privileged few supervised the use of the rest of the population as a renewable stock of hosts for our alien owners. His eyes were shining.

I sipped at the port, unsurprised to find that I still couldn't stand the stuff.

Strughold was starting to wind down. "Your father was a great support to me in the first days of the Project. True, he needed to be persuaded that we had chosen the correct path, but once that was done he threw himself into the work with a vengeance. He oversaw the first years of the hybridization program."

He paused, and I mumbled something. I was starting to feel physically ill.

"You know, your father had a great lust for knowledge. He was eager to learn everything he could about out new allies. I'm told you share your father's enthusiasm. It is time for you to use it as he would have wanted."

I forced the bile back down my throat. "And my sister?" My sister, Scully... How many other sacrifices would be demanded?

He shrugged. "We had to make difficult decisions in those days. Your father oversaw her entire course of treatment. Had it been successful, she would have been the first example of the brave new race for whom we were preparing." He drained his glass of port and refilled it. "But all that is in the past. It is time to think of the future now, of your future."

He was staring at me avidly, awaiting a response. I shakily refilled my own glass and raised it. "The future," I offered, and drank the foul liquid down.

They led me back to my room soon afterwards. I barely made it to the bathroom once the door was closed and locked behind me. Afterwards I leaned my head against the porcelain cistern and watched my dinner swirl down the drain.

Trust no one. That has been my watchword for many years now, but I have rarely been in a situation where it was this appropriate. I was on my own. No one else was going to get me out of this. Leilah was more of a prisoner than I was and Krycek... Krycek was a mess. My mind held the image of his helpless struggles outside the facility and through our journey here. Seeing the damage he did there I came to the chilling realization that even when he seemed to be fighting me he was holding back. It had taken eight men to restrain him in Turkmenistan and two of them were dead now. He broke another man's neck on the flight here.

I wanted to believe Krycek capable of any betrayal, but there was no way he'd arranged this.

And yet given the opportunity, I had lashed out at him again this morning. Of course Strughold had meant to drive a wedge between us by reminding me of the role Krycek had played in my life. I could see that. The problem was that Krycek really was guilty. Of everything, as far as I could tell, and he didn't seem to care about any of it.

If only he would stay one thing long enough for me to understand him. Dealing with Krycek was like wrestling with Proteus: traitor or ally, friend or enemy, I never knew from one moment to the next what I would find. Easiest to believe that there was no core, that the man's very essence was betrayal.

Now he was asking me to do the same to him. He had known that Strughold would offer me my father's place at the table. After El Rico, there were a lot of empty chairs to go around. Did Krycek expect me to try to rescue him? Did he think I might really join Strughold? Or was this just some kind of desperate gamble, a crazy hope that I would figure out the right thing to do and do it?

When did I start to believe that Krycek actually cared about right and wrong? Then an even more disturbing thought struck me. Did Krycek trust me? Would he care if I lived or died?

No, I thought, rejecting the idea before it was fully formed. Krycek wanted to use me. I could see that he was working against the Smoker. Maybe he even wanted to stop Colonization. Krycek, trying to save the world? It sounded like a sick joke. But even if his intentions were good, I was still only a tool to him. It was the best explanation for this entire trip. Krycek wanted me to work for him. Just like Strughold did.

Washington DC
Thursday-Friday

Scully:

Mulder called me on Tuesday night to tell me that he was following a lead. He wanted me to cover for him with Skinner. It was late, and I mumbled something into the phone. Skinner didn't seem perturbed by Mulder's absence; he suggested that I be a good girl and take the opportunity to sort through the mess that Fowley and Spender had made of the X-Files.

By Thursday, I began to worry. Mulder doesn't like to be out of touch this long. Something had to be preventing him from calling me. I couldn't find any clues on his desk, so I headed for his apartment. I told myself that at least I could flush his fish down the toilet.

What I found in Mulder's apartment made me believe that I was right to be worried. It appeared that Mulder had been kidnapped. The door was locked and the key slipped back underneath it. His gun was placed neatly on the couch, along with his wallet and the rest of his keys; his badge wasn't there. I checked his wallet; his driver's license was missing. A small suitcase was gone, too. It was the very neatness of the departure that made me suspicious: usually, Mulder's apartment is a mess. He was unlikely to clean his room before heading off on a wild goose chase, but his bedroom was remarkably tidy. So was his living room. Someone had been here long enough to want to straighten up. Possibly to conceal a struggle.

I stood in the apartment and tried to come up with a workable hypothesis. If Mulder had been kidnapped, how could I explain the phone call? Why didn't he ask me for help? We had code words he could have used to let me know he was in danger. The fact that he didn't use them made me think that he didn't want me to worry, and that he didn't want me to look for him.

There seemed to be two possibilities: a kidnapper with whom Mulder had decided to join up, or a threat to my safety. They were not mutually exclusive. A slightly different variation might explain the evidence as well: that Mulder's kidnapper had been Diana Fowley. She was still unaccounted for. She would not have found it difficult to persuade Mulder to come with her. And Mulder, having decided to do so, would attempt to keep the two of us apart. Fowley would love that, I thought. A little time alone with Mulder, time to persuade him that he could still trust her, that she wasn't the backstabbing bitch I knew her to be. Not that he would need a lot of persuading.

We hadn't found her body at El Rico. I wasn't surprised to find that she'd wormed her way out of that disaster. Maybe she'd been responsible for it. Even if she hadn't she was definitely a danger to Mulder. He might not see it, but I certainly did.

I had my hypothesis. It was time to test it. I locked the door behind me and went to visit Mulder's friends.

The Gunmen had no luck tracking Diana Fowley, wherever she had gone to ground. But at 9:23 that night my phone rang. "Scully," I answered.

It wasn't Mulder. "Uh... Dana?"

"What is it, Frohike?"

"You might want to come back here."

"New Delhi?" This was worse than I thought. "How did you track him to New Delhi?"

"It was a long shot," Langley admitted. "But the timing of his call to you made us wonder if he had been taken on a flight or was about to board one. We couldn't find any record of travel by Fox Mulder, but then we tried running his picture through the US passport agency and came up with a passport issued to Martin Birley. And Martin Birley boarded a flight from Newark to Heathrow Tuesday night; in London he changed to the Uzbeki Air flight from London to New Delhi."

"There's something else, though," said Byers. He looked concerned. Well, Byers always looks somewhat concerned to me but he looked more concerned than usual. "He wasn't traveling alone."

Langley brought up a record on the computer. "Mother of God," I whispered. The name was Joseph E. Rudich. I had never seen it before. But the face--oh yes, I knew that face. He had the startled, vaguely guilty look that people often have in passport pictures. In this case, though, he had every right to look guilty. "Alex Krycek." Now I really would have to go to India. Mulder had run off with Krycek before this only to be betrayed and left to die in the middle of Russia. Lord only knew what kind of trouble he was going to end up in in India.

So. Not Fowley, but Krycek. Fowley was the prototype, I supposed. To Mulder she had appeared the believing, supporting partner; the whole time she was working behind his back for the very organization he wanted to expose. I knew that I had been assigned to the X-Files solely to discredit Mulder and his work. Although unaware, I had been as much part of their plans as Fowley. When I failed to restrain him, they reverted to the Fowley model and introduced Alex Krycek. Young, impressionable, adoring. Not to mention treasonous. Mulder had told me a little about Russia: frankly, we had trouble keeping track of just how many people Krycek was betraying at any given time.

With that thought, I collected my wits. Rushing off blindly to a foreign country would do no one any good. I needed to find out where they were going.

Byers, Langley and Frohike were watching me as I stared at the screen. "Do you have any way of finding out what they're doing there?" I asked.

"We might have a contact there," Frohike admitted. The other two glared at him. "What?" he said defensively.

Friday, I went to see Skinner. "Sir, I need your help."

The scene was familiar. I was sitting in Skinner's office, unsure whether or not he could be trusted, but with no other choice; his refusal to allow us to investigate his mysterious illness this winter had shaken my faith in his goodwill. Only Mulder was missing. That was somewhat familiar, as well.

Skinner looked at me impassively. "What is this about, Agent Scully?"

As if he couldn't guess. Why did I always come to him? "It's about Mulder, sir. I believe that he's in danger."

"I thought you told me he was following a lead."

"So he told me," I answered. "But now I think he was misleading me."

"Why do you think that?" he asked. His expression was wary.

"I went to his apartment," I began. "It was... well, I think Mulder may have been kidnapped."

"Were there signs of a struggle?"

"No, sir." He looked ready to interrupt, so I kept going "But that's not what's important here. Mulder boarded a flight to New Delhi Wednesday morning. He didn't disembark there, however." At any rate, Frohike's friends hadn't found any trace of him. "I believe that he left the plane during a layover in Tashkent." I watched Skinner carefully.

"May I remind you, Agent Scully, that the FBI has no jurisdiction outside the borders of the United States?"

At this point I expected a stronger reaction from Skinner. Instead, he seemed to be trying to put me off. "Sir, one of your agents is missing!" I said forcefully. "It would not be unreasonable for you to contact the State Department and request support from them."

"But from what you say, Mulder could be anywhere in South or Central Asia."

So? I thought. A bulletin could be sent to all the embassies in the region as easily as to one of them. "Do you have a better suggestion, sir?"

He sighed. "Let Agent Mulder find his own way home."

I was appalled. Something was very wrong here. Had Skinner known that Mulder wasn't following a lead? But if Skinner knew that Mulder had been kidnapped, why did Mulder bother calling me and asking me to cover for him? Were they working together on this? I had one last card to play. "Sir, I don't believe that Agent Mulder is alone. Wherever he is, Alex Krycek is there with him."

I was met by dead silence. Skinner's eye twitched, and suddenly everything fell into place. "You knew," I whispered. I wondered if this was how Mulder felt when he made one of his impossible leaps, cobbling a theory together out of moonshine and spider web. "Krycek told you what he was going to do." I watched his reaction carefully; he looked guilty rather than insulted. "Do you know where they are?" I asked to fill the silence.

"No."

"But you knew that Krycek was going to take Mulder somewhere." My mind was racing as I tried to find the connection between Skinner and Krycek. If Krycek had contacted him, why hadn't Skinner told us about it? He was becoming very secretive these days. Then it hit me. "When you... were sick this winter, that was Krycek, wasn't it?"

He didn't answer that question. He didn't have to. "Agent Scully," he said, "my hands are tied. I cannot help you."

He stood up, encouraging me to leave. I stayed in my chair and thought. "Sir, do you believe Mulder is in danger?"

"I don't know," he admitted.

"But you believe that you are in danger."

"Agent Scully," he said bitterly, "I might as well be dead."

"I see." I stood up. "I won't trouble you further, sir."

Austrian Alps
Sunday

Mulder:

They brought me breakfast on a tray. I hoped I would be able to keep this meal down.

When they came to collect the tray they took me to see Strughold again. This time we met in an office, a room I hadn't been in yet. Strughold was seated at a large desk, bare except for a new laptop and a few handwritten papers.

He greeted me jovially. "Fox, good morning. I may call you Fox?" It wasn't a serious question, and I didn't bother responding. "I wanted to consult with you. Tell me about this young woman we found with you and Alex."

I had been doing my best not to think of Leilah. I didn't want to feel responsible for her. I needed to have only one priority, and that was to get myself out of here and back to the US and freedom. "I don't know much about her," I began, unsure of how much it was safe to say. "I think she lives in Turkmenistan. She seems to know Krycek well."

He nodded. "Would you say that there is an emotional connection between the two?"

"Yes." I hoped it was the right answer. I was uncomfortably aware that the wrong answer would lead to her death.

Strughold was smiling. "A sexual relationship, even?"

He seemed happy with my first answer, so I continued along the same lines. "I would say so. They certainly seemed close."

"Good, very good. She told me that her father was a German who lived in Iran, and her mother a Turkmeni woman. Does that match your observations?"

I thought of Krycek's description of Jacob Bookman as a nice Jewish boy from Berkeley. "Yes," I answered.

"Very good," he murmured. "She will be useful to us."

"How?" I asked. Shit. I hadn't meant to show any interest. I didn't even like the woman.

Strughold didn't seem to think it an inappropriate question. In fact, he seemed pleased that I had asked. "Alex Krycek is a sentimental creature. A threat to her will help us control him."

I felt my gorge rise--there was so much wrong with that statement. I didn't want to know a man who would consider Krycek sentimental. I didn't want to be responsible for anything happening to Leilah. And I didn't like the word "us".

Strughold was still talking. "Tell me, Fox, have you given any thought to your future with us?"

As little as possible. But I was sure that Strughold had given it plenty. "I think... I think I would be most useful back in the U.S."

"Of course." He waved my comment away, ready to bring out his own vision of my future. "The only question is whether you should stay with the X-Files or work for us in a more direct capacity."

I swallowed the bile rising from my stomach. "I'm not sure what kind of position I'd be qualified for." I was starting to sweat, too.

"There are any number of roles you could fill for us," Strughold said. "You have friends in Congress. Perhaps you could run for political office yourself. Think about it. I want to send you back in a few days."

I nodded. I didn't trust myself to open my mouth. I was lucky, though; Strughold got up from behind the desk. Clearly it was a dismissal, and I left as quickly as I could.

Breakfast followed dinner down the toilet. At least there was a toothbrush in my bathroom. Hungry again, I went looking for Leilah.

Krycek:

I could hear steps outside in the corridor and dragged myself to my feet. My wrist was almost healed but my knee was even worse than I had thought; I could only stand by leaning against the wall. I could have sworn I heard the click of high heels. Even with that warning, I was surprised by what I saw when the door opened. Leilah stood there, in some kind of tight skirt and a dark silky blouse that clung in all the right places. She had done something to her hair, too. The whole effect was sexy as hell. I hardly noticed the guards standing around her until one of them gestured her forward and said something too soft for me to catch. She turned back towards him as if to ask a question. He smiled and nodded. "Go on," he was saying in Arabic. "It's all right. We'll go down the hall." Then the three guards backed out of the room, closing the door behind them and leaving the two of us alone.

Something about her posture, or the length of the skirt or maybe the shadows around the door reminded me of Marita on the Star of Russia. I remembered how stupid it would be to underestimate a woman like Leilah.

She did not run across the cell and into my embrace. Standing a few feet inside the door, she said in Russian, "I'm sorry, but he had a better chance." I hadn't spared much thought for Jacob recently. I hoped he would be trying to find us, but I couldn't rely on that. Her Russian had a strong Persian accent which I'd never heard before from her. She was trying to tell me something, clearly.

"Come over here," I told her in the same language. She stepped across the room and stood in front of me. I wanted nothing more than to pull her against me and lose myself in her, but first there were some things I needed to know. "What was all that?"

"The Tunisians are homesick. They hate the rain and they don't like Austrian food." So we were in Austria. That made a certain amount of sense. If I could believe her, of course.

"What are you, a breath of fresh air from home?" I hoped she would take the opportunity to let me know what kind of background story she'd concocted.

She had a calculating look. "Well, from Iran. Until my poor father died and my mother took me home to her people in Turkmenistan." She was good, I had to admit it. A Turkmeni mother, and her father would be what? Not American. Maybe British or French. Possibly German.

"So they found you these clothes?" I gestured at her outfit.

She made a face. "No, that was Strughold. A reward, I think."

"For what?" I had a vaguely uneasy feeling, which I crushed.

"It was a purely intellectual flirtation," she said dryly. "Herr Strughold has felt isolated from German Kultur during his long exile. We talked about Goethe." I couldn't help smiling. It was so typical of Leilah. She was a survivor. Like me, she would do whatever she had to.

I reached out to play with her hair and put on my most sympathetic face. "You never should have ended up here. You've read the reports, you know what these men are capable of." I allowed my voice to tremble slightly. It was easy: my leg hurt like hell.

She sighed. "Sasha, you're a wreck. How can I help?"

I considered my plan. Strughold had set this meeting up, and I had to assume that someone was watching. At the very least, there was someone listening outside the door. So it was time to play for the cameras. I wanted Strughold to believe that he could manipulate me by threatening Leilah. I didn't need Leilah to believe it too but it would be an interesting challenge. I was aware that my plan could get her killed--that it probably would, if I escaped. And I intended to escape. I felt a sudden twinge of concern for her, which I ignored. The emotions I had felt outside the facility had been an aberration. That she had shown herself willing to sacrifice herself for Jacob didn't mean that she would do the same for me. He was her brother, and I wasn't. End of story. I couldn't afford to care what happened to her.

She was looking up at me, eyes wide and trusting. "I just wish..." I let my voice trail off and looked down at the floor. I could feel her take a step closer. I leaned down to kiss her, and lost my balance.

So much for our romantic moment. I fell forward heavily and she staggered backwards. Her arms went around me to hold me upright. It might have worked, except that my weight settled briefly on my right leg as I tried to stand; I hissed in pain and dropped straight to the ground in a fetal position. Leilah, crouched over me, held me until I managed to control my breathing. Then she uncurled me and dragged me over to the mattress. She settled herself against me and draped my arm around her shoulders.

As the pain receded I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I'd just sat like this with a woman. It was surprisingly intimate and disturbingly comfortable. I tried to find a thought to distract myself from the moment. If my plan worked I would have to spend the rest of my life on the run from her family. I was sorry about that, but it was more important to have a life to spend that way.

"Leilah," I began, keeping my voice hesitant, "please be careful." I didn't know if I meant it or not.

Her head was resting against my shoulder, and if I just turned slightly I could kiss her hair. Shit. What the hell was going on with me? There was no point letting Strughold think he could control me through Leilah if he actually could do so. Although as I thought about it now, with her curled against me, getting both of us out had definite advantages. For one thing, it might keep her father well-disposed, and that would be important when Jacob figured out that I knew he had killed Daniel. And there were other benefits.

Of course, she might be acting too. I didn't really think that Leilah would make a deal with Strughold, but you never could tell what people would do when they felt cornered. I was living proof of that. I would just have to wait and see. And then improvise, but I could do that. I was the king of improvisation. As soon as I could move without wincing I would start showing her just how much I cared. Or seemed to care. Whichever.

Instead, someone knocked on the door. Out in the hall, the Tunisians were arguing with a couple of new guards-- how many of these guys were there, anyway? Leilah and I heard the key phrase, "We've come for the girl," and she helped me stand up again. I was torn between amusement- -who bothers to knock in a prison?--and worry. God only knows what my expression was, but Leilah drew me down for a searching kiss before walking back to the door. I managed not to fall over until she was gone and the door locked again behind her.

Mulder:

No one stopped me as I wandered through the main house, although a couple of guys followed me everywhere I went. The house looked like it hadn't been used for about fifty years; it had a kind of stale smell to it. I ended up in the sitting room in which Krycek and I had met Strughold the morning before. The men who were watching me stood just inside the door and watched me pace around in it. They kept glancing at each other, and then one of them cleared his throat. "Is there something you're looking for, Mr. Mulder?" he asked in English.

I was stunned. It hadn't occurred to me that they weren't only meant to keep me from escaping. Maybe I wasn't just a prisoner here. Did Strughold really believe that I was one of them? Pushing my doubts aside, I decided to take advantage of the situation. Maybe if I played along I could get my hands on something really useful. That, or get away from here.

"Do you know where Leilah is?" I asked. "She's the girl who was brought in with me."

Another glance between the two of them. "Do you want me to go get her?" the second one asked.

"Um... sure," I said. "And hey, can I have some coffee while you're at it?" What service, I thought. Five minutes later I was sitting on the couch with a new cup of coffee when the door opened. It was the second guard again, followed by Davies. The guard stopped by the door and shrugged at me; Davies walked all the way into the room and stopped in front of the coffee table, sneering down at me.

Davies wasn't very tall and he didn't have a face that would stand out in a crowd. He made up for it by being heavily muscled. Right now he was doing his best to look intimidating. It was working, but only because I'd seen him beating Krycek up. Not that I would ever let Davies know that.

"Now, Mr. Mulder," he said, "what do you want to talk to that girl for?" His musical accent almost distracted me from what he was saying. There was something wrong about a voice like that coming out of a man like Davies. He sounded like he ought to be singing in a choir.

"I just wanted to make sure she was all right." It sounded a little weak to me, actually.

"More likely, you wanted to get your story straight. Maybe plan some kind of escape. Isn't that right, Fox?" He gave my name a heavy emphasis, as if he knew how much I disliked it. "You may have Strughold fooled, Fox boy, but I don't trust you one bit. Strughold is doing the important work, but it's up to me to make sure that no one takes advantage of him."

I was amazed to learn that I had Strughold fooled; even stranger was Davies' presentation of himself as Strughold's protector. "Do you have a point?" I asked blandly.

"I knew your father, you know," he said in a conversational voice. "Oh, not well, he was a big man and all, but he knew who I was too. He even called me in for a few jobs."

I didn't think it was just the caffeine that was making my heart beat faster. "So?" I asked.

"Strughold had a real soft spot for your dad," Davies said. "They all did. Bill Mulder this, Bill Mulder that. I don't know why. The man was a vicious drunk. You'll go a long way because of him, but you already know that, don't you?" He leaned across the table and grabbed my collar, pulling me forward. Without thinking I tried to knock his hand away. Then I froze. I didn't want to give Davies the opportunity he clearly wanted to beat me senseless. He grinned down at me. "Yeah, you're a clever Fox, aren't you? Don't worry, I can't hurt you yet. But I'll be watching you. I don't know what you're planning, but I'll find out." He released me and started to walk out of the room; at the door he paused and looked back for one final threat. "And stay away from Krycek and that girl, if you know what's good for you."

By midnight that night I understood the layout of the compound. The house and outbuildings were connected to make an enclosed courtyard. Krycek was being kept in the stable which made up the east wall of the compound; it had to be that building, because my two shadows--I'd nicknamed them Moe and Larry--wouldn't let me anywhere near it. The building on the west side was a barracks for all the armed men Strughold and Davies had guarding us. They were a mixed bunch of mercenaries: about a dozen local men, from Austria or southern Germany, and eight Tunisians who'd arrived with Strughold. In addition to them there were another dozen who seemed to come from all over; some of them were the men who had captured us in Turkmenistan.

My prospects for escape didn't look good. There were two snipers in a tower over the gatehouse and another two in a cupola on the roof of the main house; they were on overlapping four-hour shifts. Inside the house there was at least one man on the second floor and another on the first floor in the entry hall. Even in the middle of the night, there was always someone awake and moving around.

Leilah and I were on the third floor, though. Both our doors were locked, but that wouldn't stop me. In preparation I'd pocketed a bunch of blunt metal cocktail skewers from the bar in the living room. That evening I'd pretended to drink heavily and encouraged Strughold and Davies to do the same. Leilah hadn't joined us at dinner.

I heard a new sniper coming up the stairs, greeting the man on the second floor, and then walking past my room. After a couple of minutes the man he'd replaced came down the hall. I waited a few minutes longer, then slipped off my bed and padded across the floor. The lock on my door was old and easy to pick. Leilah's was a little stiffer, or maybe I was just nervous about being caught in the hallway.

I shut the door behind me, silently. I could just make out the shape of her, lying under the blankets. My instinct was to distrust her, but I wasn't sure why. Perhaps it was whatever she shared with Krycek: she was an extra distraction when we needed to be focused on our escape. That was unfair to her, though; whatever Leilah was, she was no damsel in distress. I didn't think she was part of the conspiracy, and I knew that we have a better chance working together.

It was too late to back out now. As I walked across the room to her bed the floor gave a noisy creak under my feet. I froze and she sat straight up in bed. We stared at each other in the dark for a few seconds, listening. There was no response from downstairs, so I finished my journey and sat down on her bed.

"What the hell do you think you're doing here?" she hissed at me.

"We need to talk," I told her in a whisper. "Have you seen Krycek?" She nodded. "How is he?"

She grimaced. "Not well."

That had been my impression too. "Right. So it's just the two of us. Leilah, you have to trust me."

"Trust you to do what?" she whispered back.

"What do you think? To get us out of here!" She looked at me without expression. "You don't think I'd really join Strughold, do you?"

"Well, Mr. Mulder, I don't really know you at all, do I? What do you expect?"

"Then what should I think about that show you put on at dinner last night? Chatting away with Strughold like that?" It was hard to remember to keep my voice to a whisper.

Now it was her turn to look insulted. "Do you really think I'd ever associate with that.... that..."

I grinned at her. "Like you said, I guess we don't know each other very well."

Her mouth twisted. "No. All right, I apologize. The Tunisians keep talking about you like you're the prodigal son."

"You've been talking to your guards?" I asked. I didn't want another conversation about my father at this point. "Is there any way you could, you know, get them to help us?"

She shook her head. "Believe me, I've tried. They're terrified of Strughold. And the Austrians are acting like it's the Second Coming. Do you have a plan?"

I took a deep breath. "Strughold plans to send me back to the US in the next couple of days. I can persuade him to send you and Krycek too. We'll probably take some kind of military transport to an air force base near Washington DC. If I can contact Scully and let her know when we arrive, she'll create enough chaos to let us escape. It won't be easy, but arrival is definitely our best moment."

Leilah's mouth was set in a thin line. "I don't want to go back to the US. I have this... problem with the State Department. They're looking for me."

"You're wanted by the government?" I asked, horrified. "Tell me, are all Krycek's friends criminals?"

"I'm not a criminal," she said, looking uncomfortable. "They just want to talk to me about Daniel. But it would be awkward."

I sighed. "Look, don't worry. I can probably fix it when we get there. Remember," I told her, "you're one of the good guys now."

"There are no good guys, Mr. Mulder. Not in this." She didn't give me a chance to respond. "Contacting Scully is your weak link."

She was right. I'd only found one telephone in the house and it was in the front hall with a guard standing over it at all times. Moe and Larry wouldn't let me near it and even I could shake them the man by the phone was still there. "This is where I'll need your help. Can you make some kind of distraction, so that I can get a couple of minutes alone in the front hall?"

Her teeth glinted. "It's not like fooling a few army recruits, the way I did back in Turkmenistan. But I'll do you one better, Mr. Mulder. Tell me what to say and I'll make the call for you. There's a second phone in the kitchen. I was planning to try to subvert some of the Tunisians by cooking for them anyway. It's the sort of thing Strughold would expect. It might keep him from noticing our real plan."

"You cook?" I asked. "Tunisian food?"

"Close enough," she shrugged. "My mother-in-law claimed that my kibbeh were almost as good as her own."

I snorted. "Do you have any other secret talents?"

She grinned again. "I'm an expert forger. Clever hands, see?" She held them up for my inspection.

"A forger? Where the hell did you learn... No, never mind." This would teach me to take anything or anyone associated with Krycek at face value. Terrorists, forgers, arms dealers... The more I learned about the Bookman family the more disturbing I found them. "Could you forge a letter in Strughold's handwriting?" I had noticed letters on his desk, all hand-written. He seemed to have a preference for written orders.

"Of course!" She looked insulted. "Letters are easy. Get me stationery and a writing sample."

I was starting to feel like I was in some kind of spy movie. But at least I had the core of a plan, and something to work with. "Right. I'll do that. Tomorrow morning I'll try to find out more details about when and where we'll arrive in the US. When will you be able to get to the phone?"

"I'll be in the kitchen all day tomorrow."

"Good. I'll smuggle a note in to you. I'll give you our code words, too, so she'll know it's from me." I got up. "Time for me to sneak back to my cell."

She nodded. "It'll be just like passing notes in third grade. I can't wait."

Washington DC
Sunday

Scully:

"Dr. Scully?"

I looked up and thought, ah, it's the mysterious contact. I was half-expecting someone like this to get in touch with me and offer me half-truths about Mulder's whereabouts to serve some mysterious agenda. This wasn't the moment I'd anticipated, though: I was sitting on a park bench on a bright spring Sunday eating salad out of a plastic box. He wasn't what I expected in a mysterious contact, either; he was tall, dark and, I supposed, handsome enough, but the sun shining on his face illuminated the lines around his mouth and the dark rings under his eyes. He looked too worried to be threatening. "May I sit down?" he asked. I nodded, my mouth still full of lettuce. "I'm sorry to approach you like this, but it seemed the best place."

I swallowed. "Who are you, and what do you want?" I didn't care if I sounded rude; I was worried too. Mulder's absence was oppressive, and I was starting to feel helpless without him.

"My name is Jacob Bookman." He looked at me, and I looked back blankly. "Have you heard recently from Mr. Mulder? Or from Sasha? I had hoped..."

"What do you know about Mulder?" I interrupted. And who was Sasha, I wondered to myself. "What have you done with him?"

"Please, Dr. Scully. I haven't done anything to Mulder. We were in Turkmenistan..."

"You kidnapped Mulder, didn't you? And took him there-- you and Krycek." Was Krycek Sasha? I'd gone through a Tolstoy phase in college, but my memory for Russian nicknames was weak.

"I didn't kidnap anybody," he protested. "We were investigating a laboratory. Friday evening it was attacked. I managed to escape but the others were captured."

"Captured?" I felt the world tilt around me and found my hand clutching the back of the park bench. "That bastard Krycek!"

He looked up at the name. "Do you think Krycek betrayed us?" he asked.

"I'm sure of it," I said, as much to myself as to him. "He must have set the whole thing up." I bit my tongue to keep from swearing again. That absolute bastard. I was furious. I was going to kill him. Something slow and lingering, with scalpels. "What exactly was your role in this, Mr. Bookman?"

"I've known... Krycek for a number of years. He approached me for help in getting into the facility. I know a little about the people who were behind it, and Krycek told me he was working against them." He gave a wry grin. "He can be very convincing."

"Start at the beginning," I told him. "Krycek did kidnap Mulder, didn't he? Then what?" I was starting to calm down enough to see that I ought to get what information I could out of this man.

"I've told you," he said. "I don't know anything about any kidnapping. I met the two of them in Turkmenistan and Mulder seemed to be there of his own free will. I don't know how Krycek got him there."

"Hmm." I wondered if he was telling the truth.

"Mulder did seem angry at Krycek, though," he volunteered. Well, that had the ring of truth to it. I only wondered how Krycek had kept Mulder from killing him.

"What happened after you met them?"

"It seemed very straightforward. I was only there to guide them to a laboratory up in the mountains. We arrived Thursday afternoon, they spent Friday exploring it and then that evening four unmarked helicopters appeared. I escaped out the back and hid in the mountains."

It wasn't entirely implausible but I had the feeling that I wasn't getting the whole story. Maybe I was just used to people lying to me. "How did you find me, Mr. Bookman?"

He glanced down again. "Mulder talked about you. He was worried." He looked up. "I think Krycek may have made some threat against you." Typical, I thought, too angry to be afraid. The men in black threaten me and Mulder follows after them like one of Pavlov's dogs. But why was this particular man giving me this particular information? That was the question. I would worry about whether the threat was real or imaginary later.

"What was in the laboratory?" I asked. "And do you remember anything at all about the men who attacked you?"

"Krycek told Mulder that it was some kind of weapon. Biological, I think--they were talking about a virus. I don't really know any more than that. And I don't know who the men were. The same people who operated the laboratory, I'd guess." Again, he looked apologetic.

This was remarkably unhelpful. I wondered if this man had anything useful to tell me. He was only confirming what I had already guessed, that Mulder was with Krycek and that they went to Central Asia. Now they could be anywhere. Krycek had obviously handed Mulder over to his mysterious employers. Bookman was looking at me hopefully, as if he expected me to put all the pieces together and come up with Mulder's location. This whole ignorant act was just ridiculous; if this man was working for Krycek he had to know more than he was letting on. Maybe the Lone Gunmen would be able to come up with something. I would call Byers and go there instead of to the office. But first, I had to get rid of this guy. "Well," I said, standing, "thank you very much. Is there some way that I could get in touch with you, if I think of anything else?"

He stood up. He was really quite tall, although he stood slightly hunched over to minimize the effect of his height. "Wait, Dr Scully. I haven't..." He hesitated, then seemed to gather his courage. "I haven't been entirely honest with you."

I stifled a sigh. That was a shock; I doubted that anyone involved in this conspiracy had ever told the unvarnished truth. Not unless someone was holding a gun on them. And even then you couldn't be sure. "Oh?" I said.

He was looking at the ground. "In the laboratory, it wasn't just Mulder, Krycek and myself. My sister was working with us. She was captured as well." He raised his eyes and gave me a pleading look. "I have to get her away from them. Please let me work with you, Dr. Scully. I need your help."

I would rather have had a piece of useful information. Another sob story was hardly what I needed. "Mr. Bookman, let me know how I can get in touch with you and I'll keep you updated."

Austria
Monday

Krycek:

The next time I saw Strughold we were alone. I was rousted from my cell and dragged back to the main house, this time to a wood-paneled office. They dropped me on a low chair on the other side of a large desk from the old German. My life was pockmarked with meetings like this, me and one of the old men in a car, an office, some out of the way unwanted corner of the world. Along the way I had learned the key to surviving them. These men may know the truth that Mulder has spent his life looking for, but they are only interested in what they can own. Property is their only truth and it's one particular kind of property. They own people. My goal was to persuade Strughold that he owned me.

It would have been simple once but my career was starting to tell against me. I hoped that the loss of the US division meant that Strughold was running out of people he could rely on to do his dirty work.

He was waiting for me to say something and I needed him to think I was weak. "What are you going to do with me?" I asked.

"Alex, why do you insist on trying to break away from us?" He had the same vaguely reproachful tone he had used in the room with Mulder. "You must know you cannot succeed. How much happier you would be, if you could only accept your place in the order of things."

I glowered at him. I had a good idea of what my place in Strughold's order of things would be. "What if I'm not interested in that?"

"Oh, you're interested, Alex," he assured me. "But are we interested in welcoming you back? How can I trust you not to strike out on your own again?" He paused, pretending to be lost in thought. "Do you have anything to offer as a token of your good faith?"

"The vaccine..." I began.

"Whatever was hidden in that laboratory is gone now." He sounded annoyed. "You have nothing of any value to me." Story of my life, I thought. "But I have something of value to you."

Pay dirt. "I don't know what you mean."

He chuckled. "Really, Alex. You may pretend that you desire only power, but I think we both know better. This weakness you have for women is a serious flaw in a man of your ambitions." I frowned. I still hated to be reminded of the Marita debacle.

"Leilah..." I whispered. Was I laying it on too thick?

"A charming young lady. Her well-being is entirely in my hands."

I produced an expression which I hoped would look like helplessness. "What do you want me to do?" I asked him.

Mulder:

I hesitated outside the door to Strughold's office. Inside I could hear Davies doing his best to get me killed. We were all scheduled to leave the next day. I was definitely going back to the US, but I wasn't sure what was going to happen to Krycek or Leilah. I had the elements of a plan, but I needed them to make it work. For the first time during three days we'd been here I had come down to Strughold's office of my own accord to speak to him. Now I was listening to Davies trying to persuade him that I was going to betray them. Did he know, or did he just not like me? It was too late to worry about that now. I knocked and went in.

Davies was standing in front of the desk, leaning forward on the balls of his feet. Strughold just sat there, impassive, as if he expected me to walk in like that. Maybe he did. I took advantage of the pause to walk all the way into the room and sit down in the chair across from Strughold. Davies was left standing next to me. I didn't bother to look at him.

"Fox..." Strughold said. "We were just discussing our next moves." I waited for him to tell me what they would be.

Davies couldn't stand the silence. "I'm taking you back to America tomorrow. Don't make any fucking trouble for me, either."

I looked at Strughold, who nodded at me. "Ordinarily I would accompany you back to the United States, but I am needed back in Tunisia. Spender will make all the arrangements for you. He'll meet you at the Winchester Air Force Base. You'll be working for him for the time being. It seemed... wiser than sending you back to your own life."

In my less lucid moments I considered pretending that this whole week had been a nightmare. That kind of self-deception is more difficult than I had thought. "Fine," I said. "What about Krycek?"

Davies was grinning. "He'll stay with me. I'll make sure that asshole stays out of trouble." That meant that he'd be coming to the US with us. So far, so good. Provided my scheme worked, that is. If it didn't, Krycek was going to be in a lot of pain.

I nodded my agreement. "And Leilah?" I asked.

This time Strughold answered. "Leilah will come with me to Tunisia. I find that I enjoy her company, and so long as we have her, Alex will behave himself."

"I disagree," I said. Strughold actually looked surprised. I didn't wait for him to ask me to give him my reasons. He might have told me my opinion doesn't matter. "If you want to use her to control him, they need to be in some kind of contact. He needs to see how his actions affect her." Oh God, I thought to myself, did I really say that? I pushed the thought aside and launched into my second reason. "Also, she lives in Turkmenistan, and she's fluent in Arabic. It might be easier for her to disappear in Tunisia than in the US. Let Spender guard her as well." I might not like her, but there was no way I was leaving Leilah in Strughold's hands.

Strughold's face was impossible to read. I didn't bother to look at Davies. "Very well," he finally said. "With one provision. You personally will be responsible for ensuring that she stays in our custody. Don't fail me in this, Fox. You've opposed us in the past, I know, but now you understand how important our work is. We are all that prevents the destruction of this planet, and you cannot allow your sympathy for a single individual to outweigh your responsibility for the entire human race. With your help we will succeed. Our sacrifices will be worthwhile, Fox. But only when we are victorious." He was staring at me intently. I could tell that he believed every word he was saying. I nodded mutely. His face relaxed then. "That's all, Fox. I have one or two things to discuss with Davies here."

Leilah Katalan:

Daniel's mother thought I was a barbarian. She had wanted him to marry a Jerusalem girl, by which she meant a girl whose family had been in Jerusalem for at least the last couple hundred years. Failing that, she would have settled for a Sephardi, provided her family still had the keys to some long-destroyed house in Spain. Germans and Hungarians were not even on her approved list. She called me, "that Mongol," behind my back and I called her "mamaleh" to her face. I liked the old bitch.

Faced with the horrible reality of an Ashkenazi daughter-in-law she had clenched her teeth and forced me to memorize all her old family recipes. I had been bored to tears by all the stupid little steps and frustrated by the way everything had to be done by hand. Now I was grateful. Maybe I'd send her a note.

The Tunisians had outdone themselves on their shopping expedition. I'd had no idea you could buy orange blossom water in Innsbruck. I would be cooking all day, at this rate. There was plenty of time for me to make that phone call, if I could only get rid of my guards. Even if I didn't, my own escape was planned. Strughold had been persuaded to take me back to Tunisia with him, and once there I was confident that I could simply disappear.

I had put Ammar and Mustafa to work, hoping that it would encourage them to leave me alone here. They were already started to look bored when Mulder walked in a little before lunchtime.

"Is all this for me?" he asked, poking at the pots on the stove. He inspected the two chickens boiling in one pot and the three oranges boiling in another.

"In your dreams," I told him. "But if you ask politely, maybe these gentlemen will share."

The Tunisians, ever polite, expressed their happiness at the very thought of Mulder eating dinner with them. Mulder opened the refrigerator and stuck his finger in the two kinds of dough waiting to be rolled out. He picked a piece of eggplant out of the colander and sniffed it.

"Put that down," I told him automatically. I was busy grinding almonds into powder using a hand-held coffee grinder. He grinned at me. Then he tossed it to one of the Tunisians. Mustafa caught it and carefully put it down on the table. I stopped grinding and watched as Mulder continued to mime his way around the kitchen. He burnt his fingers tasting the frying onions, sniffed at the cinnamon (and promptly started to cough) and stared for a few moments at the bulgar wheat toasting in the oven. Then he found the eggs and began, very carefully, to juggle two of them. Ammar and Mustafa both found the whole act remarkably funny. I was too tense to be amused. Then Ammar decided to juggle as well. He chose the wooden spoon he was supposed to be stirring the onions with and added two more spoons from the jar by the stove. Now there were three utensils and two eggs in the air. Mustafa threw Mulder another egg. He managed to keep them all in the air for another minute or so, the three of them laughing like madmen. Then the inevitable happened. Somehow, one of the eggs flew toward Ammar and collided in midair with one of the spoons.

The broken egg and Ammar's three spoons clattered to the ground. Mulder, still laughing, caught the other two eggs before they broke.

I took all my nervous energy and turned it into anger. "That's it!" I shouted. "All of you, out of here! How am I supposed to cook while you fool around? Go on, out!"

Surprised and apologetic, the three of them filed out. I turned on the radio for background noise and started to look around. Mulder had left the note in the bowl of eggs. He must have put it there when he replaced the ones he'd been playing with. It was a piece of toilet paper with three lines of writing on it. Mulder is peachy, was the first. Then, He'll be home for your birthday. And finally, Winchester Air Force Base, Tuesday. On the other side was a phone number with a DC area code.

Hands shaking, I dialed the phone. It seemed to ring forever. Finally, a sleepy voice answered, "Scully?"

I whispered in to the phone. "Listen. Mulder says, he's peachy. He'll be home for your birthday." That had to be some kind of code. "We'll be at Winchester Air Force base on Tuesday."

"Who is this?" the voice asked.

"Leilah," I answered. It probably wouldn't mean anything, unless Jacob had contacted her. "I have to go." I hung up the phone. Someone could walk in at any moment.

The piece of toilet paper was now damp and crumpled from being crushed in my palm; the ink was blurred. I stared at it for a moment and then swallowed it.

Since there was nothing else to do, I washed my hands and went back to the almonds. Half an hour later I felt someone watching me and looked up, surprised to see Davies standing in the doorway.

Krycek:

Before I was taken back to my cell in the stable they took me to a doctor, who bound up my knee and wrist. When I got back to the cell I found further rewards. The mattress had been replaced with a cot, and a table and chair had been added to my furniture. My boots and jacket were laid on the bed along with a few extra blankets. I guess that this was Strughold's way of welcoming me back into the fold.

Well, I should have known that in this world you don't get the carrot without a little stick too. It was all clear enough: a little reward for me, a little punishment for Leilah. After all, they needed to prove that they were willing to hurt her. She staggered in the door as the sun was setting and stood there as it slammed shut behind her. She was still holding what was left of the blouse and the skirt was still on her, more or less. There was a smudge of blood down one leg. A moment later, the door opened again, just long enough for someone to toss the jeans and shirt she'd been wearing at the lab into the cell. They lay on the floor between us.

Leilah wouldn't tell me who it had been. The level of violence pointed to Davies; I'd known him to kill women before this. I paced between the walls until my knee hurt too much to bear. Then I just sat next to her on the cot where she was curled wrapped in one of the new blankets.

I was starting to feel trapped in my own lies. I tried to remind myself that this plan would only work if I was willing to sacrifice Leilah to keep myself safe. Collateral damage, isn't that what they call it? Or maybe friendly fire. It was her own damn fault she was here, I told myself. I couldn't afford to care about her.

We fell asleep on the cot like children, fully clothed and wrapped in the blankets. I woke up in the middle of the night to find my neck wet from her tears. Still half asleep, I started to brush the tears from her face. I pulled back when she started to kiss me, but she held me tighter.

I kissed her gently as I knew how, then wrapped my arms around her in the darkness. Even through the blankets I could feel her shaking. Not knowing what else to do I began to stroke her back gently. After a while she began to breathe evenly, eyes closed and face still wet with her tears. I closed my own eyes so that I wouldn't see her, and saw instead the face of the sixteen year old girl she had been when I met her. I opened my eyes again; she was still there.

I lay awake for the rest of the night, listening to her breathe and trying to think of nothing at all.

Washington DC
Monday

Scully:

Afterwards, I was impressed by the neatness of it. I was on my way to work, stopped at a light only a few blocks from my home, arguing with a boy who wanted to clean my windshield. I never saw the man who simply walked up to the side of my car, opened the door and sat down next to me. My head whipped around and there he was. Jacob Bookman was sitting in my car. All he said was, "The light just changed."

I started driving automatically. "What the hell is this about?" I asked him. Glancing over, he looked very different from the hesitant man who had approached me the day before. Even sitting down he looked alert and ready to fight. His expression was hard and I thought I saw the shape of a gun under his jacket.

"I believe I owe you an apology, Dr. Scully," he began.

"For breaking into my car like that? I think so!" I tried to sound outraged. The call I had received this morning had forced me to reconsider our conversation, however. I was going to need help rescuing Mulder, and Jacob Bookman might be the man I needed.

He smiled. "For misjudging you. I thought that you would be more likely to accept me if I appeared weak. All I did was give you an excuse to reject me. I'd like you to reconsider that decision."

"You want to help me?" I asked. "You have a funny way of showing it."

"Actually, I want you to help me."

"Well," I said, "at least you're honest about it. You do realize that this is not the best way to persuade me?"

"You need to understand," he said, "that I am not offering you a choice. I misrepresented myself to you yesterday, but not my situation. I will do whatever is necessary to regain my sister."

I sighed. It was time for the two of us to stop playing games. "That sister of yours, what's her name?"

"Leilah," he said. "Leilah Katalan. Why?"

Damn, I thought. He hadn't been lying. I saw a parking spot on the street and pulled over into it. "Let's go for a walk," I said. I didn't really think my car was bugged, but six years of Mulder's paranoia had rubbed off on me. I didn't want there to be any risk of this conversation being overheard.

He walked down the street next to me, matching my pace. "I owe you an apology as well," I began. "This morning I received a telephone call from your sister."

"How did she sound?" he asked. "What did she say?" The relief on his face had to be genuine.

"She sounded nervous and seemed to be in a hurry. She had a message for me from Mulder, asking for my help. For our help." That had been the first code word she'd used. "He wants me to meet him when they return to the US. Some time Tuesday at Winchester Air Force Base. They're going to need rescuing. Will you help me?"

"They're working together, then?" he asked.

"It seems likely." There had been no mention of Krycek in the message, of course. I was still unhappy with his role in this mess.

Bookman was already planning. "We'll need some kind of distraction for when they arrive. Where is this Winchester place, anyway?"

"Central Pennsylvania. The base is due to be closed later in the year, and there's only a skeleton staff there." After I had received Leilah's call, I got up to see what I could find out using my home computer. Then I'd phoned the Gunmen and asked them to collect everything they could find. I had already decided not to inform Skinner. It was too much of a risk.

"We don't have a great deal of time. Should I assume that you can't rely on your colleagues for help?" he asked.

"I'd rather stay away from the official channels," I said.

He nodded. "It's probably better that way. I can't afford to take any risks with this." He glanced at me sideways. "May I ask a question, Dr. Scully? Why didn't you believe that I had a sister?"

"It seemed a little too neat." I, of course, knew exactly where my own only sister was. "Look, this doesn't matter now. I'm going to call in sick. Then I need to go visit a few friends to pick something up." Frohike had promised me a plan of the base. "Meet me outside my apartment in two hours. Can you get us a clean car?"

"Yes," he said. "But make it three. I need to pick up some supplies."

"Two." I told him. "Don't be late. I want as much time as possible in Winchester before we have to act."

Frohike was as good as his word. He had a detailed map of Winchester Air Force Base waiting for me, as well as blueprints of the main buildings and a partial list of the personnel stationed there. He and Langley were collecting information on any unusual events in the area: they'd already found three UFO sightings in the last month alone. There had also been a suspiciously high number of night-time arrivals and departures around the base.

"Looks like Winchester AFB isn't as quiet as they claim," I commented.

"It gets better," Langley told me. "The base is going to be sold later in the year, right? Well guess what-- they already have a buyer. An anonymous group of investors."

"Just a formality, we think," Frohike said. "They clearly already control the place."

I sighed. This would make everything more difficult for us. "What about Bookman?" I asked. He'd been their other assignment.

"Have you contacted him?" Frohike asked.

"He found me," I said. The three of them shared one of their coded looks.

"He's an interesting guy," Langley commented. "Not our usual dish."

"Chunks of his CIA record have simply been erased," Byers began. "It's a professional job, too. Whoever this guy is, he's good. Here's what we have. Born in California in 1963. In 1980 he graduated from high school and just vanished."

"An abductee?" I asked.

"No. His father, Joseph Bookman, is a professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley. A specialist in the nomadic cultures of Central Asia. Your man ran away to fight Russians in Afghanistan. That's where he made his connections. He reappeared in 1983 and entered Princeton that fall. He graduated in three years then disappeared again, this time into Lebanon."

"So what is he? Some kind of terrorist?"

"Not quite." Byers continued his lecture. "He's an expert in popular unrest. Social breakdown and urban warfare are his specialties. He made his name with his work on the intifada but his paper on the methodology of ethnic cleansing is a classic too. We can print you out copies of the classified reports he's written for the NSA."

"The problem," Frohike said, "is that he doesn't just study. Sometimes he participates. He's been linked to some particularly bloody episodes in Indonesia. He's also been credited with saving hundreds of lives in Bosnia in the mid-nineties."

"What about his connection with Krycek?" I asked.

"There was nothing in his file, although it might have been erased. But," Byers said triumphantly, "we took another look at Krycek's old FBI file. Joseph Bookman wrote a letter for him when he applied."

"Basically, we don't think Jacob Bookman is part of your conspiracy," Frohike said. "But that doesn't mean he's not dangerous."

"I'm going to need his help to rescue Mulder," I pointed out.

"We understand that," Frohike agreed. "But please be careful, Scully." The other two nodded in agreement.

Jacob Bookman pulled up outside my apartment building precisely on time in a battered dark blue hatchback. As I walked up to it I noticed a duffle bag and a child seat in the back. Bookman got out to put my bag into the trunk. He didn't look like a mad bomber; he seemed calm and efficient. When he opened the trunk I saw that it was full of unmarked cases and plain boxes.

"What's all this?" I asked.

"My supplies," he said as we got into the car. "I wasn't sure what we'd need. We've got guns, explosives, that kind of thing." He glanced over to see how I was taking the news that we were traveling with a small armory.

Perhaps I'd been too quick to dismiss the mad bomber idea. "And the child seat? No, don't tell me. It's actually made of plastic explosive."

He laughed. "No, it's just a child seat. I thought this was the kind of car people with kids would drive, so I picked one up at a garage sale one day." I stifled a smile. "So, Dr. Scully," he asked, "what did you bring to the party?"

"Maps and plans for Winchester Air Force Base. I have a partial list of the personnel stationed there as well. I don't know how accurate either are, though. There's been some unusual activity in the area."

"Maps are always good," he commented. "We'll just have to wait and see how things are when we get there."

"And on the way," I told him, "you can tell me what was in that laboratory."

His mouth twisted into a smile. "My ignorant peasant act clearly needs more work. The answer is, not as much as we hoped. Sasha was looking for a vaccine against what he calls the Oil. It's actually a virus which he claims will be spread by bees when Colonization begins. I think you already know something about this, don't you?"

The bees again. "So you believe in aliens and their plans to colonize the earth."

He was silent for a moment. "I've never seen an alien. I have seen descriptions of this virus and its effects under laboratory conditions, though. And frankly I don't think it matters where it comes from. We need an effective vaccine." He paused again. "Sasha believes in aliens, though, and I trust him."

"When you say Sasha you mean Alex Krycek, don't you?" Bookman was a strange mix of reasonable opinions and untrustworthy associations, I thought. But his familiarity with Alex Krycek was his most disturbing feature.

"I know that you and Mulder feel that Sasha betrayed you, Dr. Scully," he said slowly. "But for a man like Sasha there could be no betrayal, because there was no relationship there to betray. If you believed in what you say of him, well..." He shrugged at our innocence.

"What about my sister?" I asked sharply. "What about Mulder's father?"

"Why are you asking, Dr. Scully? I have no interest in defending Sasha's character to you. You've already made your judgment, and I'll respect it."

"My opinion of Krycek affects my opinion of you. How did the two of you meet?"

"He followed me home and my father said I could keep him," Bookman said shortly. "Again, Dr. Scully, why do you want to know? You've already made your decision to work with me."

"Facts about Alex Krycek are remarkably hard to come by." The more I knew, the more effectively I would be able to deal with him. His control over Skinner was the first sign that he was back. This little trip with Mulder suggested that he might intend a more active involvement in our lives. "I need to be sure that Krycek didn't set all this up." It was my final reason, and the most important of the three.

"It seems over-elaborate if all he wanted was to trap Mulder. Why take him all the way to Turkmenistan and then have him captured there? The whole thing could have been done here with much less trouble. And again, why lure you to Pennsylvania? If they wanted to kidnap you, they could do it in DC."

He was right, I thought. "Maybe it isn't a trap for Mulder or me. Maybe it's a trap for you."

Bookman was silent for a moment. I wondered if the possibility had occurred to him. "I don't think that Sasha would set me up like that. And why?" I thought I heard a hint of doubt in his voice.

"Perhaps they want to recruit you." Mulder and I had no way of knowing how badly they'd been damaged at El Rico. "You have an impressive record."

He frowned. "Sasha and I met in Prague, spring of 1989. After the elections we traveled together to Poland. We were planning to go on to the USSR but instead we stayed in Warsaw to watch the government fall. I thought he was a tourist, some Midwestern kid out to find his roots. He thought I was some kind of liberal intellectual rejoicing over the triumph of democracy."

"Popular uprisings a specialty," I quoted at him.

"You've read my CIA file, haven't you? In this case I was only observing."

"And Krycek?" I asked.

"Imagine my shock when I followed him one night and found him speaking perfect Muscovite Russian to a contact."

"So he was already a double agent?"

Bookman ignored my question. "After that, I had to know more. I invited him home with me that summer. He finally realized we weren't a normal family when he found Leilah in the basement making fake IDs for all her high school friends." I raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Is it impossible for you to imagine that Sasha would have relationships outside of his work?" he asked.

I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it. In the course of my work with the X-Files I had sloughed off all my other connections: I had no room in my life for friends. I was barely holding on to my family. How could a man like Krycek expect to have friendships? He had always seemed so rootless.

"I have no illusions about Sasha," Bookman continued. "I would never expect him to place my life above his own. I would not expect him to tell me everything he does. But within limits, I do trust him. You will have to make your own decisions."

We drove on in silence.

Austria
Tuesday

Krycek:

I have always thought that anger was a kind of weakness. I've watched other people get angry, and watched them make mistakes. I try not to get angry. I've been upset, sure, and worried and desperate and maybe a little frightened. But I've never felt this cold cold fury before. Everything seemed very clear to me. I felt like I was watching myself from above, totally disconnected.

I had no idea it felt this good.

Leilah was gone now. In the morning she had washed herself off and put her clothes back on. We hadn't said much, and then a couple of the Tunisians had come to get her. She wrapped one of my blankets around her like it was a fur coat and walked out, her back perfectly straight. After all, there was nothing I could do about it.

After she left, I stopped thinking.

One of the Austrians came in too soon after that. He was bringing me a pot of coffee and some toast, but I didn't notice that until he was dead. It was their fault, I thought. They had been sloppy. They hadn't found the last knife in my jacket, and they had let this boy walk in with his hands full, without any kind of back-up.

The crash of the coffee pot brought two of the mercenaries running. The Austrian boy hadn't been armed, which was a shame. They would expect me to be standing behind the door waiting for them. I lay under the cot. As I expected, one of the mercenaries knelt down next to the boy. It was a stupid thing to do; I had slit the boy's throat and he was lying in a circle of blood.

The thing about this kind of fury, as I was learning, is that it makes you strong, and you don't feel any pain. I propelled myself at the man from under the bed, slamming into him and knocking him off balance. We rolled across the floor, and landed with him on top of me and my arms held between us. He probably thought it gave him an advantage, but this was no time to fight fair. The little knife hidden in my right hand ended up against his stomach; the prosthesis created enough space for me to drag my hand up and slit him open from belly to sternum. It was over before he even knew it had started.

The other man took a second to realize that his friend was dead. It was nearly enough time for me to get the dead man's gun, but not quite. The bullet hit me in my right thigh, the injured leg. I kept going. That leg wasn't good for much in the first place. His second shot just missed my shoulder; by the time he pulled the trigger I had the gun in my hand. I shot him before he could shoot me again.

Fury gives you better aim, too.

Now I had my knife and two guns, but my leg was bleeding. It was hard to tell how badly, because I was covered in the blood and guts of the man I had knifed open. I crawled over to the chair and used it to pull myself upright. I could hear shouting in the yard and steps in the hallway.

Mulder:

When I heard the shots I headed for the courtyard. No one stopped me. I found Davies pacing back and forth. The guards were standing around in little groups, looking unhappy. Strughold had taken the Tunisians with him when he left this morning, but there were fewer people here than there should have been. I watched Davies send three heavily armed men into the stable.

"It's Krycek, isn't it?" I asked.

Davies spat on the ground. "He's already killed three of my men." At that point more shots rang out. We stood there listening to the firefight, trying to figure out from the pattern of sound what was happening inside. One of the Austrians staggered out, clutching his gut. He coughed and said something in German before the doctor rushed over and started to lead him away.

Davies started to swear. "Fuck this. That's five of my men that bastard's killed. I'm going to start throwing grenades through that fucking window."

"Strughold won't like it," I pointed out, my mind racing. How could Krycek be such an idiot? "Strughold wants him alive. Just because he's already headed home doesn't mean he won't find out."

"He'll get over it," Davies said, but he looked doubtful.

"Do you really want to explain this to him? It was your stupidity that lead to this mess." I wasn't sure about that last point, but it was worth a try.

"Have you got a better idea?" he asked.

"Let's make a bet," I suggested.

"A bet?" His voice jumped an octave. I must have surprised him.

"Sure. I bet that I can talk him out of there. What do you have to lose?"

Davies seemed to be considering it. "What are your stakes?"

I grinned. "Krycek." Well, what else did I have to gamble with? "If I win, he works for me from now on. If you win, you get to kill him. I'll back you on it to Strughold." I was pretty sure Davies wanted to kill Krycek, even though I wasn't sure why. I was pretty sure he wanted me dead too, just on general principles. That was all I needed.

Davies stared at the barn for about half a minute. "Fine. But no funny stuff. I'll be right on the other side of the wall, and I'll be listening to every fucking word you say."

He didn't offer me a vest. As I entered the barn the smell of blood, shit and smoke hit me; I had to stop for a moment. Then I started to walk forward. When I was halfway there I passed the body of one of the guards I had seen go in. He must have dragged himself this far.

I felt calmer than I expected. In a way this situation was totally familiar. I had been here countless times, about to walk into a room and confront a man with a gun. The fact that this time the man was Krycek might or might not make my job easier. I was starting to realize that where Krycek was concerned I didn't think as clearly as I needed to. I was angry at him. He was going to fuck up my plan for our escape if he didn't stop this. But right now I needed to put that aside and work at talking him down before he gave Davies a reason to kill us both.

"Krycek," I shouted. Nothing but silence. "It's me, Mulder. I'm not armed. I just want to talk to you." He didn't answer. I kept moving forward. "I'm at the door now. Can I come in?" I could hear him breathing heavily.

"Drop your gun," he growled.

"I told you, I'm not armed." I wasn't.

"Then put your hands up."

I took that as an invitation and stepped through the doorway. Krycek had turned the furniture into some kind of obstacle course. He was crouching just behind a wooden table. Every inch of him that I could see was covered in blood. He looked like a beast out of hell. One portion of my mind noted the four bodies on the floor: two gunshot wounds, a boy with his throat slit, and a man who had been gutted. No wonder the room stank of death.

We stared at each other across the pools of blood on the floor. Krycek looked calm, and the hand which pointed a gun at me was perfectly steady. "What do you want?" he asked. "Are you here to gloat?"

"I thought you'd be the one to gloat," I answered. "Here I am, on your side. You win."

"No one's on my side."

My back was going to get tense from keeping my arms up. "You can put the gun down now, Krycek. I'm no threat to you. I just want to talk."

"Put down the gun?" He gave a bark of laughter. "Mulder, the minute I put this gun down I'm a dead man. What's this thing you have for offering yourself as a hostage, anyway?"

"Do you want to talk about old times? I can do that." It might help. I needed to persuade Krycek that he could rely on me. It wasn't going to be easy.

"It might give me a reason not to shoot you."

I tried for a light tone. "If you shoot me, they'll kill you. Then who's going to look after Leilah?"

He shot me. The bullet went between my arm and my head. Gingerly I touched my ear. My fingers came away bloody. I could hear Davies outside, snapping a command. "It's all right," I shouted. "I'm fine in here."

Krycek acted like he hadn't heard me or Davies. "Next time I'll aim for your head," he said. His face and voice were expressionless. "Let's talk about something else."

Right. Leilah was clearly out as a topic of conversation. I would worry about why later on. "What do you want to talk about? The weather? The NBA?"

"What made you change your mind? The incorruptible Fox Mulder, suddenly hand in hand with Conrad Strughold. What happened, did you decide to save your own ass and let the rest of the world worry about itself?" I ignored the sarcasm in his voice.

"Isn't that what you're doing, Krycek?" I heard the echo of his last words at the facility, telling me to betray him. "I'd do it," he'd said. I wondered if he was remembering the same scene. "What would you do, in my situation?"

His mouth quirked in what looked like a smile. "I'd sell you down the river and laugh over your dead body. Isn't that why you're here?" His voice was ice-cold. All the anger I'd put aside came flooding back. Fine. If this was how he wanted it, I could play this game. I was going to save this man's sorry ass if it was the last thing I did, and I could do it without his help.

"Well guess what, Krycek," I said. "I'm not here to watch you die, much as I might like to. I'm here to keep you alive."

"You want to make some kind of deal?" He was mocking me.

"There is no deal." I dropped my hands and took a step closer to him. He might have the gun, but I was in charge here. He wasn't going to kill me. "You're going to do what I tell you from now on, or Davies is going to start tossing grenades in here."

"Dream on, Mulder," he said. I could feel the tension in him as I got closer. It was hard to tell, but it looked like he had stifled some kind of movement when I'd told him I was taking control. Almost a shiver.

"You're going to work for me. We're heading back to the US. You'll stay with me, not Davies." His hand had tightened slightly on the gun, then relaxed again.

"So you get your own tame assassin? How did you work that?" His voice remained expressionless.

I took another step closer and crouched down just on the other side of his little barricade. "No one else seems to be able to control you."

"You think you can control me, Mulder?" he purred. It was my turn to shiver. "I could still shoot you."

I knelt there staring into his green eyes. It occurred to me that I might have gotten a little too close. His hand on the gun was perfectly steady now. I took deep breaths and listened to my heart beating. I didn't think I could control Krycek. I didn't even want to control Krycek. I wanted... I wanted... Damned if I knew what I wanted. I needed to get back in control of this situation. He has an amused, challenging look. A little smile on his face which I recognized from the very beginning of this trip. It was the expression he'd had when he told me he would have Scully killed.

He'd been bluffing then, and he was bluffing now.

Everything seemed to be in extremely sharp focus. I could feel laughter pressing up from my chest. God, I thought, who was this man? Covered in gore, probably about to pass out from blood loss, and he was still challenging me. He was still fighting. I did not want this man to be my enemy.

I took the challenge and leaned closer. His lips were the cleanest part of his face so that's where I kissed him. They tasted like salt and iron. He gave a little hiss when he realized what I was doing then held himself perfectly still, waiting to see what I would do. It only lasted a moment and then I settled back on my heels to find him still smiling, but no longer smug.

"Mulder..." he began as I took the gun from his nerveless fingers.

"No," I said. "Just follow my lead. Even if we are halfway around the world." I remembered how we'd argued before the ambush. "You kissed me," I'd shouted accusingly. "And you still followed me halfway around the world," he'd reminded me. I didn't understand the connection between us, but I knew it was there. He knew it too.

"Mulder," he said, "I'm not sure I can walk across this room." I could see the blood leaking slowly from the wound in his leg. It was clearly all the answer I was going to get. It would have to do.

"Some tame assassin you are," I told him. "Looks like I'm going to have to carry you out of here."

He grunted, then leaned back and closed his eyes.

Austria
Tuesday

Mulder:

We were scheduled to leave the compound that afternoon. Leilah, Davies and I were supposed to ride in a big black limousine, an enormous car big enough for six in back. I was pleased to see a glass divider between the driver and passengers' seats. Krycek was going to be carried in the back of an armored car. He was brought out of the main house, washed, bandaged and in clean clothes. Clearly they were taking no chances after the events of this morning; the guards brought out handcuffs, chains for his ankles and an elaborate hood and gag contraption to cover his head. Davies started dangling the hood in front of Krycek's face as Krycek kept up a stream of abuse directed at the two of us.

I left Davies to gloat over him and went back inside to get Leilah. She hadn't been in her room the night before, when I'd broken in to give her what she needed for Strughold's letter. In the end I'd left everything under her pillow and let myself out. Now I found her standing in the front hall, arms cuffed behind her. I pocketed the key, grabbed her by the arm and started to lead her out to the car. She flinched slightly under my hand and I loosened my grip. "Are you all right?" I asked once we were outside.

"I have the letter," she told me. She looked withdrawn, I thought. Perhaps she was nervous.

"I need a distraction once we're about half an hour away." I was sure she'd think of something. She nodded and I pushed her into the car. As we got in I noticed Davies turn and watch us. He couldn't know what we were planning, I told myself. Leilah settled into the back seat and I sat facing her. So far, no one had noticed that I still had the gun I'd taken from Krycek. It took all my willpower to keep from reaching for it just to make sure it was still there.

As we pulled out, I reviewed the plan Strughold had given me. The compound was in a fairly lonely area of the Austrian Alps, and it would take us a while to get down to the border. Then we would drive north to an American airstrip outside Munich and take a borrowed transport back to the US, where Spender would meet us. My own plan was very similar.

The road began to wind down the mountains. When we got to a forested area, Leilah let herself fall limply into a turn against Davies. She straightened herself right up, staring straight ahead. He leered at her and pulled her against him, groping at her breast. She stared resolutely out the darkened window as he pawed at her.

If this all worked, I might have to start believing in a higher power. I pulled my gun and pointed it at him.

"Get your hands off her," I told him. "Keep them where I can see them." He just stared at me. I clicked the safety off, hoping he would understand that I meant it.

He did what I told him, and Leilah darted across to sit by me. I leaned across the distance between myself and Davies. The car swung into a turn and my gun pressed into his chest hard as I took the gun from his shoulder holster and began to pat him down. I found two more guns, the last a nice little piece with a silencer which he kept in an ankle holster.

"Put your hands on your head," I said. When his hands were out of the way I fished in my pocket with my left hand and got out the handcuff key. It was a little difficult getting Leilah's cuffs off with only one hand, while keeping my eyes fixed on Davies. Once she was free I moved across to the back seat and cuffed Davies. Leilah, still silent, handed me the letter she'd hidden in her jeans and took one of Davies' guns. I nodded at her and she leaned back and rapped on the partition. The driver pulled over to the side of the road and I could see the armored car stopping behind us. "Wait here," I told her as I got out.

I walked back to the armored car. Strughold's men were obliging enough when I told them to open the back. They balked when I told them to take the ankle chains off Krycek, though.

"We want to talk to him back in the limo," I snapped, "and I'm not going to carry him back there. Undo those chains." They were used to obeying orders, and I sounded like I knew what I was doing. I could hear him trying to talk as they unwrapped him. "Shut up, Krycek," I told him, trying my best to sound harsh. "They'll be plenty of time for you to talk later on." I felt like the villain in a bad war movie, and the presence of the Austrians only made it worse.

Finally they stood him upright. I shoved him along in front of me to the limo, opened up the door and pushed him into the back seat.

Davies was lying stretched out on the floor, a neat little bullet hole in the center of his forehead. He'd been shot at point-blank range and there was no sign of a struggle. Leilah had opened up the partition and was holding a gun to the driver's head.

"He was trying to escape," she stated. His hands were still cuffed behind his back.

"What the hell were you thinking?" I snapped as I got into the car and closed the door behind me. At the sound of my voice, Krycek started to struggle. "We need him alive! The letter doesn't say I can kill him," I complained. Unless she'd changed it. I opened it up to look, but she'd written what we had agreed on. A letter in Strughold's handwriting denouncing Davies and giving me his authority. The letter instructed me to release Krycek and put Davies in his place.

I threw it on to the seat and set to work getting the gag and hood off of Krycek. He was still struggling. "Sit still, damn it," I hissed at him, "I'm going to get this hood off you, but I need you to sit still and cooperate." Once the hood was off he turned his head to find Leilah. She met his wild stare evenly. "What the hell are we supposed to do with a corpse in the back seat?" I asked her as I set to work on the gag. She spared me a brief, thin-lipped glance before returning to stare at Krycek.

Finally, the gag came off. Krycek twisted around to glare at me. "Don't yell at her," he snapped.

"Don't yell?" I said, pushing him back around to open the handcuffs. "She just shot a man in cold blood. Granted he was a lowlife but still--"

"He deserved it," Leilah said in a tight voice; at the same moment Krycek growled, "Shut up, Mulder."

As soon as the cuffs were off Krycek stepped over Davies' body to sit by Leilah. He was still staring at her intently, but he didn't touch her. "Are you all right? I was going to kill him for you."

"You can't protect me," she said flatly. He looked away.

"Hey," I said. Their interaction was interesting, but we didn't have time for it. "What now? Should we just keep going?"

"Why not just take the limo and make a run for it?" Krycek asked. "Once we get out of the mountains we'll have no trouble outrunning that armored car."

"Scully's meeting our plane," I told him. "I don't want to leave her hanging. It might put her in danger. And I don't want to start a high speed chase in a stretch limo with a corpse in the back."

He turned back to Leilah. "Jacob will probably be with Scully by now," he offered.

She shook her head. "I can't see Jacob now, Sasha."

"OK, OK," he said in a soothing voice. "You don't have to. We'll work something out."

What the hell was going on here, I wondered. Here was another whole new side to Krycek. He seemed to be completely intent on this little drama with Leilah. I watched her holding the gun on the driver. Then I looked at the driver himself and an idea struck me.

"Right," I said decisively. "Here's the plan. Krycek, take your clothes off."

"What?" he asked incredulously. Well, at least I had his attention.

"Leilah, tell the driver to do the same," I continued. "If he does what we tell him he'll come out of this alive. Tell him that." She started to murmur to the driver in German. Krycek was still staring at me, one eyebrow lifted. "I'm going to switch you," I told him. "He's about your size. You and Leilah can take this car, and I'll go back and ride with the Austrians."

"What will you tell them?" Krycek asked. I was relieved to see him shrugging out of his jacket and starting to pull off his shirt.

"Tell them Davies wanted to be alone with me. They'll believe you." Leilah's voice was bitter. Krycek turned sharply to look at her; she kept her eyes on the driver, though, and after a moment he turned back and met my gaze. His eyes held a warning I didn't need any more; my brain had already made the connections. I had a good idea of why Leilah had killed Davies and why she and Krycek were acting the way they were. I felt a stab of guilt: I had told Strughold that he could use Leilah to control Krycek.

The two men continued to change in silence. They were both wearing jeans and it was all done quickly. Once the driver had Krycek's jacket on I switched places with Krycek and started to put the gag and hood on him.

"You know," Krycek said, "it's not too late. You can still change your mind and run away with us."

"And miss my free flight back to the US? Besides, one of us has to be there to see Spender's face when he takes off the hood and sees the driver."

"Will you be safe?" he asked.

It was the big question. "Scully will be there. It would help if no one found this limo until I've landed in the USA." Scully had better be there, I thought.

The driver was tied up like a Thanksgiving turkey, and it was time for us to get moving. I reached over to open the back door on the driver's side. "Mulder," Krycek said. I couldn't interpret his tone. "Good work. Thanks."

I froze. "Whatever," I muttered.

"Enemies again?" He gave me half a smile.

"Listen, Krycek," I told him, "I don't know what we are, but it isn't enemies."

He wasn't smiling now. "I killed your father, Mulder. All those things you think I did, I did them."

"Save it for the judge, Krycek. And stay in touch." With that, I pulled the driver out of the limo and started propelling him across to the armored car. "He's all yours," I told the guards, and watched impassively as they put the rest of the chains on him and tossed him in the back. "Is there room up there for one more?" I asked them. "Davies wants the girl all to himself. He says he'll catch up with us at the airstrip."

"Lucky fucker," one of them commented. "Come on up."

It wasn't hard to seem impatient as we waited at the airstrip. I had the irrational expectation that Strughold would come driving up and demand to know what was going on. I paced back and forth as the shadows lengthened and the low cloud broke up. The other men had stopped guessing what Davies was doing back there.

I was anxious to get back. I needed to stop being Fox Mulder, temporary ally of Alex Krycek and pretended member of the Consortium, and return to being the Fox Mulder I had been when this all started. I desperately needed to get away from these people before the strain of pretending to be one of them drove me crazy.

The hour of our departure came and went. After another half-hour's wait I waved the pilot over. "It's time. I'm not waiting for Davies any longer. That bastard can make his own travel arrangements."

The pilot took a little convincing, until I reminded him that he didn't want to keep Spender hanging around on the other end.

I had reached the limit of my planning. All I could do now was hope that Scully would be waiting for me.

Tuesday
Winchester Air Force Base, PA

Bookman:

When Sasha and I were planning the Turkmenistan raid I asked him why he was planning to bring Mulder with him rather than Scully. We were visiting a laboratory; it seemed reasonable to take the scientist rather than the layman. He had laughed briefly and told me that it would be a cold day in hell before Scully would follow him off a sinking ship and onto a lifeboat. "Mulder's easy," he had commented. "Deep down, Mulder wants to believe me. Getting Scully to trust me would take forever."

I was beginning to understand why he treated her so cautiously. She could not possibly have known my suspicions about Sasha, yet she had targeted my fear with a surgeon's precision. Could this be a trap for me? Sasha knew that I was responsible for Daniel's death. That knowledge made him a threat to me. If he thought that I suspected him he might well see me as a threat in turn. He might decide to eliminate me. Ten years of friendship would not count for much with Sasha if he thought his life was at risk.

I had to assume that he had figured everything out. I was reluctantly beginning to realize that I might have to kill Sasha before he killed me. At least I could be sure that he wouldn't tell Leilah that I had killed her husband. Sasha was hardly vindictive. He would kill me if he had to, but he would not make Leilah do it for him.

I had too much time to think while we waited for the plane that would bring Sasha, Mulder and my sister back to us.

Winchester AFB must have been the result of a particularly corrupt piece of Congressional pork. It was up in the hills bordering a state forest. There was just enough flat land in it for a single runway and a couple of hangers. God knows what the Air Force thought when they saw it; they were probably delighted to be able to hand it off to the Consortium.

It was isolated and understaffed, which was to our advantage. Last night Dr. Scully and I had broken in and placed a few of my better bombs in the basements of two unused buildings at the far end of the base. We would detonate them by remote control once the plane we were waiting for had landed. There was a small risk that the bombs would be discovered, but I thought not. We then moved the car to its present location just inside the state forest. A service road ran along the edge of the chain-link fence which separated the base from the park. The car was hidden behind some trees, and Scully and I had set up a position from which we could see the runway and the front gate.

Dr. Scully had been a revelation. She had behaved impeccably last night as I set up the explosives: moving silently, watching my back and making no complaint at our planned destruction of federal property. In fact she had acted as if late-night raids on military installations were a regular part of her life.

Now, after eighteen hours in the woods watching a base in which next to nothing happened, she remained remarkably fresh. I was beginning to wonder if she would consider giving up her work for the FBI and starting a career destabilizing repressive regimes with me. Before I could ask her if she'd rather run guns to be used against the Burmese or the Indonesians she tapped my shoulder and pointed to the main gate. In the floodlights I could see two black cars entering the base and coming to a stop at the near end of the runway. A man in his late middle age got out of one and immediately lit a cigarette. I looked over at Dr. Scully and she nodded. "It's him. Spender." Her voice was full of distaste.

At least we had something to watch. Spender and the men he'd brought with him gathered at the end of the runway; there were only six of them with him and only the two cars. I hoped that the absence of any kind of transport meant that the plane itself wasn't carrying many troops. In addition to Spender's group there was a minimal ground crew waiting for the airplane. It looked as if Spender was trying to keep the number of people involved to a minimum.

The ground crew started to get impatient after roughly forty-five minutes. A few of them wandered over to consult with Spender; then another went inside briefly. After around five minutes he came back out and made a brief report. They all settled down to wait some more.

They weren't the only ones getting anxious.

Perhaps half an hour later we heard the sound of an airplane approaching. Scully glanced over to me and we moved back from the road to the car. Under the cover of the noise from the plane we started the engine and moved it onto the service road. Now it was just a matter of timing. Scully's face was a mask. I had expected her to be more impatient.

The plane--a military transport--touched down and came speeding toward us. I counted off the seconds in my head as it came to a stop and then taxied to the end of the runway. Then I hit the accelerator and we went flying down the service road and through the chain link fence; in the hours before dawn we'd weakened the metal so that it burst as soon as we hit it.

"Now!" I said to Scully as we entered the base. She hit the switch on the detonators and suddenly all I could see were silhouettes of the plane and the men around it. Most of the ground crew were heading for the burning buildings on the other end of the runway. I drove the car into the center of the men who were left. As we appeared out of the darkness into the middle of them I slammed the brakes. Scully leaped out of the car as it rolled waving her gun and yelling "Stop! FBI!" for all she was worth.

I thought I heard Mulder's voice crying "Scully!" as I swung the car around to the back of the plane and followed her out. I didn't take the time to look for him. I could see Spender, cigarette held absently in his left hand, staring at Scully and reaching into his coat for something. His men might have been surprised but I wasn't sure that he was. I launched myself at him and knocked the gun from his hand. We slammed up against the side of his car and then I pulled back and turned him around, my own gun grinding into the back of his head.

There was shooting around me. "That's it!" I shouted. "On the ground!" The two men nearest to me turned and stopped and began to crouch, slowly. I shook Spender. "Tell them to drop their guns!" I looked around myself as, at his nod, the remaining men put their guns on the ground and kicked them towards us.

Scully had taken shelter behind the door of our car. Now she stood up and we both watched Mulder walk down the ramp towards us. The interior of the transport looked empty except for the armored car which was halfway down the ramp. He appeared to be alone.

I don't think he saw me, Spender or the men on the ground. He went straight over to Scully and stood in front of her, brushing a lock of hair from her forehead. She looked up at him, her expression a mixture of relief and annoyance.

"Where is she?" I hissed at Spender. I had the sinking feeling that my sister wasn't here. Could Mulder have left her a prisoner? Spender was silent. "Where is she, Mulder?" I repeated, more loudly this time.

Mulder finally turned away from his partner and seemed to notice our tableau for the first time. Amusement crossed his face. He nudged one of the men on the ground with his toe. "Get up," he said, "and open the car." Then to me, "Bring him over here."

This commanding tone was new. Back in Turkmenistan Mulder had sounded threatened or defensive or angry. He hadn't been in charge. Now he thought he was. "Don't play with me, Mulder," I said. I was judging the distance between us, thinking about shooting him. Spender was still and heavy in my arms, like a child or a lover, and I needed to hold onto him. He was my ticket out. Or my ticket in, if Leilah wasn't here.

"It's all right, Jacob," Mulder was saying, "she's fine." The armored car was open and he was dragging a bound and hooded figure out of it, pushing him forward to stand, swaying, directly in front of us.

Spender, still motionless, spoke for the first time. "That isn't Alex Krycek."

"No," Mulder said. "Alex couldn't make it." Both Spender and I caught the use of the first name. Mulder was looking distinctly pleased with himself.

"Mr. Mulder," I said again, "start explaining this. Where the hell is my sister?"

"They're both fine," he said. "I left them in Austria. They got away."

Scully came to my rescue. "You left Mr. Bookman's sister with Krycek?" she asked, her voice high with disbelief. "Mulder, what were you thinking?"

"Why didn't they come with you?" I asked sharply.

Mulder hesitated, then spoke. "She'll tell you when she sees you."

Analyze, I told myself. What are the possibilities? That the two were both still prisoners? Unlikely. If Sasha were still a prisoner he would be here in these chains. That he was free but Leilah still a prisoner? Even more unlikely; everything Sasha had told me about Mulder indicated that he would not leave my sister a captive and save himself. They were free, and together, and had chosen not to return with Mulder. This could be serious. It could mean that Leilah didn't want to see me. And that could mean that Sasha had told her the truth about Daniel's murder.

I could feel the chasm opening in front of me. It might already be too late to stop this by killing Sasha. If I killed him it would just give Leilah another reason to come after me. Perhaps I should just let her execute me and be done with it. It would only be fair.

Now Mulder was talking to Scully. "Did Bookman give you the data from the facility?"

"Data?" she asked. "What data?"

They turned to look at me. My cue for an exit, I thought to myself, inching back to Spender's car. "You did get the data out, didn't you?" Mulder sounded outraged.

A hidden ace, I thought. The lab was dust, but I had what it produced: the first steps toward the vaccine Sasha wanted. That information was meant for Scully, now looking at me with a betrayed expression. One woman, however brilliant, could not do all the work necessary to produce this vaccine. For that one needed resources, the kind of resources the man I was holding had access to.

If I did have to kill Sasha, the least I could do was take his place.

"But you didn't fulfill your side of the deal, Mr. Mulder," I pointed out. "My sister isn't here. How do I know she isn't still in danger?"

"Deal?" Mulder began. "We didn't have a--"

I cut him off. "Talk to me about it again when I see her. Call it proof of your goodwill. The same deal for Mr. Spender here." The gun was still at the back of Spender's head, but now I was holding an arm twisted behind his back. It was a painful hold, and I was impressed by how well he took it. "All I have is Sasha's word that I should work with you. And Sasha isn't here." If he had been here, would I have killed him? I pushed the question away as unimportant, and wondered instead whether Mulder would be able to tell me why Leilah hadn't wanted to come back here. An open airfield was not the best place to trade information, but now he knew he would have to trade something for the data he wanted.

"Bookman, you don't understand," Mulder said. "That information is important. Whatever you do, don't give it to Spender."

"I'll be in touch, Mr. Mulder," I told him. As I spoke I came to a stop by the door of Spender's car. A twist of his arm and a shove folded him into it. I slid into the seat next to him.

As I closed the door and started the engine I heard Scully swearing at me. Before she was done I gunned the engine and we were gone. I had a last glimpse of open mouths and white faces. Spender was already lighting a cigarette.

Epilogue

Granada, Spain
One week later

Leilah Katalan:

All of Europe was moving around us that spring. Above us in the sky the bombers flew every night to Serbia, and every few days a planeful of refugees flew north or south or west from Kosovo. Many had traveled first on foot, then by bus into Macedonia and Albania. There they would wait in the mountains and watch their homes burn from over the borders. No one noticed a man and a woman traveling slowly by train from Vienna to Paris, and from Paris to Madrid. Sasha and I had no home to turn our gaze towards, no place to remember.

Daniel's lawyer, now mine, met us in Madrid with the house keys and drove us to Granada and the house Daniel had bought for me on the Albaicin. If he had an opinion about the fact that I had a man with me he kept it to himself. We arrived as the sun was setting, and I walked Sasha through to the courtyard to watch the light fade over the Alhambra. Like most of the houses on the hill here, the back wall had been taken out to provide a view of the fortress. I hadn't returned since Daniel's death, but the house seemed the same. I could hear the lawyer moving around, turning on the power and water and unpacking our groceries and the few things we'd picked up on our journey. Someone had been in to water the plants, and the night-blooming jasmine and the orange blossoms were pouring out their scent. It was a white- washed jewel of a house, all tile floors and dark wooden furniture. Daniel and I had never spent as much time here as we meant to.

Sasha stood and watched the darkness come over the hillside. It was too early in the year for the floodlights on the Alhambra. When the lawyer was gone, I came to stand next to him again.

He had been very quiet throughout our journey. "I would have left you there," he said now. Even now he sounded as if the words were sticking in his throat.

"I know," I told him. I supposed I should have been upset, but it would have been wrong to expect Sasha not to act like himself. His own survival would always be his first priority. I offered him my own apology. "I would have run away in Tunisia. Would they have killed you?"

"No." He shook his head, as if for emphasis. "It's not the same. I knew what I was doing." His mouth twisted into a humorless smile. "It's ironic, really. Mulder always accuses me of betraying him. But you're the one I did betray."

"Sasha..." I began.

"I should never have let you get involved," he said stubbornly. "Even if it meant keeping Jacob out."

"No one forced me to meet you in Turkmenistan and go to the laboratory. No one forced me to stay with you and Mulder. Those were my decisions." It was difficult to keep my voice even. "I am not your responsibility and I am not your dependent."

"And now?" he asked after a while.

That could have meant anything. I decided to answer an unemotional question. "We can stay here as long as we need to. Daniel and I bought this house through a blind trust. No one knows we own it, and we used false names with the lawyer." Buying the house had been a joke, actually, in the middle of two weeks of crazy vacation. Daniel had business on the southern coast of Spain but when we came to the Albaicin with its white Moorish houses and narrow medieval streets he had insisted that we buy a house here. I tried to focus on the conversation I was having now, but I thought I could hear the two of us laughing in the dark. Since the funeral I had avoided most of the places Daniel and I spent time together. It didn't keep me from thinking I saw him everywhere I went. Sometimes I could hear Daniel's voice still talking to me. Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night afraid that I'd forget the sound of it.

It wasn't as unemotional an answer as I thought. I came back to the present to see Sasha's eyes glinting at me in the dark. He'd been careful about touching me when I was awake, although I'd woken up in the night a few times to find his arm around me.

"That wasn't what I meant," he said evenly. Guilt, I supposed, was a new feeling for Sasha. I didn't think it suited him.

Suddenly I was desperate to drive Daniel's ghost away. "Why did you kiss me back in Turkmenistan?"

His shoulders had slumped forward. Standing all this time on his knee must still have hurt. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. For what it's worth, I don't regret it." I could feel him withdrawing from me. "Leilah, do you want me to sleep on the couch?"

I was absurdly grateful that I didn't have to say it myself. "There's a second bedroom," I said abruptly.

He nodded. "I'll leave once I my knee is healed."

"No!" The word was out of my mouth before I had a chance to think about it. A muscle jumped in Sasha's jaw. "No," I repeated with more certainty this time. "I think I need you, Sasha." We were two of a kind, really; in a way it was for the best. With the hesitancy that always seemed out of place in him he reached for me then. We stood there together, wrapped in the darkness.