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//Shit out of luck! To Hell with you! Fucking 'Cancer Man'! Fucking Bill Mulder! Stupid Scully sister! Fucking all of them. Most of all, fucking Agent Mulder// The rhythm of his curses matched the slap of his shoes on the pavement as he ran deeper into the squalid warehouse district and away from the remains of the gutted vehicle. He felt the sting of tiny pieces of shrapnel from the rocks and glass, which had hit him in the ass as he outran the explosion. He added more names to his list as he kept running, //fucking Skinner, fucking Cardinale// not daring to stop to breathe, to look behind him. Not daring to consider the future. His hair dripped sweat and added to the sweat on his neck that combined with the sweat running down his back. His hands stung, which added to ache of cramped muscles in his arms. The sharp gut punch of a cramp in his diaphragm finally stopped him, and his lungs heaved as he flung himself into the dark shadowed corner of an alleyway. //Breathe, breathe - don't think, don't care - breathe. The shit has hit the fan with a vengeance// Slowly he calmed, slowly un-kinked his abused muscles and realized he was damp with cooling sweat and shivered, drawing his jacket closer around him. All he had on him was $123 dollars in cash and a shiv in his boot; that was it. His ID's, credit cards, bank account, everything else was now useless. He'd known this, or something like it could happen, but he'd thought the day was further away when secret backup and personally manufactured coverage would be necessary. //Shit, shit! What do I do now? Shit, I must get out of DC// Alex began to walk and found the world skittered and tilted crazily as he got his bearings, tried to keep in the shadows and avoid the open backdoors and loading docks, which lined the alleys. He slicked his damp hair back out of his face with dirty fingers. //Shit! Don't even have a comb// He stopped behind a cluster of dumpsters and urinated. The sharp acidic smell hit the back of his throat, and he gagged, spat and pounded his fist against the metal container. //Fuck! Fuck! Think Alex; you must think// He rested, needing a drink, wanting a moment of safety, wishing he were just tired and on his way back to his dorm at college or at the academy or on his way back to his apartment and the chubby blonde who often invited him in for dinner and quickie when her boyfriend was away, for //fucking wimp// a home he hadn't seen in years and wasn't really there anymore anyway. //Gone, all of it// He slipped through a deserted side door of a large auto body repair shop. Made his way to the stacks of boxed and packaged parts and hunkered down. An Asian man was just locking up and setting the doors' alarms. He would spend the night here and think of a plan. He patted himself down, hoping to find a stick of gum or a stray hard candy. //Motherfucker! The DAT. I have the goddamned DAT// *** Alex studied the DAT, holding it to the light from the emergency exit signs as if it were the Hope Diamond. This was what it was all about. Everything the smoking man and the others were protecting. They'd trained him well, but told him practically nothing about the project itself. This was the holy of holies, Mulder's grail and reason for living. This was his one chance for an identity all his own. If he could decode it, understand it, use it; he could be an autonomous presence of his own in this serious game of life and death among the conspirators. //Bastards already tried to kill me. I owe them nothing. Mulder doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground about daddy dearest, but he's smart and has made deals with the devil, before, to find out things// Alex checked out the alarm system. It was primitive and only protected the building from intruders trying to break in. There were no motion detectors on the inside, no cameras. He went into the manager's office and booted up the computer. It took 40 floppies to get the whole thing downloaded, but he used a couple of new boxes from the supply cabinet. Should the day come when the manager ever needed more disks, he would simply figure that someone had made off with them. Alex hid the floppies in the bottom of a bin filled with parts of dismantled radiators, in the very back corner of the shop. By the looks of things, they hadn't gotten around to throwing out this kind of junk since 1987, and he doubted they were going to clean up anytime soon. He returned to the computer, studied what little information was available in English and chose a few items he thought he might be able to sell to others interested in locating lost or stolen secrets. //Got to get bankrolled, have a defense against another assassination attempt and then back to the action// He would save the rest of it for a time when he had resources to decode it. Alex washed up as best he could in the shop's bathroom and made his way out of the building. He caught the last metro to Rockville and walked some more, finally breaking into the ice rink and securing the DAT in a locker. He found an open Hamburger Haven and ate, took the three A.M commuter-rail to Baltimore and then the Amtrak to Philadelphia. He made a call from the station, scared, angry and surer of himself then he'd ever been. The phone rang and was answered.Briefly Alex said, "Can I talk to him?" The Aide answers, "Yes, he's just arrived. One moment, please. You have a call, sir." The Smoker takes the phone, "Thank you. Hello?" "I'm alive. Isn't that a surprise?" Alex asks sarcastically. Trying to seem unsurprised the Smoker answers, "Yes, good, good, good. Uh, where are you?" "Somewhere that you will never find me, you double-crossing son of a bitch," replies Alex. "Are you sure?" Replies the Smoker mildly, yet, full of unspoken threat. Alex says clearly, "I'm sure of this... if I so much as feel your presence; I'm going to make you a very, very famous man. You understand?" Keeping up the pretense of hearing good news the Smoker answers, "Yes, thank you. I'm going to report that to the group." Afterwards, Alex hung up the phone, went out into the morning rush hour and took a cab to the airport. He looked around the International terminal for a man about his age, build and coloring, who was traveling alone. He followed the man into the bathroom and calmly held the knife to his neck. The guy was agreeable, once Alex had made a shallow cut under the man's coat very close to his groin. He walked the man past the luggage claim and out into the parking lot. He gagged and tied up the guy, stole his wallet, ticket and suitcase, attaché case and left the man in a service hut. On the short flight to O'Hare, Alex found $640 in cash, $3500 in Traveler's Checks, and a passport with a piss-poor photo that could be anyone, including himself. He sat back, stretched out as far as he could in the coach seat, tuned out the crying kid and the bitchy wife who was haranguing her husband for forgetting to pack something or other and closed his eyes. //My luck has changed. Just keep moving, keep thinking and I'll be okay, maybe better than okay// The End *** Lawyers, Guns, and Money Well, I went home with the waitress I was gambling in Havana I'm the innocent bystander Now I'm hiding in Honduras |
SOLby Flutesong |