Star Gazing

First, there was the backwards stagger from the impact. Then, the hard smash against the wall reverberated in his skull. Third, his feet went out from under him, or maybe it was his knees. Whatever body part failed, he was on the ground when the pain hit him.

Pain is always the same and never the same, because remembered agony is just that, memories. New, current, just happening pain is always worse.

//God, god the pain// Always his last thought before the darkness swallowed him up.

//God, god the pain// Always his first thought before he opened his eyes again.

Fox Mulder watched Alex Krycek struggle to open his eyes. The man screamed when the bullet tore though his abdomen. Somehow, that surprised Mulder. He'd been surprised again when Krycek was wheeled out of the O.R. and his left arm had been missing. It had taken his mind a moment to process that Krycek had taken the bullet to his belly, not to his arm. The arm, he realized, wasn't his most recent injury.

Mulder stayed. Krycek lost the battle to regain consciousness five, maybe six times over the next eight hours. Mulder napped off an on, made use of Krycek's hospital room facilities, and had one of the guards bring him a meal from Subway when the man returned from his own lunch break.

Scully stopped by, read Krycek's chart, examined the stump and reiterated that nothing the man could ever tell them would be of value. That he was a liar, a traitor, and murderer. Mulder added coward, pretender, sneak, and bastard, but not aloud, because he could never fully explain to Scully or Skinner why he always had the smallest of suspicions Krycek did have something to impart.

Skinner dropped in too. Armed with official arrest warrants, he asked if Mulder wanted to be the first one in to execute the search warrant on Krycek's apartment. Mulder was very surprised. Krycek actually had a place to live? He agreed to go, but only if Skinner would remain. Personally remain, and see that no one executed the bastard before he had a chance to question him.

Skinner agreed, reluctantly.

The apartment turned up no clues to what Krycek was currently up to, who he was working for or with, and almost nothing about who the man might be or think or feel, between the seldom and catastrophic intersections into Mulder's life. He had few clothes, almost all of them black. He had a full chest of medical supplies, a second and lesser quality prosthetic, many cans of soup, three boxes of different kinds of crackers, and two can openers, one electric, and the other a magnetized roller model. A good quality bag of coffee beans, a grinder and a French coffee press, real cream in the fridge. The sheets were clean, the carpet vacuumed, and the garbage can recently emptied.

The bedside table's contents included a spare unregistered gun, boxes of ammo, two kinds of unguent for scar tissue, one European and the other Chinese, two left of a three-pack of condoms and three photocopied pictures. There was a black and white picture of a young family; father, mother, two boys and girl, circa 1970, at what looked to be a standard American playground. Mulder wondered which boy was Krycek; the boys looked a lot alike. And, from the fifties, a picture of a lovely college aged girl, Mulder thought this was Krycek's mother and wished it was in color. Lastly, there was a picture of him and Krycek, taken with a telephoto lens, when they were exiting Grand Central Station, jacketless, grimy and exhausted, with his hand on Krycek's upper arm, guiding the younger agent.

Mulder remembered how that arm shook beneath his hand. The odor of stale sweat and the splatter of vomit clung to Krycek's right shoe. Forty minutes later he'd returned to the car and found the Cole file gone.

Mulder stopped by his apartment, showered, changed and packed a bag. He didn't intend to leave the hospital again until Krycek was either dead or somewhere safer. He grabbed his laptop, cell phone, and glasses.

Krycek comes awake with a stifled grunt at two in the morning.

Mulder rang the nurse, took off his glasses, turned off the laptop and slipped his shoes back on. He waits for Krycek to notice him.

He's in a hospital room with dulled pain making it fuzzy around the edges. Knowing if he moves the pain will sharpen, bloom, and maybe send the darkness back. He's been here lots and lots of times. A bustling nurse buzzing about, "What is your name?" Glancing at the chart, "Yes, that's good Mr. Krycek. Do you know what day it is?" Another notation on the chart, a quick shuffle by the IV pole, "I think you can have some water now. I'll be back with some in a few minutes."

His back is aching and he knows he has to adjust his spine, a deep breath and bracing his right foot, the right arm a loss with the IVs, an inch and another inch. A start of a sigh and he sees a large sneaker clad foot, laces undone, out if the corner of his eye. He turns his head more quickly than he should. //Fuck! Mulder!// The pain obliterates everything and darkness returns.

It's seven in the morning before Krycek returns to full consciousness. He moves in small increments this time and sees Mulder asleep in the plastic chair. He feels warm urine flow through the catheter tube where it lies against his thigh. He knows he's thoroughly fucked this time, but hardly has enough energy to care. He wonders, briefly, what body parts have gone missing. It makes him almost glad he'll be dead soon instead of learning how to get by again.

He swallows dryly, reaches for the Styrofoam cup and can't quite grasp it. He sees a hand reach out, pick up the cup and pause before handing it to him. He dribbles more on the sheet than in his mouth. Still, it's a relief and eases the back of his throat. The hand returns and removes the cup.

Mulder reads the charges levied against Krycek aloud. It takes a long time. Mulder does the whole rigmarole, enunciating his rights and placing him officially under arrest. Only when Mulder asks the guard for his signature as a corroborating witness, does Krycek realize they aren't alone in the room.

Mulder asks him if he is invoking his right to silence. He almost smiles. "There's nothing to tell, Mulder." He answers in a hoarse whisper.

Mulder glares at him, but the edges of his face are getting fuzzy again and Krycek closes his eyes.

It takes almost three days before Krycek is fully awake and aware. He sees Mulder looks as bad as he feels and realizes Mulder has not left the room. "You can't stop them, Mulder," his voice is raspy.

Mulder stares at him. It is a cold clear gaze and Krycek is almost glad to see Mulder is at the top of his game, three days vigil notwithstanding. "They will kill me. You know it. You can't stop it."

"You think I care?" Mulder asks arrogantly.

Krycek quirks his brow, he cannot adequately put the words he wants into speech; but there has always been something between them. He's not sure what it is exactly. Some kind of understanding that is beyond words. It's almost sexy, this unseen, unspoken bond. It's certainly intimate. He was never able to convince himself it was actually sexy, not in the flesh-kind of or dick-kind of sexy. But, it was as intimate as that kind of relationship, even more so for being covert and not part of the plan on either of their parts. He used to think about it whenever he had the time or the privacy. The best explanation he could come up with was that regardless of 'sides' he and Mulder were a lot alike. They were both lonely and 'bent' somehow by the world they inhabited.

Mulder turns the sound up on the tiny hospital room TV. A rerun of Cheers is on and the laugh track grates. Krycek closes his eyes. He keeps them closed when the phlebotomist comes in and takes yet another blood sample.

"It's red," Mulder said quietly. Krycek doesn't know if that was to reassure him or Mulder.

"What happened at Weikamp?" Krycek asks.

"Hell if I know," Mulder replies. "Something." he adds after a few beats of silence.

"Good," Krycek answers. "The Brit wants to resist, the serum from Russia cured Marita Couvarrubious. If processed on a mass scale, it might be possible to head off an invasion. They all seem to think that the aliens do not want an unpopulated or resistant planet or they would have done away with humans a long time ago. The old men are having the in-fight of their lives, sides are being taken, and new alliances made. It's time for you to step up to the plate and get inside, Mulder."

"Are you offering me an invitation, Krycek?" Mulder asks waspishly.

Krycek, his eyes still closed smiles grimly, "Signed in blood, Mulder, signed in blood."

Mulder gets up and paces. "You always sign in blood, although not usually your own."

"Well this time, it is mine. Mulder," Krycek feels so tired. There isn't anything he can say that will make Mulder understand that collaboration is the lesser of all other evils. He gives it one more try, "It may be possible, Mulder. Don't you think you should give it a shot?"

"You dare say that to me?" Mulder asks incredulously. "What the hell else have I been doing for all these years?"

Krycek chuckles, albeit weakly. "Playing Hamlet? Pretender to the throne? I Spy With My Little Eye? I don't know Mulder, what have you been doing besides adding weight to the chip on your shoulder?"

"Fuck you," Mulder spits out, making a fist in the thin blanket where it lies over Krycek's chest. "It's people like you who've prevented the truth from getting out."

Krycek pries his eyes open, "Truth, my ass. There is no truth except survival. You spend your energies being distracted. You worry about trust, truth, and loyalty, so admirably worthless when the only thing that matters is being alive."

"That's the difference between us, Krycek."

"So you hold yourself above all humanity Mulder? You think they will all thank you from the grave because you were honorable. Your honor won't stop them from becoming incubators or drones. Your truth won't stop the coming carnage. Who you fucking trust won't be an issue when there's no one left alive and human for you to believe in or to believe in you."

"No." Mulder says decidedly, "You're wrong. Damned if you can excuse what you are and what you've done by blaming fate. You had options, choices and free will. You could have helped instead of hindered. You could have been honest instead of a liar and coward."

"Oh, for Christ's sake! What does it take for you to see that this is bigger than your hurt, Mulder? This is not a private war. This is the big one and nobody, nobody is gonna be left to play Truth or Dare with you if the end is Aliens One - Humans Zero."

Krycek falls asleep again. When he wakes, he knows he is on the other side of the damage, and that he is healing enough to get going soon. Mulder is working on his laptop. His shoes are off, a large pile of folders covers the floor near his feet, and his glasses are slipping off his nose. Krycek feels a cold whisper shudder down his spine. If things could have been different, he stops the thought uncompleted. There is no margin in supposing what might have been.

Mulder looks up, automatically pushes his glasses onto his nose and rubs his forehead. "You ready for something to eat?"

Krycek touches the bandages on his belly, "yeah, I guess so. How long have I been here?"

"Almost four days," Mulder answers and presses the call button.

Krycek patiently answers the nurse's questions and agrees that starting with something easy to digest is a good idea. As she turns to leave, he says he likes green jello the best. The nurse smiles and says she'll check and see if there is any available.

Mulder snorts.

"It's not much to ask for a last meal, you know."

"Krycek you're not dying and no one can get to you here."

"You want to be my food taster, Mulder?"

Mulder snorts again.

Krycek laughs, "Tell me, how many people in your custody have actually lived to get to trial?"

Mulder frowns at him.

"Come on, tell me."

"No one can get to you in here," Mulder repeats.

"Sure," Krycek answers sarcastically, but lets the matter drop.

His food arrives and there are two cups of green jello.

Once upon a time... Krycek reads a Highlights magazine that somehow got in the pile brought to his room by Mulder's helpful door guard. It's the best of the bunch as Home and Gardens and Redbook have nothing at all to do with his life experiences. At least Highlights has plenty of fantasy in it and the kid who had it first colored inside the lines.

He skims the letter from a fifth grader in Arkansas who wants Highlights to know that there are more than pig farms and soybeans in her state. That she belongs to a dance troupe and not to 4H. He gets the feeling that this is just the first of this kid's many future letters to editors.

Passed to him by the guard, Mulder brings another bag of greasy fast food into the room. He has become so accustomed to being with Krycek that he automatically brings him a chocolate shake. "Tomorrow you'll be going to the brig at Quantico." He says shortly.

Krycek sighs and drinks his shake. He has found he wants to live again. Pain is always worst when it is happening, as soon as it subsides the human mind forgets the immediacy and begins to believe it wasn't really so bad. No matter how many times he has been injured and recovers to this point, it is always the same. He wonders at his tenacity for life. It certainly hasn't treated him so well that he should have a fondness for clinging to it.

"I'm going to go too," Mulder speaks again around his burger. "Once you are arraigned I will consider leaving you to the protection of the Feds. So, the sooner you start talking, the better the chance you have to get federal protection that means something."

"There is nothing to say," Krycek reiterates. "Do you think if I say there are aliens in our midst they will believe me anymore than they believe you?"

"They will believe what you know about the conspiracy."

"Mulder, almost everyone you know or have met these last years is a member of the conspiracy, one way or another. Why do you think putting me on trial will yield any new results? You overestimate what you think I might know."

"You are a face to go with the story. That is what will count."

Krycek wants to throw his shake in Mulder's face, but it tastes too good to waste. "That's both a fantasy and a fallacy and you should know better by now. There is no judge or jury that, even if I live to testify, they cannot get to. There is no senate or congressional committee that doesn't have them at their backs and in their campaign chests. I have no proof of anything. I told you before, expose them and you expose their secrets and lies. Otherwise, there's nothing I can say that will make any difference."

Mulder knows Krycek is right, but he is willing to sacrifice the man for any tidbit he can get before they get to him. He hates that Krycek looks like a kid on a bad hair day. He should really look as dissolute as his actions, wear an eye patch or have obscene knife scars across his cheek. Krycek moans in his sleep and Mulder remembers the missing arm. Ok, he thinks, so the bastard isn't unscarred, but the thought doesn't bring him the satisfaction he hoped would result.

The transfer to Quantico takes far longer than Mulder would like and is almost too much for Krycek to bear. Mulder rides in the ambulance, the sway of the large van and the smell of Krycek's bloody bandages combine to make him nauseas.

The medical wing of the brig at Quantico is a stripped down, bare barracks of a ward. Although there are thin curtains, there is no privacy. Mulder drags over a chair and a bed-tray table from an unoccupied bed further down the ward. He sets himself up, laptop, snacks, coffee cup and tape recorder.

The medics are changing Krycek's bandages; he is barely conscious and moaning softly. The moans disturb Mulder; he wants distance between himself and Krycek, not pity or compassion. The pallor on Krycek's face make him seem even younger as it highlights some old acne or chickenpox scars and shows that once the man had freckles across his nose and cheeks. When a medic turns up the power of the bed-lights, Mulder sees Krycek's hair is not really dark at all, there are red and mahogany strands. Combined with the freckles, Mulder realizes Krycek had probably been fair as a child, maybe even redheaded.

Mulder gets up and paces. He is making too much of Krycek, humanizing him too much. Distance, he tells himself again, distance.

Krycek sleeps the day away. Mulder keeps the curtains closed around the bed and his improvised workstation. The day grows gray and rain splatters against the barred windows. As cold as it looks outside, Mulder feels the dampness inside even more. There are no cheery flowers or boxes of candy on this ward. No hand made or brightly colored blankets or quilts. The medics wear military uniforms, not whimsical smocks.

Krycek makes some choked sounds, as Mulder watches, tears run from Krycek's closed eyes, down his nose and cheeks. Mulder wonders what Krycek is seeing in his dreams or nightmares.

Mulder is angry that Krycek is acting so human; so vulnerable and damaged. The unfeeling monster in the room seems to be Mulder, not Krycek. Mulder gets up and opens the curtains and paces. Several more beds are occupied, but he never heard a thing while they had been filled.

It takes four more days before Krycek is arraigned. Mulder has bunked on a bed on the ward, and has food for Krycek brought in from nearby restaurants and markets. He keeps up a hard line for Krycek, but inside he is as paranoid as Krycek is. He watches all the medical personnel closely, and asks Scully to come as often as she can. She is reluctant, but she has seen too many of their suspects disappear or die to shrug off Mulder's requests.

She is both amused and insulted by Krycek. She is amused because he is careful around her, saying very little and respectfully calling her Agent Scully. He seldom meets her eyes, although he watches her hands carefully when she examines or injects him. She is insulted because when she lists his crimes and her own anger and pain, he purses his lips and closes his eyes, an impatient expression on his face. She hates him for brushing her off this way.

Mulder is exhausted by the time the court officer arrives at the base. Krycek has retreated into a hard-faced almost expressionless drone. Mulder wants to slug him in the gut just to hear him scream again.

Krycek's attorney arrives and insists that Mulder leave or at least get out of hearing range while he talks to his client. Mulder gathers his stuff and leaves the ward for the first time. He sees a momentary look of panic and then resignation on Krycek's face as he looks back.

Mulder goes to his apartment for the first time in days. He kicks off his shoes, happily sinking into his usual place and the embrace of the couch. He closes his eyes and drinks in the ambient noise of the traffic and the creaky elevator. He takes a deep breath and smells only the usual dust and coffee. He is glad to be away from sterile dressings and Pine-Sol.

He wonders if leaving Krycek with his lawyer was really a safe thing to do. He is fully aware that the attorney must be someone in the Syndicate's employ, but he thinks the man won't actually try to kill Krycek. He further justifies his actions thinking that he cannot be Krycek's Siamese twin forever.

He sleeps for a few hours, waking in a panic because he cannot hear Krycek breathing. He looks around his dim and dusty apartment and slowly works out his panic and confusion. Shit, he thinks, and takes a quick shower and shaves, packs a new bag and returns to Quantico. As much as he resents his instincts, he calls ahead to find out if Krycek is still alive.

He arrives by early evening, having fought rush hour traffic all the way there on I-95.

He sees Krycek before the man is aware he is there. Mulder realizes that Krycek kept his left side covered the whole time while Mulder was there. Seeing him now, still pale, needing a shave, his hair all flattened on one side and tousled on the other, the empty sleeve beneath the hospital gown, Mulder begins to give up on keeping his distance. Even he cannot believe Krycek is playing pitiful on purpose.

It's always been this way, he thinks. Krycek manages to get to him, get under his hate and defenses somehow. Mulder almost feels sorry for himself. He wants to keep the rage and the justification for the rage alive and bitter.

He sees Krycek gives up on the green jello and cover his left side up again, pulling the sheet short of his toes to do so. Mulder thinks Krycek should look ridiculous instead of pathetic. But, vulnerable wins.

As he steps closer to the bed, he surprises a strange look from Krycek. It takes Mulder a moment to understand that it is a welcoming, if complicated expression. Heartened that he is not alone in having convoluted feelings, he holds out the large chocolate shake. Krycek quirks his lips and takes it with a soft, "Thanks."

As Krycek drinks the shake, they talk in a desultory way about sports and the news, saying nothing much at all, but Mulder thinks, feeling rather a lot.

Mulder is taken wholly and terribly by surprise when after falling asleep, the shake only half finished, Krycek stops breathing and the heart monitor goes flat-lined. It takes him a precious moment before he hits the Code Blue on the controller and starts CPR.

Doctors and techs arrive with the emergency cart within seconds. They take over and coax the life back into Krycek. Mulder sees the stitches break open on Krycek's abdomen when the paddle shocks his body into an arch. He feels like screaming, forgetting entirely his own vengeful musing of a few hours ago when a fresh stream of blood soaks Krycek and the bed.

Time slows down; Krycek is put on oxygen, undressed, cleaned up and taken to a treatment room at the end of the ward. He is injected with a local anesthetic and the stitches are restored. Through all of this, he never regains consciousness. Mulder, who had never seen Krycek fully unclothed before, feels ashamed to see him this way, pale, bruised and wounded, totally helpless.

It strikes him how easy it is to destroy the flesh, to winnow down a man into a helpless creature. It isn't just Krycek, Mulder realizes, it is the sum of his experiences. In a state like this, everyone is a victim. Mulder feels compelled to lay a hand on Krycek's cold shoulder, offering mute support while the thin, tender skin of the man's belly is sewn up once more. While he watches, the catheter tube flushes with blood filled urine. The doctors tell Mulder that Krycek was poisoned and that they will take him to the surgical ICU and monitor his kidneys.

Mulder shows his badge and insists on coming along.

He keeps a hand on Krycek's shoulder as they traverse the hospital.

It is now almost 2AM, Mulder doesn't call Scully. He fills a cup with acrid hot coffee and sits in the hard chair next to Krycek's bed.

When Krycek begins to wake, he tries to understand why he is in such pain again and why the lights are so bright it penetrates his eyelids. He feels hallowed out, light as air and empty. He wonders if he is dead and if he opens his eyes, he will see himself on a slab while he floats above and watches them draw the sheet over his head. Instead, he cracks his eye open and sees Mulder, head hanging down to his chest, snoring lightly, asleep in an upright chair by his bed.

It's a different room and a different bed, all the medical equipment tells him he is in an I.C.U. He almost smirks, someone got to him after all, he thinks, but Mulder must have saved him.

He thinks about Mulder saving him. He thinks about the soft voice Mulder uses when he talks to Scully on the phone. He remembers he used to get the urge to call Mulder, just to see if he would talk to him that way, without anger and bitterness.

A nurse comes in, trips a little over Mulder's feet, waking him up and begins to take Krycek's vitals.

The two men stare at each other.

When the nurse leaves, Mulder gets up and tugs the thin blanket up and over Krycek's chest and left arm. Krycek flushes as if this is a terribly intimate and unexpected thing, which upon a moment's reflection, he realizes it is.

"You are rapidly using up your nine lives," Mulder mutters, sliding an ice chip into Krycek's dry mouth.

Krycek closes his eyes and enjoys the ice melting in his mouth.

The truce stays intact over the next two days. On the third day, a Department of Justice lawyer deposes Krycek. His own lawyer returns and Mulder keeps his hand on his gun. Krycek watches the lawyer closely, realizing Mulder thinks this man tried to kill him. It is a tense few hours and Krycek is exhausted when it is over.

The lawyer frowns at him, and when he thinks Mulder is not looking, draws his finger across his throat. Krycek gets the message.

As the man leaves, a wash of pure rage encompasses Krycek. He feels a true sense of rebellious anger. They have done this to him. He was young and ambitious, willing to skip a few steps, but not really what they made him. He never wanted that, he thinks now, never wanted to leave a trail of blood and bodies behind him. He hates Cancerman with an all-consuming anger. He turns to Mulder and the DOJ lawyer. "This is how it works," he begins. Mulder turns on his tape recorder and the attorney takes notes.

Mulder and Krycek, with various DOJ personnel taking notes, eat, sleep and breathe Syndicate structure, names, dates and projects for the next few days. Mulder sends the friendly guard for milkshakes and throat lozenges for Krycek and good coffee and No-Doze, for himself. Krycek is hoarse anyway, but he whispers what he knows regardless.

When his lawyer returns, Mulder is in the bathroom. The poison this time is a contact gel on the lawyer's hands, the lawyer dies foaming at the mouth as Mulder exits the toilet and the door guard yells for back up. They start to flush out Krycek's system immediately, but it is too late.

Krycek goes into cardiac arrest and his mouth begins to bubble, he tries to utter a deathbed vow that all the information is the truth. Mulder is bent over his face, and he is begging Krycek not to die, not to die.

Krycek passes out, his heart is still beating, but the poison has damaged his throat, esophagus and some of his lung tissues. They put him on life-support.

Mulder paces, he hassles Scully to find a way to help Krycek and ignores back to work memos from Skinner. Krycek does not regain consciousness and Mulder hates the way his face has smoothed out, seemingly at peace. Mulder no longer tries to kid himself about his connection to Krycek. It is there, a fact of life, his life.

Other than Skinner or Scully, he trusts no one to keep an eye on Krycek and as they do not believe he will wake up. They refuse to spend uncomfortable nights in hospital chairs and even hint that if the syndicate still thought he was a problem and killed him, it would be no worse than the state he already inhabits.

The information Krycek spilled leads to several arrests. These arrests, unfortunately, are only low-level personnel, caught because they were obviously breaking the law. The Smoker and his ilk remained untouchable.

The press went so far as to suggest there was another "conspiracy" in Washington D.C., but was hushed before the press could connect more dots and name it Alien-gate or ET-Gate.

Mulder has the papers brought to the hospital and reads the articles aloud to Krycek. In fact, in the quiet stillness of the night, Mulder talks quite a lot. He reiterates his hate and the causes for that hate, over and over again, until even he recognizes that he has talked a lot of it out. He tells the comatose man his whole life's story. He speaks about all his pain, all his anger, bewilderment and fear and guilt.

Krycek's lack of a response encourages him to talk out his problems and Krycek becomes his alter, the white sheets and the pale man, his confessors. After such talks, Mulder would sleep, in the next bed, deeply and serenely.

Eventually, he uses up his accumulated leave and has to return to work. He hires two ex-FBI agents to take shifts and watch Krycek. Both of these men had been invalided out of active duty because of injuries. They were willing to take the job because, whether or not they believed in aliens, they do believe in recovery. They have done it themselves.

Krycek hears whispers flutter against his mind. He vaguely understands the words or rather, the tone of the words. He wonders why he is with people who are praying. Nothing forms into cogent thoughts, but his unconscious mind finds the soft comforting voice and he gives into its rhythm, as if it were a lullaby.

He stays this way for weeks, while the information he leaked has seemingly run its course through the press and law enforcement agencies.

Unbeknownst to him, he has been written off as if he were already dead. The comforting voice comes back at odd intervals, but his mind and soul wait for it, hold on to it and breathes easier when it is near.

Mulder's life has narrowed to the crucible that is the X-Files and Krycek's hospital bed. When he is at one, he longs for the other. Scully reminds him that the helpless figure in that bed is an enemy. Mulder nods and agrees. Scully sighs. When they report in to Skinner, even he sighs, knowing Mulder is at best, only half there.

The Department of Justice and the DOD insist on transferring Krycek to a long-term care facility. Mulder lobbies his contacts and Krycek is transferred to the VA Hospital in NW D.C. Mulder starts to sleep there, listening to the heart monitor and the gasps and shudders of the breathing apparatus. He takes comfort in this dumb assurance that Krycek is still alive.

When he finds himself taking over some of the responsibilities for Krycek's personal care, bathing him, turning him and exercising his limbs to keep as much muscle tone and blood flow as possible, Mulder knows he's entered some kind of alternate universe. One made of underserved sympathy and empathy. He tries to make himself believe that he would do this for anyone he knew, but that untruth is not justifiable. Of all people, besides Cancerman and his buddies, Mulder hates Krycek the most. Of all people, he would have willingly stood by and let this man be killed, either wishing he killed him or actually doing it himself. Nevertheless, as he tends to Krycek, he becomes more and more convinced that this is something he was meant to do, something he is compelled to perform almost ritualistically to preserve his humanity.

Mulder, knowing Scully and Skinner do not understand, applies himself more rigorously to listening to Scully as they work on X-Files. He begins to notice that when he does, she is less impatient with his far- flung theories. He catches up with the lowly tasks he put off before, going through his mail and files, cleaning up and putting away much of the mess around his desk and reducing the piles from on top of the cabinets. One Friday, when the high summer sun actually makes its way through the small basement window, Mulder goes to requisitioning and chooses a midsized, only partially beat up desk and has it delivered to the office. He takes a walk on his lunch hour and buys a matching desk set, blotter, pencil holder, and rolodex. They have a bright blue trim on the faux leather and he thinks Scully will like having something that is not Government Issue cardboard accessories.

He sets up the desk and after hours, goes hunting for a good chair. He steals one from a third floor office, knowing they will never come to the basement to find it and not caring at all that the owner will miss it. This finishes the neat niche he has designed for Scully.

He takes a quick shower at home and gets a large take out meal on his way to the VA. He sets himself up for the weekend. The hospital personnel welcome him with smiles, appreciating his devotion to the man who exists in what they privately call the vegetable garden. Mulder saves them a great deal of work with this particular patient.

He sits by Krycek and tells him about his day, the long summer day is fading outside and Mulder tells Krycek about the tourists who flooded the streets, baggy shorts and sunburn ointment on their noses. Mulder has become adept in one-sided conversations. He does his evening chores for the comatose man. He notes that despite the IV intake and his own efforts, Krycek is thinner and more limp than ever. This night he sits closer to Krycek, one hand on his shoulder and one on the TV remote.

Mulder is comfortable. In some strange way, the responsibility for Krycek is fulfilling. He no longer gnashes his teeth or remonstrates himself for being lonely or antisocial. He has come to believe that if Krycek were really awake and aware, he and Mulder would have worked their way to this level of friendship, somehow, someway. He knows that this idea is preposterous; they were enemies operating on opposite sides of a deep divide and Krycek is a felon. Regardless, Mulder begins to believe that all they would have needed was a chance, and Krycek would have thrown off his fetters to the syndicate and aligned himself with Mulder.

Deep in the night, the TV quietly playing some repeat of afternoon soaps, Mulder, more than half-asleep, feels a twitch beneath his hand. Unconsciously, he holds the shoulder under his hand more tightly. The second twitch wakes him up. Krycek is shuddering, his long unused limbs trembling and spastic. Unwilling to leave him and terribly excited, he hits the call button, holding it until even he can hear the buzzer from the nurse's station half a hallway away.

The nurse comes, frowning at the interruption, she sees Krycek move and notes his blood pressure is higher, the breathing tube is vibrating. She hurries away, telling Mulder she will return right away. She does, with the late night on-call neurologist. Manual resuscitation bag at the ready, they unhook Krycek from the artificial lung, remove the breathing tube and rhythmically massage his chest, arm and legs. Krycek coughs, the nurse and doctor laugh, Mulder says, "Yes, yes, come on," quietly into Krycek's ear.

They work on Krycek through what is left of the night. He has not spoken, but he has opened his eyes and begun to respond to the massage. Mulder is sure Krycek recognizes him. He keeps up the litany of encouragement. When the sun rises and the rest of the ward begins to stir with the shift change of nurses and techs, Krycek says a very raspy "Mulder."

"Yes," Mulder replies and smiles. Krycek raises an eyebrow in a pale copy of his trademark smirk and reaches out. Mulder takes his hand and Krycek falls into a natural asleep.

Mulder spends the entire day at Krycek's side. Each time he comes awake, he is more aware of what is happening. Mulder, despite the long night and no sleep, is ebullient. Krycek reaches for him each time and Mulder gladly holds his hand.

In these early hours of recovery, Mulder becomes more convinced than ever that what he has done, spending so much time with Krycek, tending and talking to Krycek, has been worth it. He believes, as surely as a child does, that Krycek feels the connection as well. For once, he makes no excuses or caveats for his happiness, he lets it all flow. By suppertime, Krycek is grinning back at him, his eyes asking a million questions, although his throat is too painful and he cannot yet speak.

Mulder makes sure he has green jello for his first taste of the rest of his life.

Mulder uses his long held secret FBI hacking codes, which the Lone Gunmen had presented him with ages ago, to run security checks on the hospital personnel that attend the ward where Krycek is a patient. He monitors emails from doctors and administrators. He is in a panic. If the Smoker and the syndicate know Krycek is lucid, he is sure they will try to kill him again. He arranges to meet with Scully and Skinner outside the Hoover building and tells them about Krycek.

Skinner and Scully cannot understand Mulder's concerns. As soon as he is able, Krycek will go to a Federal Prison and await trial anyway. Then, they are sure; he will get a life sentence and rot in jail forever. Mulder is torn. The newly awakened Alex Krycek is not at all like his enemy. He speaks little, his smile is no longer mocking and he seems appreciative of all the things done by others on his behalf. Besides that, he is thin, pale and looks about sixteen, and a 98- pound weakling to boot.

Mulder urges Skinner to review the information Krycek offered before he was attacked. He wants Skinner to agree it was meaningful testimony and should count towards leniency and further deals with Krycek's sentence. Skinner grits his teeth, reiterates what Krycek did to all of them as well as his pose as an FBI agent and his traitorous exploits selling information from the stolen DAT.

Mulder keeps trying as the days pass and Krycek's strength returns. When Krycek can talk more easily, Mulder tells him about the poison and the coma. But it is Scully, there at Mulder's urgent behest to evaluate his recovery, that tells him how Mulder stayed and kept watch.

Hearing this news, Krycek turns his face away and stares out the window. Scully is irritated at his apparent disinterest. She marches around the bed and stands in front of the window, "He cares about you," she says. "Somehow he has invented a good man to take your place, an honest man and not the lying scum that you really are. I have told him he has been wasting his time, that if you woke up, you would be unchanged and not the ideal he invented. I don't have his faith. But hear me, Krycek, you mess with him again, with any of us, and I will personally hunt you down and kill you."

Krycek slowly meets her eyes; an expression in them she cannot decipher. He smiles a small bitter grin, "I believe you Agent Scully," he says, but the sarcastic edge is missing in his voice. "I don't know why Mulder has done what he did. I don't know why he felt it was important to keep me alive in the first place, and although you won't believe me, I tried to minimize the damage to all of you from the beginning."

Scully snorts and shakes her head, packs her medical bag and says, as she leaves, "You're right Krycek, I don't believe you."

That night, Krycek has a dream unlike any dream he has ever remembered. He is in a crowded office, hemmed in by filing cabinets piled high with reports and folders. If he turns right, his shoulder will knock files over, if he turns left, a stuck drawer will bang his knees. If he tries to push a path through the cabinets, they change places and box him in. He is stuck and while there is nothing inherently fearsome about filing cabinets, he is scared to move. In the dream, he stands there and sweats. He cannot move without making more of a mess. His dream self cannot understand why he cares about making a mess, but still he cannot move. Slowly he reaches out and picks up a file, a few cabinets over; he sees a glowing space in a cabinet and knows that the file in his hand belongs in that space. Slowly, carefully, he inches his way to the cabinet and files the folder. He picks up another one and again, sees an eerie light. He files that folder too. Eventually, he has filed everything and the way is clear. Boldly, convinced he has fulfilled his dream's mission, he hurries toward the door. It slams shut just as he reaches for the handle; he hears a great roaring sound, turns around and sees the cabinets rush towards him. He cannot open the door in time and the metal cabinets crush him to death against the door.

He wakes up in a sweaty tangle, his heart beating madly against his ribs and his mouth opened in a silent scream. He orients himself, and looks around. He is still in hospital, Mulder is still asleep in a plastic chair by his bed and he can see the nurses through his curtains, busy at a counter filled with dials monitors, and switches.

Slowly he takes deep breaths. The sweat cools on his skin and he tucks a blanket over his shoulders against the chill.

He thinks about the dream. He believes it has a simple message at its core. No matter which way he turns, he is doomed. Cleaning up the messes he has made of his life affords him no mercy or forgiveness. The very foundations of his life are impossible to alter or change and will kill him no matter which way he turns. There is no 'out'.

He reaches for Mulder's hand. It lays relaxed on top of his blood pressure monitor. Mulder grasps the hand, never waking up; Mulder's hand closes around his. Krycek holds on and sleep overwhelms him. Dreamless and deep, he does not waken again until morning.

Krycek is moved into the prison hospital ward at Quantico again and physical therapy begins, and Krycek is made to stand and walk and bend. The simplest things exhaust him. The medics are concerned about his balance and the weight of the missing arm. They cannot find the prosthesis that came into the hospital with him.

A raspy edge, from the poison, makes his voice breathier than ever and seems permanent. He has to eat bland foods and it may take months before his stomach lining is fully healed.

Mulder remembers the extra prosthesis in Krycek's apartment and stops by on his way to the VA one day. There isn't much mail, but there are overdue utility bills and a final back-rent notice. As far as he knows, the only money Krycek has is the couple of hundred that was in his wallet when he was shot. There were no credit cards either in his wallet or at the apartment. He has the Lone Gunmen check on Krycek's finances; they are way ahead of him and can tell him immediately that if Krycek has money it is under another identity. They tell him they checked the John Arntzen identity too.

He brings the arm and the mail to Krycek. Krycek asks for his jacket. It is stained and crusted on the inside where the blood coagulated. He tears at a loose thread and opens the hem. The hem is crammed with rolled $100 dollar bills, rubles and Deutch marks. He gives a bunch to Mulder and asks him to pay the bills, rent and to keep the jacket in a safer place than the hook on the wall above his cubical on the ward.

"Aren't you afraid I'll take the money?" Mulder asks.

"No," Krycek answers.

"Harrumph," Mulder mumbles.

Krycek grins and shakes his head.

Mulder's load lightens now that Krycek can get to the bathroom and bathe himself. He still spends most of his non-working hours with Krycek. They have developed a careful relationship. Neither brings up the past and neither talks about the future and Krycek's most likely prison sentence. They talk about the news of the day, how Krycek finds daytime television a waste of time and they play bloodthirsty games of Gin, racking up thousands of dollars in wins and losses.

Occasionally, they talk about Mulder's current X-Files. Mulder finds it a relief to talk to someone who has few doubts about paranormal phenomenon. Krycek, who never got the chance to actually work on X- Files, finds the topics fascinating and frustrating. He has no personal agenda or great scientific theories to prove to the world and wonders why Mulder is so devoted to proving these things exist. Nevertheless, they talk about the cases and the evidence. When Mulder brings him Scully's reports on the same cases, Krycek often agrees with her explanations over Mulder's theories.

One day, as his therapy is almost at an end he is facing a Federal Prison holding cell in New Jersey, Scully arrives with Mulder. She watches the two men's friendliness and ease. Scully is unconvinced that Krycek is a changed man and believes he is plotting some new evil. When the discussion turns to a new X File that has given her fits over Mulder's insistence that what they found were super- intelligent bats and not just a few African bats, no doubt brought into the USA aboard a cargo-container ship. Even she has to laugh when Krycek, with an unlikely and heretofore unknown sense of humor, makes jokes about bat- to-bat love life.

Her checkup that afternoon is more thorough and gentle than before. She tells Krycek that he is likely to be weak for sometime to come, because even before he was shot and poisoned he was malnourished and over stressed.

Krycek thinks about those last weeks in Russia, the cold, the boy witness, the weeks on the freighter and Marita's betrayal. He has no doubt that Scully is right. He never had enough time to really work on his recovery from the loss of his arm; he merely forced himself to go on.

After Scully leaves, he asks Mulder about what happened to Marita. Mulder tells him what he knows and they compare their information. Krycek concludes that she was going to give the boy to Mulder, but the alien-oil got to her first. Mulder agrees and tells Krycek how panicked he was when he thought Scully has been taken or killed on the bridge.

Krycek tells him about the missing Purity alien fetus and the rebels. Mulder counters with the death toll from the Ft. Marlene airplane hanger. They make a list, who survived and who perished. Both know that Cancerman and Diana survived. They wonder about the Brit, and Krycek tells Mulder about how the Brit followed Marita's trail and captured him on the freighter.

Krycek doesn't mention either his sexual encounter with Marita on the freighter or that he abandoned her and Jeffrey Spender at the hospital, where he found Cassandra Spender and the alien fetus missing.

Mulder, not knowing that Krycek already knows about his meetings with Cassandra, does not tell him about seeing her at the hospital or that he also saw Marita and left her to her own resources, ill as she was.

They both privately ponder how close they were then, simply minutes and a few corridors apart.

Mulder grows very excited over the news that the antiviral from Russia works and kills the alien-oil. Both of them are scared, deeply scared that the work to make Cassandra Spender a hybrid was successful and that it means the invasion date may have been moved up.

Krycek is the one to pace this time. Mulder watches and waits, a million things in his mind that Krycek could tell him, swiftly chasing each other.

Krycek comes to a halt, sits on the edge of the bed and, looking out the barred window, and tells Mulder that Jeff Spender is Cancerman's son. That Spender used his wife as a guinea pig for over two decades.

Mulder feels his heart stop and start again. Carefully, the words almost a whisper, he asks Krycek if Spender also sired him or Samantha.

Krycek answers, his eyes still on the waning afternoon out the window. "I am not sure; he always played that hand close to his chest. He hinted that he was your father too, but who knows? I think that at some point that Samantha and other abducted children were returned to him for more tests. But, I do not know when or where."

Mulder sighs and stares out the window, Krycek, forcing the words out of his constricted throat, says very quietly, "William Mulder knew. He probably was there when she was returned and watched the progress of whatever they did to her. Since I have never heard of or met any of those returnees, I think they must have all died somewhere along the line, either with the aliens or here on earth."

Mulder's hands become fists, he wants to deny what Krycek has said, he wants to break the window and run away from this news. He thought he had already faced the fact that his father knew what happened and kept it from him for all those years, but his gorge rises and he knows that he was never convinced before. Gruffly he tells Krycek he is going for a walk and leaves the ward.

Krycek watches him go, cursing William Mulder and Spender in his heart with all his might.

A few days after their heart-to-heart talk, Krycek sees his opportunity to escape. He has been here for so long and visited so often that the sentries hardly notice when he wheels himself out the door, ostensibly on his way to physical therapy. He has done this many times, and the guards do not know his PT sessions are over. He is wearing jeans and a Quantico Tee shirt under his robe and he is sitting on his shoes. He goes through the empty PT rooms and out a back door he discovered, that remains unlocked and has no alarm or code so that the medics can grab a smoke nearby and unmolested. He has his wallet, after convincing Mulder to give it to him so he could chip in on the milkshakes and other treats Mulder bought. He is sure Mulder has his jacket in his apartment. So, after hitching a ride on the I-95 North ramp, he takes a cab from where the driver left him in Springfield. He knows Mulder is at work and breaking in the apartment is easy.

He takes a plain blue shirt, his jacket and leaves Mulder a note. He thanks Mulder for all his above-and-beyond care and says he cannot allow Mulder to send him to prison.

He hurries to his own apartment and takes his pictures, spare gun, ammo, chest of medical supplies and a few pieces of clothing; he can't carry much with only one hand and he can't carry anything too heavy because of the gun shot surgery that has left him weaker than he likes.

On the run again, he feels some of his prowess and confidence return. He does not go far, just to a motel he knows won't ask for ID. He settles in and begins to plan what to do next.

By the time he turns off the light and lays down to sleep, he finds that he misses Mulder's presence a great deal. He realizes he has become used to conversation and company. He realizes he has become familiar with some things that had been lacking in his life for a long time: friendship, a modicum of trust and a well-hidden happiness that Mulder cared and that he cared back.

Mulder gets a call from Quantico when Krycek fails to return to the ward and the guards find the PT rooms empty. They have searched the entire hospital. Mulder goes there right away and he discovers the unsecured door. The guards mumble something about this being the only way outside to smoke, but Mulder is livid. He had become ambivalent about incarcerating Krycek, but he never thought he would simply disappear again, especially while he was still weak and a target.

Mulder calls Skinner. It is not a comfortable conversation. Skinner gets right to the heart of the matter and Mulder's new opinions about what Krycek really is now and has always been. He tells Mulder he is issuing a bench warrant and a local, as well as federal, APB. Mulder, more concerned that Cancerman and his goons will go after Krycek, tries to dissuade Skinner. He fails to do so.

Mulder returns to his apartment heart-sore and angry. He finds the note.

//Mulder, it begins in a slanted print, sorry to run out on you and the plans for my future. There is still too much to be done and I need to be in the game to do it. I have burned a lot of bridges these past weeks. I think we have come to understand each other a bit. I promise you that I will have your name on my lips when I settle a few scores with the Smoker. If I can get to any of his files, they are yours//

Mulder puts the note in his desk drawer. He turns on the TV, kicks off his shoes and sits limply on his couch. Before he can process what the note said, Skinner calls and tells him Krycek stopped by his own apartment, removed some of his stuff and seems to have vanished.

Mulder carelessly tosses the receiver back into the cradle. He wonders how Krycek will fare on the run, wounds only half healed. He smiles a bit to think what Krycek will say when he finds that Mulder removed all the money from the hem of the jacket, he hopes Krycek hasn't booked himself into an expensive hotel. He lies down; a moment later, he sits up and checks the phone to make sure it is still working. He lies back again. He believes he knows Krycek well enough to know that the man will send him a message about the missing money.

Krycek discovers his money is missing the next morning. He laughs before he gets pissed. He needs that ready cash to get his plans underway. He considers going back to Mulder's apartment to find the money, but the odds on it being watched are too high. He thinks about a few other places he has secreted a bit of cash. There's no way to avoid the risks, he needs money. He goes to a thrift store and spends almost all of his money on a used, but in excellent condition, dark blue suit, shirt, tie, and business shoes. On his way to the counter, he sees a short, curly blond wig. It wouldn't pass inspection up close, but then he has no plans to be up close and familiar with anyone. Regretfully, he shaves off his sideburns in the Thrift store bathroom, dons the wig and the suit and leaves, avoiding the cashier and any possible comment.

Thus attired, he catches a city bus. He gets off at the Dupont Circle metro stop and takes the subway north to Rockville. The Ship and Save office is there, just two short blocks from the metro. He waits for a few other customers to crowd the small office and slinks in behind the stacks of mailing boxes and rolls of mailing tape. His key in hand, he opens the mailbox he rented almost two years ago. The envelope with money inside is still there. He makes a note to find someway to reward the office manager for his honesty, slips the envelope in his pocket and leaves the store.

He walks to the next metro stop, on the way he sees a florist. Krycek goes in and buys an arrangement of all green leaves, ferns and buds. He arranges it to be delivered to Mulder's apartment the next day. He leaves no card or greeting. Smiling grimly, he is sure Mulder will get the message with the green arrangement.

He continues walking for half a block before he decides to go back to the florist. He adds a single red rose to the arrangement. This time, he is satisfied and makes his way to the airport, takes the shuttle to Philadelphia, and finally makes his way to the Port Authority in New York City by bus.

He sees the Smoker has sent a few men to look for him there; there are probably more at the airports and train stations. In his suit and blond wig, they disregard him. Krycek snorts to himself, amateurs, he thinks.

He takes a room in the hotel on the lower floors of the syndicate's office building. In your face, assholes, he decides.

Mulder gets the huge green flower and fern arrangement just as he is about to leave for work. It has no card, but he gets the meaning well enough. The greens are an acknowledgement that he has Krycek's money. The rose, well Mulder ponders the meaning of the rose all the way into D.C. He's still making up his mind if the rose is about feelings or represents blood. It does not occur to him to label feeling as love, since he has never even thought that what he could feel for Krycek, no matter how close or on similar wavelengths, as love. Armed neutrality, maybe, but the tenderness he felt for the injured man still leaves a bittersweet tug at his heart.

Scully, neatly ensconced in her work niche, greets him with an "I told you Krycek was still a bastard."

Mulder looks at her, remembers the pain he felt once when there was one of her rose petals on his desk, frowns and shakes his head, "You can hardly blame him for trying to escape a prison sentence," he says.

Scully shrugs and tells him about a case that has been handed off to them by the Behavioral Science unit.

Mulder reads the report; it is similar to many he has seen before. A serial killer claiming clairvoyant promptings from God told him to rid the world of those seven stockbrokers.

He and Scully discuss strategy as they research the local police and what the FBI have already documented. Mulder believes the man will kill again, no matter how close law enforcement is on his tail. Scully agrees. This killer, unlike the ones who work within the Smoker's purview, kills simply because he is viciously and violently mentally ill.

By four in the afternoon, they are ready to go, agreeing to meet at the airport for a seven o'clock flight. Mulder goes home to pack a bag; he adds more water to the green and red-rose arraignment and feeds the fish. He leaves Krycek's money under the pillow on the couch, sure that if the man comes looking for it, he will find it.

Krycek wakes from a long nap. He is pissed that he remains so weak. His plans will take dexterity, energy and silence. He watches the curved driveway to the hotel, from his window, waiting until he sees the smoker alight from a limo and proceed to the doors.

He knows there is a meeting tonight of what is left of the syndicate after the BBQ; Diana, the Brit and several other multinationals will be there. It is his one chance. He knows the Smoker is arrogant enough to turn off the security alarms on the seventh floor and leave them off until the meeting assembles. He cannot come in the door, of course, but he can get in through the air-conditioning ducts if he can be quick and quiet. Krycek reviews his plan. He is going to wear a gas mask and drop tear- gas pellets, from the A/C ducts, into the meeting room and the lobby where the bodyguards and drivers wait. This means he needs to be in place before the meeting starts. Once the gas has incapacitated everyone and they are in a state of confusion, he will climb down or jump down into the room. He has no illusions that the gas will prevent anyone there from taking a shot at him. After all, they were all trained to react no matter what the situation.

He spares a thought as to whether or not Mulder will freak out when he finds Marita or more likely, Diana's dead body. As far as Krycek knows, Mulder has no idea that Diana has been working for the Smoker for years and years, that she was, in fact, recruited by them to be Mulder's first partner on the X-Files.

Krycek takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He will need all his reserves to get this job done. He faces the fact that he may very well die this night, but as long as he takes the Smoker and his cronies with him, it will be worth it. He amuses himself with a Star Trek reference that this is a 'good day to die'. He always liked the Klingons the best.

Awkwardly, he straps on a small waist-pack filled with tear-gas pellets and extra ammunition. He takes off his boots and wears sneakers instead, putting on kneepads and glove on his right hand. He leaves the prosthetic arm behind.

He takes the back stairway, climbing slowly, he still has to pause and catch his breath. He has quick flashbacks of things he has done, people he has met and places he has been. He says good-bye to each as they filter through his consciousness, not everything was bad or dark or violent. He breaks into an unoccupied office, dismantles the duct and gathers his energy and courage to get up and into the dark tunnel.

He looks down into the dim room, remembers Mulder asleep in his room, glasses down on his nose and shoes kicked to the side. He remembers Mulder outside the sleep institute from a few years ago, pissy, demanding, and so, so smart. Krycek sighs, hoists the A/C panel into place behind him and begins the long journey up another duct and the many yards he has to undertake until he will be at the syndicate's office.

Much, much later, Alex goes over the day as he undresses and steps into the shower. He is itching like crazy from the fiberglass in the insulation along the A/C ducts. He lets the water run over his head for a long time before he begins to wash. He is exhausted and in a sort of dumbfounded way, he is amazed the water runs clear instead of bloody. He keeps turning his hand over an over in the hot water, a one handed Lady Macbeth.

It went according to plan. He waited in the dark ceiling until the meeting was underway and the people at the conference table had relaxed with coffee, scotch, or a cigarette. He was glad Marita was not there, she would pose no real threat to him if she remained alive. If he managed to transfer some of the syndicate's assets to her off shore account, she would be even less of a threat.

Diana took a seat at the opposite end of the table, the Smoker lording it from his seat at the head. The Brit sat, seemingly totally unmoved by the Smoker's arrogance and poured himself a scotch.

For a moment, Krycek doubted what he was doing. Really, it was all or nothing. He could not spare the Brit. He dropped the pellets. Choking from the gas, a couple of bodyguards managed a few shots toward the ceiling, but they were way off aim and Krycek was not harmed. With his gas mask on, he jumped from the duct and coolly, carefully, began to shoot each of the attendees. When they were dead and the gas was rapidly clearing, he went to the Smoker's computer. He began to copy everything on its memory to CDs and Mulder's personal email address. This took some time in spite of the most up-to-date software. He did not turn to look at the bodies.

When he was done, he unscrewed the back of the terminal housing and removed the hard drive. He made his way back through the ducts, refastening them along the way. Back in his hotel room, he packed his few belongings, dressed in his suit, wig, and checked out.

He easily got on the next shuttle from NYC to O'Hare and thence to an airport hotel. He could not risk returning to D.C. and Mulder lest anyone remained alive and became suspicious. He was sure there were survivors, but they would have no reason to believe he had been the shooter and no way, without the hard drive, of knowing that Mulder had been the recipient of all the data.

He dried off wearily, self-directed scorn rubbed in with the towel strokes at the heaviness in his heart. Surely, by now, a dozen more deaths were nothing that should weigh upon him, but they did. For all their festering evil, the plots, the betrayals, they had been people he'd known, people that had families who were innocent and he'd slaughtered them regardless, all or nothing.

He thought about his parents, brother, and sister. Although he had not contacted them for almost six years, he knew that somewhere out there they thought of him, loved him and would morn him when he died.

He pulled on some sweats to sleep in, tidied the room, packed his belongings, turned off the light and the TV, put his gun within arm's reach and went to bed.

Maybe in a few months he could try a cautious visit to Mulder. In the meantime he would make himself wealthy enough, on the syndicate's holdings, to never need to be anyone's dogsbody or kill anyone every again.

He was due severance pay, after all, he'd given an arm, if not a leg to their misguided cause.

He did not dream, or if he did, he had no memory of it.

Mulder and Scully duly solved the case of the serial killer. The man would spend the rest of his life in prison. After a press conference, the families of the slain were eager to talk to Mulder and Scully; they wanted to know why and how the murders happened and why their loved ones had been chosen.

This was the hardest part for Mulder, trying to convince others that random brutality and death really made sense somehow. Scully was better at it, her medical training giving her a bit of distance from the horror and tears.

By the time they got off the plane, a week to the day after leaving DC, the Washington Post was running headlines about the massacre in NYC. Mulder picked up a NY Times at the airport. He glanced at the pictures and froze. He recognized the Smoker, the Brit and Diana. He read the text that described the building and offices of what the press thought was an international consortium of long time international tea distributors. Diana was described as an Administrative Assistant to a Mr. Spender and very near the end of the article on page six, he noted the computer's hard drive had been stolen.

His first thought, after the shock of seeing Diana, dead and in that company of men, was; Alex, Alex, what have you done?

He showed Scully the article, and she also recognized the Smoker and the Brit. She scanned the text, handed the paper back to Mulder and said, "Krycek has something to do with this." When Mulder did not answer, she scowled at him and said sharply, "This is murder, Mulder. Cold blooded murder, no matter who the victims were."

Mulder nodded and headed for the tram to long-term parking and the FBI's Taurus.

Scully sighed and followed, shaking her head and cursing Krycek, and knowing all the while that she was glad that the smoking bastard was dead.

Scully finished her report on the serial killer case on her home computer, glad for once that it was fully explainable and without ambiguity. She was worried about Mulder. All those weeks at Krycek's side had changed things somehow. She was relieved that his violence toward the man had ceased, she'd always wondered what would happen if, during one of their altercations, Krycek had really fought back. On the other hand, a ceasefire was one thing, liking Krycek or feeling sympathetic towards him was another. Making a friend out of him was way, way to far a-field for her to countenance or understand.

Still uncomfortable with the probability of Mulder rescuing Krycek or dealing with him in secret, she emailed the report to Mulder, Skinner and the Violent Crimes main files.

As she got into bed, she told herself that Mulder would never betray her or the memory of his father and her sister. Thus reassured, she pulled her quilt up to her chest, turned the light off.

They had a few days off, so she did not set the alarm, merely glanced at the time, sighed and went to sleep.

Mulder tossed his briefcase to the floor, shrugged out of his coat and sat down to read the articles in the papers more thoroughly. The missing hard drive interested him the most. Compared to the long lost DAT tape, what was on that computer was beyond priceless.

He got up and paced, with the Smoker dead, there was little chance of ever knowing what the man was responsible for, that held for the Brit as well. He refused to think about why Diana was there, only feeling a sharp regret that she too had spied on him, lied to him and most probably faked her personal and sexual interest in him.

He thought, instead, about how Krycek, weak and one handed, managed the assassinations, while coming and going unseen. He tried to imagine if Krycek understood that the syndicate's demise meant little compared to the threat of alien invasion. Who would deal with the aliens next, he wondered.

He turned on his computer letting it boot while he took a quick shower and heated up a couple of frozen tacos in the microwave.

There were dozens of email messages in his inbox. He glanced at them casually as he ate the sandwiches. The second time he ran his eye down the list, he gasped and choked on the food. The size of the files from Tea-Ports Ltd. were huge, more than huge, they were gargantuan. He began to sweat. Intuitively he knew that these were from Krycek, that the man had sent him these amid the dead bodies, He imagined the scene, Krycek all in black, gun near at hand, frantically downloading all these files, sending them to Mulder immediately lest someone come in and stop him, kill him.

Mulder sent a quick email to the Lone Gunmen, explaining he was sending massive files for them to save in a safe place, warning them that the information was a matter of life or death and to be very careful. He forwarded the files to the Gunmen, took a deep breath, grabbed a large bottled waster from his fridge and opened the first file.

Mulder did not go to sleep that night; he took another shower, cold enough to keep him awake, and read the files, devouring the multitude of plans, projects, administrative details and personal histories. He started at every sound coming from the hallway or outside his window. He had both of his guns on the desk and checked them several times during the long midnight hours to make sure they were fully loaded and ready.

By five AM the following morning, he was euphoric. Here it was - the mother-lode, the fucking mother-lode to end all mother-lodes. He made himself some coffee and went back to the monitor; at eight, he found the files on Samantha, and by nine, the file about him.

Krycek wandered the streets of Chicago. He'd been here before, but not in the daylight and not on his own time. He went shopping, deciding that he should continue in a disguise. This time he planned it better. He purchased a well-fitted wig of light brown curls, sleek wire-rim glasses and a super elegant and conservative Hugo Boss suit in gray with a black vest, a black, gray and red tie, new soft leather boots, brown contact lenses and a pocket watch.

He also went to a variety of electronic and printing supply companies and returned to his room with more than enough technology to make himself several sets of IDs.

He installed the hard drive in a new computer and studied the banking data. He chose an identity that he thought he could pull off and created all the necessary documentation to get into a selection of safety deposit boxes spread in banks all over town. He bought a stylish tote at the hotel shop, hired a cab and set out.

By the time the banks closed he was richer by several million in off- shore accounts, a two pound selection of uncut gems, had wired three- hundred-thousand dollars into Marita's Swiss account and, just to play a head game he could not resist, sent a million dollars into Jeffrey Spender's account. He laughed under his breath when thought of how that weak weasel would try to explain it to OPM and FBI Internal Affairs.

On his way back to the hotel, he stopped for dinner.

That evening, contrary to Mulder's thoughts of the previous night, Krycek tried to make sense of the relationship between the aliens and the syndicate. He knew, well enough, that the demise of the syndicate did not mean the end of the alien presence. It was complicated and devious, of course, because everyone who had had a hand it in it over the years tried to serve their own agendas. At last, he found what he was looking for, a way to contact a Jeremiah Smith. Even if these extraterrestrials had their own plans, he was certain that they wanted the conspiracy to end and for earth to be safe once more from threats outside the usual human destructiveness. He rather thought they would like to be free and no longer hunted themselves.

He went to bed on the thought that tomorrow he was going to change his profile from thief, thug and grunt to that of negotiator for humanity and Mother Earth.

His last thought before he slept was of Mulder. He wondered what Mulder was doing with the shit-load of information he had sent. He wished he had thought to bug Mulder's apartment when he had picked up his jacket, but at the time, everything was happening too fast to plan ahead.

Mulder collapsed, unwillingly, in the afternoon. He was simply unable to keep his eyes open any more. There was so much information floating in his brain that his heart took a long time to slow down and allow him to fall asleep.

He dreamed of Samantha, buried beneath mounds of paper and medical charts. She waved to him and he waved back, trying, unsuccessfully to negotiate the flood of papers, and get to her side. Each time he came up for air, she was farther away and her wave was more and more feeble. Eventually, he lost sight of her altogether.

He woke in a panic, saw he was alone and went back to sleep.

This time, he dreamed of Krycek, the young Krycek who had fooled him. He saw Krycek run ahead of him, and like Samantha, he eventually disappeared from sight.

Mulder was alone on a vast plane. The sun shone on the dry ground and he was tired and thirsty. Every direction looked the same and he had no idea which way to chose.

The loneliness pierced his dream-self heart and he wept. The tears dried on his cheeks in the merciless sun, before they reached his chin.

He saw Scully in the distance, her red hair competing with the sun. She came closer and he saw that she was armed, had her flashlight in her hand and her trench coat on, despite the heat. He called out to her from his dry throat, but she did not look his way or answer.

He began to run towards her, his feet kicking up a trail of dust. As the dream progressed, the dust swirled around him and then Scully. He ran faster and faster. He grabbed her coat and spun her around. He took her by the shoulders and pulled her towards him. He started to say, 'thank God I've found you', but when he looked into her face, he was horrified. She was a corpse, rotting tissue and maggots well advanced. He let her go and she swirled away in the dust.

He was left alone on the hot, bitter plane.

Mulder woke to the faintest of sounds. It took a moment for him to identify that it came from his door, where, when he got up and looked, he found that a thin manila envelope had been pushed under it.

After the last forty-eight hours immersion in the syndicate's files, the sight of that envelope made him laugh in its simplistic covert symbolism.

It was a note, written on the back of Jeremiah Smith's photo. //Mr. Mulder, meet me on a bench by the Jefferson Memorial. Tonight at 8:45, it's important.//

The unsigned note was not written by Krycek.

Mulder went; he purchased an ice pick from a hardware store along the way. He was armed, although he knew his guns would be useless if this Smith meant him harm. Seeing the gray head of the man sitting on a bench, he wondered if it was really a Smith or one of the other shape- changers, perhaps one who blamed him for the deaths of the conspirators.

He wished he were meeting Deep Throat instead.

Smith rose politely as Mulder approached him, looking dignified and exhausted. He gestured for Mulder to take a seat and then sat down himself. The quiet of the evening settled around them, only the lapping water of the Tidal Basin and far off snatches of laughter from tourists by the paddleboats ruffled the calm.

"Humans are interesting, Mr. Mulder," the alien began. "We know of many worlds and many races. Most live according to simplistic maxims regarding procreation and survival." He paused and clasped his hands on his lap.

Mulder commented, "Under all the fuss, humans basically do the same."

Smith nodded, "But you attempt higher goals," he said. "You have gods, sages, poetry, science and art. You have minds that wonder about things outside its immediate needs. Each generation attempts to live up to a moral standard, flawed and self serving perhaps, but something higher and nobler nonetheless."

Mulder watched the small waves creep forward and back against the pilings and listened.

"We have been here a long time, Mr. Mulder. We have seen hundreds of generations come and go and still humans have the capacity to surprise us. We have been caught up in a silent battle for the last fifty years and finally the end of the war is in sight."

"How?" Mulder asked in a rough voice, "Tell me how."

"The ones who held us captive and discovered the answers to the mystery of our longevity are dead. The project that was investigating this problem is also at an end. We were fooled, Mr. Mulder, fooled long ago and sucked into a controversy by those that discovered our problem and us. We were arrogant, believing our superior science and strength would give us the better position. That arrogance cost us, once we made the deal with humans."

Mulder felt goose-bumps break out all over his body. Despite everything, he never really believed he would have conversation with an alien; never know how or why they were here.

"As I think you know, Mr. Mulder," Smith spoke again. "Beneath the surface of this planet there is an extraterrestrial element. I do not say being because it is not, in fact a being. It is, perhaps, the most primitive life form in the universe. It has one goal, to return to a planet that was destroyed when the double sun of it solar system collapsed. It has survived ice ages and heat waves, survived eons and through all the development of earth has been waiting. It rose to the surface, after a billion year nap and was eventually understood by the men of the syndicate. Do you know why it came to the surface, Mr. Mulder?"

Enthralled, Mulder, on the sitting on the edge of the bench, shook his head.

"It was the atomic energy manufactured and used during the Second World War. The radiation from both the detonated bombs and the underground tests woke it up. It feeds on radiation. The men of what became the syndicate learned the wrong lesson from your world wars. They only saw that millions of lost lives hardly dented the greed and avarice of the human race. They saw only opportunity to rise and become powerful for themselves, regardless of how many more people were damaged or died."

Mulder took several deep breaths while Mr. Smith waited with a sorrowful expression on his face and looking more exhausted than ever.

"My race is distantly related to this element. We are however, much more related than humans. The radiation, especially in the western portion of this country and in the waters of the South Pacific ocean was high enough to cause our ships to crash. Since that war fifty years ago, atomic radiation use has proliferated all over the world and while our ships can maneuver within your atmosphere, the radiation prevents us from leaving. Our ships, which operate on bio- chemical energy, were configured to search out radiation and bond with it. The men of the syndicate found this out, and promising that they had power enough to call a halt to nuclear testing, we joined with them on a project to find commonality between our races. It was kept secret for a long time, we were convinced that it was for the reasons they told us. That the earth was not ready to accept poof of the existence of extraterrestrial life."

Mulder stood, too excited to sit still a moment longer. He motioned for Smith to continue while he paced.

"By the time we understood that these men wanted our science to use against the rest of humanity, it was too late. Most of our ships were hidden or destroyed by these men and the radiation levels continued to increase. The more impatient of our kind made a new deal with the syndicate. Together they would create a hybrid being that could flourish on earth or with us on the more radioactive planets that we inhabit. The humans seemed to work towards this goal, sacrificing family members as proof of their good-will."

Mr. Smith rose to his feet and with silent accord, began to walk towards the Lincoln Memorial.

"My particular species did not agree to the project. We discovered long, long ago that we could be healers and, through doing so, we began to admire and appreciate humanity. The project attracted many more of our race willing to take the chance that they could conquer the radiation problem and create a new being that, combined with human DNA, would be less vulnerable to our enemies and would expand our lifetimes. As the number of our race increased, we became targets and were hunted. There are only a few like myself left on earth and we are certainly ready to sacrifice ourselves if that will prevent the completion of a hybrid and stop both the syndicate and the others from our planets spreading human DNA throughout the universe." Smith paused and turned to Mulder, "Human DNA, Mr. Mulder, is a destructive force and you have a long way to go before you are ready for distant space travel. You would try to conquer all the races that you met, much as the colonial powers once were here on earth. We are quite certain that the rest of the universe would not benefit by your presence in it at this time."

Mulder rocked on his feet. A part of his mind, which had been fascinated by space travel since he was a boy, was jumping up and down; the part of him that was devoted to solving alien mysteries was at attention, storing away every word.

On a riverside bench Mulder and Smith sat quietly for a few minutes watching the planes take off and land at National Airport

"Why have you contacted me?" Mulder finally thinks to ask, his mind teeming with the bits and pieces Smith has already shared.

Smith looked deeply into Mulder's eyes, and answered slowly in his deep precise voice, "Mr. Krycek found me. He was careful, but a risk for both of us if either was caught. He wanted to know if the human syndicate failed or disappeared, would we want to leave or continue the project and rebuild the syndicate. We knew about the massacre at the New York office and although we deplore violence, we were relieved. I explained about the radiation and our difficulties. Mr. Krycek was frustrated, as are we, at our inability to overcome this problem. He wants a way to rid the planet of the rest of our kind, the other shape-shifters, and end the hybrid experiments."

Mulder was surprised, he believed Krycek had gone to ground, happy that he had killed the Smoker and ended his subservience to the syndicate. That Krycek also wanted to rid the world of the alien threat was something he has not considered.

Mulder blinked, and realized Mr. Smith was staring at him. "Is there a way?" he asked.

Mr. Smith leaned back on the bench, crossed his arms over his chest, watched a plane take off and answered, "Yes, Mr. Mulder. There is a way."

Smith arranged for them to meet again the following evening, this time in one of his few remaining safe houses and labs.

Mulder walked across the Memorial Bridge, and continued walking as the manicured parkland became the streets of Arlington. He paused on a rise and saw the scope of the vastness of Arlington Cemetery, so many thousands of white crosses. He took a deep breath, feeling he had something in common with those dead. They had died for peace; he would most likely die for peace in a war that would be unnamed and unreported. Behind him, the huge monolith of the Pentagon glowed yellow in the street lamps dotted evenly about its huge parking lots.

Mulder tried to think how he could explain all this to Scully and Skinner. They had never, in their hearts, believed in aliens. He needed them. He needed Krycek too. Krycek believed and knew the aliens were real, believed that they needed to leave earth, and was resolute about getting rid of them. Mulder was sure that Krycek would hold no sentiment or feel no deterrent about killing all of them. Krycek was a pragmatist.

Mulder hailed a taxi on Mt. Vernon Drive and rode the remaining few miles to his apartment.

Krycek spent the next day finding a residential hotel that suited his needs, mainly that it had several and convenient exits that led to busy streets with many places to lose himself in, if he should be followed. He rather liked room service and the small kitchen, which afforded him an opportunity to have coffee or whatever whenever he wanted. He checked in with only the brown contacts and wire rimmed glasses, it would be too inconvenient to have to avoid the hotel personnel or put on a disguise each time he answered his door or went out.

Settled for the moment, he hopped an air shuttle to Detroit, and then Cleveland, and visited banks in both places. Rich enough now to have everything and anything he could ever want or need, he sent some of the syndicate's money to various art organizations and hospitals around the world. He reserved the greater part for whatever plan he and Smith could work out. He now had lots and lots of money near at hand. If any survivor wanted to try starting the project again, they would find themselves strapped for cash. He found the irony wonderful, the syndicate money ending up in the pockets of the best pursuits of human endeavors, certainly things that drones and hybrids would never do.

After that, he waited in his room. Smith called two days later, he'd met Mulder and started the ball rolling. He warned Krycek to stay out of the way and well hidden. Krycek said he wanted something to do, Smith had a few ideas and Krycek chose the one that would put him on course to meet up with Mulder.

Scully was unsurprised when Mulder arranged a meet with her, Skinner, the Gunmen and Chuck outside the Hoover Building. She was sure he was rashly acting on something Krycek provided and that they would be lucky to survive. But, Mulder was insistent and wouldn't take no for an answer. After five years as his partner, Scully hated his tone of voice that she felt excluded her. The voice that meant he was going ahead no matter what and would not listen to reason or her opinions.

She packed a bag, cleaned her gun and emptied anything that would spoil in her fridge. She also cancelled lunch with her mother for the following Saturday, and threw out a coupon that promised 50% off a gym membership and a free massage if used this week only.

Skinner was also smarting about Mulder's tone of voice and coercive wheedling that he attend the meeting. Along with Scully, he noticed the change in Mulder's attitude toward the 'at large' Krycek. He also noticed that Mulder, who had never been particularly apologetic about getting his way, had become more aggressive and short with anyone who tried to calm him down or persuade him otherwise.

Skinner prepared an email that would not actually be sent until the following day, informing his staff that he was taking some emergency leave, packed a bag, cleaned his gun, decided one gun was not enough and cleaned his hunting rifle as well, added three bulletproof vests to his pile, locked his door behind him and loaded his car. He thought it was a good thing that he had not gotten the dog from the pound that he'd been hankering for, because this way, Mulder's insane schemes notwithstanding, he was free to leave his apartment with no regrets.

The Gunmen threw a few things into a common case, bought some of the most miniaturized equipment available, dressed in black; they waited for Skinner to pick them up several alleyways and a corner or two away from where they actually lived, unsure that Skinner was someone they wanted to trust.

Frohike was pleased to share the backseat of Skinner's SUV with Scully. Chuck an FBI techie and long time friend, who rivaled the Gunmen in electronic expertise and went toe to toe with them in paranoia, rode with Mulder, a huge jumble of scientific equipment overflowing the back seat.

Their destination was a hotel just off I-70, in a place named Breezewood, Maryland, the hotel capital, so called because it was a major intersection of highways and interstates. It was a place entirely made up of hotels, motels, drive-thru restaurants and gas stations. It was situated at the on-ramp to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, barely 15 miles from the Pennsylvania state line, I-70 West and I-40 East to Baltimore and West into West Virginia. No one would notice if they unloaded a whale in the dusty, busy comings and goings of traffic.

They piled out of their cars at the backside of the motel, which faced the backsides of other motels. Smith met them with keys to adjoining rooms. He had cleared the middle room, piling the beds into a corner and setting up cheap card tables, lights, and extension cords in the center. Chuck and the Gunmen realized, within a few minutes that they had been communicating for years, each admiring the other's skills. Chuck accepted help from Byers while he set up various centrifuges and cell mapping equipment. Langly and Frohike set up their computers. Scully, her room at the end of the building, unpacked, looked up food delivery places and walked several dusty streets down the way to a fruit and vegetable stand situated on a corner that had very long red lights. She filled several bags with Pennsylvania apples, plums and grapes. She bought two gallons of fresh squeezed apple juice too. She accepted a cloth tote, somewhat worse for wear, from the vendor in order to carry everything back to the motel.

When she returned, Mulder called everyone to order and they took their places at the tables. He introduced Jeremiah Smith saying he was an alien who was on their side. Scully leaned her face in her hands. She remembered the entirely logical explanation the last time they met this man and was sure he was no alien. Chuck popped another piece of gum into his mouth, Frohike laughed quietly, and the others were silent.

Standing quietly in front of them, Smith changed shapes, doing each of them in turn. That got their attention. Next, he put his arm inside a large glass tube, reached in through the mouth and with a knife in his other hand, cut off several of his fingers. The green, foamy blood filled the jar; he quickly grew back his fingers and closed the jar tightly. The combined audience only felt the briefest moment of eye and nose irritation.

Chuck applauded, the Gunmen quickly followed, and Mulder grinned.

The plan was simple enough. Since there was no way any of the aliens could leave the planet, and capturing them was impossible, the only thing to do was disable and kill them. There was a great deal of discussion before everyone agreed there was no safe way to actually catch one, do scientific experiments on it and inform the public.

Smith bore it all in silence, only adding his opinion at the end. "This is how the original project began," he said. "Humans excited and determined to know everything. I assure all of you there will be time for humans to know, but that time is not now. As a healer, I deplore the need to kill any being. We are many trillions in number; we occupy many planets and are always on the look for more, especially more with creatures that we can use. The few of us that are on this planet came voluntarily and always knew dying here was a very possible outcome. There will be no reprisals from us. Without the project guiding our behavior and the humans involved in blackmailing us under the guise of hybrid production, this planet will return to being a curiosity and nothing more."

"How did you get in the position to be used?" Byers asked.

Smith had a faraway look on his face and to the people in the room it seemed that he really was ancient and tired beyond measure. "We may be trillions in number, but we have become weak and fragile. Perhaps this is simply a natural outcome for a civilization as old as we are, perhaps we have squandered our recourses, no one knows for sure. The last millennium has been spent looking for fresh blood and strong creatures to bond with, extend our life spans, and return us to full strength."

Smith sat quietly, everyone stayed quiet and still. Slowly, Smith transfigured into his real shape. Mulder felt tears run down his face and he could hear everyone else breathing, shocked and afraid. The creature in front of them was very like one of Spielberg's Close Encounters aliens. It was not tall, but had an elongated head with large slanted eyes, arms with four fingered appendages and was covered in a milky-gray hide. It blinked at them and suddenly they heard it, although it did not speak aloud. "After all this time the majority of my kind has turned against this method for 'curing' us. They will rule the more ruthless factions and leave Earth in peace. All in all," it went on, "there are only a few dozen of us here. The clean up will be more of a problem than killing us. There are hundreds of labs, safe houses, experimental crops and testing centers scattered around the world. With my help, we can preserve any of the scientific advances that have none of our form of DNA in them. We have made a terrible mistake trying to conquer earth. Like us, you are creatures that refuse to die quietly and have a tenacity to survive built deep in your makeup. The other shifters that are here have older orders and refuse to let go of the project. Now that most of the humans who maintained it are dead, I think they're in a state of confusion and are vulnerable. The much, much more ancient entity that lives beneath the surface of earth will stay stagnant until either you have another flirtation with atomic radiation or eventually if earth changes its rotation or its place in your solar system. Without our ships or until you have ships capable of extended space travel, it will leave you in peace."

It changed back into Smith, looking even more exhausted than before.

Scully was the first one to approach it, the others stayed in their seats, shocked. She took out her stethoscope and listened to Smith's heart, looking in his ears and mouth. She spent a long time studying its eyes with a small flashlight. "You seem entirely human," she marveled. Smith gave her a tired smile, "yes Dr. Scully, we do seem to be so. Since we can heal ourselves quickly, we have avoided doctors and scientists that were not part of the project. When we are mortally wounded, we bleed out and disappear. You have seen this before?" He asked.

Scully, for once in her life, could do nothing but agree with an alien.

Mulder touched her shoulder, when she turned, for a moment he laid his forehead against hers and sighed.

Scully straightened up, looked Mulder in the eye and said, "You were right."

Mulder, not losing his somber expression answered, "Yes."

Scully nodded and moved back to her seat at the table.

A babble of voices began to speak all at once. Chuck continued to set up his equipment, Skinner got to his feet, "Mr. Smith," he said in a respectful voice, "how do we stop them and end the project?"

Smith looked at Mulder, who grinned and took a deep breath, "we're going to poison them."

Krycek was waiting for a call from Smith, instead, Smith knocked on his door. It took him a moment to realize this was not the same Smith who was in DC with Mulder. He knew the password and Krycek let him in. Krycek, knowing it wouldn't help if this Smith wanted to harm him, nevertheless kept his distance. He'd had enough of being up close and personal with aliens for this lifetime.

It began without preamble, "Mr. Mulder has organized a team of specialists. They are ready to begin."

Krycek nodded.

Smith continued, "We need you to act as bait to draw the remaining shifters to a central location. Once they are nearby, all the Smiths will come out of hiding as well. Agent Scully and the others are concocting an astringent spray. It is odorless, clear and undetectable by our kind. It has a short potency period. Mr. Mulder's team should be able to manufacture it easily in large quantities. We will all die together, Mr. Krycek. We are the last." Smith sat down in the chair by the table.

Krycek was not sure he believed Smith. Self-immolation was a heady thing to consider, human or not.

"Why not stay and continue to be healers?" Krycek asked.

Smith shot him a glance that could be considered wry, if it were actually human. "As long as any life form alien to earth exists here, there would be no doubt that new projects and uses would be found and we would be forced to carry them out. Imagine the military of any nation on earth and what they could make of us."

"Yes, yes," Krycek murmured, "but, choosing death is a serious matter, no matter what the future might bring."

"We have been here for so long, Mr. Krycek. We are tired. It is not yet the time when extraterrestrial life can coexist with humans." Smith cocked his head and studied Krycek.

Krycek, aware of the scrutiny, shifted his left side away from Smith and sat down.

Smith met his eyes in a wise, clear look. "I can repair your arm, Mr. Krycek, before we begin the roundup."

The Gunmen, Chuck and Scully were in their element. Smith had given them the ingredients, all rather commonly available. They discussed endlessly how banal the concoction was to do such an unbelievable job. The Gunmen insisted on the right to print the story, of alien vs. human, in their paper and on their web sites. Mulder was agreeable. At this point, it hardly mattered to him who else believed or not, Scully, Skinner, Krycek and his friends were enough. He did ask Smith to walk with him through the dusty, busy streets. Smith agreed.

They discussed how the deaths of the syndicate members and the alien infiltrators would affect the lower echelons. Smith said, "A great deal of the monetary assets has already gone missing and without clearance from the elder and powerful members, the others will have to abandon their projects and quite possibly run for their lives once they figure out all is lost."

"What about the straw-men and traitors who worked for the syndicate under the guise of military officers or members of various covert agencies or the government?"

"As unsatisfactory as it might be," Smith said, "they will probably go on as they have as long as they can. I do not imagine they have been comfortable or pleasant coworkers and without the unseen heavy hands clearing the way for them, they will probably have to resign or take retirement. I do not think you will ever be able to prosecute them, Mr. Mulder."

They sat on a bus stop bench that was quiet and empty this late at night. "What about the abductees, Mr. Smith?" Mulder asked.

For the first time, Smith reached out and touched Mulder's arm. Mulder started as if he'd been shocked by an electric current. He closed his eyes and saw people, many of them children, board ships in beams of light. He saw them strapped down and experimented on by humans and aliens. He saw them die, one by one. After a while, he realized these abductions dated back forty or fifty years. Eventually, as more groups were brought on board, he realized the people in the beams of light were from the 1970's and he saw Samantha, in her pretty night gown and braided hair, being laid on a table and strange medical equipment taking samples from her body.

Unaware that he was crying out for them to stop, he saw her young life used over and over. Saw her return to earth and to a building on an Army base. He saw the Smoker, the Brit and his father supervise more experiments until she slipped away, her life ending years ago on a cold, flat, white hospital slab.

Abruptly, he saw a mass grave, located, as far as he could tell, on an artillery range. It was dug, filled and covered quickly.

In a bewildering montage he saw more recent abductions, he saw Teresa Hosie, Billy Miles, the MUFON women, the many faces of abduction cases he'd followed in the X-Files and finally, Scully, all subjected to various tests. Some of them died and some of them returned to earth alive.

Smith took his hand off Mulder. Mulder, deeply shocked and sobbing, put his head in his hands and wept.

"I am truly sorry, Mr. Mulder," Smith said and sat quietly as Mulder cried.

Alex Krycek was stunned by the alien's comment. Repair his arm, surely a mealy-mouthed way to deliver such a surprise. He thought about the dank, dark and freezing Tunguska forest. His arm, or what was left of it, was there and he had made his peace with those facts. He turned away from Smith entirely, whether it was safe to do so or not and looked out the hotel window to the busy street below.

"There is no need to fear me, Mr. Krycek. I am a healer and would not harm you and you would remain fully human."

Krycek shivered, feeling the hateful weight of the prosthetic arm dragging on his left shoulder. He tasted the metallic residue of blood and realized he'd bitten the inside of his cheek.

He watched the seemingly careless people on the street outside, their heads down fighting the brisk Chicago wind. Coming and going into shops and cafes, parking cars or driving by. He knew they had problems, fears and frustrations, but since he finished school and became involved with the Smoker, he'd always felt apart from them. Since the loss of his arm, he'd given up all hope of ever mixing back in and taking up the reins of a more normal life. He jeered at himself, 'normal' whatever the hell that was; well it was certainly out of reach, arm or no arm.

"Thank you, Mr. Smith," Krycek said quietly, turning to face the alien once more. "I make do as I am," he said by way of explanation.

Mr. Smith nodded, they all owed this young man, his act of violence against the syndicate cleared the way and offered the only chance he could see of freeing the earth and ending the particular suffering and danger, that group had held fast for fifty years.

Krycek straightened up and poured himself a cup of coffee, "When does the show start?" He asked.

Mr. Smith asked Assistant Skinner for a private meeting. Skinner was intrigued as well as wary. Even after years of Mulder's obsession, he had a hard time coming to grips with an actual alien presence.

Mr. Smith, refusing Skinner's offer of coffee, began at once. "I am in contact with the other Smiths. We have arranged for Mr. Alex Krycek to front the operation." Skinner sat up and grunted, frowning at Smith. "I know you believe Mr. Krycek to be a criminal," Skinner nodded vigorously. "Whether he is or not, is not a concern. I can assure you that he will do this job, very possibly risk his life to do it. You have no need to worry about betrayal or double cross."

Skinner knew he was exhibiting an uncooperative mien, but Krycek was too far from trustworthy to believe Smith.

Smith studied Skinner and saw a brick wall. He allowed his thoughts to consider the stubborn nature of humans. He reached out a hand and touched Skinner's arm. Skinner sat up straight, his eyes glazing over. He saw a frantic Krycek trying to get the man Mulder called Mr. X to take the body of the concussed tram operator to a hospital. Out of sight of Krycek, X smothered the tram driver and dropped him in the Shenandoah River a few miles from Skyland Mountain. He saw a tightly contained Krycek urging Dwayne Barry to keep calm and tell Mulder everything and then he saw the paramedic poison Barry quickly as he put the oxygen mask on. Skinner realized what was happening and tried to project his unwillingness to witness Krycek's actions, but he could make no move to disengage Smith's hand.

He saw Krycek try to warn a computer hacker about the men who were after him and heard the hacker say the DAT tape he made was in safe hands. Panicked, Krycek shook the other young man, yelling at him that he'd signed Mulder's death warrant. The young man ran. A short time later he saw Cardinale poison the water input valves at Mulder's apartment. Saw Mulder and Scully trying to figure out the DAT and Mulder hide it in his desk. He saw his own altercation with Mulder. He watched the progression of events from several points of view. The call from Bill Mulder after he and the Smoker had their talk, saw that Bill Mulder knew his phone was tapped and that he was inviting his son into an ambush. Saw him drink steadily for the rest of the day.

Whispering, "no, no, no," he saw Mulder arrive, sick and confused and wait on the couch as Bill Mulder went to the bathroom. Saw Krycek hiding in the bathtub, gun tucked in his waistband. Saw Krycek watch Bill Mulder get his pills, catch sight of him and drop them. Saw Krycek hesitate to draw his gun and the shot to Bill Mulder's head come through the bathroom window.

Skinner saw Krycek beat him up in the hospital stairway and steal the DAT, preventing, from this POV, Cardinale from garroting him.

The memories went on and on, until he could see that was Krycek caught up in the vast conspiracy, yet try to warn Mulder and minimize the damage as best he could without ending up dead himself.

Skinner resisted understanding, Smith showed him Krycek in the silo, his fear, hunger and pain. When Skinner still resisted, he showed him Krycek in the gulag, meeting with an assistant to the boss, and pay him to insure Mulder got the best of the antivirus exposure to the black, wormy alien.

Smith showed Skinner the escape, Mulder's rescue and Krycek's very bad fate.

Skinner, overwhelmed and unwilling, gave in and allowed his mind to tell Smith that he understood Krycek a bit more.

Smith removed his hand, poured Skinner another cup of coffee and said, "Mr. Krycek has not asked for any consideration to be the front man, Mr. Skinner. The Smiths and I agree, however, that should he live through the dangerous times ahead, that he be granted immunity from any further law enforcement actions to his person."

Skinner shook his head no.

Smith rose, "you need him to help save the world, Mr. Skinner, he is the only remaining member of the syndicate that both the surviving humans and the shape shifters believe has the power to continue the project."

He left Skinner sitting at the cheap faux wood motel table, rubbing coffee splatters with a dirty napkin, as if he could rub out what he now knew about Alex Krycek.

The actual plan was simple enough. Krycek would put out the word that he was going to head the project and needed a meeting to make adjustments for his leadership. He would hold all his meetings in the conference room of a small hotel in the Hamptons. The room and all the furniture, coffee service and plates would be polished with the contact poison, all except the chair where Krycek would sit. He would wear gloves, something he already did quite often which would cause no comment and a body suit of non-permeable plastic weave beneath his clothes. The poison, similar to what Krycek had been exposed to, but adjusted to kill both human and alien, was slow acting. The first meeting would be over for several hours and while he conducted the second meeting, the poison would take hold. If all went well, Krycek would have made his escape. The hotel would have no other guests and the hotel management and staff, believing this was a top secret government meeting, escorted by the FBI would leave the premises and not return until Mulder, Scully, Skinner, and a discreet team of cleaners, came and left with all the evidence.

The remaining Smiths would gather afterwards and begin the longer process of helping the team find all the labs, offices and experimental areas and separate what was useful science from what was too alien or too questionable to leave in human hands. They wanted the ships found and destroyed as well. This might take several months, perhaps longer and enormous dedication from the team; they would all need to work together without rancor to get the job done.

They intended to take the last ship, fly it towards deep space and die aboard as it reached the end of earth's atmosphere and exploded.

Scully, the last to believe, would get to see science that was truly incontrovertible to what she knew of nature.

Skinner met with Mulder and Scully. He explained what the Smiths thought of the plan and Krycek. Scully pursed her lips and commented that Krycek was a career criminal and, no doubt, they could prosecute him in the future when he attempted more crimes. Mulder was pleased. Skinner was not happy, but said he'd reluctantly come to the conclusion that Krycek, should he lead the resistance honestly, deserved immunity. Although he had learned that Krycek was not the assassin they all thought he was, he debated whether he should tell Mulder that Krycek was not his father's or Scully's sister's assassin. He decided that if Mulder did not know, he might keep some distance from Krycek's wiles. At least, he hoped so.

During the next few weeks, as Mulder and his people got things ready. Everyone had assigned tasks to arrange. Skinner was charged with getting together a large team of trusted FBI personnel and he had to do it carefully so if there were still infiltrators in the Bureau they would not become alarmed. Scully and the techno-geeks had to refine the astringent poison, hook up unobtrusive cameras and microphones. The Gunmen and Scully had a hard time rigging the assassinations. They questioned the rightness of it repeatedly, but since they could not figure out a safe way to capture and keep humanity from harm or prevent the aliens from committing more atrocities, they went ahead.

Mulder had more sessions with Smith. He learned answers to most of his questions and answers to most of his mysteries. He was torn between the joy of finally getting to the truth, both sorrow and guilt in the roles his parents, knowingly or not, his sister and he played in the whole thing. He assuaged much of his turmoil by writing to Krycek. He wrote as if he were still confessing to a mute and comatose Krycek. He held nothing back and felt no shame for needing this kind of outlet.

He dismissed the feeling of disloyalty to Scully because she had her own doubts. Something changed between them after the reality that she always doubted so completely and that he always believed in was true. Instead of freeing them from the weight of their disagreements about the syndicate and the aliens, the truth became a large wedge between them.

So, Mulder wrote to Alex Krycek.

Krycek did a lot of shopping. He bought things he had not had in years, clothes, CDs and a CD player, a hand held video system, made for cripples, but fun anyway and several games that allowed him to blast aliens at will. He went to the best artificial limb manufacture and was fitted into a new arm that was both lighter and had more features. At last, bored with his own company, he realized the quickie with Marita was ages ago and decided to go barhopping.

During the years with the Smoker, he'd lived a circumspect life, if one did not count the lying and the killing. He and Marita simply drifted into a tepid relationship enlivened by occasional sexual encounters. He did not love her and she did not love him, in fact, he never thought of what they had as love at all. Outside of the fear and stress engendered by the syndicate, there was no excitement or longing to be together.

He thought it was ironic that she attempted to turn the boy over to Mulder. For all her inside knowledge, she had underestimated the danger.

Sitting at a beautiful oak bar in an upscale club, drinking ice-cold beer, he thought about what was ahead of him. The Smiths had carried a message from Skinner. It was terse and to the point, immunity if the plan worked. Nothing was said about what would happen if the plan failed, there was no need. He would be dead. He received a longer letter from Mulder, written by hand in a messy scrawl. Mulder started out stiffly, inquiring about his health and financial circumstances. Krycek chuckled, you could take the boy out of upper middle class Rhode Island, but you couldn't the upper class manners out of the boy.

Mulder outlined what Krycek already knew from his own Smith counterpoint. Mulder's excitement and feelings of justification spilled over in the following paragraphs. He wrote about Scully and Skinner finally believing in aliens. How they now looked at him with more than a touch of awe and respect. He told Krycek about what he'd seen through Smith's eyes regarding his father, mother and Samantha and the project. He closed the letter with a wish that he and Krycek could come to an accord about the past. How knowing of his father's actions had taken away a great deal of his resentment over the man's assassination at Krycek's hands.

Krycek sipped his beer, contemplated having a Smith show Mulder what really happened in his father's bathroom, tapped the pocket that held Mulder's letter and looked around for a likely woman to pick up. He looked around slowly, met several sets of lovely eyes, saw several young men enjoying each other without women, He watched them coolly for a while, shook his head and called himself delusional. He rustled Mulder's letter again, finished his beer and went back to his hotel room alone.

The next day he got another letter from Mulder. He carried them and the subsequent number in the inside pockets of his jacket.

As the date for the meetings came closer, he summoned Smith.

Anyone, thought Krycek, looking into the large conference room at the Hampton Royal Hotel and seeing the ninety-seven identical heavy-set bruisers with blandly evil faces, would have rubbed their eyes and believed they were having acid flashbacks.

He watched them carefully, after so many years of collaboration with the syndicate they were no fools and not easily duped. His usual guiles would not work. He'd planned his actions to the last detail with Smith and Mulder.

He wore the good suit; the slight crackle of the letters in his pocket brought him some comfort. Ironically, now that the time was at hand, his thoughts about a good death seemed to have faded. The letters, while giving him courage, also gave him a kind of hope he couldn't remember feeling in ages. He finally began the meeting, hoping desperately with one part of his mind that he and Mulder would survive so they could explore the wealth of meaning behind the letters.

Mulder, Scully, Skinner, several Smiths and the others on the team, watched the meeting from another room hidden in the old-fashioned wine cellar where they'd been hiding out since hours before the meeting time. Knowing that these aliens had been the hardcore of the syndicate's enforcement made Mulder bite his lip in a frenzy of fear that the plan could go awry and they would all end up dead.

"Your old masters are gone," Krycek began, "along with most of the project's assets." Krycek could hear a murmur, and knew it was in his head and the assembly had not actually made a sound. 'We need to move the date for assimilation up," this time the murmur was more positive. "The convoluted games the old men played are at an end. We go for the heads of state and the militaries in a coordinated effort that will leave no time for an organized resistance." In a parody of human behavior, the drones sat up straighter and looked more alive and excited. Krycek knew this was not a real human response, but it was intimidating nonetheless.

He elaborated the plans for attack, likening it to D-Day.

He passed out military identities and profiles, plane tickets, driver's licenses, car keys, and various orders on papers all sprayed with the poison. He tried to ensure that all the drones present touched them.

He asked if there were any questions. He was thinking frantically about getting them out before their human syndicate counterpoints arrived and they started dying. He hoped Skinner's men had indeed rigged all the cars and helicopters so that they would fail on target several miles away from both the hotel and any human population.

One drone stood up, "What do you get out of this, Mr. Krycek?" He asked it aloud.

Alex grinned, summoning every ounce of confidence, conceit and acting ability, "I get what the old Masters wanted, only more of it," he said, strutting around the perimeter of the filled seats. "Long, long life and immense power during the many years the assimilation will take place. Oh, and a select untouched population to live with on the Hawaiian Islands," he said with a salacious grin.

He knew that the drones thought him a fool. He also knew they believed him. The one standing nodded his okay and the others followed him out of the room, clutching their instructions.

When the room was empty, Krycek felt his knees go weak; he sat down, abruptly, in the nearest seat.

Mulder watched Krycek collapse and wished he could go upstairs. He thought Krycek had done a convincing job. Had he not known that Krycek was on his side he would have been convinced that Krycek was indeed a power hungry mass murderer.

Sotto voice, Chuck said, "Too bad you can't win an Oscar for saving the world."

All too soon, the remaining syndicate members arrived in a flurry of multi-national complaints. Two Smiths opened the hotel doors and took turns ushering the men and women inside. Several of them sneered at Krycek, took seats in the front row, but made no overt moves to harm him. The tables were dressed with water carafes, cups, handsome cases of Havana cigars and French cigarettes, ashtrays and lighters and each item was poisoned.

Krycek grinned sharply, //Have a last smoke, assholes//.

After everyone arrived the full number of Smiths planted themselves around the perimeter of the hotel, as a front guard, should any of the aliens realize what was happening to them and return to wreak havoc and revenge.

In the wine cellar, the human team dressed in plastic suits, bulletproof jackets and checked to make sure their seriously adjusted super-soaker water/poison guns were fully loaded, their real guns were holstered and their gas masks on. If the aliens got through the Smiths, they intended a full assault. Chuck and the Gunmen would stay and record whatever happened for the record, which if the line was broken; there would be no posterity to view it.

Mulder and Skinner, for different reasons, stared at Krycek in the monitor.

He had no mask. His nose itched, but scratching it meant death. Krycek waited until the guests quieted down before he turned from the window and very possibly his last look at the sky and began his address.

He started by accusing an unknown traitor to the project of masterminding the massacre. He berated them for acting too soon and without proper regard for the agreements with the aliens. He accused them of endangering the project and stepping up the invasion without proper precautions. Already a paranoid bunch they eyed each other and shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

He kept up the hectoring tone, staring one after the other in the eye and frowning. He saw when the tide turned his way, his knowledge and daring and strategies finally making the old bastards, regardless of language or nationality, see he was more than a thug on his knees to the Smoker. When he said he had first hand knowledge of the alien resistance and knew how to communicate with them, a few of the hardliners began to protest his loyalty. He spun around, grabbed a handful of bank statements from the pile in front of him and threw them at the old men, "You protest when most of the money is gone?" He let his voice soften, low and thready. "At least one of you here has a larger bank balance than normal," he said, "much, much larger."

The old men glared at each other questioningly and moved their chairs as far away from one another as possible.

Krycek sat on a chair on the dais chose a non-poisoned cigar, bit off the end and spat it on the floor. He lit the cigar, crossed his knees and sat back.

In the face of this bravado, one of the few women in the room stood. "What are we to do?" she asked. The rest of the assembly became quiet and Alex Krycek, former thug and assassin, grinned as nasty a grin as ever crossed his face.

In the wine cellar, Mulder laughed. "Atta boy," he said, "sic-em."

There was no attack by the aliens to interrupt the dying of the remainder of the syndicate and the dying humans were too distressed to attack Krycek.

Scully watched them die with a deep frown wrinkling her forehead. The Smiths went to look for the now empty cars, trucks and crashed helicopters, which the aliens had occupied.

Mulder, Krycek, Skinner, Scully and the team cleaned up, taking the cameras and the microphones; using a foam detergent they had developed to wash the conference room down. Skinner's Special Forces, careful not to actually touch them with bare hands, removed the bodies; loaded them into several unmarked vans, took them to an unmarked grave, and buried them after first pouring in large quantities of acid. They burned all the papers in the stone fireplace in the hotel lobby, along with the cigarettes and cigars. Washed the glassware, cleaned out the grate, and left the premises.

Once in their getaway cars and SUVs, they took off their gas masks and other paraphernalia. Death on the scale they had just engineered and witnessed made them, despite the known evil of the victims, a sober party.

Mulder and Krycek watched them drive away.

"We're good," Mulder said softly.

"Yeah," Krycek said in the same tone, "we're good."

Mulder offered his hand and Krycek shook it.

"See you soon?" Mulder asked.

"At the rendezvous," Krycek replied.

Each man went to his car and drove away. Mulder went south towards DC and Krycek went west.

Within moments, the dust settled and it was as if no one had been there at all.

Krycek couldn't relax during the days that followed. Mulder and Skinner were reassessing the viability of hiring mercenaries or using special ops from the FBI's pool of violent crime agents to begin dismantling the syndicate's labs and other holdings. Krycek received brief emails about their progress.

He knew his role came later, when he would describe projects and how to get through the security systems. In the meantime, he worked out, ate large healthy meals and regained his strength and agility. He was often lonely, but could not work up enough interest to enter the social scene or send for a professional companion of an evening.

It seemed to him, as cliché as it might be, that one door on his life had closed and another one was waiting to be opened, not the way it had been before, assuming new identities or undertaking some new scheme in another language, but a real life change. To what end, he was not sure.

Mulder chafing at all the details and plans that Skinner and Scully wanted in place before they started. He wanted to get Krycek, have a squad of armed, thick-necked no-names at his back, go out and bust up labs and set fire to testing centers.

He felt he deserved to get the chance to destroy the remaining vestiges of the syndicate. After all, there was never going to be public announcements or hearings. The syndicate and the aliens lived conspiratorially in sight for decades and were going out the same way. He still hoped to convince the Smiths into leaving some kind of alien proof behind, but he wasn't counting on it.

The fallout from the destruction of the syndicate top-level bosses gave Wall Street and the press a great deal to manage and write about. Many companies, especially pharmaceutical firms and medical equipment companies, went out of business in a flurry. The press made a passing note of the strange fact the shareholders and personnel of these companies did not instigate lawsuits or class action legal proceedings. When the press attempted to investigate, they came up against a host of impediments. Since there was no public outcry from out of work employees or pension fund accusations, it soon faded away.

A few brave independent reporters kept looking. The Lone Gunmen tracked them, making plans to disseminate information when it was safer to do so.

In other places around the globe, Eastern Europe and Russia, the companies that had been run illegally by the syndicate were snapped up and continued to run illegally by organized crime, with hardly a blip on the radar of multinational corporate entities.

In some places, not necessarily hidden in the Third World, there was a surge of ill and suffering people who could not be diagnosed and the medical world wondered if there was a new plague. The American CDC and its foreign counterparts tried to get on it and for the first time met no mysterious or all encompassing resistance to their work. No resistance did not mean they actually got anywhere in their investigations.

The death toll was calculated and watched by Mulder, Scully and the Gunmen, who were truly the only ones to fully understand, rose to thousands worldwide. Most died of a virulent and fast spreading cancer of the frontal lobes. Some died, delusional and claiming they had been abducted and tested upon by aliens. The gutter press and the tabloids made much of this. Since they had published hundreds of false alarms in the past, no one took these new cases seriously.

Mulder, the truth about so many things already known to him, became bored with all the planning and paperwork. He took up writing letters to Krycek again, only this time Krycek began to write back.

Krycek kept something of a low profile. He knew there were more collaborators who remained alive. Strughold and his crew from Africa were unaccountably at large. Krycek knew Strughold to be a ruthless member of the syndicate and that he had long ago optioned several diamond mines. At heart a scientist, Strughold had no qualms about what he did. With a typical fascist attitude, with money on hand, he always claimed it was for the scientific good, no matter what the cost in human life.

If the Smiths had not made themselves unavailable, Krycek would have asked them about Strughold. For the moment, however, they were absent and Krycek was alone.

At last, a safe house was selected. Large enough to be a base of operations, well hidden in the Virginia foothills, but still only an hour or so for convenient access to Dulles Airport.

Krycek bought a souped up, super charged 1968 Mustang convertible with automatic steering and set out from Illinois on a fine spring morning.

He picked up Mulder in Detroit, as arranged in their correspondence. They would take their time on the drive to Virginia.

Mulder was waiting. He asked for the keys to the car, this assumption made Krycek laugh and say, "As if!"

After several hours of turnpike driving, Mulder was so antsy that Krycek pulled into a service plaza and, after lunch, let him drive.

They discussed the plans, the alien resistance and their mutual desire to finish the whole thing off in a blaze of glory. They quickly, returned to the more or less comfortable relationship they had in the hospital. They did not discuss Bill Mulder, Melissa Scully or Tunguska. Krycek did not tell Mulder about the mega millions he now possessed and Mulder did not tell Krycek what the Smiths had shown him. Neither man, keeping his own secrets, suspected the other of doing the same. Neither noticed that they touched each other, casually, like old friends, when they went in and out of doors or waited in lines at the service plazas.

They drove for five hours, and although they could have pressed on for another five and get to Virginia, they stopped, deciding to eat a relaxed dinner and spend the night in a hotel.

When pressed and assured by Krycek that he would pay the bill, Mulder agreed to a Hilton Hotel instead of the grungy motel he would usually chose. They got a suite and Mulder turned on the large TV and claimed the couch.

Krycek took a shower, pulled on a pair of pants, left the prosthetic off and turned on the TV in his room. He watched for a while and fell asleep. His last thought was that never in a million years had he expected to feel safe with Mulder anywhere nearby.

Mulder eventually became hungry. He got off the couch, had a quick shower and looked for Krycek. He was debating whether he wanted to go to the hotel restaurant or go for a drive and see what they found on the road. He found Krycek asleep, and studied him. He was definitely looking better than the last time he'd seen him without a shirt. He'd filled out, had a light spa tan and the scar, while still red, looked like it would no longer burst open. All in all, if he did not look at the truncated arm, it was a nice chest, smooth and nicely muscled. For the first time, he wondered about Krycek's sex life. Had he been a womanizer during his dark adventures of the syndicate? Had he seduced sources and confidential informants, perhaps of either gender? Given the tasks he had had to accomplish, it seemed to Mulder that Krycek would have had to be flexible and expedient.

On the other hand, other than finding some comfort when Mulder had touched him or held his hand in the hospital, Krycek had given no indication that he was sexually interested or aroused by him. Mulder shook his head violently, negating his train of thought with a sharp "No", said to himself.

The water droplets flew from Mulder's damp hair and landed on Krycek. He awoke and was startled to see it was dark and that Mulder was in his room.

"Dinner?" Mulder asked in a husky voice and then harrumphed to clear his throat,

Krycek sat up, unconsciously rubbed his scar and then his head, and said, "Yeah, yeah. What time is it?"

"It's gone nine," Mulder replied. "What are you in the mood for?"

Krycek reached in his suitcase and pulled out a T-shirt donned that and chose a gray pullover to put on over it.

He was putting on black socks when he said, "There was a billboard advertising a steak house on the exit. We could try that."

'Sounds good," Mulder, said. "I'll drive."

Krycek laughed and muttered, "Control freak," under his breath.

Mulder, pretending not to hear, left the room.

At the safe house, Scully was protesting. She did not want mercenaries hired to work with her and Mulder. She was afraid that with a non-FBI team, Mulder would run off and be more careless than ever of planning and safety. She did not trust Krycek to be a sobering influence, it seemed to her he thrived on violence and death and nothing could change her mind. She became angry when Skinner tried to reason with her and all her long held bile from his inactivity in the past broke through. The atmosphere was tense and when Mulder called to say that he and Krycek were not arriving until the next day, she knocked a tray of coffee cups over, stepped over the broken shards and left the house.

Skinner rubbed his forehead while the abashed Gunmen made for the large basement and their temporary sleeping quarters, data retrieval set up and lab. There was a fridge, microwave oven and sink. They ate cereal and made coffee for dinner.

Regardless of the interpersonal strife ahead, the Gunmen were extremely excited about being part of this adventure. Mulder's proof justified all their own farfetched ideas about the covert government and their own paranoia. They'd watched Krycek do his thing with the syndicate and the aliens and held the joint opinion that whatever face he showed to the rest of them, he was not a psychopath and did not enjoy murder. Besides, if Mulder could make peace with Krycek, who were they to judge? Frohike protested that Mulder wasn't the only one with a grudge, Scully had suffered too.

The others agreed, but thought destroying the men and their machinery of death should go a long way toward Scully's need for vengeance.

Being open to all kinds of crazy ideas and odd scientific proof, they did not take into consideration that Scully, having denied the very existence of the things now revealed, would be both ashamed and angry. They did not guess at her bitterness at what she now saw as her much smaller role and the ascendancy of Krycek and his importance to Mulder.

Skinner understood. He too was leery of Krycek and his influence on Mulder and he understood that Scully felt she was owed better.

The two men ate a huge meal, both enjoying the aged beef and the cold beer. When they were sated and relaxed, Krycek asked Mulder, "Why did you stay and help me recover?"

Mulder stared at Krycek and finding only simple curiosity in his eyes, he answered, "I hardly know." He paused. "There was something about your helplessness," he muttered.

Krycek frowned.

"You always came and went in blaze of activity, or so it seemed to me. You were always so arrogant and off hand. Once you were lying there pale and weak, well, it made me think about you just being a man trying to stay alive and not doing a very good job of it."

Krycek continued to frown, and said "Pity?"

Mulder took a long swallow, delaying his answer; he was not sure what he wanted to say. Every explanation he thought of sounded too touchy- feely and intimate. Instead, he answered with a question, "What made you change your mind and go against them?"

Krycek took a turn drinking his beer, but he met Mulder's eyes, seemingly without guile, "I really had no idea what I was getting into. By the time I began to understand, the Smoker had it in for me and I was on the run. I didn't believe in aliens, Mulder. It seemed too fantastic. I learned that aliens were real in the silo. After that, it was imperative that I learn all of it. The Brit mentioned that a Russian project was in progress in Tunguska. When the diplomatic attaché was stopped in customs so the Smoker could get hold of whatever he was carrying, I needed a way to get to Russia and see for myself. Whatever bad acts I have done, Mulder, I had no intention of being part of the destruction of humanity."

"And the militia in South Dakota?" Mulder asked.

"Pathetic, really," said Krycek, "But dangerous." He grinned, "I thought you should do something about it in real FBI style. So, I sent you the documents."

Mulder grunted and studied the dessert menu, doubting he would ever be ready to talk about his fear and loathing in the Russian woods.

They talked of other things after that, just like any two men having a dinner on the road and on their way to a destination.

Behind his relaxed demeanor, Mulder seethed with more questions that he dare not, yet, ask.

Eschewing the large soft bed for the larger TV, Mulder ended up sleeping on the couch. Slumping in the armchair by the couch Krycek stayed up for a while. Eventually, realizing Mulder was safely in TV- land for the night, he went to bed in his room and closed the door.

They had breakfast in style, each buried in different sections of the newspaper.

Mulder drove while Krycek did the crossword puzzle, making up outrageous and filthy answers to the clues. Today, they were more relaxed with each other than ever.

Krycek puzzled over Mulder's affability, sensing even the deep and dark hate for him was gone. He made a good guess that the Smiths must have told Mulder something of the truth about his real actions, or his father's real culpability and that had eased Mulder's mind.

The hesitant flirtation that Krycek thought was in the letters was missing entirely. Although he knew the letters by heart, he decided to reread them as soon as possible to see if he had misjudged what was written. Drowsing as the turnpike rushed by, Krycek remembered his own thoughts when he was in the hospital, about how he and Mulder were a lot alike and maybe there was a sexual component that he had prematurely dismissed. If there was one, it certainly seemed absent now.

Mulder glanced at Krycek often wondering what the man was thinking. Krycek looked good, healthier and buff. He remembered Krycek's nakedness in the hospital and flushed. He did not know if it was from the shame of seeing Krycek so helpless or because he remembered the nudity, in vivid detail, so well.

They made their way through Ohio and Pennsylvania and once on I-81 south, they stopped for lunch, arguing amicably about fast food joints. Krycek used the restroom while Mulder waited in line for their order. When he came out, he stopped and scanned the restaurant. Standing two lines over and reaching for his weapon, Krycek saw a familiar face. He reached for his own gun, just as Mulder looked up, sensing something was not right. He saw Krycek's movement and quickly dropped the tray and pushed as many people down that he could reach.

Shots were fired, Mulder heard a body hit the floor and saw Krycek rise from his crouch. Mulder rolled and saw the wounded, possibly dead man a few feet away. The place was in an uproar, women and children screaming and crying. The teenager servers at the counter were rising to their feet slowly as the fryers dinged and beeped that the French fries were cooked.

Mulder pulled his FBI I.D. and yelled, "FBI! Stay down!" He flipped his cell phone on and called the police.

What should have been a pleasant drive through the Virginia countryside became a nightmare of local and state police vying for jurisdiction that lasted for several hours while Krycek and Mulder were detained.

Lunch missed; eventually they were allowed to drive on. They went a hundred miles and decided to have a meal. This time they sat at the back booth of a pub and ordered their meal, eyes on the alert and between the two a very high level of shared paranoia.

Skinner and Scully came in while they were eating, having driven very fast from the safe house to the pub. They were taken aback at Mulder's surly reception. "We're fine, I'm fine. The body will be shipped to Quantico for the autopsy. I told you not to worry; we would have been with you by nine o'clock."

Scully frowned at Krycek, who met her look with a bland, even placid, expression. Mulder saw the look and sighed. "Scully, you're going to have to trust Krycek some time. He saved my life."

"How do you know that this isn't just a ruse to draw you in, Mulder?" She asked, "He's been plenty devious in the past."

Mulder tapped the edge of the table with his knife. "If you can't trust him, Scully, you're going to have to trust me." He thought he heard Krycek snort.

Scully, cheeks on fire from Mulder's sardonic reprimand, stood up. "I have been backing you up for a long time, Mulder. I expect better from you than to brush me off like this."

Mulder glanced from Scully's angry face to Krycek's bland one and sighed. "I am not dismissing you, Scully. Thing have changed, that's all and we all have to adjust."

Skinner stood up beside Scully, "Have it your way, Mulder," he said in an exasperated voice, "You always do anyway. Let's go Agent Scully; we have a lot to left to do." They turned as one and left.

Mulder took a long swallow of his drink and Krycek, toasting Mulder with his glass said, "Don't ever go into the diplomatic service, Mulder, you suck at it."

Mulder grunted and took another bite of his corned beef sandwich. "I don't think they're fans of yours."

Krycek said, "Duh," and bit into his own burger.

When Mulder and Krycek got to the safe house, all was quiet. Scully and Skinner were obvious in their absence from the rest of the welcoming reception. Members of Skinner's black ops manned the perimeter and everyone else went to bed. Mulder and Krycek shared a room, the Gunmen were in another and Skinner and Scully each had quarters of their own. The team were bivouacked in the barn.

In the quiet of the night, Krycek got up and sat in the window seat, looking out over the gentle foothills of the Virginia countryside in the moonlight. He was on the right side at last, he thought. Maybe not everyone trusted him, but he only cared about what Mulder thought anyway. He could feel the vestiges of panic and stress thrum in his pulse from the activities of the day. He'd come to a profound understanding when he saw the thug aiming at Mulder. He glanced at the sleeping man whose hair caught the gleam of the moonlight.

Krycek sighed soundlessly.

Such a long way he'd come from his wide eyed belief that what Spender offered was a chance at patriotic heroism and a way to rise in the ranks of the Bureau. Even further, he thought, from his role as thug and assassin. Mulder slept. Krycek tried to wrap his mind around that fact. Mulder slept in his presence. That was a million miles from before. He wanted to lie down beside Mulder, match him breath for breath and find a similar sense of safety, of peace.

He rested his head on his knee and watched the clouds cover the moon and then, move on.

Mulder woke silently. He saw Krycek's bed was empty and looked around, finding Krycek sitting motionless on the window seat, staring out into the night.

He studied the still, silent man, seeing the weariness and sadness that Krycek never showed to the world in daylight. His prosthetic was off and the empty sleeve seemed ragged and harsh in the moonlight.

Mulder felt drifted on a wave of sleepiness and allowed it to happen. For once, he put up no barriers to impede his feelings for Alex Krycek. He'd stood up today blocking Scully and Skinner's concerns, siding with Krycek against them. He understood their anger, but the need to take a stand had been stronger than his understanding or guilt. His partnership with Scully was deep and, he still believed, strong. His appreciation that Skinner believed at last, was also fervent. However, the lonely man sitting by the window took the larger part of his heart and mind now.

He sighed and Krycek turned toward him. In that moment, Krycek became Alex. The moonlight silvered Alex's hair and forehead, lending a deep and dark shadow to his eyes and mouth. The mystery of this shadowed face, stirred something in Mulder that he had been avoiding, denying, for a long, long time.

Mulder got up and approached Alex. He saw him cringe slightly and then force himself to relax. Mulder put his hand on Alex's left shoulder, bent down and said softly, "Come to bed, Alex," tugging on him gently.

Alex rose and started towards his own bed; Mulder applied a reverse pressure and guided Alex to his bed. He gently, but firmly, urged Alex to lie down and when he had, Mulder followed him. After a few moments of awkwardness, Alex relaxed and Mulder pulled him closer. Soon, matching breath for breath, they slept.

When they awoke, they were sprawled across the narrow width of the twin- sized bed, one leg over the other and Mulder's hand splayed across Alex's stomach. They both went from drowsy to uncomfortably tense immediately. Alex felt the need to draw up the covers with a sense of modesty he hadn't felt since the sixth grade. Mulder made a production of removing his hand as quickly as possible, dramatically using it to scratch his nose.

Alex choked back a laugh with a cough, Mulder grinned, snorted and they both broke into laughter. Alex swung himself over Mulder onto the edge of the bed, rose, stretched and went into the bathroom.

While he showered, Alex heard Mulder enter the bathroom, take a leak, flush, say he was going to fetch coffee and leave. He thought how easy it had been to fall into the safety Mulder's compassion. Knowing Mulder's tendency to fly off into every danger that came his way, Alex wondered why this was so. Telling himself firmly to get a grip, he shaved in the shower, looked at his mangled arm coolly in the bathroom mirror and went back to the other room to dress.

The common rooms of the large house, other than the table in the kitchen, were dedicated to Operation ET-Go Home. The front room was already a mass of computer equipment, phone lines and a large white board. What had once been a parlor was now a lab, Bunsen burners and neat rows of bottled chemicals, tubes and a centrifuge. Mulder had no doubt that as soon as they were settled in and working, the Gunmen would get a still going.

He looked outside at the large walled garden and was glad to see a pool reflecting the morning light. He wondered if Alex swam, not that he doubted the man had the ability, but whether he would show his arm.

Mulder went back to the kitchen, filled two mugs with coffee, cream, sugar, and pressed the 'on' button on the second coffee machine on the counter. There were four coffee makers ready to go and several huge cans of ground coffee near at hand. Someone had brought in several dozen doughnuts and pastries. Mulder grabbed up two in a paper towel and went back upstairs.

He found Alex sitting on his bed pulling on socks and shoes. He was dressed, but the buttons of his shirt were not fastened and he could see the straps and buckles of the prosthetic arm across his chest. He put the coffee and the pastry on the end table, carried his own to his side of the room and sat on his bed.

Alex took a swallow of the coffee, noted it was made to his liking, "Thanks," he said.

"Welcome," Mulder said through a full mouth.

"What's the agenda for today?" Alex asked.

"I think were going to try and categorize the facilities and make a plan where to go and what to do first. The Smiths are here and between them and you, we should be able to get a picture of what's ahead."

The white board lost its pristine sheen after several hours of flow charts and assignments were written, erased and rewritten. Everyone put in his or her two-cent worth of expertise and advice. The Smiths did not attempt to run the meeting, leaving only one of them to answer questions.

The Gunmen transferred the data to their laptops as soon as it was said, but the rest of the team were more comfortable seeing it in black and white on the large board. Mulder, who had always suspected that the conspiracy was a huge operation, was amazed at the real scope of it. Almost every country on earth had some kind of hand in it from the rain forests of Peru to the Hunan Province in China. The names of those who aided and abetted the central syndicate members were legend, presidents, Knesset members, members of Congress, of the Polit Bureau and of course the DOD, FBI, and the CIA.

Central Africa seemed to be the place to start; Strughold still had his end of the project intact. If they could catch him alive and make him talk, it would certainly help the whole effort.

When they broke for lunch, Mulder headed back to his room and Alex followed.

Alex found Mulder sitting in his bed. He had hunched his shoulders, head in his hands, and was muttering to himself in a low voice. Alex did not attempt to cheer him up; instead, he sat down next to him and waited.

After a few minutes, Mulder turned an anguished face to him. "It's too much," he began, "it'll take millions of dollars and more help than we have now. And," he added, flopping backwards and lying across the bed, "there's no way to know who to trust with what information. Even Skinner's Ops are suspect."

Alex turned towards Mulder, who was fortunately on his right side and ran his fingers on the ridge of wrinkles on the man's brow in a soothing rhythm, Mulder blinked at him and slowly, relaxed. Krycek, deliberately clearing his mind of anything other than Mulder, bent and kissed him. It was a soft kiss, but sure. Mulder went completely still and when Alex sat up again, Mulder asked, "Things aren't complicated enough?"

Alex grinned and shrugged his shoulders. He flopped down, joining Mulder in a prone position, "Well, you didn't slug me."

Mulder turned towards Alex. Silently, he pushed Alex's shirt aside, baring the pale warm skin to his touch, his fingers tracing the red scars. "When you were ill," Mulder said in a soft voice. "I saw you, for the first time, as a fragile man, as fragile as me. It changed everything I'd ever felt about you and made me wonder the whys, hows and whens you came to be caught up by the Smoker."

Alex smiled to himself; this was it, Mulder's voice talking to him softly, intimately. He treasured the moment. This is what he had dreamed of, what he'd desired more than anything. The clarity of his feelings when Mulder had been under fire in the fast food restaurant came back to him. Win or lose the Alien War, live or die trying, it was all worth it as long as Mulder spoke to him this way.

They kissed again, both caught up in the luxury of it. They did not hurry; there was no rush to passion or orgasm. They kissed and stroked one another as if Mulder's words had conjured two fragile people who needed tenderness. They did not speak and their silence was imbued with a rightness that needed no words.

Eventually the sounds from the house and its other occupants penetrated their sanctuary and they sat up unhurriedly, buttoned up their shirts. "Back to the here and now," Mulder said and stretched.

Alex grinned as he roughly tucked in his shirt, "We've got a good start on R&R."

Mulder chuckled and opened the door.

They planned their first raid near to home, a large pharmaceutical firm on the Dulles access road in Reston, Virginia. The Gunmen found the blueprints to the building in a way known only to them and the team studied them closely. Mulder itched to get on with it, but found Alex's attention to detail fascinating. Here was a man who would have been a great FBI agent, Mulder thought, the kind of agent that rose through the ranks and made it to the top. He was, much to his amusement, vicariously pleased that Alex impressed everyone. It also eased something in his own ego, that place where he'd always felt like a loser when it came to exacting revenge on Krycek. To see the man so seriously attentive and careful made him realize that Krycek had, indeed, been a formidable enemy.

The Smiths volunteered to help and dressed in security guard uniforms, managed to convince the majority of the building's security force that they had orders to replace them for the evening so that they could go attend a meeting at the main office. By the time the real guards got to the offices on the other side of Washington D.C., the team would have gotten what they needed. The descriptions of the Smiths, who had taken on the likenesses of some pictures from the FBI criminal database, would confound the security force and the police. Mulder and his team would long gone.

The Gunmen, with Alex at point, hurriedly broke through the extra security for the syndicate's labs, entered, and downloaded the contents of the computers' memories. Scully and her minions took large samples of the entire spectrum of specimens, gathered the remaining bits in a large sink, and doused them with acid until they were destroyed.

Satisfied that the entire mission had taken place with no violence or death, but with a long list of criminal offences that would eventually become charges, the team exited the building, taking the surveillance tapes with them. The strategy of holding these secondary syndicate members up on illegalities in open court would have the benefit of exposing the syndicate to the public and the press. While it was unlikely that anything to do with aliens would ever come up openly, the syndicate and Mulder's theories about a quasi- governmental force, which operated in secret for decades, would come to light and alert the public to its evil.

They returned to the safe-house in a jubilant mood and everyone had a taste of the champagne that Skinner had tucked away for just such a moment. The toasts finished, the Gunmen and Scully already in scientific heaven, Mulder looked for Alex. He found him on the back porch staring at the sky and the full moon.

He approached Alex silently and stood next to him, gazing his fill of the serene evening and the moon over the gentle Virginia foothills.

Alex slid his good arm around Mulder's shoulders and Mulder leaned into him. The mood from earlier returned. This time heightened by their successful mission and the champagne. Mulder hugged Alex to him and they kissed in the moonlight. Both of them breaking away and laughing a little at the sentimentality of the setting.

Standing there, feeling the warmth, the beginnings of passion and the humor that doubled because someone else understood him, Mulder finally relaxed. The dreams and desires he had put away years ago began to swim in his pulse. He remembered another boy in the moonlight one late night in Oxford. He remembered wanting to reach out and knew that if he did he would be lost on a path that didn't bear thinking about back then. He had tried, Mulder thought now, had tried to love Phoebe and Diana successfully, had tried to meet Scully halfway. But, it just wasn't meant to be. Mulder looked at Alex and noted the esthetic beauty of him, the well-shaped head and shoulders, the narrowing line to a strong waist and to the long muscled legs. There was no trace of the thin, weak and helpless invalid Mulder had watched and assisted a few weeks ago.

Alex turned and faced Mulder. He wondered what the other man was thinking. Because Alex certainly knew the man's energy, strength and strong will, Mulder seemed slender in the moonlight and deceptively fey. He wanted to make love to Mulder. This was not a new desire although he had damped it down from the beginning. He'd lived a heterosexual life for most of his adulthood, perhaps as a nod towards his father's middleclass conservatism in absentia. In any case, chances for love and lovers had been scant, he'd never wanted Spender or the others to be able to hold that part of his life hostage too. Now, in this moment of peace and relative safety, champagne and moonlight, his desires filled him forcefully, urgently.

Something of his urgency must have communicated itself to Mulder, because he stood taller and relaxation fell from him, leaving him almost trembling.

They came together with low growls of need and their kisses became fierce and deep. Mulder grabbed Alex's ass and Alex ground his erection into Mulder's hip. This time they did not chuckle when they broke apart, only panted and impatiently, headed for the stairs to their room.

There was no awkwardness or hesitation when they reached the bedroom, carefully locked the door and dragged each other to a bed. There was a buzz of understanding between them and this time it was about passion and need. Mulder did not find it strange to feel muscles instead of soft breasts and Alex was as aroused by Mulder's ass as he had ever been by a woman's derrière.

They fell onto the bed and laid each other out as a feast of sounds, tastes and scents instead of meat and wine.

Mulder, looking at Alex as he stretched like a large feline under his hands and this time there was no shame. Alex was as taut and sleek as any cat and more beautiful than any lover that had gone before. Mulder felt his head spin with the taste and scent of this man and he knew him as if he were making love to himself.

Alex reached for Mulder, tugging not so gently on his chest hair to drag him closer. Mulder responded and rolled on top. Alex spread his legs and they were groin to groin and too impatient for the practicalities of fucking so they rubbed and humped and set each other off, coming almost as one.

Breathless, they lay spent, Mulder's head comfortably nestled where Alex's arm was missing and thus, fitting in all the closer. Neither of them moved to clean up, wash up or go brush their teeth. Alex thought the damp nest they made was perfect and Mulder was too sated to care about the mess.

The twin bed was not really large enough for two grown men, but on this first night of love, they didn't notice, too bemused by the presence of the other to want distance.

A long time later, Alex whispered, "Earth to Mulder."

And Mulder answered, "Not now, the stars are wonderful tonight."

Alex made a "humming," sound of repletion and happiness. He adjusted himself a bit and fell asleep. Mulder followed him within moments.

The mission before them seemed endless, hundreds of labs, all over the world, hundreds of offices, institutions, and business that had been built and were run to support the syndicate. Many of the people who worked in these places were totally in the dark about the true value of their work and, for that matter, and they worked for any kind of suspect or criminal entities. Certainly, the military, in the USA and abroad, were implicated and that would be the toughest nut to crack when the time came.

Skinner convinced the team that forensic accountants and lawyers were needed to straighten out the syndicate's holdings, investigate retirement funds, and see if the legitimate operations could be sold or traded without causing a huge panic on Wall Street. Furthermore, he felt it was necessary to include the State Department to help them with the international elements. He felt strongly that, like Capone's operations in the nineteen thirties, the Syndicate could be brought to its knees when the financial records came to light.

Mulder viewed this plan suspiciously. He and Alex talked about how the secondary level of the syndicate would try to take over and continue with the project and how many of those operatives were in the FBI, CIA and State Department.

It was the Gunmen who, paranoia intact, suggested that the entire international operation be exposed as illegal cloning experiments. These experiments, like all fascist endeavors, preyed on innocents for their experiments. They estimated it would take NATO, the WTO, the WHO, the United Nations and Congress years to sort it out and actually begin investigating the charges against so many of their own private projects and ties to the syndicate. In the meantime, they could go ahead and close down as much as they could and eliminate the issue of extraterrestrials.

Alex argued that kind of exposure would alert those they needed to surprise and eliminate before they could get there to do it. This was debated at length, Scully taking the view that the sooner they got into the labs the better and Skinner maintaining that even with enemies within the state organizations, there were more honest people than not.

The spokesman for the Smiths' intervened. "We agree with Miss Scully," he began. "All traces of alien science, tools and equipment must be eliminated first. In the massive confusion the governments of the world will investigate and try to solve, whatever missing pieces that the elimination of alien presence can be explained away."

With a very human kind of wryness, Smith concluded, "Humans love to solve blatant examples of outrageous behavior on the part of those that do not touch their own wellbeing. The project was always maintained and operated in secret, so exposing it will bring approval to those in the various governments who do so, without appearing to hinder or affect most of the population."

With real human irony, Skinner said, "Mulder, you, Krycek and the Gunmen can still be cowboys and blow stuff up, probably for months, if not years to come."

Mulder, not entirely appeased said, "You'll probably get promoted to Deputy Director before we're done. That is if you live through the first wave of congressional retribution and spite."

Skinner replied with a shark's smile, "I'll buy a new suit for the occasion," which made Alex laugh and Mulder calm down.

The chaos was much, much worse than any of them had predicted. The internet conspiracy theorist groups and chat rooms lit up like Christmas. The frenzy spread to the press and television news within a few days. Mulder, Scully and the FBI were besieged constantly, until the safe-house was no longer a quiet retreat. The remaining members of the syndicate pulled out all their collective stops and tried to tell the public that AD Skinner's Black Ops were unlawful and a misuse of governmental power. That it was the FBI that was out of hand, hurling misguided and slanderous accusations at respectable and legal businesses.

The Secretary of State and the Joint Chief's of Staff, countered with double talk about ongoing investigations into the military, blaming foreign terrorists of masterminding plots against the American Public.

The president's spokesman made a brief comment, saying that the president had full confidence in the Secretary of State and would not take any questions.

The Gunmen and Alex were at great pains never to appear in front of cameras, and since this curtailed there movements, they grew nervous and short tempered. Mulder spent his time gritting his teeth. He stayed, on a pain of death threat from Skinner, polite to the press.

When Mulder was alone with Alex, he ranted against everything that stood in his way. Alex made no attempt to calm him down. In fact, he encouraged Mulder to break them out and get on the road. At last, in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, Mulder drove calmly out of the safe- house compound in a large SVU. The Gunmen and Alex were hidden under blankets the same dark blue as the seats and through the tinted windows, were invisible.

They separated in the underground parking lot of the Pentagon City Mall. The Gunmen took different metro trains into DC and Alex and Mulder, leaving the SUV behind, their backpacks loaded with weapons and other necessities for life on the road headed for a rent-a-wreck dealer across the street.

They picked up the super-charged 1995 Dodge sedan, which the Gunmen had already arranged for them to collect. With a sigh of relief, they headed out of DC, going north.

There were thrills aplenty during the following few weeks. Mulder and Alex went ahead with minimal preparation, and a lot of nerve, raided labs and offices. When they encountered people working in these places, they held them at gunpoint until the operatives Skinner employed came and took them to the brig at Quantico, and in a few cases, shipped bodies to the morgue.

The men grew closer to each other, building on the relationship they'd started when Alex was in the hospital. They found common ground in the most banal of interests, sports, movies, and books and they both found comfort in the banal, holding it as proof of normalcy in a life lived far from usual.

They did not debate philosophical ideas or touch the still sensitive issues about William Mulder, Scully's abduction or Alex's relationship with Spender. And, they never talked about the loss of Alex's arm.

One or another of the Smiths was often present; making sure anything pertaining to the alien presence was fully eliminated.

After a particularly close encounter with syndicate scientists who were willing to die to protect their part of the project, Mulder and Alex resorted to a large bottle of Scotch instead of the beer or two that they usually had in front of the TV. Morose over the carnage they'd participated in that day, the death and the blood, they drank a great deal.

The progression of their sexual affair had moved slowly, because both were aware this wasn't a passing fancy and that they were building a relationship. This night, tired and drunk, they showered together and each avowing that they were free of STDs or HIV, proceeded past where they had gone before.

Alex, who had more experience, led the way. He began to relish Mulder's warm damp body even before they made it out of the bathroom.

Alex treated Mulder to a full-fledged onslaught of eroticism, from head to toe and a long drawn out blowjob that had Mulder grabbing Alex's hair and then the headboard of the bed in delighted agony.

"Want this, Mulder?" Alex breathed as Mulder was on the brink of orgasm.

"Yes, yes, damn you, hurry!" Mulder replied, dead serious and about to explode.

Alex chuckled deep in his throat at the same time he deep throated Mulder.

Mulder actually yelled out his pleasure, while Alex was busy swallowing.

Mulder lay, sated and drowsy. Alex, who wasn't finished yet, continued to pet him, until Mulder began to focus again on something besides his own fulfillment He began to return the caresses and exploration of Alex's sleek body. As he ventured further down Alex's chest and stomach, Alex said, "Oh, god," a few times.

Muttering breathlessly, Alex balanced on his stump, and half on top of Mulder, put his hand on Mulder's penis, then, gently fingered his scrotum and drifted to the cleft of Mulder's ass. Mulder jumped a little and tensed up. Alex became more aggressive, his fingers penetrating Mulder. "Say yes," Alex, crooned, "Say yes, Mulder."

Mulder tossed his head, bit his lip and said, "Yes," in an unconvincing voice.

Alex laughed deep in his throat, "It'll be good," he promised and Mulder discovered that is was good, indeed that it was better than good. He let himself go, he moaned and cried out and Alex panted and praised him and Mulder orgasmed a second time, with an almost sobbing Alex right behind him.

They lay where the spent passion left them.

Mulder woke in the middle of the night with a parched throat and desperate need to urinate. He peed, found some ice left in the bucket, and pored himself a soda. The sweet fizz felt wonderful going down his throat. He stared at Alex's back. From this angle, Alex's left side was shadowed and he could not see the abrupt end of his arm. Instead, he saw the length of smooth back and the soft swell of buttocks, unfortunately covered by a sheet. The sight of Alex, sleeping deeply and peacefully, brought a lump to Mulder's throat. He was suddenly struck with an onslaught of feelings that broke the dam of his long held solitary existence. He was no longer alone in his beliefs; Alex knew them for a fact as well as he did. The rest of the team, Scully, Skinner, the Gunmen, they believed it now too, but somehow that meant less to him than it would have mere weeks ago.

Mulder hurried into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He opened the door quietly, although he heard Alex mutter something before he closed it again. He stood outside on the small concrete walkway in front of the motel door and watched the traffic rush by on the interstate.

He stared at the stars, so far away, bright and full of secrets. He realized, for the first time, convincingly and deep in his soul that Samantha's fate was known to him, that she was gone and had been gone for many years. He had exposed and was truly ending the syndicate's reign of power and finally, that he wasn't alone.

He stretched yawned, winked back at the stars and went back inside. Alex murmured again at the faint noise. Mulder undressed and got in bed beside Alex, "Honey," he said and Alex turned towards him sleepily, "I'm home."

He heard Alex take a sharp breath, "You're feet are cold," he complained.

Mulder laughed softly and Alex drew him closer with a warm right hand.