Title: Enough of Hate

Author: drovar

Rating: NC-17

Category: Angst, Colonization, vaguely slashy

Notes: Spender/Krycek. Krycek POV. Special thanks for Lopsided and Shael, this story is much better for thier input, thanks guys.

Warning: Multiple character death!!

Summary: Krycek faces the end of the world from an unexpected source.

Enough of Hate
by drovar

They say you never hear the shot that kills you. You're alive --then you're dead, that quick. I don't know if it's ironic or just damn luck, good or bad -- I'm not sure, that I was the only one that heard the shot that killed the world. That's me, Alex Krycek, the only witness to the beginning of the 'The biggest shitstorm of all time' as Mulder might say -- the beginning of the end of everything.

I don't even know why I'm running, why I'm joining the throngs of civilians dashing Helter Skelter for their safe, suburban homes and families. It's not like I can escape; I'm already dead. I'm as dead and in the ground as Spender's father, as dead as Jeffrey Spender was supposed to be.

I was there. I heard the muffled shot, a sick 'thup' of a sound. I listened as the body hit the floor. Everything according to plan, each step carefully thought out. Too bad for The Smoker he underestimated his own blood. I watched the door to the X-Files office swing open, and watched with astonishment as young Jeffrey walked out. I felt a small grin stir on my lips, you can't kill the devil, not even his son can, but Jeffrey apparently had managed what a cadre of assassins and international conspirators never could.

He looked at me, hell it seemed like he looked right through me, and didn't say anything for a long time. It was his voice that clued me in when he finally did speak. It was a dead man's voice, flat and monotone, no life or emotion in it at all. It was like something in him had died, something important. I'd wonder later if he hadn't shot his own soul in that basement office.

Whatever had been soft or gentle or kind in Jeffrey Spender died that night. The shell left behind was as dark, and bleak and cold as a starless winter night. He scared the hell out of me, he still does. No one is more dangerous than the man who's lost everything.

"Come on," he said as he walked past me, without even looking my way "We've got things to do." I hesitated, and glanced back at the office door. I couldn't imagine that the smoker was really dead; the bastard had more lives than a dozen cats. That's when I got my first lesson in life under the thumb of Jeffrey Spender. Stupid and careless, I didn't even see him draw his gun, but I felt the hard metal digging into my temple plainly enough. I knew from that moment that the CGB Spender was dead.

"Now," he said in that stone cold voice of his. I could hear him breathing, slow, steady and deep. The gun didn't waver or tremble. He meant it. I nodded once in agreement. Spender holstered the gun without speaking further and walked away. I took a deep breath, looked back at the office door one more time and then at Spender's retreating back, did a quick calculation of my options, and fell into step behind him.

#

Spender moved quickly to secure his place as heir to his father's throne. It was my place by right, but his by birth. I had to admit a grudging acknowledgement of his position, he was every bit his father's son, and more. Diana Fowley, his former partner on the X-Files, was the first to challenge him. She was an amazing woman; I don't think the old man's side of the bed had even cooled before she sidled up to Spender.

She was a woman who knew what she wanted, and how to get it if she had to. I suspect she thought she could buffalo Spender just as she had when they were partners on the X-Files. She was the second one to get a hard, fast, and in her case final, lesson from the new consortium master.

We were gathered in the restored main room of the consortium 'office'. Spender must have been building his connections behind his father's back the whole time. He seemed to have resources and manpower I just couldn't account for. That should have been a clue. It was one of many that I missed; I was blind and a fool. I stood at the back of the room off to Spender's side. I rolled the plam in my hand, nervously like a set of worry beads.

Fowley sauntered into the meeting room just as Strughold, the sun-withered old devil, was taking his seat. Sunlight slanted in through newly cleaned and open windows, casting bright hard rectangles across the room. I don't think the dreary place had been so bright and clear in a generation. The air was likewise clean, without the omnipresent reek of cigarette smoke and tired old men. Somehow, though, it was more oppressive without its cloying shadow, and with its dark and secret places thrown open and revealed in the stark light.

Strughold seemed unsettled by the changes. His eyes darted around the taking in and cataloging the differences, weighing each one, filing, categorizing and storing each one for later study. He was just in from Tripoli, no doubt eager assess the situation, and perhaps bring down this upstart syndicate leader.

Fowley seemed unfazed by the changes, as if they were irrelevant, though I'd bet my life that her inspection of the premises had been even more incisive and encompassing than Strughold's. She spared the old man one dismissive glance, ignored me, and moved to stand in front of Spender's desk. It was big, heavy, dark mahogany and oak, cold and hard to the touch, just like its owner. I got to know the feel of them both in time.

Fowley spoke softly, her words soothing, and relaxing, a lie in tone and inflection. Her expression was as bland and smooth as her voice. But her eyes were bright, and eager, almost hot with anticipation, revealing the truth. She looked tightly wound, tense and ready to spring, like a lioness, her muzzle already red with blood, closing in on a wounded gazelle.

But sometimes gazelles aren't what they seem. Sometimes gazelles are the predators, dark, strong and deadly. Sometimes gazelles are evil and soulless, and sometimes they kill lions.

"Jeffrey," she said in tones a little too hard edged to be truly dulcet or pleasant. "It's so good to see you looking well."

There was a microsecond pause there; her mouth twitched just enough to give the suggestion of a smile I doubt she even knew she'd done it. I doubt that Spender missed it.

"I was . . . concerned." She smiled that steel sharp smile of hers. I've never understood how she managed to look more deadly and surreal while trying to be pleasant than when she had murder on her mind.

Spender remained seated where I could see him in profile, impassive at first. He looked at her for a moment, not saying anything. Then he smiled. Suddenly that dutiful, slightly out of kilter Boy Scout of an FBI Agent was back. Jeffrey Spender, the old one, the sorry confused son of a bitch, was back. I suddenly had to wonder if *that* Jeffrey Spender had ever existed at all or if he was just a false front for the true darkness that lay beneath.

"Hello Diana," Jeffrey said still smiling. His gravelly voice was full of emotion, and inflection. The warmth in his voice grated on my nerves like a band saw. It was fake, a pretense to snare the foolish and unwary.

I had been both, Fowley still was.

"It's so good to see you. You were my father's confidant." He took her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing it lightly. "You meant great deal to him, and to his organization." He paused, raising his eyes to meet hers. "I had hopes that the arrangement might continue."

She smiled widely at that, a hint of humanity slipping into her expression. Had her eyes misted just slightly? Perhaps she had feelings, real ones, for The Smoker? Her loss, her weakness, my advantage in the coming power struggle. If Spender was out to rule the world in his father's stead, then I was going to be at his right hand not her. If that meant convincing him that I was the one to share his bed, then so be it, I'd done far worse to get what I wanted. Power is more than a drug; power is life itself.

Jeffrey released her hand and she caressed his cheek, her fingers brushing his lips and lingering there for just a moment.

"Perhaps we can have dinner this evening and discuss that, and your plans, I can help you, guide you."

"Thank you Diana," He squeezed her hand and released it. He turned away. She watched him for a moment before turning back to her seat. There was a small look of triumph on her face, suppressed and hidden, but still there. She'd gotten her 'in'.

Jeffrey's earnest expression melted from his face the moment he had his back turned, replaced by shadow and steel. The boy who loved his mother and obeyed his father was gone. He was stone and ice again, deadly and dark. He was Spender again.

He stopped.

"Diana . . ."

Strughold looked at the scene curiously, his gaze darting between Spender and Diana, and sometimes me. His mouth twitched and his eyes darted back to Spender. He was planning something.

"Yes Jeffrey?" Diana asked as she turned back. Her attention seemed to linger on Strughold for a moment. His eyes flicked to Fowley, then to Spender, then to me. My pulse leaped, and I suddenly became very aware of how vulnerable we were. Careless and stupid again, an amateur would have seen this coming. Fowley and Strughold were plotting something deadly, and Spender was the target.

As he'd been since the beginning, Spender was a step ahead of me.

He spun around faster than I've ever seen him, or anything human, move, a cobra strike of motion. His fist slammed into her right temple with incredible force. He was stronger than he looked, stronger than I thought possible. There was a ghastly bone-on-bone crunch. Fowley spun around staggering with the force of the blow, and dropped without a cry.

Her body landed at Strughold's feet. She didn't move. The old man's eyes grew wide. He hesitated for a moment and tentatively placed two fingers on her neck.

He looked up again, his eyes still wide. I was able to suppress a gasp when he spoke. "She is dead."

Spender simply returned to his chair, standing, reestablishing his position of authority behind the massive desk. I felt frozen, more shocked than appalled. He was solidifying his control; Fowley was a danger, an iron bitch without a conscience, had been all along. Direct murder had never been the old men's style; they normally didn't sully their hand with the blood of others -- that was my job.

Strughold watched Spender for a moment and seemed to come to some realization, a decision. I have to give the old man his due, he was quick, quicker than I expected. He must have pulled the gun as I was watching Fowley's death scene. He had it drawn and pointed at Spender before I could react.

"You think to follow in your father's footsteps, rule with an iron hand. You are a fool, and now you die," he said in that quick bitter voice of his.

Spender only stood there, behind his desk. He didn't react at all. There was no way I could drop the plam and get my gun out in time, no way in heaven or hell. I'd as likely hit Spender in the rush anyway. For good or evil I'd hitched my wagon to his train. If he had a chance of making it to the top, I was damn well going to be there, and if he happened to stumble along the way, I'd be there, waiting.

"Get down," I yelled, more to get Strughold's attention than any real hopes Spender would evade a gun shot at that range -- it worked. Strughold's eyes flicked in my direction. That was all the diversion I needed. The plam snicked open as I raised my arm. Strughold raised his gun as the plam left my hand. There's a time when the world seems to hang in the balance teetering on the brink or oblivion or salvation, all future events turning on one razor-edged moment. This was one of those moments.

Time doesn't slow down when things get dicey the way it does in the movies, not really. You get your one heartbeat, your one moment, then it's gone. But afterwards, after the dust and the mess have settled, after you've taken your shot and you're turning over the body just to be sure, that's when things change. Just like now.

Strughold was dead; he just didn't know it yet. A thin trickle of blood rolled down his forehead and beaded on the tip of his nose. The plam was embedded up to its haft in his brain. He gave one strangled cry as the gun spun in his lifeless hand and clattered to the floor. Strughold seemed to give a final sigh as his last breath escaped his chest. He shuddered and toppled from his chair landing in a heap atop Fowley's lifeless body.

Spender sat down, apparently unconcerned with the carnage and corpses in front of his desk. He turned to a small intercom; it had been installed just the day before, and pressed a button. He didn't say anything at first, simply waited for a heart beat before turning to me.

"Thank you," he paused as the door on the other side of the room opened. Two identical men in identical drab suits stepped in. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I was suddenly very sorry for letting the plam get out of my hands. They moved in unison, in synchronized steps and motions. Their faces were emotionless and bland, though somehow still menacing, as they went about disposing of the bodies. My heart really did stop this time, I think. I'd seen these types before; bounty hunters; enforcers, shock troops of the coming invasion. It seems Spender had been busy.

In minutes the bodies were gone and it was as if nothing deadly or bloody had ever happened here. Spender dismissed the other syndicate functionaries, probably correctly assuming that this would be an object lesson in the results of defying the new master.

"Krycek?"

Spender had turned in his chair and addressed me directly. "Please sit down," he continued, motioning to the chair closest to his desk, Strughold's chair.

I nodded in agreement and stepped quickly across the room. I was about to take my seat when he spoke again. I stopped in mid-application of ass to chair.

"One thing, Krycek?"

"Yes?" I replied. I wasn't going to call him sir, no way in hell.

I understand that you have some sort of . . ." He paused as if considering his words carefully. "Influence, with Assistant Director Skinner."

"What do you mean influence?" I asked trying to look as dopey and non-comprehending as possible. He wasn't buying it.

"Give me the device, Krycek."

What could I do? I don't even know how he knew about it. It'd been my pet project, another road to power and control, for months. But he apparently had been diligent, and thorough, I'd be surprised if there was anything he didn't know at this point.

I handed it over.

"I'm assuming it works at an ultra-low frequency, and requires proximity to the subject?" He turned the device around, flipped it open and pulled the stylus.

"Yes," I said evenly, willing my heart to stop pounding and quite the blood thundering in my head. We were miles from the Hoover building, far out of its range.

Spender turned the device on, and studied it for a moment. He seemed to grasp its function quickly enough and ramped it all the way up. The device hummed in Spender's hands. Exposure to that signal would kill Skinner quickly, and that was the last thing I wanted. I'd worked Skinner long and hard and still had plans for him.

He looked at the device for a moment longer, and pressed that damn intercom again. "Are you picking up the signal?" He seemed to get the answer he wanted, though the voice on the other end was so low I couldn't hear it. "Amplify and direct to the coordinates we discussed."

With that he snapped the device closed and tossed it into the wastepaper basket at the side of his desk.

"That will be all," he said as he opened a folder and began shuffling through papers and photos.

I stood stock still for a long moment, he couldn't be intending, hell, *doing* what he was doing.

Not hearing me leave Spender looked up from his papers. I could see clearly that one of the photos was a surveillance shot of Mulder . "That will be all Krycek." He looked at me with those stone-dead eyes. I swear I could see a sheen of oil skimming across those dark emotionless surface. A shudder ran through me.

"Yes sir," I mumbled and turn to flee while I still have my soul and dignity intact.

"And Krycek? I won't fail to reward your efforts."

I nodded mutely. Skinner's funeral was three days later.

#

I have to admit Spender was as good as his word even better than I expected. I soon had a cadre of agents under my command assisting me in every aspect of the assignments I was given. No more skulking through back alleys and small time breakings. Before long I had everything I wanted, money, power, influence, everything. Yet something still rankled at the back of my brain, there was some wrong with the setup, something that nagged at me but danced out of view when I tried to think on it directly.

I'd been gone for two weeks, cleaning up some business left over from CGB's days of power. Returning to my apartment I found my closet full of new clothes; suits, ties, a new leather jacket, you name it I suddenly had it. It was a far cry from the cheap shit I'd worn as Mulder's partner. I stood there slack-jawed, running my fingers over the expensive fabric. It was heaven, and I suppose that's when things really started to go to hell.

I hit my bed for some well-deserved rest. The mission had been a simple one, silencing a young CIA agent who wandered a little too close to important operations. But somehow, this one was different, not that the guy was anything special or unusual. He was just another earnest plebian, an eagle scout of an agent -- spit shined and polished -- I knew the type. I caught him late on a rainy night stakeout of one of Spender's pet projects. It was an easy takedown. As I rolled the body over, his wallet fell loose and tumbled open on the wet asphalt. His cards, photos and a few bills scattered in the cold breeze.

I danced around like an idiot chasing stray bits of paper till trapping the last Washington under my boot. I couldn't leave this sort of evidence behind; Spender'd have my ass in a sling, and not in a good way.

Turning back to the body with a wad of paper and bills in my hand, I stopped. The man's face lay illuminated in the faint orange glow of a distant mercury street lamp. The light gave his face an appropriate sepulchral cast. Beneath that, beneath the cold eyes locked wide in surprise, beneath the slack jaw, something familiar lurked.

I stuff the crumpled mess into my pocket and fish out the man's ID. Turning the card to catch the dim light I knew I was right. The eyes were a bit too large, the nose was a little too broad, and he had more of a chin, but the resemblance between us was substantial, almost uncanny.

He was almost me, or rather me 10 years ago; me before the old-dead-smoker got the bit between my teeth; the me before Spender Jr. took over the reins, gentle though his touch might be. The me that could have been, if everything had been different.

I stepped back from the body, suddenly repelled. It wasn't the corpse itself that bothered me. I've seen enough death and horror to qualify as one of those doomed heroes in a Lovecraft story, this was just one more. No, I was repelled by what the body represented, what the credit cards, wad of small bills, and family pictures I had stuffed in my pockets meant. Regret, and loss. A regret of choices made, and the losses those choices led too.

I've always been able to adapt, always. I remember the smoker telling me how important that was, as he drew in another lung full of smoke filled air. "Adapt, Alex," he said. "Adapt and serve, it's the only way to survive in this world, and it will be the only way to survive in the next."

A quick call on my secure phone had my crew there to clean and shine the scene. They do their job quickly and professionally. In moment there was nothing left, no body, no car, no evidence; just the remnants of one man's life stuffed into my pockets. It's a sorry-ass legacy, but it was all that was left.

#

Sleep finally comes late that night. I'm restless, agitated, sleeping in fits and starts as disturbing dreams and memories vie for my attention. It's far into the morning, my body tells me sunrise is near, when I wake for the last time that night. Something is wrong, something close. There's someone in my room, I know it before I'm fully conscious of being awake.

My breathing stays calm. I listen. Steady breathing, familiar. The air is thick with my own scent, and something else, spicy but subtle, like day old cologne. Jeffrey . . . I open my eyes.

He's sitting in a chair drawn up close to my bed, sitting in darkness, lit only by the glow of the monitoring equipment I keep running to keep tabs on Mulder, sitting and watching me. He doesn't move, doesn't react, though I'm sure he knows I'm awake. We sit there in the darkness, lit by the weak electronic glow, watching each other, waiting for something . . . though I don't know what.

"Do you ever think about the future Alex?" He says. I can hear inflection in his voice, it isn't the consortium boss voice, the voice of the dead, but it isn't exactly na=EFve Jeffrey Spender either. It's somewhere in between, with an edge of hardness and bitterness, but human. I decide to roll with it and see where it goes, this is the closest thing we've had to personal contact, and I'm not going to lose this chance.

"Sometimes." I reply. "I try not to. Too much thinking about the future can cloud your judgment; make you hesitate. It can kill you."

"Have any dreams or aspirations? Any plans?"

"Aside from deposing you?" I say it lightly, as a joke. Jeffrey only stares at me. I can't see his eyes clearly in the dim light; I don't think I want to.

"Goodnight Alex."

He doesn't move after he says that, just keeps sitting there. I let my eyes close and listen to him breathe in the darkness. I don't remember falling asleep. When I awake to morning light. He's gone, though his chair is still faintly warm,

#

I didn't see him for days after that episode. The stream of 'visitors' he received became steadily more repellent, and his unexplained absences grew more common. I remember waking one night to the sounds of distant screaming. It was an unearthly wail of pain and fear that was cut off abruptly.

I tried to get out of bed, but couldn't. Something, some unseen force or trick of the mind was keeping me steadfast under the sheets. I drifted back off to an uneasy though thankfully dreamless sleep.

I didn't see Jeffrey for two weeks after that.

#

I woke to find him in my room again. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, one eye then the other. Even in the dimness I could see that his 'trip' had taken a toll on him. He looked drawn and haggard. His hands trembled as he ran them through his close-cropped hair. His voice wavered when he spoke, a stressed unwholesome trembling that seemed to build as he talked.

"Alex?" he asked. His voice was a whisper of its normal self, edged with pain and weariness. I wonder if he'd slept at all since I heard the screams. This voice was the old one, Jeffrey's familiar gravel had replaced the steel and stone voice.

"Yeah?"

He didn't speak again at first, but wrapped his arms around himself and rocked slowly back and forth. Whatever had happened had devastated him. It had brought the old Jeffrey Spender to the surface and tortured the hell out of him.

He finally slid out of his chair and sat on the edge of the bed. I could see him shaking.

"I'm cold." He said it as if it were the deepest most important thing in the world, and to him right then I suppose it was.

"Their touch . . . it's worse than ice. It's like they scoop out your insides, scrape out your soul and leave the coldness of space behind. They don't feel it, they don't understand. It's worse than death, because . . . "

He stopped

"Because . . . "

He wasn't able to get the words out, as if his voice had failed in the face of his memories, unable to speak of the horrors he had experienced. He sat on the edge of my bed, shaking, just rubbing his arms and slowly rocking.

"C'mere," I said almost soundlessly and raised the blanket at my side. He looked at me doubtfully for a moment and then slid in beside me. His body was cold, frigid and corpse like. I suppressed a shudder as I threw the blanket over us.

We lay there silently for a long while, with my arm draped over his body. In time his shaking diminished and his breathing steadied. I think it's the only time I've known that he's slept. I guess I'm the closest damn thing Jeffrey has to family and a friend, what a sorry son of a bitch.

But then, what does that make me?

#

A few weeks after that Spender's campaign against Mulder and the X-Files began in earnest. Without Skinner's interference and CGB's sympathies towards Mulder, it was fairly quick work. A trumped up case, bolstered by some well-planted evidence (I know my work) and Mulder was blacklisted at the bureau. From there it was a simple enough task to manufacture a crisis and get Scully reassigned "temporarily" to Quantico. Without her grounding and Skinner's protection Mulder went off like a damaged rocket. He was out of the agency and into a teaching position in Connecticut within a year.

It was one nasty bit of work on Spender's part. Though it left me wondering why. Why alive? Surely Mulder was a threat to Spender, and he'd shown no remorse in killing, so why leave Mulder and Scully alive and full of potential troubles? Perhaps that was Jeffrey pulling Spender's strings? I don't think I'll ever be sure.

#

Jeffrey's visits to my bed eventually became a regular practice. He'd show up deep in the dark of night after being gone for days or even weeks. I never asked him what happened or where he went. I had a pretty good idea and didn't want to know the details.

This was always the old Jeffrey Spender, the real one, the fake one, I was never sure, but it was the one I knew was human. He'd sit on the edge of my bed and just talk, sometimes just a few words sometimes for hours. Sometimes he'd shiver and I'd hold him in the darkness. Sometimes he'd be agitated, almost maniacal, and I'd talk a continuous stream of words and nonsense just to bring him down. But always he'd end up beside me, sometimes shivering, sometimes wracked with night terrors. He'd be gone again in the morning as if a force compelled him, drew him forward to complete some task that he wasn't allowed to relinquish.

During the day, between their visits, he was stone-cold Spender, the hard ass. He gave me assignments, ordered the deaths of men that were in the way without flinching or showing the slightest remorse. And yet, he'd vanish one night, only to reappear at my bedside, saying that he'd seen his mother, that he'd seen his father -- his real one, and he'd shiver and quake till it seemed he'd shake his own skin loose.

Which brings me to tonight, and why I'm alone in this car, driving like a lunatic toward Connecticut, why I'm running and how the world ended.

#

He calls me into his office; it's early, nearly sunrise. He's sitting at his desk, the same one Fowley and Strughold died in front of all those long months ago. He's the stone man again; his face is impassive, bland, with a shining glint of steel in his eyes. He has sharp eyes, eyes that seem to cut you, stripping away your flesh and slicing at your soul.

There's something else. I pause at the doorway and adjust my tie. His face is different than I expected, a hint of softness at the edge of his eyes, as if Jeffrey is sitting there in the same skin.

"Alex?" It's Jeffrey's voice, but the face is wrong, the stance is wrong. Everything in me screams caution.

"You wanted to see me?" Real original, I know, but I'm treading on uneven ground here. Spender's at least been predictable and constant if nothing else. I've come to know his moods, when to push, when to back off, when and how to push for what I need. I can't calculate this situation, which makes me wary.

Jeffrey's just an emotional bundle to be held and eased as much as I can. Jeffrey I don't try to manipulate; Jeffrey who comes to me in the deepest night to be held and comforted; Jeffrey with all his pain and fears. Jeffrey . . . vulnerable, miserable Jeffrey who brings out what little kindness lingers in my own dark heart.

"Come here Krycek," he says, and nails me with a gaze. Something's up, something big, he's all Spender now. He's never so direct, not with me. His computer screen is turned sideways but I can see an unfamiliar program running. I've never seen it even though I know every byte on that hard-drive.

I step to the front of the desk and place my hands down on its smooth glass-like surface. I try to project confidence that I don't feel, try to still my racing heart and calm my rapid breathing. Think, adapt, change, survive, profit.

"It's time," Spender says.

"Time for what?" I ask stupidly. The computer screen keeps drawing my attention, something about it is disturbing and yet hypnotic, what the hell is it?

"The next big thing, the change." He leans forward, his own hands on the desk, bringing his face close to mine and meeting me eye to eye. "It's here; it's done; time to stop fighting the future. It's time to adapt to the future."

It's the Spender voice, dead, and cold, hard as stone and steel.

His hand comes to my face stroking my cheek with a gentleness I can't reconcile with the hard, stone man in front of me. His eyes are dark, like deep pools of space, cold and dead.

His face shifts even as I look into those eyes, the hard edge falling away, the dark eyes growing suddenly softer, the bland hardness giving way to a fear shocked Jeffrey. He struggles to say something, fighting to keep from falling back into Spender's cold darkness.

"Alex, . . " he whispers. The sound is soft, echoing as if he was speaking from a great distance. There was a tone of deep sorrow in that voice, something is very, incredibly wrong.

I get a better look at the computer screen from here. My eyes shift to the screen again. It's a map of North America with broad geographic features and weather formations pointed out and labeled.

"Alex . . ." Jeffrey repeats. My eyes snap back to his. Jeffrey's face hardens; he's Spender again. His hand clamps onto my chin, holding me in a firm grip locking my gaze to his.

"You're mine Alex, eternally. You'll never be free, not as long as the stars burn in the darkness, not as long as they stride across on God's firmament. It's their world now, or soon will be."

My eyes jump back to the computer with sudden dawning horror. Yes those were weather patterns, winds and rainfall and such, but they weren't measuring precipitation, nothing so ordinary or sane. All along the East Coast red pinpoints appeared and bloomed, growing larger as I watched. New York, Boston, Philadelphia, all the big Eastern cities were soon awash in red.

My breath stopped in my chest and seems to harden nearly squeezing my heart to bursting. I gasp in spite of myself, he'd done it; the fucking deranged bastard had really done it. The virus was loose on the world.

"I'll kill you." I say, putting as much menace into my words as I can muster.

"Oh really?" He says, still holding me firmly in his iron grip. "What's the matter Alex, too much death, too much destruction?" He grins with a narrow thin-lipped smile. "Or is it that you can't figure out how to profit from the end of the world?"

He releases me and I stumble back rubbing my sore chin. The computer display continues to tick ominously forward. Red smears of light appear over smaller cities, in moments the entire Eastern seaboard of the US is under a blanket of blood and doom.

"You're mine forever Alex. Remember that. You'll soon know them the same way I do. Soon you'll see those dark eyes staring down at you as the scrape out your soul. You'll see the drills and saws, they'll break you and put you back together again, and you'll scream and beg and plead, but they won't listen -- they never listen."

I slide my hand into my jacket feeling for my gun and the plam I keep with me just in case. He's insane, clearly and horribly out of his mind.

"Fucking, son of a bitch." I say, more to hear my own voice than anything else. "Even your father," I begin to say

"My father was old and weak and a fool." Spender interrupts me.

"Even your father," I repeat. "Would have fought against this."

Spender returns to his desk as if nothing has changed, as if he and his non-human masters hadn't just fucked the world.

"That will be all, Krycek." He said. He began straightening the files on his desk, tidily slipping each bit of paper into its proper folder and putting it away. It was so utterly mundane an activity it seemed only to heighten my growing horror.

"That will be *all*, Krycek." Spender looks up at me with consternation clear in his face. He's not used to repeating himself, not even with me.

"No, I don't think so."

My gun is in my hand before I really realize what I'm doing. Spender stands. My eyes meet his and for a moment I can't help but wish I could separate Jeffrey from Spender; that I could somehow drain off the cold bitter dregs of his soul leaving behind the man who interrupted my solitary existence. I know that I can't as my finger tightens on the trigger. Spender makes no move to defend himself or run. He staggers when the first bullet slams into his chest and crumbles when the second catches his shoulder. I step up and put a third shot into his prone body. The plam replaces the gun, it snicks open, and I slip around the desk and slam it into the base of his skull. There is a sickening gristly crunch as the plam forces its way between his vertebrae.

I step back and realize that my lungs are screaming for air, I don't know how long I've been holding my breath. I gasp as my lungs pull at the air, for a moment the world spins and darkens down to a narrow tunnel. Air, sweet precious life giving air.

I breathe slowly, willing my heart to stop racing and my pulse to steady. I've killed my share, and for far less cause. He deserved to die. My knees threaten to buckle as I step back from the desk. The computer is still running, it's too late, for me, for Jeffrey, for the world.

I'm halfway to the door, though I don't know where I'm going, when I hear it. A soft sound, a scuff of cloth on carpet, followed by the nearly silent snap of joints suddenly bearing weight.

I stop and redraw my gun. No way, no how. I listen to the sound of a body moving, shifting, hands on wood, a low slow grunt, the sound of cloth, he was standing back up. There's a solid thump as I turn; it's the plam hitting the floor, sweet Jesus, he's alive.

I force myself to look at what I don't want to see; force myself to face the truth I've done my best to ignore all these long months.

He's standing there, I can see the holes in his suit, I know I shot him, I know it. He takes a long ragged breath as I take a step back.

"Thank you Alex." His voice, Jeffrey's voice, is breathy and wet, like he's speaking with lungs full of blood.

"Thank you for trying."

"You wanted me to shoot you. You wanted me to kill you."

"I thought you might, somehow manage what they won't allow. You see my mother wasn't entirely correct. They did in fact remove an alien human-hybrid from her during an abduction. What she doesn't recall is . . ."

"You . . . " I edge closer to the door trying to accept this incredible reality.

"I . . . " he says, as first one bullet then another, then a third drops from his body and clatter on the desk. I can seem them covered with deep green slime.

" . . . was that child."

He draws a deeper breath, and suddenly he's Jeffrey again, the stone dead look, the coldness replaced by simple vulnerability.

"Get out of here Alex, go . . . before they change my mind."

I run.

#

So here I sit, driving through darkness toward Hartford Connecticut. I take the turn off. The sign says Hartford 10 miles . . . 10 miles to Hartford, and Mulder, and hope.

[end]