by Morticia

M/K

NC-17

Part One

Spoilers: Sleepless (sort of - in that I have taken the basic premise of that episode, including a large amount of the script, but have changed the plot, the reason and a number of the characters. The most important change is that in THIS story Alex Krycek never joined the FBI, and Doggett was assigned in his place....) It was necessary to do this so that I could seamlessly create an entire AU that splits off from canon at that specific point.

So it's AU  - it's also  my story, so I can do that if I want to!

New York City 

When Dr. Saul Grissom arrived home, the cat was sitting on his doorstep again.

It was the fourth night in a row and it made absolutely no sense whatsoever. The leases in his building banned the keeping of pets, so he hadn't been surprised when his neighbors had all sworn that the animal was not theirs. Although the cat could theoretically be coming into the open foyer by itself, the doors to the stairwell were too heavy for even a child to push open, let alone a cat, and the creature was hardly able to operate the lift up to the 16th floor.

Even if it was somehow slipping unnoticed into the lift with another resident, the chances that it was finding itself on his own floor every evening were slim to none. So someone on this floor *had* to own the cat, and they were not only irresponsible enough to keep an illegal pet, but they obviously simply threw it out of their  front door every evening to fend for itself.

Grissom liked cats. He didn't have a lot of time for people, but he found the company of cats to be soothing. There were a lot of cats at the clinic but he was loath to attach himself to them because it invariably upset him when they died. He'd even been known to shed the odd embarrassed tear when he'd sacrificed a particular favorite. He'd never given as much as a second thought to the people he'd used in his experiments but then, unlike the cats, people had very few redeeming features as far as Grissom was concerned. 

"You *are* a handsome fellow," he told the cat as he unlocked the door.

It was a handsome cat, except for a withered rear leg that suggested it had once picked a fight with a car and lost. Somehow, it was the small imperfection that endeared the cat to Grissom. It meant he'd never be tempted to take the cat to the clinic, so it was safe to offer the cat a little affection. 

The cat preened and smirked,  raising itself from its haunches to display the entire magnificence of its glossy black coat. It wound itself around Grissom's legs with a loud rumbling purr.

"Okay, okay," Grissom mumbled, deciding the cat was far too well-fed  to be a street creature so his vague worries about fleas were probably unfounded. "You can come in, but only until I go to bed and I am *not* going to feed you."

The cat seemed unfazed by the conditions. As soon as the door was open, it flounced inside, tail-high, and began to prowl covetously around the living room.

A few hours later,  Grissom was sitting watching television. The large black tomcat was curled sleepily on his lap, its belly extended by some chicken that Grissom had discovered in his freezer.  It was purring so loudly that Grissom barely noticed an echoing rumbling sound outside his front door, and when he finally did discern the disturbance outside,  his initial reaction was merely to give an annoyed shrug and turn the remote up a little louder, assuming his neighbors were being typically thoughtless.  It was only when the noise continued and rose to an annoying roar of sound that he slammed the remote down,  carefully placed the cat on the floor, jerked to his feet and stomped angrily to the door.

He felt a strange, but not uncomfortable, sensation of warmth as he touched the door handle, but before his brain could process the fact, he had opened the door. A wave of heat swept over him and he leapt back in terror as the flames that filled the hallway arched towards the fresh oxygen within his apartment.

To his horror, the black cat raced past his feet and out into the burning hallway.

"No," he screamed in horror, as the tiny panic-stricken animal raced straight into the path of the leaping flames and was swallowed within them.

Slamming the door shut with a choking gasp of terror, Grissom ran to the telephone and dialed the emergency services. Then he grabbed a fire extinguisher, congratulating himself for a purchase that had seemed a little paranoid to him at the time.

Yet, as the flames licked up from beneath the door and smoke billowed into the room,  they seemed barely affected by the arc of ammonium phosphate from his extinguisher. 

Grissom's last thought was whether he should have followed the cat's example and simply run through the flames to safety.

~~~

"The article makes no mention of the fire," Mulder said.

"Yes, Agent Mulder, I can read," Skinner snapped acerbically.

His tone rolled harmlessly over the top of Mulder's head.

"Grissom's company had a number of government contracts which would place this investigation within the Bureau's jurisdiction," Mulder pointed out, giving Skinner an innocent smile.

The older man wasn't fooled for an instant.

"But that's not why you want the assignment."

Mulder just gave a tiny shrug, as if to say his personal reasons were irrelevant. So what if his interest was due to the anonymous delivery of the article and a tape. *Someone* thought the death of Grissom warranted a closer look, and Mulder was ready to bite. Something about the fire smelt, and it wasn't just the body.

" I think that the circumstances surrounding Grissom's death warrant a closer look. I called NYPD but they won't even talk to me unless I get the Attorney General to sign off on it."

~~~

Mulder screwed up the piece of paper he'd been doodling on, balled it in his fist and considered the aerodynamics of launching it into the waste bin on the far side of the room. He was so engrossed that he barely noticed the tall stranger approach.

"Agent Mulder?"

"Yeah." Mulder confirmed disinterestedly, although his eyes automatically digested every detail of the man from his tow-hair, cold blue-eyes, lean frame and almost military posture. Another fucking former-marine, Mulder told himself irritably. Skinner seemed to be filling the department with all his old buddies.

"It's your 302. Assistant Director Skinner just approved."

Mulder snatched the paper, not bothering to hide his excitement. Then his eyes scanned the document and he stiffened in annoyance..

"There's a mistake here. There's been another agent assigned to the case."

"That would be me. Doggett, John Doggett.".

"Skinner didn't say anything about taking on a new partner," Mulder challenged.

"It wasn't Skinner. Actually, I opened the file two hours before your request so technically, it's my case."

"And you already talked to the police?"

"Yeah, just hung up on the officer in charge a few minutes ago. A detective named Whorton. He's an old acquaintance of mine from my NYPD days."  

"NYPD?" Mulder asked. "Funny, I would have put you down as a marine myself."

Doggett frowned, seemed to finally decide that Mulder wasn't mocking him and replied: "Both. Marines then three years at NYPD while I waited for the FBI to approve my application."

"Really," Mulder murmured with obvious disinterest.

Doggett flushed and stiffened.

"Anyway, it turns out Grissom called 911 to report a fire."

"I heard the tape," Mulder replied dismissively.

Doggett's eyes narrowed into annoyed slits. Mulder regarded the expression with interest. Except for the color of his eyes, Mulder could have been looking straight into the pissed-off face of Skinner. Perhaps snake-eyed expressions of pure angry loathing  was something they taught in the marines.

"Did you hear that forensics found a spent fire extinguisher on the floor? Grissom's prints were all over it. The walls and floor in his living room were covered with ammonium phosphate."

"But no trace of a fire," Mulder asked, his interest piqued once more.

"Not even a burnt match," Doggett replied with a satisfied smirk.

"Forensics pick up anything else?"

"Nothing unusual...except..."

"Except?"

"Cat hair."

"And that's unusual why?"

"Because Grissom didn't have a cat."

"That all you know?"

"So far. What do you think it means?"

Mulder learned forward, beckoning Doggett closer as though he were about to impart some pearl of wisdom. He waited until Doggett was almost in his face, his blue eyes now bright with anticipation, then Mulder leant back in his chair, placed his hands casually behind his head and said:

"Listen, I appreciate the show and tell, and I don't want you to take this personally, but I work alone. I'll straighten things out with Skinner."

It only took a split-second for the surprise on Doggett's face to be replaced by barely concealed anger.

"It's my case, Agent Mulder. I had the case first and I'm not going to give it away so quickly."

Mulder sized him up, briefly considered his chances of convincing his former-marine boss to rescue him from this former-marine idiot and decided they were slim to none. So he gave a resigned shrug.

"All right, I'll tell you what, I got a little work to finish up around here. Why don't you go down to the motor pool and requisition us a car and I'll meet you down there."

Doggett, clearly prepared for a fight, was bewildered by Mulder's capitulation.

"That's all? I mean you don't have a problem with us working together?"

"It's your party," Mulder pointed out.

"Well, um, I'll get the car."

Mulder waited just long enough to be sure Doggett had left for the basement, before grabbing his coat and keys and racing from the building. He checked over his shoulder for pursuit, caught a cab and was at the airport before he took the chance to call Scully. To his relief she came to the phone within minutes. Although they'd promised to keep working with each other despite their re-assignments and the closing of the X-files, this was the first time Mulder had put that oath to the test. 

"Where are you?" she asked.

"National airport. Catching the shuttle up to LaGuardia in a half an hour. How do you feel about joining me in the Big Apple' for an autopsy?" Mulder asked nonchalantly.

Scully wasn't fooled by his tone.

"What's going on?"

"I was hoping you could tell me," Mulder admitted.

"I can't do it today. My last class isn't until 4:30."

"That's fine. I can have the ME wrap the body to go."

He rang off before she could refuse and replacing the phone into his jacket with a satisfied smirk he headed for the check-in area.

~~~

Two hours later, Mulder was sitting in Dr Grissom's clinic, talking to a starched-uniformed nurse who looked more like a type-cast for a Vincent Price horror movie than the kind of fantasy nurses portrayed in blue-movies.

Since Mulder's personal choice in porn ran in a somewhat different direction, he wasn't overly concerned by her lack of sex appeal. He was, however, surprised that a private clinic like Grissom's didn't make any effort to make the facilities aesthetically pleasing. It wasn't just the nurse's unattractiveness that seemed out of place, the entire facility had the clean soulless lines of a laboratory rather than the usual comforts Mulder expected to see in a home with long-term residents.

"Dr. Grissom's alpha-wave analysis defined the standard, he revolutionized the way we think about sleep. His death was a tremendous loss to the scientific community," the nurse told him primly.

"But his research wasn't restricted to sleep disorders, was it?" Mulder pointed out. "He has published papers on a number of psychological illnesses, including schizophrenia and lycanthropy."

"Dr. Grissom explored a number of extreme conditions in his exploration of the human psyche. He believed that all abnormal psychological states were interlinked in some fashion. He said that if he could find the common thread between all the conditions he would find a universal cure."

"Even for werewolves?" Mulder asked lightly.

The nurse frowned.

"The *primary* purpose of this clinic is the treatment of sleep disorders," she reminded him. "Whatever *private* interests Dr. Grissom may have had, I am only qualified to answer questions regarding the treatment that takes place here." 

"How many kinds of sleep disorder did he treat?" Mulder asked.

"There are 38 different dissomnias and parasomnias. Dr. Grissom treated them all with an unprecedented success ratio."

"Maintaining that kind of batting average must have taken it's toll," Mulder suggested.

She didn't bite.

"Excellence demands certain sacrifices."

" Did he ever show any signs of psychological stress?"

" Not really. Except for his own occasional bout of insomnia," she admitted reluctantly.

" But he was never delusional?"

" Of course not," the nurse snapped, her eyes narrowing to an uncanny imitation of Doggett's.

Maybe she had been in the Marines too, Mulder thought to himself. It would explain the moustache.

~~~

When he walked out of the clinic, the sun was in his eyes so it took him a moment to realize that his cab had left. It's parking place was now occupied by a dark sedan, from which Doggett emerged. Mulder suppressed a sigh. 

"I paid off your cab," Doggett told him. "I don't appreciate being ditched like someone's bad date."

"I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings," Mulder replied carelessly, not even trying to hide his self-satisfied grin.

"Where do you get off copping this attitude? You don't even know the first thing about me," Doggett snarled.

"Exactly," Mulder replied pointedly.

Doggett digested that slowly, his eyes cold.

"You know, back at the academy, some of the guys used to make fun of you."

"Oh stop it, or you'll hurt my feelings," Mulder mocked.

"Me, I prefer to judge people as I find them. I don't enter into relationships with preconceived ideas. I take people as I find them," Doggett said easily. Then his voice sharpened, "and so far I find you to be an ignorant, self-centered bastard with an over-inflated idea of your own importance."

"Really," Mulder drawled.

"I've spoken to Skinner. He says that you either work with me, or the case is back in my hands and you are out of here. It's your choice."

"Funny," Mulder said.

"What is?"

"You *look* like a grown-up," Mulder replied. "But I guess if you feel you have to go running to the boss like that for back-up, I should treat you like the spoilt kid you are."

Doggett's face flushed with fury and clenched his fists.  Mulder never found out whether Doggett really intended to hit him because he was saved by the ringing of his cell phone.

"Yeah?" he said, clutching the phone with relief.

"Who is it?" Doggett demanded, as he saw Mulder's face twist in confusion.

"I can make it in two hours," Mulder told his phone and hung up.

"Make it where?" 

"That was Scully. She says Grissam didn't die of cardiac arrest."

"So what did he die of?"

"That's what I'm about to find out."

"That's what *we* are about to find out,"  Doggett replied, dangling the car keys with a smirk.

~~~

Doggett's first thought on meeting Dana Scully was that she was far smaller than he'd visualized her to be. She was also one hell of a babe. Something that Mulder seemed completely unaware of. Doggett had always assumed that Mulder and Scully had been getting it on before they were split up. Now, seeing the way that Mulder regarded the woman with the same professional disinterest as she gave to the body she was carving up, Doggett had a blinding revelation.

Mulder was gay.

Of course, Doggett being Doggett, he would prefer to actually catch Mulder doing the nasty with some other guy before putting money on it, but his gut told him that no red-blooded guy could look at Dana Scully with complete indifference unless they were a eunuch or queer. 

Interesting, Doggett thought. Maybe that was the handle he needed to get under Mulder's skin.

"Spleen or pancreas?" Mulder asked.

"Stomach. I was just about to start on it," Scully replied. Then she gave a pointed look at Mulder's shadow.

"This is John Doggett. We're, uh, working the case together," he explained, making no effort to disguise his unhappiness at the idea.

"Good to meet you," Scully told Doggett.

"You, too," Doggett said,  giving her a blinding smile. He held out his hand but she either failed to see it or simply walked right past it.

From Mulder's quickly hidden smirk, Doggett was sure that Scully had just given him a pointed slap.

So, maybe Scully's got the hots for him. Probably thinks she can convert him or something.  Maybe she doesn't get out much. Doggett looked down to where two shapely calves were revealed by the white lab coat. What a waste, he decided. He'd have to do something about it, and since the way to Dana Scully's heart was probably through Mulder, Doggett decided a little closer inspection of his new partner was probably warranted.

"Notice the pugilistic attitude of the corpse," Scully said. "This condition generally occurs several hours after death. It's caused by a coagulation of muscle proteins when the body is exposed to extremely high temperatures"

"Like fire?" Mulder asked.

"This degree of limb flexion is observed exclusively in burn-related victims," Scully agreed.

"But there was no fire," Doggett pointed out.

"And no epidermal burns to indicate as much but when I opened up the skull, I found external hemorrhages, which can only be caused by intense heat. Somehow, this man suffered all of the
secondary, but none of the primary physiological signs of being in a fire."

"Any theories?" Mulder asked.

"I couldn't even begin to explain what could have caused this. It's almost as if. . ." her voice trailed off uncertainly.

"What?" Mulder encouraged.

"It's almost as if his body believed that it was burning."

~~~

Henry Willig was sitting watching the home shopping network. He didn't have a credit card, or even a check book, and it was obvious from the state of his apartment that he hadn't voluntarily bought anything other than groceries for years. So the only reason he was watching QVT was that it was the only channel he could get a clear picture on. Since his TV service was only by courtesy of a highly illegal splicing into his neighbors cable, there was no point complaining. Besides, he quite enjoyed the program. It was better than silence. Anything was better than silence.

"You left the window open, Willie," a low voice purred.

"Krycek?" Henry queried, swiveling in his seat to check although he didn't know anyone else who was likely to have climbed through his ten-centimeter-square third-floor kitchen window.

"Not a good idea leaving your window open in this neighborhood. You never know who's gonna drop by," Alex Krycek said, prowling sensuously across Henry's living room and sinking elegantly into the spare arm chair.

Henry bit his lower lip. Any other man would have looked vulnerable and maybe downright comical walking stark naked into a strange apartment. Krycek simply looked dangerous.

And beautiful, of course. There was no escaping the fact that Alex was the most beautiful human being that Henry had ever seen, and since Henry was as heterosexual as they came, his acknowledgement of Krycek's looks wasn't sexual. It was simply the truth.

Except that Alex wasn't strictly human any more.

"What are you doin' here? How long ya been in town? Want a beer?" Henry asked, so nervous that his words tumbled out after one another in an uncontrolled flurry.

"How are *you* doing, Henry?" Alex replied, his green on green eyes glinting dangerously as the light from the TV screen flickered over his face.

"How am I doin'? I'm, uh,---tryin' to forget. You know. I'm tryin' to get it out of my head"

"No luck?" Alex asked. His tone was almost brotherly but Henry didn't find it comforting. He knew exactly what had brought the younger man to his door. The only question now was *why* Alex had decided to visit.

He laughed nervously, still hoping somewhere deep inside that Alex would understand, would perhaps even approve.

"I'm, uh, still fightin' it, you know. I keep seein' the faces. Every day I see---aw, what's the difference. We're all goin' to Hell, right?"

"We're already there, Henry. There's no going back. Our only chance was Grissom."

"He wasn't looking for a cure," Henry argued. "He was makin' more of us. You know he was."

"So you killed him."

"You know I can't walk," Henry wheedled, pointing at his withered right leg.

"Not on two legs," Alex replied coldly.

The blood drained from Henry's face as he saw the unwavering conviction in Alex's eyes.

"He had to pay, Alex. For what he did to us. 'Sides, he was makin' more. I told ya!"

"You've brought the FBI down on our heads, Henry. They're sniffing around Grissom's clinic. What if they find out? What if the Government find out that all the money they gave Grissom wasn't wasted after all? Do you know what they'll do to us? We'll be lucky if all they do is kill us, Henry."

"Shit. How they gonna catch us, huh? It's just a coupla feebies. I can take 'em out if they figure anythin' out."

Alex sighed sorrowfully and produced a large black pistol from his lap.

"No," Henry squealed. "It ain't real. You couldn't have carried that with ya!"

"I'm sorry, Henry. Everyone took a vote, I drew the short straw. You and me, well, we both lost, I guess."

"No," Henry screamed as a flare of light erupted from the barrel of the pistol, a split second before the room was filled with a deafening blast. He knew it wasn't real, knew Alex was only *pretending* to fire the weapon. He was still telling himself that as the inside of his chest exploded.

Tears pooled in Alex's eyes as he saw Henry's body collapse lifelessly to the floor.

"It's all right, Henry. It's all over now for you," he whispered.

~~~

"The victim's name was Henry Willig," Doggett said, pointing at the photos on the bulletin board. "He was unemployed and lived on disability. Police found no indication of forced entry. The door was locked from the inside and the only other means of entry was a third floor window that not even a child could climb through. There was no struggle, no abrasions or contusions on the body and cause of death is being listed as a burst aneurysm."

"So, why did your friend from homicide call us?" Mulder asked.

"Because the medical examiner called him. The autopsy revealed forty-three small internal hemorrhages and skeletal fragments which doesn't just happen spontaneously. Not without some corresponding external trauma,"  Doggett explained.

"So what does the ME have to say about it?" 

"He said if he didn't know otherwise, he would swear they were gunshot wounds."

"Anything else from forensics?"

"Yeah. You're going to love this, Mulder."

Mulder just raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"Cat hair."

"Let me guess. Willig didn't own a cat?"

Doggett just grinned.

"What's this old scar on his neck?" Mulder asked, pointing at the photo.

"Maybe it happened same time as his leg. Willig did a tour of 'Nam  in 1970."

"Willig was a Marine? God, you guys breed like rabbits, don't you? So where do all Marines receive basic training on the East coast?

"Parris Island."

"Where Grissom was stationed from 1968 to 1971," Mulder said.

"Which means that he and Willig were there at the same time, 24 years ago."

"Okay. So we have a connection. Check Grissom's clinic too. Willig's medical records say that he suffered from a sleep disorder eight years ago. What's the bet that Willig became Grissom's patient?"

~~~

"You were right," Doggett said, throwing a report down on Mulder's desk. "Grissom was not only the Doctor in charge of Willig's post-trauma counseling after 'Nam left him in a wheelchair. He also had Willig as an inpatient eight years ago. His treatment was paid for by the Government out of the Vet rehabilitation budget. According to the accounts people, he  stayed at the clinic for nearly three years only, and here's the strange part, there's no mention of his stay in the Clinic's records. So I figure Grissom was keeping two sets of records and pocketing money to fund his own private research."

"That's one explanation," Mulder agreed.

"And the other is?"

"I don't know yet," Mulder smiled. "But don't worry, when I do, you'll be the first to know."

Doggett glared but only said: "So, what now?"

"I want you to look for more cases where independent records say someone stayed at the clinic but Grissom's records don't." 

~~~

"Want to hear a funny story?" Doggett asked.

Mulder just grunted his lack of interest.

"I just got off the phone with an old buddy from the NYPD burglary division."

Mulder's head jerked up, his hazel eyes now blazing with interest.

Doggett had to fight a spiteful urge to refuse to tell him the rest.

"It seems someone broke into a pawn shop last night and raided the till."

"Which is funny because?" Mulder demanded.

"Well, funny for two reasons. Firstly, Sam Hortensa is as bent as a three-dollar bill, so its nice to think that he's finally the victim instead of the instigator of a robbery. Poetic justice, maybe. He called the uniforms in to report the theft and one of the cops recognized a piece of jewelry from a burglary he'd investigated. Hortensa ended up getting done for possession of stolen goods himself."

"And secondly?" Mulder asked impatiently.

"There was absolutely no sign of forced entry. The cops were going to mark the whole supposed robbery as an insurance fraud, only Hortensa doesn't have any insurance."

"Inside job," Mulder said dismissively.

"Yeah, must be," Doggett agreed. "After all, the shop's got a burglar alarm with internal sensors. Even if someone had gotten in, he'd have had to crawl across the floor."

"That wouldn't work," Mulder said dismissively. "Sensors are usually set to cover right down to the floorboards. They'd go off if a mouse ran across the floor."

"Usually," Doggett agreed. "Except Hortensa's are those special adapted kind, you know, the one's that allow for pets."

"Pets?"

"Yeah. Seems Hortensa has a cat. It's got its own little cat door and comes in and out of the shop all night. Only it seemed to have a bit of a rumble last night."

"Huh?"

"There were signs of a cat-fight in the shop. Huge hunks of cat hair strewn all over the place. Like some strange cat had come in and invaded its territory. Gives a new definition to the term cat burglar, doesn't it?"

~~~

The Arveda clinic was a complete contrast from Grissom's, from the well-manicured lawn, the pretty receptionist and the pleasant decor to the attitude of the medical staff. They were open, friendly and evidently proud of their facility. Even the maximum security wing looked more like an exclusive private hospital than a ward for the mentally disturbed.

"I've been supervising Mr. Krycek's treatment since I admitted him five years ago. 'Fraid you won't find him very cooperative, though," Paul Jeffries said with a sad smile. He'd introduced himself as the doctor in charge of the facility, but had insisted that they called him by his first name. "All my patients do," he'd laughed.

"We just want to ask him a few questions about his stay at the Grissom clinic, directly before he was referred to yourself," Mulder replied.

"He doesn't respond very well to authority figures."

"Is that why you put him in isolation?" Doggett asked.

"Oh, we've had to house Mr. Krycek  in this section of the ward because he kept interfering with our treatment of the other patients that came to us from Dr. Grissom's clinic. Their problems aren't just sleep related. They all have other psychiatric problems too."

"How was he interfering?" Mulder interrupted.

"He was disrupting their sleep patterns and encouraging their delusions," Jeffries explained.

"Excuse me, but exactly how would Krycek disrupt their sleep?"

Instead of answering, the Doctor halted outside a locked door, produced a key and began to turn it in the lock.

"Here we are. Mr. Krycek, there are some gentlemen here to. . ." his voiced trailed off in confusion as he unlocked the cell and found it to be empty.

"Oh dear," he said weakly.

"Oh dear?" Mulder repeated in disbelief.

"It seems Mr. Krycek has run away again. He does it quite often I'm afraid."

"I thought this was a secure facility," Doggett growled.

"It is," the Doctor protested, "but it's not a prison. Mr. Krycek is here voluntarily. Admittedly he 'volunteered' because the alternative was a possible psychiatric order, but the truth is that he is free to discharge himself whenever he wants to."

"So why did you say 'he's run away'?" Mulder queried.

"Because, as you can see, Mr. Krycek lives inside the secure wing of this facility. Theoretically, the only way he can leave is by the front door with a discharge form."

"Which you say he's entitled to do," Doggett challenged.

"He is, " Jeffries agreed. "The thing is, he doesn't ever ask to leave. He just disappears." He saw Mulder and Doggett's disbelieving looks and shrugged helplessly. "I know. It's crazy but true. Every now and then, Mr. Krycek decides to check out and he simply vanishes. He'll be back, of course. He can't cope with life outside the clinic. He'll be back in a few weeks, I'm sure."

"And you won't do anything about it?" Doggett demanded.

"He's not a criminal, Mr. Doggett. He's a young man with a number of psychiatric problems but he acknowledges them as problems and voluntarily seeks assistance to help him deal with them. I have no power or authority to force him to stay here and although his delusions are severe, they aren't dangerous either to himself or to others."

"Exactly what are the nature of his delusions?" Mulder asked.

"Well, they're Dr. Grissom's fault, of course."

Mulder and Doggett both snapped to full alert.

"Explain," Mulder demanded.

"All the patients I have accepted from Grissom have had a number of delusional problems, despite the fact that they initially attended his clinic merely because of common-place sleep disorders. Alex Krycek, for instance, was sent to Grissom because his abnormal sleep patterns were causing disruption in his unit."

"He was a soldier?" Mulder asked.

"A Marine," the Doctor confirmed. "Special forces I believe. After the gulf war he experienced some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. It manifested as a sleep disorder and he was sent to Grissom for treatment. By the time Grissom discharged him as being unsuitable for his form of treatment, Mr. Krycek was severely delusional. Because of the similarities between his delusions and those of other patients of Grissom, I personally believe that it was Grissom's treatment itself that caused the delusions."

"I was told that Dr. Grissom had an abnormally high success rate," Mulder argued.

"He did," the doctor agreed. "Over ninety percent of his patients left his clinic with a complete cure. The problem is that over half of the remainder were left severely psychotic."

"What exactly are the nature of Krycek's delusions?" Mulder asked.

"Didn't I say?" Jeffries asked.  "He believes he can turn into a cat."

~~~

Mulder looked cautiously around the old, abandoned warehouse. His gut was churning, telling him that he'd voluntarily walked into a trap without back-up, yet a tiny voice at the back of his head was screaming at him to believe. It wasn't easy. The only person he'd ever trusted was dead and even that informant had led him astray as often as he'd helped him.

There was a slight movement in the shadows, and Mulder spun, gun in hand.

The figure stayed in the shadows but stepped forward just enough to show that his hands were raised and empty.

"Who are you?" Mulder demanded.

"Who I am is irrelevant," the stranger replied, in a remote, emotionless voice.

"Why are you trying to help me?"

"You think I want to be here, Agent Mulder? I don't want to be here," the stranger virtually growled. 

He moved, just enough to kick something, and a file spun across the dusty floor to land at Mulder's feet.

"What is this?" Mulder demanded, looking down at the file as though it was a venomous snake.

"Data from a top secret military project. Originally born of the idea that sleep was the soldiers' greatest enemy. Only the experiments became a little more...experimental."

"Of course. That's why all the names we're turning up on Grissom's secret list have military connections. This goes all the way back to 'Nam, doesn't it? Experiments in sleep deprivation."

"Not deprivation, eradication," the stranger corrected.

"Why?"

"Why else? To build a better soldier. Sustained wakefulness dulls fear, heightens aggression. Science had just put a man on the moon. So they looked to science to win a losing war. Grissom knew that  removing the possibility of REM sleep would drive the subjects insane. He had a theory, however, that once a man was pushed into that extreme state of insanity, he would be open to new possibilities. ESP perhaps."

"Or shapeshifting," Mulder suggested.

"Useful ability for a soldier," the stranger commented. "Of course, the experiments were all failures. The subjects who were tested to destruction simply self-destructed."

"Except Willig and Krycek and the other ex-lab rats who are living at the Arveda Clinic."

"Willig was a cripple. The others are insane. The experimentation was a failure. It was stopped five years ago."

"So why murder Grissom now?" Mulder queried. "Unless...unless Grissom was about to start running new experiments."

"There have been certain budgetary anomalies recently," the stranger confirmed.

"You think Krycek killed Grissom to prevent more soldiers being experimented on?"

"I'm not here to do your thinking, Agent Mulder. All I can confirm is that, despite the clinic's own inability to confirm one way or the other, Alex Krycek was still in Arveda at the time of Grissom's death." 

The stranger began to back away into the shadows.

"So how do I contact you?" Mulder cried out.

"You can't"

"I may still need more."

"You still don't get it, do you? Closing the X-Files, separating you and Scully was only the beginning. The truth is still out there, but it's more dangerous. The man we both knew paid for that information with his life, a sacrifice I'm not willing to make."

~~~

Mulder pushed the file under his car seat as he saw  Doggett approach.

"Where the hell were you? Someone matching Krycek's description just robbed a drugstore in Queens and the place is located under a motel just around the corner."

"Is he alive?"

"He was when the night man just saw him. So where were you?

Mulder ignored him and shifted the car into drive.

He sensed rather than saw Doggett glaring at him, and had to suppress a grin. Under other circumstances he might have appreciated Doggett. The guy was good-looking if you liked tight-assed soldier types. He wasn't relationship material, but he would have been good for a quick fuck if they'd met in a bar someplace. As it was, close acquaintance was proving Doggett to be an even more uptight asshole than he'd originally suspected. But he was still getting an almost sexual pleasure out of yanking Doggett's chain.

Mind you, if Doggett looked like Krycek, Mulder thought dreamily, he could have put aside his loathing of marines.

From the pictures they'd retrieved from Krycek's service file, Mulder had immediately realized that Krycek was one hell of a gorgeous looking man. Not even the stupid marine hair-cut could detract from the fine-cheek boned face, and once they'd had the picture altered to allow for Krycek's current longer hairstyle, Mulder's cock was in lust.

It was just lust, of course, since the guy was a psycho, a possible murderer and now it seemed a thief as well. The fact that every time Mulder closed his eyes he could only see those huge, green on green eyes blazing in his memory was nothing more than an indication that it had been *far* too long since he'd been laid.

Cat eyes.

Krycek had cat eyes.

Krycek the cat and Doggett the dog and here he was, the fox, stuck between the two of them and getting nothing.

"What?" Doggett demanded, and  Mulder realized he'd obviously  laughed out loud.

"Sex," he said.

"What?" Doggett choked.

"I was just thinking about sex," Mulder said conversationally. "Oh, I forgot. You marine types don't believe in that sort of thing, do you?"

He was still grinning, and Doggett was still fuming, when they arrived at the motel.

~~~

"Detective Whorton? I'm Agent Mulder, I believe you already know Agent Doggett."

"I've been waiting for you guys. I tried holding the SWAT guys back but they're getting a little antsy. For what it's worth, Krycek didn't steal dime-one from that drug store, just a bunch of pills."

"Krycek's unarmed as far as we know, and although he's wanted for questioning, there's no warrant out for his arrest," Mulder pointed out urgently. "Who the hell authorized the SWAT?"

Whorton looked pointedly at Doggett.

Mulder opened his mouth but before he could speak, the building resounded with gunshots and a high-pitched scream of pain. He turned and raced up the stairs, Doggett following so closely on his heels that he could feel the man's breath down the back of his neck.

They burst into Krycek's room and froze in confusion for a moment. Then Doggett shook himself, ran back to the door and yelled:

"Inside, NOW! Two officers down! Request emergency vehicles, immediately."

So only Mulder saw the black cat.

It paused on the window sill for a moment, its green on green eyes meeting his in cool unperturbed contemplation and then, with a flick of its tail, the cat's sinewy body twisted and dropped.

Mulder ran to the window and looked out.

It seemed impossible that even a cat could survive a sixty foot drop to the road below, yet Mulder saw the unmistakable flash of a swiftly moving black body as it raced away down the alley opposite.

"Well, hello Alex," he whispered to the cat's disappearing back.

"What are you looking at?" Doggett demanded, charging up to the window.

"It's a sheer drop," Mulder replied absently. "No fire-escape. No drainpipe."

"What's going on here Mulder? These two officers, they shot each other."

"Well, like I said, Krycek wasn't armed," Mulder pointed out.

He left Doggett standing in bemusement, walked past the scurrying medics, and headed back to his car. He was already half-way to Quantico before it occurred to him that he'd ditched Doggett again.

~~~

"Neither of the officers are seriously hurt," Mulder said, and tried to believe he was only pleased for their own sakes, not because he was desperately needing to believe that Krycek was a victim rather than a killer.

"I've been going over these reports you faxed me," Scully replied. "They're incredible."

"Well, the military already sent troops to radioactive mushroom clouds, I guess they figured they had to top themselves, right?"

"Sleep eradication still doesn't explain the shooting of those two officers, or the anomalous autopsy results on Willig and Dr. Grissom, and I'm not even prepared to make a comment about the supposed link with physical shape-shifting and ESP."

"Well, I learned something at Dr. Grissom's clinic. About what happens to a persons cortex when you stimulate it with electricity," Mulder replied.

"They experience mild visual and auditory hallucinations, any first year med. student could tell you that," Scully replied.

"Well, what if that stimulus were to come from a remote source? What if the subjects have somehow developed the ability to project their unconscious?

"Are you suggesting that Krycek killed these people with telepathic images?"

"I'm not sure whether Krycek has killed anyone. He certainly didn't kill Grissom, but one of the *other* test-subjects might have."

"I thought they were all in the Arveda clinic, except Willig."

"Maybe...hang-on...maybe Willig killed Grissom, then Krycek saw the news report of Grissom's murder and killed Willig."

"Why?"

"Krycek and the others have voluntarily been staying at the Arveda Clinic so that their sleep disorder can be kept under control. Willig refused, stayed outside and proved with his murder of Grissom that he was a killer. Perhaps Krycek just performed an execution of a dangerous man. Krycek's a soldier. He's capable of doing what needs to be done. That doesn't mean he's a killer by nature. That would explain why he was careful not to really hurt the officers in the motel."

"You seem peculiarly keen to find a justification for Krycek," Scully pointed out, "but you're wasting your time. He *isn't* guilty of anything, as far as I can see. There haven't been any murders."

"Think about it, Scully. In all these years without REM sleep, maybe Krycek and the other test subjects have built a bridge between the waking world and the dream world. A collective unconscious. And what if, by existing consciously in the unconscious world, they've developed the ability to externalize their dreams and effectively alter reality. Even to the point of at least 'appearing' to shape shift."

"Even if you're right, you'll have a much better chance of finding Krycek if you work up a profile and try to surmise his next move."

"All right, I'll sharpen my pencils and I'll see you later."

~~~

"Bastard," Doggett hissed as he climbed into the car. "I should have taken a leaf out of your book and checked this lead out by myself."

"Lead?" Mulder asked sweetly.

"I've got the name of another test-subject who didn't check into Arveda. His name's Salvatore Matola and he's from Willig's original unit."

"One of the first then," Mulder said. "Maybe the earlier experiments were less 'successful'. That would explain why they could function almost normally in the outside world."

"You think," Doggett replied. "I turned up all the other names of the original subjects. They're all dead. Most of them committed suicide in 1973."

~~~

"Salvatore Matola?"

"You gonna shoot me? You gonna kill me?" the small man demanded, yet despite the slightly hysterical note in his voice, his eyes had the same cool, unperturbed stare as the cat Mulder had seen on the balcony. Mulder shivered slightly and saw Matola give him a sly, secret assessment.

"We're with the FBI. We just want to ask you some questions. Why'd you think we were gonna kill you?

"I dunno,." Matola said cagily.

"You know about Willig and Grissom."

"I read about it in the paper. I guess they're finally killin' us all off."

"Who?"

"The gov'ment of course.  Who else?"

"Why would the Government want to kill you Mr. Matola?" Mulder asked.

"Clean up, I guess.  Figure they think we've had our share anyway. They said it'd be like living two lifetimes. At---at first, that's what it was like. Not having to sleep at all made us feel like nothin' could touch us, you know? We'd do 24 hour patrols, night ambushes, you know, and that type of thing."

"And you never got tired? " Mulder asked.

"No. Not so that we had to sleep. And then, nothing that the pills couldn't fix."

"Serotonin?"

"Yeah."

"How long did this go on?" 

"How long?" Matola laughed. "It ain't never stopped, boy. ''Course, when we got home from 'Nam we just all got let loose. Lot of the guys couldn't face it. Trying to fit back into a  normal world again, I mean. They killed themselves."

"But you didn't," Daggett pointed out unnecessarily.

Matola shrugged. "My people, they, well they ain't so feared of what I am."

"And what are you?" Mulder asked.

Matola just grinned slyly.

"I'm anything I wanna be," he sniggered. "But you already figured that, didn'tchya?"

~~~

Doggett was silent for most of the drive back to DC. Even when they pulled into the drive-though, he mumbled his order in a low sulky voice that grated on Mulder's nerves, but it was only when Mulder told him to change direction and head for Arveda again, without bothering to explain a reason,  that  Doggett finally  lost his temper and slammed on the brakes.

"It's bad enough that I've got to put this shit in my body, without trying to eat and drive at the same time," he snarled.

"Okay, I'll drive, you eat," Mulder suggested, starting to unfasten his seatbelt.

"No fucking way. From now on I keep the car keys at all times. It's the only way I can be sure you won't fuck off and leave me again."

"Is it the food, or does your language always deteriorate like this when you're tired?" Mulder asked.

Doggett slammed his palm against the steering wheel and took a deep breath.

"Could be sleep deprivation. Apparently it makes Marines aggressive," Mulder taunted.

"What is it with you, Mulder. Do you have a fucking death wish or something?"

Mulder just smirked and chewed a mouthful of french fries.

"I want to know what's going on," Doggett growled.

"Going on?" Mulder asked innocently.

"This is *our* case, if you remember. Strictly speaking, it's *my* case and I'm pissed off with the way you're treating me like some rookie kid."

"Gonna go running to Skinner again?" Mulder asked snidely.

"If I have to," Doggett replied coldly.

"Okay. What's the problem?" Mulder sighed.

"You still haven't answered my question. What's going on?" Doggett demanded.

"All right, what do you want to know?"

"What's the truth? There are things you're not telling me that I need to know."

Mulder looked at Doggett's granite, unimaginative face, wondered how the hell he had even thought the guy was attractive enough for a one-night stand, and firmly pushed away the errant image of Alex Krycek that popped into his head the moment he thought about sex.

"I think that the test-subjects possesses the psychic ability to manipulate sounds and images to generate illusions that are so convincing they can kill. They also have the ability to either shape-shift, or appear to do so, although the cat-hair found at both murder scenes suggest that the transformation *is* physical. How's that for a theory?" 

John Doggett stared at Mulder for a long time, digesting his words with the same slow methodical process as he was devouring his dinner.

Which, Mulder decided as he stuffed another mouthful of french fries into his mouth, was indicative of the whole  problem between them. Doggett took the idea of skepticism to a whole new level. He was incapable of intuitive thinking. If he couldn't touch, taste and smell something, it simply didn't exist

Between Skinner and Doggett, Mulder was beginning to feel as though he was crushed between two gung-ho, former marines who had less imagination between them than he had in his pinky finger..

“I’ve got two words for you…bull shit.”

 “Huh?” Mulder spluttered around his Big Mac, glaring at Doggett with all the dignity he could manage with his mouth full of food..  He swallowed, cleared his throat, gazed longingly at his rapidly cooling dinner, then sighed. He understood Doggett’s reaction. Mulder had made no attempt to befriend him, confide in him or let’s face it, even treat him with mere professional disinterest. No. He’d made a concerted and deliberate effort to abandon him at every given opportunity, so he only had himself to blame for the fact that Doggett hated his guts.

“Fine. Believe whatever you want. Just drive,” he snapped.

“No.”

“Look just drive. I’ll explain more on the way.”

TBC