Consequential Loss

By Joann H
joannhere@gmail.com


RATING: R (strong language)
CLASSIFICATION: X A
DATE: April 2006 - Book 1 completed
TIMELINE: S7 (with refs to S8)
ARCHIVE: Ephemeral, Gossamer - others please ask
AUTHOR: Joann H - joannhere@gmail.com

LEGALLY:
We all know the score. The characters are not mine, never will be.

SUMMARY:
A last minute intervention by Krycek changes Mulder's life
forever, threatens to destroy Skinner, and sends Scully into a
dangerous pursuit.

Joins the X-Files timeline five minutes before the end of the
Requiem episode and then takes a very different course.

My grateful thanks to a whole long list of people. Honor who was
there at the beginning. Ann, MaybeAmanda, Probe, Lisby who helped
me bring this home. And to the guys on XOK who egged me on a vital
moment.

Status:
Book 1 is complete and will be posted in parts over the next
couple of weeks.
There will be another Book following on after this one, but I'm
not promising a particular delivery date on that.

On with the show!

=======

So which was it to be: an alien bounty hunter or Alex Krycek? The
throbbing glow of an extraterrestrial spaceship or the dim outline
of a delivery truck?

He turned, looking for the third option: Walter Skinner and
sanity. Saw nothing except a pulsating curtain of light and that
single narrow strand of darkness, a slender blindspot in the
ship's beam. In the shadows, the gray outline of a man, one arm
raised above his head, a ghostly silhouette against the blackness
behind.

Shifting through three-sixty degrees, Mulder looked for the
miracle that wasn't there. Now or never. Panic too close to the
surface to consider the consequences, he sought out the breach in
the shimmering wall and found it again. Story of his life, running
from the light into the dark. The shadows had never looked so
inviting.

---------

EARLIER THAT DAY - Washington DC


Scully's mother seldom called during what she referred to as
"working hours" and knew better than to call Scully at the office.
Which meant that when Maggie called Scully on her mobile at 11:45,
Scully was obliged to take it seriously. She nodded an excuse to
the Lone Gunmen and headed into an empty corridor.

"I'm fine, mom."

"You didn't sound fine last night."

Scully, frowned at her mother's insight, thought back to the
previous night. She tried to recall the words she'd used,
wondering if she could wiggle out of them now. Mulder had flown
to Oregon, but she hadn't felt well enough to join him. How the
hell had she made a slip like that? She never admitted to being
ill. No wonder her mother was concerned enough to call again
today. No reply at Scully's apartment. Of course she'd try the
cell phone. "Really, it's nothing to worry about. Must have been
one of those 24-hour flu things."

"You told me here's no such thing."

Scully closed her eyes, wondering why she'd even said it.
"OK - you got me. Probably food poisoning."

"You were thirteen when you told me that."

Scully could hear the proud smile in her mother's voice and
couldn't help but smile as she replied. "Clostridium perfringes,
maybe."

"I'll bring you some food over."

"Mom."

"Or are you flying out to Oregon now?"

"No," said Scully, fighting to keep at least a semblance of a
smile in her voice. "Mulder will probably be back before I could
even get there."

She closed the call and returned to the office, chin up, shoulders
straight, walking proud and tall, defying anyone to see weakness
in her stance. She was dismayed by the expression of concern on
Byer's face.

She'd shrugged the Gunmen's questions off the day before. They'd
been surprises that Mulder was traveling to Oregon with Skinner.
"I've work to do here," she told them. Frohike had insisted on
driving her home that night, reminding her that dizzy spells and
city traffic didn't mix.

When they resumed work again today they did so only after asking
oblique questions about tiredness and food. They'd insisted on
supplying fruit juice and pastries, despite Scully's insistence
that she wanted neither.

"Time for lunch," said Byers, before Scully even had chance to
return to her chair.

Langly looked up at him, obviously ready to tell his colleague
that he had to be insane before catching the look in Byer's
eyes and turning to stare at Scully's pale face instead.
"Yeah, time for a break," said the blond, stretching his arms
behind his head as he rose.

Frohike had already taken up position at the door and was holding
it open, making it clear to everyone that the decision had been
taken; they were going to take a real break and not just call out
for sandwiches or a pizza.

Byers moved towards Scully, cornering her for a moment. "He'd
never forgive us if anything happened to you. We'd never forgive
ourselves."

Easy for them to say. She needed to be ready; Mulder was going to
need help and he was going to need it soon and, though she
couldn't pin down exactly what it was that she was afraid of, she
acknowledged the fear to herself. To Byers she admitted only a
bare minimum about tiredness and stress, knowing that he would be
reassured by a show of honesty, however incomplete.

Lunch was lunch. Eaten fast and tasting of dust and cardboard.
While the others indulged in tall cups of caffeine rich java, she
stuck to water. Even that was hard to swallow. She hustled them
back to work as quickly as she could and they agreed that she'd
compromised, but insisted that the next meal break would be a
longer one in which they all got to sit down.

Stress? She'd thought working with Mulder was stressful, but not
working with him was far worse.

He was out there looking for that UFO and she was stuck in DC.
Mulder's orders. Since when had she listened to an order from
Mulder? Smiling a little, despite the queasy feeling in her
stomach, her thoughts drifted back to their first case and a night
in an Oregon forest. Special Agent Dana Scully, the rookie kid
drawing her gun on the town's sheriff. Mulder, acting as the voice
of maturity, shaking his head and ordering her to stand down. God
- she'd been so young, so naive, so excited to be in the field. A
partner, not just another agent.

If she hadn't been feeling so damned sick, she'd have ignored his
little speech about not wanting to risk losing her. Rejected that
idea as well, as the dizziness returned full force. She'd have
ignored his words? Not possible. How could she, not when they were
practically a declaration of love, or as close to one as you could
reasonably expect while standing outside a meeting room in the
middle of the Hoover Building. Thank God for Skinner, at least she
knew Mulder had backup he could trust.

Didn't stop her feeling sick to the pit of her stomach though.

She threw herself back into her work and was grateful that the
Gunmen seemed equally absorbed in theirs, huddling around computer
screens looking for anomalies on satellite feeds.

Hours later, she was rifling through the files, still searching
for a pattern, knowing that something in there was calling to her,
perhaps trying to tell her something that she didn't want to hear.
The call was getting louder, more insistent. She read the list of
names again and this time the mists cleared. "This just can't be."

Frohike reacted first. "What are you looking at?"

"Medical records. Billy Miles and other known abductees in
Bellefleur, Oregon. They all experienced anomalous brain
activity."  

Byers continued the thread. "Electro-encephalitic trauma."

"Which is exactly what Mulder experienced a few months ago."

"I don't understand," said Langly.

And Scully didn't want to understand either, but suddenly the
pattern and its implications were only too obvious. "There was
something out there in that field. It knocked me back because it
didn't want me. Mulder thinks that it's me that's in danger of
being taken."

Mercifully, Frohike drew his own conclusion. "When it's Mulder
who's in danger."

The dizziness was back, the sick feeling in her stomach rose; the
awful pounding in her ears reached a crescendo. Knees buckling,
she gave in to the gray.

--------

Mulder's first attempt to open his eyes nearly made him throw up.
One hell of a hangover: dry mouth, fuzzy vision and a definite
dose of seasickness. Make that carsickness, he corrected, getting
some kind of lock on his surroundings.

Krycek and the hole in the wall of light.

Maybe if he curled up on his side he could avoid actually
vomiting. That proved to be easier said than done. Reopening his
eyes he saw what he already knew; his hands were cuffed to the
vehicle's walls.

Spread-eagled, flat on his back on the cold metal floor.
Experimenting, he realized that his feet were free. A squirm
later, he found the outline of his backup gun still strapped to
his ankle. Which information might help later, but it sure as hell
didn't help him now unless he could pull off some kind of
contortionist trick and wriggle the gun out of its holster, hold
it between his feet, draw it up into his manacled hand, and do it
all without shooting himself.

Even sliding out of his shoes proved to be a tough job. His
attempt to focus on breathing just made him more aware of the
taser burns on his chest. Trying to bend his knees made him groan.

"They say that waking up is hard to do." Krycek was singing. The
bastard was actually singing. A Neil Sedaka impersonation of all
stupid things. "Now I know; I know that it's true."

"Breaking up is hard to do, asshole," snapped Mulder.

"Whatever you say, Mulder. How you doing back there?"

"Unfasten these cuffs and I'll draw you a picture."

"You're fine."

---------

As the ship rose into the night sky Skinner's first rational
thoughts had been of inevitability. Mulder's mission had drawn him
to this place and to this fate. Angry, he cursed his brain for
feeding him platitudes. Mulder had been here because no one else
had the guts or the insight to do the work. Skinner was here as
his lone backup because even an Assistant Director couldn't brave
the ridicule that would follow a decision to send a team of agents
to investigate a clearing in a forest. Actually, even if he'd
wanted to, he wouldn't have trusted other people with the task.

It had been easier to do the job himself. Except of course if he'd
done his job then how could he have lost Mulder? Scully never had.
She'd never looked the wrong way at the vital moment. She'd never
let go of the rope when Mulder had been playing on the cliff's
edge.

The deputies Skinner called to the scene showed up fast but
short-handed. Ray Hoese was missing; Billy Miles and his father
couldn't be reached. The locals feared the worst. So did Skinner,
but he wasn't ready to admit that yet. If nothing else he would
get evidence of the abduction. Mulder deserved that much. If
there were to be any meaning to this, then it would come from
revealing the truth.

A couple of hours later and a team from the Bureau and a cluster
of state troopers had been added to the mix. The infrared cameras
on the helicopters patrolling overhead found nothing to record. A
slight discrepancy regarding the ground temperature in the
clearing. Very slight. "Fungi," suggested one of the pilots; "An
underground spring," suggested another. The search teams went into
action with flashlights, performing a first sweep of the woods,
but found no sign of a missing man, or of anything else.

Requests to military and civilian air traffic controllers for
information on abnormal radar activity drew a blank.

When dawn broke, the ground search began in earnest. Tracker dogs
and men on foot walking in well-drilled lines. The Bureau
forensics team pressed on in puzzled silence, diligent but
perplexed. Some of them raised eyebrows at Mulder's array of laser
monitors. Some of them were foolish enough to let their amusement
show. Skinner's glare demanded silence and respect.

Despite their efforts, the bottom line was that so far they had no
evidence of strange activity, and they had no clue as to how a
federal agent could disappear without a trace from under his
boss's nose.

The clearing itself was unmarked except for the heavy and obvious
traffic of the search teams, police vehicles and helicopters. No
scorch marks to mar the tree line. No giant pad prints where the
ground had sunk away under a space ship's weight. Nothing to see
except the evidence of their own investigation. The locals had
opened a couple of gates to give them better access to the site
but had found neither molten metal locks nor charred and
splintered wood.

"A lot of vehicles have crossed the area, sir. We can try a few
tire casts but it'll be a needle in a haystack."

Skinner stared at the forensics specialist who was busily trying
to state the obvious. It took him a moment to catch on. These
people thought Mulder had driven away from the scene, or maybe
been kidnapped at gunpoint by some heavy with a SUV? Skinner
almost laughed. How the hell did Mulder and Scully put up with
this? "Just make sure we don't miss anything. Document the area. I
want everything, photos, measurements, chemical residue analysis.
Anything out of place. Something took off from this site. It flew
out of here. I need to know what it was."

The agent stepped back, looking mystified, then nodded and
walked away.

-----------

From Krycek's perspective it was a time for celebration; a moment
to applaud a rescue mission conducted in haste but flawless in
execution. He'd driven deep into enemy territory, risked injury
and death, and he'd brought his target out alive and intact. In
another time and place he'd be a hero. Unfortunately in this one,
he'd assaulted a federal agent and was now transporting him in
chains across state lines.

However, in his favor was the fact that he'd planned this journey,
or one very like it, so well. The capture itself might have been
fortuitous, miraculous even, given that Mulder was only seconds
from disappearing into the belly of an alien ship, but most of
what had happened since had been planned for weeks. Get Mulder at
a moment when his defenses were down. Force him to listen to
uncomfortable truths. Show him the files that would explain to him
why danger was no longer simply a fact of life, but an immediate
threat that required emergency intervention.

Years of Mulder-watching had given Krycek the knowledge to map out
a strategy. On the one hand, Mulder wouldn't want to listen; he'd
need to be made to. On the other hand, a helpless Mulder was a
dangerous and unpredictable risk to himself and others, likely to
gamble everything on a single throw of the dice just as he had in
Tunguska. Mulder needed to be confined but he had to feel as if
the situation was not completely out of his control. A balancing
act certainly, but Krycek was confident he'd found the right
approach.

A taser had persuaded Mulder to get into the van. Chloroform had
bought Krycek enough time to chain the agent securely to its well-
prepared walls, and enough access to inject the agent with the
nanite army that could mean the difference between success and
failure in this mission.

Since Mulder regained consciousness, Krycek had maintained a
continuous thread of carefully rehearsed explanation. He'd
successfully closed his ears to Mulder's anger and insults.

Carefully focused, he stuck to the necessities and chose not to
respond to Mulder's pointed and mostly legitimate accusations by
answering with lies or near lies, or even with speeches in
self-defense.

The only real weapon he had in this game was that he was right.
One hundred percent certainty that Mulder needed to listen;
complete confidence that if the agent actually heard what was
being said then he would act on it.

"Resist or serve," Krycek insisted again. "Another few years and
that'll be the only choice anyone gets. Only difference is you
have to make that choice now."

Krycek knew that Mulder was starting to weaken when, after hours
of argument and angry rebuttal, the tenor of his responses had
changed from a, "Why?" to a, "Why, right now?"

"Same reason that ship nearly took you. Anomalous electrical
activity in the brain. You're changing, Mulder. Changing fast.
What the aliens didn't realize is how much further you can go.
They would never have let you escape tonight if they'd known. They
would never have let you go once they got you on that ship."

"Changing?" grumbled Mulder, his tone suggesting that he
considered the idea to be a joke, though not a very amusing one.

"Your genes were modified before birth, afterwards there were
chemicals and surgery. You're becoming what you were designed to
be."

Mulder's voice wavered, bouncing along somewhere between
exasperated and lost. "They didn't have the technology for genetic
manipulation back then."

Krycek smiled, knowing that he was winning. No denial that
something was happening inside Mulder's head, merely a feigned
skeptical stance on its origins and meaning. "The Consortium has
been borrowing alien technology for a long time."

The reply was studiously bland, delivered by Mulder as if it was
all somebody else's problem. "So what was I 'designed' to be?"

"A secret weapon. So secret that Bill Mulder never told his
Consortium buddies about you."

That seemed to break Mulder's trance, the response was snapped
back. "He didn't tell me either."

Krycek flinched and wondered if he could change the subject.
Unfortunately he wasn't quick enough.

"Perhaps he would have, if you hadn't killed him." Mulder
suggested, his voice dropping into a venomous hiss.

Krycek could only be grateful that while Mulder still had a gun he
couldn't actually reach it. It was too soon for this discussion.
Keep moving, he reminded himself. Keep on track. Stick to the
plan. "You asked me why it has to be right now. Because as of a
week ago Strughold's back in town and he's seen your latest
hospital reports. He wants you."

"Strughold?"

"Klaus Strughold, an old 'friend' of your father. The Consortium's
a shambles. El Rico Air Force base, old age, faction fights - most
of the old leadership are dead, the rest are useless. They're like
a ship without a rudder, thrashing about but going nowhere.
Strughold's stayed out of the squabbles for years. Now he's come
back to take charge."

"And he's got time to read my hospital records?" said Mulder,
sounding mockingly amused.

"He's got time to offer a reward for your capture."

Krycek had it in black and white, albeit couched in terms that
would make no sense to anyone outside the elite group of
operatives who got their orders direct from the top. Money and a
new life for the man who brought Mulder in alive. A death sentence
for anyone who killed Mulder or left him mentally incapacitated. A
blanket approval to kill anyone who got in the way of the
operation.

Mulder response sounded more resigned than angry. "You kidnapped
me for the reward money?"

Krycek was the one who suddenly sounded annoyed. "I'm keeping you
out of his hands, same as I kept you off that ship. I'm giving you
a choice."

Mulder was silent, which was a victory of sorts for Krycek, even
though the angry outburst had been unplanned. He checked the clock
again and thought about the route they were taking. With any luck,
by the time they stopped at the motel, Mulder would have too much
on his mind to even consider running away.

-----------

Pregnant?

The ER Doctor's first response was a, "Well, duh," look of
bewilderment that a seemingly intelligent woman, another doctor in
fact and one who was clearly of childbearing age was so easily
struck dumb. "Recent sexual activity?" he said, obviously not
quite sure what he was going to say next.

"Well - "

"Did you practice safe sex?"

"No, but - "

The doctor shrugged.

"I had IVF treatment. Three courses. And nothing. I didn't think.
I don't understand."

The doctor, whose expression had been growing increasingly
concerned, suddenly smiled as he realized that the news was
presumably unexpected rather than actually unwelcome.
"Congratulations."

They wanted to keep her in overnight. "Just for observation.
You're obviously dehydrated. We fix that and the dizziness should
go. But I'd like to run a few tests to be on the safe side. You
should see your OB-GYN doctor as soon as possible - make sure
there are no complications, hormone imbalances, no special
precautions you should be taking given your difficulties
conceiving."

Dazed as well as dizzy now, she lost track of his words and didn't
even debate the point. Whatever it took. Whatever they thought
best. Pregnant? A baby? She allowed her index finger to brush
lightly over the imaginary bump in her belly, trying to visualize
the soft skin of her child's head. Mulder, she thought, "You have
to come home now. You have to see this."

She swallowed down the dread she'd been feeling, decided to blame
the butterflies on unruly hormones. Of course it didn't help that
she couldn't reach Mulder's phone. "Out of service area," said the
voice at the other end. Skinner's phone was just as unobtainable,
which was oddly reassuring. Brooding over phone reception in an
Oregon forest? She chided herself for indulging in ridiculous
fears.

When Frohike came in, she nearly fainted again. It was written all
over his face, screamed out in the slump in his shoulders. He
shook his head. "It's Mulder. He's missing. Skinner's organizing
the search."

Seven years to get here. Mulder had to come home.

=======

TITLE: Consequential Loss
RATING: R for strong language
ARCHIVE: Ephemeral, Gossamer - yes. Others please ask.
AUTHOR: Joann H - joannhere@gmail.com

http://www.cbcasa.com/new.htm

LEGALLY:
We all know the score. The characters are not mine, never will be.
They're owned by some combination of Fox, 1013 and CC.

For summary and notes on the status of the story please look
in Part 1.

=============

According to Krycek, they were just outside Boise. Also according
to Krycek, "It doesn't matter where we are. We won't be here
tomorrow."

Mulder disagreed; disagreement was mandatory. According to Krycek
they were stopping so he could get a few hours rest and so Mulder
could get a first look at the files. Mulder, still manacled to the
walls of his metal prison and with no real view of the world
outside, could only guess that meant they were now in a motel
parking lot.

Krycek leaned across the back of the seat to release Mulder's left
hand. "I can't drag you to the room, Mulder - too many witnesses.
You're just going to have to walk quietly in there with me and then
I'll show you the files. I know you don't want to make it easy for
me, so I'm going to make it easy for you. You try and run; you
raise an alarm; you struggle with me in any way and I'll shoot
anyone who sees. Understood?"

"Fuck you." The voice of grim compliance.

"Save it for when we're alone. You don't need a pile of dead bodies
to prove that you didn't choose to come with me."

A bluff? Had to be, didn't it? Krycek wouldn't just shoot a bunch
of innocents in cold blood, would he? Mulder thought not, but then
he'd misread Krycek before. In any case, after hours of being
strapped down, he probably wasn't in any shape to take on Krycek
and win. The tingling numbness in the fingers of his left hand
seemed to confirm it. In any case, the main thing was he still had
his backup weapon and there would be other opportunities, provided
he didn't spoil his chances by acting too soon and losing the
element of surprise.

Krycek handed him the key to the other manacle. "Touch that ankle
holster and I'll blow your foot off," he said.

Krycek knew about the second gun and hadn't taken it? Too confused
to focus on being angry, Mulder struggled to free his right hand.
Finally loose, he tried to stretch his fingers, had to clench them
again as the blood ran in and the pins and needles took hold. One
more reason to wait for a better moment.

"Nothing stupid, nothing brave," said Krycek. "I'm going to open
the door and you're going to step out as if you've been asleep back
there and you're happy to be heading to a real bed. Ready?"

Mulder scowled.

Krycek nodded. The van door opened and Mulder kept his eye on
Krycek's gun hand as the man showed him the mouth of a pistol
nuzzling out from behind his leather jacket.

Krycek passed Mulder the cardkey using his prosthetic hand. "Room
17. Don't test me, Mulder. I'm too tired to play games."

"You never do anything else."

A twenty-yard walk to the room. "Open the door."

Mulder did as he was told, not sure why he was being quite so
obliging, but certain that he didn't have a choice. His fingers
still didn't feel quite right, but they were at least functional
again.

Krycek nudged him towards the center of the room, cold metal
against the back of Mulder's head. A solid clunk as the door closed
behind them, Mulder could only assume that Krycek had used his
foot.

Mulder turned to face him, ready to go ballistic.

Krycek's right hand was holding Mulder's Sig Sauer by its muzzle.
Lying in the outstretched plastic palm of his left hand was the
weapon's clip. Krycek pushed the gun's grip towards Mulder. "Take
it."

"What?" mumbled Mulder, temporarily lost. The indecision was over
and done with in an instant. He reached forward, grabbing the
weapon and its ammo. A brief visual check found both items
satisfactory. The balance, the feel, confirmed the verdict - his
gun, his bullets. All present and correct - so far as he could
tell.

Krycek was digging around in a bag filled with paperwork. Mulder
slid the clip back into place and pointed the gun directly at
Krycek's chest.

Krycek ignored him, carried on searching through the documents,
emerging with a manila file as non-descript as all the others in
the stack. "You should start with this one."

What the hell? Mulder's anger flipped from ice to fire. He should
kill the bastard. His finger twitched towards the trigger; the
realignment of muscles so familiar that for an instant his mind
felt the briefest flicker of deja vu. The sensation caught him
unawares, reminding him of who he was and what he was, and for all
Krycek's preaching in the car about him becoming what he was
designed to be, he was still Fox Mulder and he was an officer of
the law.

Fed or not, he was furious, and there was no avoiding that. He
lowered the gun, pouncing forward, sending Krycek tumbling into the
wall and the bag of papers flying across the floor.

"Asshole," complained Krycek, and Mulder silenced him with an arm
against his throat.

"What is this, Krycek? You drag me here in chains to read a file!"

Krycek glared, and Mulder, recognizing that it wasn't realistic to
expect a choking man to reply, gradually eased the pressure on his
neck. Realized that he'd eased the pressure too far when Krycek's
foot crunched into his shin leaving him off-balance and easy prey
for an elbow to the ribs that sent him crashing into the wall.

To Mulder's surprise, Krycek didn't follow up with an arm to the
throat or even a knee to the groin. A brief stand-off as some of
the fire in Krycek's eyes faded, and then Krycek took a step back,
shaking his head, looking down at his left arm. "You could have
trashed the elbow joint. You know how long it takes to get new
parts made for these things?"

What? Mulder stood up straight, looked at the prosthetic and then
back up into Krycek's face. The man looked genuinely hurt,
insulted, offended even. He surely couldn't be expecting an
apology?

Krycek finally shook his head and turned away. "Read the file,
Mulder. Read that file and then decide if you need to read the
others. You're pissed; I know that. Let's just take that as a given
and get on with the job."

Sighing, Mulder let his head fall back against the wall, pushed
away again with his foot to move towards the small desk and
wondered why he was still listening to this. He could just walk out
of here. Hand to hand they were a pretty even match. Krycek would
have to shoot him to stop him and, though he couldn't explain why,
Mulder was confident that he wouldn't do it. If only because Mulder
was now carrying two loaded weapons and might forget all that stuff
about being the good guy if he was wounded or threatened.

Mulder picked up the phone.

"Don't," said Krycek. Mild, like a reminder, not harsh like an
order. "If you call her, they'll know you aren't on that ship, and
nothing will stop them from hunting you down."

Mulder frowned, irritated that Krycek had guessed who he was
calling. "She needs to know." They'd already had this conversation
on the road. According to Krycek the Consortium was so eager to
capture Mulder that they wouldn't care how many alarm bells they
rang or FBI agents they brought into the fight.

"She's safe as long as you're on that ship. Soon as they hear
you're on the run, they'll take her." Krycek paused, looking
carefully at Mulder. "Read the file." He waved vaguely towards
Mulder's cellphone, wallet and ID where they rested on the bedside
table. "You have time to think. Give yourself an hour, then
decide."

Two hours later and, with a couple of cups of coffee and a plateful
of steak sandwiches that Krycek had brought back from a neighboring
restaurant inside him, Mulder was still reading. Still digesting
files and images and trying to make sense of terms like
merchandise, enhancements and failure rates. His own file, this one
dating back only as far as the incident with the rubbings from the
alien ship, and the strange brain activity that had seemingly ended
abruptly under a surgeon's knife at Cancerman's direction, was
a sickening mix of clinical precision and euphemistic spin.

The enhancements were going to make the merchandise fail
catastrophically. Untreated, the flaws would inevitably lead to
early termination. The report held out one faint hope - with the
right drug regimen and suitably sophisticated life support
systems, maybe only the body would die.

His head hurt. He hurt. The file was wrong. Yet it didn't feel
wrong. The file sounded like it knew exactly what he'd been going
through over the past few months of hospital visits and doctor's
appointments. In fact it sounded like it knew rather more than he
did about both the underlying cause and the prognosis. None of the
possible outcomes mentioned in the file held any appeal. Which left
him one option, and that was to disagree.

Not that disagreement helped, he'd disagreed with everything so far
on this journey with Krycek and yet he was still here, sitting in a
non-descript motel room, having been kidnapped and transported in
chains across the state line into Idaho. If he didn't have anything
solid to charge Krycek with before, then he certainly had it now.
He glanced at his wrists, noted the way the bruises were darkening.
It struck him that they could have been worse; at least Krycek had
adjusted the cuffs to fit correctly.

"Your choice," said Krycek, playing with the TV remote, not
actually moving off CNN, and not even looking at Mulder.

Choice? Like there was any kind of choice. Stay invisible, play
dead, and maybe do something that, according to Krycek, might be
useful and possibly even critical to the future of mankind, or make
a phone call to Skinner or Scully and look forward to spending the
next few years as the Consortium's chief lab rat. Assuming of
course that such intervention by Strughold and his associates
didn't arouse the curiosity of the aliens as well. "Why the hell
should I believe you?"

"What have you got to lose? Stick around and you may learn
something. Or walk out - now, next week, next month. Only
difference is if you walk out now, then by this time next week
you'll be wishing you were dead."

Mulder snorted at that. If he stayed with Krycek, then maybe by
this time next week he would be dead. Just walk out, walk away now.
Pick up the phone and call Scully. If he was in trouble then it was
Scully he needed. For once his gut agreed with his brain - just
call her, they said.

If he was in trouble then her phone would be tapped and that would
lead them straight to him. Which was OK because he'd planned for
this kind of eventuality. More accurately, they'd planned for it,
even if Scully had tried to act as if she was humoring him in a
hypothetical discussion not preparing for an eventual life or death
struggle. Run, hide, switch to one of the fake identities the
Gunmen had helped him to arrange and then get a message to Scully.
Easy.

So why was he still listening to Krycek weave tales of Consortium
infighting and genetic engineering?

Commonsense was screaming loud and clear, so why was it so hard to
walk away? His fully loaded Sig Sauer and turned-off, but otherwise
fully functional, cell phone were reassuringly close to his right
hand, resting on the bedside table in the Extended Stay hotel
alongside his credit cards and FBI credentials. How long had Krycek
been using this room? Did he have a whole string of places like
this, permanently on call, just in case he needed to transport a
federal agent cross country?

The guns were the biggest problem, their implications profound, and
currently well beyond his ability to analyze. The loaded Beretta
had never left his ankle holster. Krycek had handed the Sig Sauer
back to him as soon as they'd entered the motel room.

Ice cold and furious, Mulder had pointed it directly at his captor.
Infuriatingly, Krycek had chosen to ignore it. Even when Mulder
followed up by slamming Krycek into a wall, Krycek had done no more
than reciprocate the move. Mulder could already feel the bruise
forming on his elbow. Just another one to add to the collection.

The guns, according to Krycek, were a gesture of good faith, which
didn't help Mulder resolve the confusion. Krycek and fucked up were
probably synonyms.

Good faith or not, Mulder still remembered the rest of the story.
Tasered into submission in the back of the panel truck. Flopping
into oblivion as Krycek held the chloroform-soaked rag over his
nose. Chained down and unconscious. Waking up nauseated,
disoriented and restrained.

Now he was half-lying, half-sitting on a bed in a room with an
assassin for hire and the knowledge that if anyone was looking for
him then they would certainly be looking in the wrong place.
Another look at the gun, another glance at his bruised wrists as
his hands clenched into fists. His breaths coming closer together
as the thoughts chased through his brain.

Krycek picked up on his discomfort. "If I hadn't knocked you out,
you wouldn't have any choice."

Mulder shook his head, amused disbelief as his lips pulled wider in
a grimace of a smile.

Krycek turned to face him. "You'd have run straight back to Skinner
and the Consortium would have picked you up at the motel in
Bellefleur." He looked back at the TV screen. "Or you could have
gone on that ship. I'm giving you a choice - live on your feet, or
die in a cage."

"Why? Why are you doing this, Krycek?"

"Why does anyone do anything?"

Great, just great. Now Krycek was playing shrink games with him.

Krycek was watching him, far too cool, far too controlled for
Mulder's liking; his voice too sure in its delivery. "You're the
profiler. You work it out. Everything you need's in those files."

---------

By the time Skinner found himself stammering through his carefully
prepared speech in Scully's hospital room Mulder had been missing
for more than 36 hours. What exactly do you say to someone whose
other half had been stolen from right in front of your eyes? "I
lost him. I don't know what else I can say. I lost him. I'll be
asked... what I saw. And what I saw, I can't deny. I won't."

Even as he spoke, the words sounded pale. What had he seen? A UFO?
A military experiment? A bright white light? All he knew for sure
was that Mulder was gone and that he had no idea how to bring him
back.

After more than a day spent hunting for evidence in an Oregon
forest, he knew that exposing the truth was an easy commitment to
make in the privacy of his own thoughts, but that without
compelling evidence it would be a much harder thing to deliver in
front of the Bureau brass. Too easy to lose the truth in a sea of
rationalization and ambiguity. Skinner didn't care. He was ready
and willing to nail his flag to a UFO that only he had seen. It was
the least he could do for Mulder and for Scully. Wasn't it?

Would it do any good to tell the truth? Would it do anything more
than get him transferred or sidelined and wouldn't that leave
Scully isolated and alone? What did he really know? The burning
determination to deliver the truth at any price was already fading
and he hated himself for it. He replayed his own words and felt
their inadequacy. Even here, in the calm of Scully's hospital room,
faced with the only audience that might believe him, he couldn't
say it out loud. Couldn't tell her that an alien space ship had
stolen her partner.

He needed to get out of this room. Scully needed his support; she
didn't need to see her boss collapse under the weight of knowledge
that she'd struggled with for years.

She was talking to him and all he could think about was running
away. He didn't run. A Marine doesn't run. Aching at the stiffness
he saw in her posture, the agony in her face, he stood his ground,
and forced himself to listen as Scully struggled to tell him
something in return. Cancer, he thought, when she took too long to
explain why she was in a hospital bed. What if Mulder came back
only to find Scully dead or dying? He locked his muscles and made
himself wait it out.

What she said was nothing that he'd been preparing himself for.

"I'm having a hard time explaining it. Or believing it. But - I'm
pregnant."

----------

AN SUV IN UTAH


"He killed my father," said Krycek, sounding resolute but matter of
fact.

Mulder snorted at that, amazed. He'd been ready for another
pointless argument; he hadn't been ready for this. When he'd
demanded an explanation for his father's death, he'd anticipated
excuses and evasion. A rhetorical question delivered somewhere
between statement and accusation. Even to Mulder, the words he'd
spoken seemed to lack the passion and gravity they deserved, driven
more by ritual than necessity. He wondered vaguely if he was still
drugged. But it was too late to retreat now. He'd asked the damned
question and now he had to face Krycek's reply. Voice shaky with
disbelief. "You're saying you killed my father as revenge?"

"I killed him because I was ordered to."

"Then why are you telling me - "

"Because he was a player. He was up to his neck in it," barked
Krycek, coming in loud and clear, and then suddenly letting the
volume fall again. "And you know it."

Yes, but. Yes, but, what? Head throbbing, the logical aftermath of
hours of drugged sleep and a bumpy ride strapped down in the back
of a van. Even after an edgy few hours rest in an anonymous motel
he was still exhausted. When had Krycek slept? Why did he care? Why
was he even listening to this? And yet there was something here;
Mulder could feel it. Some truth was standing there, just out of
reach, and he had to chase it, because that was who he was. "Why
was your father killed?"

Krycek took a moment to respond, seemingly left off-balance by the
question. He frowned, fingers dancing over the steering wheel, then
swallowed, eyes still locked on the road ahead. "To protect you."

----------

The investigation into Mulder's disappearance was by the book. What
it lacked in inspiration it made up for in numbers. Three days
after Mulder's disappearance Skinner got a polite advisory visit
from Deputy Director Jana Cassidy. "Step away, Walter. You're too
close."

Not close enough. One look at Scully as she stood on the edge of
the task force briefing, looking exhausted and angry, made it clear
that when it mattered he'd been too far away.

Kersh on the other hand looked pleased to be here. Skinner
reconsidered it. Not pleased, Kersh wasn't gloating, not exactly.
Perhaps it would be fairer to say the man looked like he was in his
element then? Yes, that was it. Kersh was relishing the chase, a
tangible X-File to battle against.

"He ran or he was taken," said Kersh, politely arrogant, a newly
promoted Deputy Director talking to a passed-over Assistant
Director with more years on the clock and more enemies in the
shadows. "We all know the drill. Mid-life crisis? Mental
breakdown?" Kersh licked his lips and shrugged. "Some perp with a
grudge? Some of the Bureau's finest are working on this. Go home,
Assistant Director - get some rest - Agent Scully, too." Kersh
stared at Skinner for a moment, the polite facade shifting to
something more like a challenge. "Unless you've remembered
something more?"

"I told you what I saw." In fact Skinner had told the whole task
force about a light that hid rather than illuminated and an object
that surged up into the night sky but didn't appear on radar and
didn't leave any trace on the ground. Mumbled comments had followed
from agents who should have known better, quickly stifled when
Kersh raised his head and grunted a wordless warning.

The luxury of ignorance, thought Skinner, trying not to care and
failing. How the hell did Scully stand it? He glanced in her
direction and realized that she couldn't. Emotions masked but too
close to boiling over to keep entirely bottled up, pain seeping
into her eyes. Maybe he should take Kersh's advice, just for
tonight. Drive Scully home perhaps? She needed to keep her strength
up, but he thought that was probably the last thing that she'd want
to hear.

"I'll be back in the morning," said Skinner, ignoring the
tight-lipped grimace on Kersh's face. "First thing. If there
are any developments overnight, I'd like your team leader
to keep me informed."

Not waiting for Kersh's reply, Skinner started towards Scully,
pausing briefly en route to speak to the agent running the manhunt.
"Agent Doggett - keep me apprised, any time, day or night." Skinner
handed him a card that included his home and cell phone numbers as
well as the official ones.

He kept it together as he spoke to Scully. "Nothing's going to
happen tonight. Why don't you come back fresh in the morning?" A
question delivered as an order.

To his relief, Scully nodded, squaring her shoulders before
carefully gathering up the files from the table in front of her. He
recognized the body language: exhaustion, emotional and physical,
was dampening her movements, forcing her into awkward robot steps.
He doubted that she'd risk a sleeping pill, so he doubted that
she'd sleep. But she could have a little solitude; put her feet up;
close her eyes; cry it all away. Whatever she needed to do to
recharge her batteries and recover at least a little of her
strength.

It sounded like a plan. He helped her slide her arms into her
jacket and pretended not to notice that the tears so carefully
withheld all day were now dancing on her eyelashes waiting for
their chance to fall.

"Let's go," he said.

She nodded, turning her back on him and moving swiftly towards the
door.


========


TITLE: Consequential Loss
RATING: R for strong language
ARCHIVE: Ephemeral, Gossamer - yes. Others please ask.
AUTHOR: Joann H - joannhere@gmail.com

http://www.cbcasa.com/new.htm

LEGALLY:
We all know the score. The characters are not mine, never will be.
They're owned by some combination of Fox, 1013 and CC.

For summary and notes on the status of the story please look
in Part 1.

========

Days of hard driving had taken them down through Utah across
Arizona and into New Mexico, continually crisscrossing and doubling
back on themselves, covering hundreds of extra miles in order to
follow Krycek's preferred roads.

"Less surveillance, fewer cameras," Krycek had said, looking at
Mulder as if he was uncertain whether the agent was being difficult
or merely dumb for actually daring to question the route. A hard
smile as he'd added, "Or you could go and lie down in the back and
I'll put on my ski mask if you think that'll make us less
conspicuous."

Snaking their way past volcano country, they stopped again, this
time for groceries, and Mulder knew that meant that they were
almost "there" even though Krycek had been describing "there" as
"soon" for several hours now.

Krycek glanced briefly at Mulder as they entered the store.
"Whatever you want," he said.

Mulder shrugged, mind blanking on what or how he was supposed to
respond to that. He was going shopping with Krycek? In what
universe?

A single wistful look at the payphones by the door and Mulder
followed Krycek deeper in. Seeing well-stocked shelves but
unable to focus on their contents, he turned his attention back
to Krycek. The man moved steadily from shelf to shelf, loading
up the cart without a moment's hesitation or doubt, seemingly
working to some kind of mental checklist. A month's worth
of supplies maybe?

Krycek threw two different brands of toothpaste into the cart and
that was just plain disturbing. He acknowledged Mulder's surprise.
"It's the kind you always buy," he said, and Mulder's brain jumped
briefly between admiration at the man's preparedness and anger at
the intrusion, before sliding into profiler mode and storing the
information away for later analysis.

Another couple of hours on the road and they were finally stopping,
somewhere close to nowhere, not far from the Oklahoma state line,
in what looked like an abandoned quarry. Krycek parked the recently
acquired pickup truck under the shady entrance to the main
building.

No fanfare. No announcement of home, sweet, home. Just, "I'll start
the generator. We need to get unloaded."

The generator shuddered obediently to life. Mulder, freezer bags in
hand, followed Krycek up the stairs, surprised to find curiosity
temporarily overruling his anger and discomfort, and even his
desire to pick another fight.

The heat made the three flights of stairs more of a challenge than
Mulder was ready for, reminded him of sleepless nights and
migraine-addled days on the drive down here and even from the ones
that had come before.

The site manager's accommodation, actually the top floor of the
main office and storage building, was airless and agonizingly hot.
Looking disturbingly familiar with the place, Krycek moved swiftly
to open windows and turn on air-conditioning units. Mulder could
only hope that the generator was up to it. By the time they
completed their third trip from truck to apartment, the air was a
little more breathable.

Krycek had taken the food into the kitchen and Mulder wasn't
surprised, when he looked into the room, to see that the fresh
and frozen food had already been put safely away.

It was hard to discount the feeling that Krycek was working to a
script while he was flying blind. How often did Krycek do this kind
of thing? How long had he been preparing for this particular
scenario?

The place smelled stale and disused despite Krycek's obvious
familiarity with it. The blend of avocado green fittings in the
kitchen and orange drapes in the living room betrayed its age. Yet
it was still in remarkably good shape, fully-furnished and
everything intact.

The cushions on the couch were plump; their corduroy covers
still crisply ridged not patchily smooth. The kitchen was stocked
with a full complement of pots and pans. The appliances were
clean and seemingly in good condition, despite the yellowing
of the plastics and the dullness of the metal surfaces. Nothing
was old and battered, but none of it was new.

They could have been walking around inside the set for some 1970s
retro movie. Except for the boxes of groceries, the new cell phones
bought en route for cash, and of course the TV, microwave, DVD
player and all the other electronic goodies that Krycek had brought
along for the ride. They'd switched vehicles twice more after the
first stop in Idaho, unpacking and repacking items, and adding to
the collection of objects as they did. Finally switching to the
beat-up pickup truck with its New Mexico plates just before their
final food and refueling stop.

Mulder considered the signs of previous occupation. At a guess,
based on the tarnished metal of the door handles and the labels on
the older cans in the cupboards, the operation had been abandoned
twenty, maybe even thirty years ago. A sick feeling in his gut.
"They left in a hurry."

"You could say that," agreed Krycek, talking from one of the
bedrooms as he unpacked a suitcase only to immediately pack an
overnight bag. "I'll be gone for a couple of days. There's food,
water, fuel for the generator. Don't contact anyone." He lifted his
right arm to point at the case that housed the satellite phone.
"For emergencies. Real emergencies."

"I know," grumbled Mulder, parroting words that he didn't quite
believe and yet couldn't actually bring himself to discount. "If
they know I'm alive and free, the Consortium will come after me. If
they think I went on that ship they'll just have to wait and hope
that I'll be returned."

Krycek looked at him, paused from packing until he was sure he had
Mulder's attention. "This time they mean it. They thought...
It doesn't matter what they thought. You're their only chance
- they'll do anything to get you."

Tired of the repetition, exhausted by going round the same tight
little loop of conversation, Mulder completed Krycek's speech for
him. "Unless they think I'm beyond reach."

"You touch that phone - you sign Scully's death warrant. If they
know you're alive, they'll take her as bait to draw you out."

As if Krycek hadn't repeated the statement a dozen times in the
past two days, and every time he made the speech that was always
the sucker punch. Mulder groaned at being caught by it again. He
really should be used to it by now. His words came out fighting,
coolly sarcastic. "So I should just sit here while you - do -
what?"

"Something I should have done a long time ago." Krycek pointed to
another small case that Mulder assumed contained a laptop.
"Password's vengeance. If you need it, the car keys are behind the
visor." Made sure that Mulder heard the word need.

Fine. What did it matter anyway? Krycek was going to run off to do
God knows what to God knows whom and Mulder was going to stay home
and play house.

Just give it a few days, Krycek had said. Give yourself time to
read the files and think it through, Krycek had insisted. Stand up
and fight smart and maybe one day you'll return home a hero, or
make the wrong call and die a lab rat's death.

Mulder glanced at the satellite phone. The perfect opportunity to
make the wrong call. If using it could kill Scully then he might as
well blast the damned thing to bits now. Plenty of bullets left for
whatever else he might need to do.

"Where the hell are you going, Krycek?"

"Why? Worried about the ghosts of miners past?"

There was more truth to Krycek's jibe than Mulder dared hear. He
suddenly realized that he didn't want to be alone. Shouldn't he be
glad to see the back of the treacherous bastard? If what he needed
was a brief pause to collect his thoughts and analyze the files
that Krycek had supplied, then wasn't solitude an advantage? Three
days on the road with a killer for hire wasn't a relationship, not
even a pragmatically made business alliance. It wasn't even the
beginning of one.

Of course he didn't trust Krycek; how could he? "Not planning on
committing any felonies are you?"

Krycek paused from his packing, offered a slight smile, his
eyebrows high in mocking salute. "Nothing of interest to the
Bureau."

"How the hell do I know that this isn't just a trap, that you won't
call your Consortium buddies as soon as you leave here?"

"Why would I wait until we got here to do that?" Krycek's mocking
smile faded. "Stay or go. I'm not your jailer."

But he was, and Mulder knew it. It stung Mulder that Krycek knew it
too. All he'd had to do was push the right buttons - Scully, tests,
invasion, truth, resistance - and the agent had fastened the
manacles on himself. Mulder turned away, feigned sudden interest in
the contents of the kitchen cabinets and didn't look round until he
heard Krycek close the apartment's door.

The sound of the pick-up's engine drew Mulder to the window. A
swoosh of dust and Krycek was gone.

Alone and wired so tight he was ready to start bouncing off the
walls, Mulder decided to test the boundaries of his alleged
freedom. The car hidden behind the big doors still worked. It
started first time. It even had fuel and water, at least if the
gauges were to be believed.

Mulder's own weapons were loaded and, based on the damage they did
to an old Coke can foolish enough to come into range, he concluded
they were fully functional.

He tapped his jacket pocket where it hung by the apartment door and
felt the reassurance of spare clips.

Even the shotgun in the closet near the top of the stairwell with
its supply of what Krycek described as magnetite cartridges looked
like the real thing. Krycek's explanation of those had fallen
somewhere between vague and infuriating. "If you weren't sure if
you were shooting a werewolf or a wolf, you'd still want the silver
bullets - wouldn't you? It's all on the computer."

The apartment made as little sense as the rest of it. It was too
comfortable, too well appointed. Not merely out of time with its
seventies color schemes but out of place as well. Too expensively
furnished, too city in its design to be out here in the heart of an
abandoned quarry.

Clearly it was a trap. Yet if it was a trap, then it was a good
one. All the comforts of home and enough rope to hang himself.

-------

SCULLY'S APARTMENT

The apartment looked wrong, as if everything had moved three inches
sideways perhaps. It even smelled wrong, though logically not
enough time could have possibly elapsed for that to be true. Scully
pressed on into her living room, knowing that it wasn't really the
apartment that was off.

Skinner had driven her home. It surprised her that she'd allowed
him to do that. She'd excused the lapse as being for his benefit
rather than hers and hadn't invited him in for coffee. Forcing a
brisk goodnight, she'd insisted on carrying in her own laptop and
briefcase, and hadn't allowed the mask to slip further.

It was the first time she'd been completely alone since Mulder
disappeared. It had taken every ounce of her resolve and her
OB-GYN's blandishments to keep her in that hospital bed while
the FBI looked for Mulder in Oregon.

The Lone Gunmen had enlisted her mother to play guard dog.
When she heard that Skinner was coming back to DC, she
knew what had happened. There was no way that Skinner
 would have left the scene unless Mulder was truly gone.

Why was she making coffee? She didn't want coffee.

A brief shiver of nausea and Scully could recall the look of anger
and concern on her mother's face as she left her house that
morning.

"I have to go back to work, mom. It's my only chance to find him."

"You said that there's nowhere to look."

What Mulder had never really accepted was that the truth sucked.
What her mom had to accept was that, "I have to try."

"You don't just have Fox to think about."

As if she didn't know that. As if that thought hadn't been
replaying on a tight little loop since the moment the doctor told
her that she was pregnant. Of course, that thought had had to
time-share with another that asked how the hell could she be
pregnant and a third that demanded that she find Mulder.

Mulder wasn't findable, was he? But what if Mulder was in one of
those mysterious boxcars that had carried her away? What if the
same men who made the chip that was wedged in the back of her neck
were experimenting on him in some railroad siding?

So what if he was? They still wouldn't find him. Seven damned years
and all they had to show for it were cabinets full of files and
bodies full of scars. Must do better, Agent Scully. Had to.

Pregnant? How on earth could she be pregnant? What about that trip
with the Smoking Man? Surely he couldn't have done something to
her? Just because the man was offering miracle cures didn't mean
that she'd been a recipient of one herself. She would have known,
wouldn't she? Just because she'd woken up from drugged slumber to
find herself in a strange bed wearing only her nightclothes didn't
mean that - don't go there.

Maybe all those hormones she'd taken during the IVF treatment had
more effect than her doctors believed. Maybe it had triggered her
body to function again, found a lone undamaged ova and worked its
magic, despite the odds against. Maybe science got lucky for once?

Perhaps it was Jenn; maybe it was Mulder's genie who sent this to
them as a parting gift?

Maybe God had heard her prayers?

Did it matter? She was pregnant. She had someone else to think of
apart from herself. Someone to care about other than Mulder.

The shower sluiced away the day's grime, but neither refreshed her
body nor touched her mood. She headed for the bedroom, forcing
herself to go through the motions of life knowing that if sleep
came tonight, it would be from exhaustion not relaxation.

--------

The screen was annoyingly small. The lack of Internet access
frustrating at best, agonizing at worst.

Apart from breaks to fix a few sandwiches and make the occasional
pot of coffee, Mulder had spent most of the past two days submerged
in a mire of files. The deceptively small laptop was carrying at
least 50,000 pages of data. Some of it as text. Some in complex
relational databases that he hadn't really begun to get a handle
on. Some of it as image copies of old documents, faxes and
handwritten notes.

He guessed he'd at best skimmed the barest surface of maybe a tenth
of the material. Some files documented thousands of different test
subjects being put through hundreds of tests. Others discussed
project personnel: their deployment, management and funding. Then
there were the equipment lists, site plans, project timetables,
proposals for new tests, step-by-step instructions for old tests,
briefings on the care and handling of human guinea pigs so as to
cause the minimum ripple in the wider world. Mountains of it.

Some of it seemed to date back to the fifties. Some of the memos
might have been older still. The most recent material appeared to
be around a year old.

To make matters worse he had no decent tools to search the files.
If the Gunmen were here - but no, he'd come this far and, though
the temptation to jump into the car, drive to the airport, board a
plane and make copies of the hard drive before dropping off the
machine at the offices of the New York Times was almost
overwhelming, he wasn't quite ready to succumb. What he would do
though was drive into town tomorrow. Wherever town was.

He looked at the map. None of the names rang many bells, though the
idea of a Texline or a Wheeless held a certain appeal.

The siren call of a library and public access terminals caught him
again. "Anonymous and untraceable aren't the same thing," said a
memory of John Byers sounding awfully like his conscience. They'd
debated this kind of thing before, looking for the perfect solution
for a hypothetical life on the run. "You can set up a fresh Hotmail
account every day, but if Scully gets an email from it on a site
where she can be seen, then with the right access somebody can
trace the source IP address and they've got a location for the
sender. You need to control the line to disguise it."

In any case, even if he used a suitably roundabout route to contact
her, a birthday greeting in one of the dailies, a question on a
non-related newsgroup using keywords that only Scully would spot or
one of the other methods they'd discussed, he still couldn't do it.
Still must not do it.

What was he going to say? "I'm alive and well. See you later."
Would a message like that from Scully have stopped him from
worrying if their situations were reversed? Would a rider
instructing her to act as if she'd never seen the message lest she
trigger some worse tragedy for them both reassure her? Or would it
just make her more determined than ever to track him down?

It wasn't that long since Scully went off on that joy-ride with
Cancerman. All the "fines" in the world wouldn't have stopped him
from worrying or from searching.

Best if she thought he was on that UFO. Nothing she could do about
it if that was his location. No foolish risk she might suddenly
feel driven to take to try and bring him back. In any case, once he
had a better handle on the data and understood Krycek's claims that
he'd been "designed" as a secret weapon then he would find his way
back to her and they could talk about this face to face again.

There were other reasons to go to town though, even if finding the
right kind of town was easier said than done. He tried to guess how
far he'd have to travel to buy an external hard drive to create a
disk image, and a DAT drive for easy duplication. Which gave him
another dilemma: he knew the jargon but, without the Gunmen, the
reality was that he'd be buying blind.

What if he bought the wrong thing and screwed it all up, destroying
data rather than copying it? Could he risk taking the machine into
a store to get advice? Maybe he needed a city? Sure, but if he went
to Albuquerque or Amarillo why not just get on the next flight
home?

Because Krycek said that he mustn't and Mulder had almost bought
into Krycek's request for a voluntary delay before resurfacing. A
time for reflection and research. Just a few days to think it
through and understand all the implications. But that never-quite-
agreed-to deal had been made before Mulder had seen the contents of
the laptop. The Gunmen needed to copy this. Scully needed to see
it. The world needed to know.

It was all or nothing. Stay silent, as Krycek advised, and bide his
time until the right opportunity arose or scream it from the
rooftops now and hope that full exposure could offer a different
kind of security?

He looked back at the screen again. Of course the idea of thousands
of test subjects in a database wasn't actually incriminating at
all. You could chose to believe that the columns reflected
voluntary answers to an opinion survey on the lovability or
otherwise of some brand of coffee rather than the voltage level at
which the victims passed out during testing, or the brightness of
light to which they could be exposed before permanent retinal
scarring occurred.

Volume of data wasn't enough, not when the keys to the databases
and report cards looked like scruffy memos or back of an envelope
doodles rather than highly confidential, critically important
documents on which billions of dollars and maybe even billions of
lives might depend. The absence of anything that even approached an
abstract or a management summary in the files he'd examined just
made it worse.

The files were mostly raw data; the sheer quantity acting as a kind
of bizarre security, the lack of indices providing another layer.

It occurred to him that perhaps the explanation might be just that
simple. These might be working copies of the files. Databases left
open on some scientist's machine. Photocopied notes from someone's
desk. Incomplete snapshots of encrypted files captured by some PC
keylogging virus. The kind of thing a trusted second string like
Marita Covarrubias or even a treacherous son of a bitch like Alex
Krycek might get access to.

Despite years on the X-Files he really knew very little about the
Consortium, its organization or its intentions. Adding what he'd
now read in Krycek's files to those little hints he'd been offered
by people like Bill Mulder and Deep Throat in the past, he could
only conclude that in the early years the leaders were honestly
enthusiastic about their task.

Enthusiastic enough that, according to the laptop, they'd offered
themselves as the first human guinea pigs. Throwing the net wider,
they turned their attention to the military. When that resource
proved inadequate, they looked further afield and the nation became
their laboratory.

At the same time they improved their techniques for managing
the memories of victims until all that could be seen was the
occasional error in which somebody would talk about aliens
and airmen but the world would hear only hysteria and
hallucination.

The leadership's faith in their project was seemingly strong enough
that they continued to include themselves in the tests. At any rate
they included their wives and children, and even the occasional
husband, in the trials.

So far as Mulder could tell, the first of the genetically modified
offspring to survive gestation was born in 1958. The majority of
that year's crop died within days. By 61, survival rates were
better, mostly because they'd scaled down their ambitions - brains
or brawn, telepathy or radiation resistance, and so on.

Had Bill Mulder looked down a list of features and chosen which
ones his son was to possess, knowing the more boxes he ticked, the
less chance of the kid surviving? Perhaps it was a lucky dip, a
random choice by an anonymous technician, though that hardly seemed
likely. Not if dad had the kind of power that Krycek suggested.

Which bits of him were real then? What came courtesy of mom and dad
and what had been manufactured in a test tube? He'd accused his mom
of having an affair with Cancerman. If he was reading this right
then daddy could have been a mix and match of a dozen men and some
things that weren't even men at all.

His mind flashed to thoughts of flounder genes implanted into
strawberries to act as antifreeze and he wondered if surviving
trips to the Arctic and Antarctic said more about him than he
wanted to know. Maybe it explained the swimming thing. Shit. He
almost laughed, thoughts racing past the possible via the
improbable into the bizarre. Too much information and too little
knowledge.

He'd found his file or at least what was probably his file if the
folder he'd found in the vaults of the Strughold Mine years ago was
right. 61/292544 documented changes made before, during and after
fertilization, but the combination of technical complexity and the
lack of searchable cross-references made it hard to see what it
meant beyond the bare fact that "something" had been done.

So far, all he really knew was how big this thing was, how little
of it he understood, and how badly he needed help. 

Stretching back in the chair, angry muscles complained and tired
eyes took the opportunity to blink closed. He was still low on
sleep, lower still on energy.

Sleep, he thought, offering himself the only escape route he was
allowed. He didn't want sleep; he wanted Scully. Permitted the
words to escape from the cage in his head and bounce around in his
conscious thoughts, relishing the moment of freedom even as he
braced himself against the pain of memory.

Unforgivable. The word spun and he closed his eyes a little tighter
as if that could block the images from closing in. He thought back
to their last night together, to a tired motel room on the edge of
an Oregon forest. "So much more you can do with your life." A
moment of truth hiding the lie within.

God, he'd wanted her that night. Wanted to lose himself in her. It
hadn't even been her body he'd craved; he'd wanted her soul. At
least he'd had the guts not to follow through. At least he'd been
able to stop at comforting her. He'd kept the promise he'd made to
himself the day the neurologist in a Philadelphia hospital finally
stopped using phrases like, "there's a danger of," and started
talking about a, "need to prepare yourself," instead.

They'd had one week together before the doctor's verdict was
pronounced. They'd made love three times in that extraordinary
week. Three times. He'd had longer one-night stands.

"Your timing sucks," he muttered, snorting in a lungful of air and
wishing for something he was scared to admit to wanting, even in
his head.

Ashamed, he remembered his relief as Scully let him off the hook
after he got the new prognosis. First of all she'd agreed, without
so much as a questioning look, to his declaration that he needed
a couple of weekends alone to sort out things related to his
mother's estate. Then, after a week in a hospital bed suffering
from the after-effects of an assault by tobacco larvae, she'd
accepted his claims of tiredness and a need to sleep it all away.

"Should have told her," he said, wondering momentarily if Krycek or
someone had the place bugged and was going to use talking to
himself as evidence of something later, then laughed at the thought
of just how insignificant that particular symptom would seem
compared to the rest.

Couldn't tell her. Hadn't come up with a way to tell her. Telling
her would have made it real. Telling her would have been dangerous
- what if she'd said they should make the best of the time they had
left together?

Better to back away. Better to retreat. Better not to die in her
arms. Not slowly, not with her eyes betraying love and pity and
concern as deterioration set in and the drugs became impossible to
avoid.

"Sorry," he said at last. Not sure whom he was talking to, thinking
that maybe it was himself. He'd tell her; next time he saw her,
he'd tell the truth. Explain about the brain disease, the
headaches, the warnings in the doctors' words.

And now he'd also have to tell her about the things he'd read in
these Consortium files that said he was a freak and that it might
be necessary to keep the freak alive, whether he wanted to stay
alive or not.

A shuddering deep breath and he opened his eyes, forcing himself to
come back to the here and now.

The cell phone that he wasn't supposed to use, despite there being
no paper trail linking it to him, blinked "No Service" which was
hardly a surprise. He turned it off again, not wanting to see the
words.

The satellite phone was the worst possible solution. If someone was
waiting for him to resurface then that would simply give them an
early warning.

If he got this lot back to DC then he could get it out in front of
the public. The Bureau had people who specialized in unraveling
paper chains, tracking money movements, and identifying falsified
and anomalous employment histories. They were good at it, and with
this kind of documentation as a starting point they could achieve a
lot more than he'd ever done.

If he was going to make a break back to DC, then the faster and
more directly he did it the better. If they thought he was on that
UFO, then they wouldn't be actively looking for him. Which meant if
he moved fast enough now then he could fly home and, with some
electronic magic and a little luck, he'd have passed on everything
that Krycek had given him before anyone realized he was back in
town.

Everything that Krycek had given him? He sighed, throwing back his
head, closing his eyes for a moment. Krycek's computer. Krycek's
files.

Didn't matter. Those files should be out there and one way or
another he was going to make sure that's where they went. Besides
which, there was no way they were Krycek's files in any sense other
than that he'd stolen them from his employers or maybe been handed
them by someone like Marita. Fine. Mulder would leave him a receipt
from the FBI to indicate the removal of property. If Krycek dared,
maybe he could get the Bureau to reimburse the cost of replacing
the machine.

Mulder was going home.

Another yawn, more rubbing at tired eyes and aching temples. He
thought about the drive to the airport. Hours of driving on empty
roads. It would be a long night. A sudden flash on a conversation
in a car. "The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that
over 190,000 fatal car crashes every year are linked to
sleepiness." Special Agent Alex Krycek told him that - a lifetime
ago.

Despite the source of the information, he accepted the glimmer of
truth. He might need to be on top of his game to get home safely. A
few hours sleep were a necessity. What mattered was that the
decision had been taken. Tomorrow he would be going home.


========
END of Part 3/12

Do you think that Mulder's going home tomorrow? 
Joann


TITLE: Consequential Loss
RATING: R for strong language
ARCHIVE: Ephemeral, Gossamer - yes. Others please ask.
AUTHOR: Joann H - joannhere@gmail.com

http://www.cbcasa.com/new.htm

LEGALLY:
We all know the score. The characters are not mine, never will be.
They're owned by some combination of Fox, 1013 and CC.

For summary and notes on the status of the story please look
in Part 1.

========

The Lone Gunmen had a lot of information but from Skinner's
perspective none of it was useful.

The evidence, such as it was, fell somewhere in the range
circumstantial, incomprehensible and inadmissible. Magnetic
anomalies, lights in the sky, reports on MUFON bulletin boards.
Plenty of coincidences, suspicions and observations, but nothing
that Skinner could offer to Kersh as proof of an alien presence and
of a quasi-governmental conspiracy to hide it.

The Gunmen were arguing over the interpretation of satellite
thermal images in densely forested regions. His eyes slid towards
Scully again, trying not to make it too obvious that he was
watching her. He realized that he had nothing to be concerned about
on that score; she didn't seem to know that there was anyone else
in the room. Eyes wide open, mouth pulled into a flat line, Scully
sat, slumping a little in the chair, staring at her lightly
interlaced fingers, as they rested in her lap.

She was tired, that much he knew. She was lost in thought, that
much he understood. He ought to respect her privacy and pretend
that he'd noticed nothing but he couldn't do it. He'd always prided
himself on protecting his people and he'd failed to protect Mulder.
He wasn't going to fail her.

"Scully." When she didn't stir, he tried again. "Dana. Come on. Let
me take you home."

"I'm not tired," she said, her tone equal parts exhaustion and
stubbornness.

Skinner nodded. "I know. And you won't be tired tomorrow."

To his relief, after a moment's thought her fingers drifted to
touch her stomach and she smiled. The expression lost in an
instant; the new tension in her jaw threatening to pull tears from
her eyes. She rose, nodding once towards the Gunmen before heading
for the door.

Something about cars changed the rules. Maybe the borrowed security
of metal walls or the artificial privacy of enclosure. Whatever it
was, it gave him permission to speak. "When you were missing, he
never stopped looking. Even when he was working other cases, he
didn't stop."

Her face was turned away from him, eyes fixed resolutely on the
view from the passenger window, but the stiff set of her shoulders
told him that he had her full attention. "It blinded him. He nearly
killed Duane Barry. It nearly got him killed. He went after the
Smoker. He wanted revenge. He gave me his resignation."

That last piece of information actually provoked a, "Why?" from
Scully and he could only guess that she'd never heard that story
before.

"He was scared of losing himself - to vengeance, to anger, to a
foolish mistake. He wanted to be there when you came back. You've
got to do the same for him. He'll need you when he gets back."

-----------
WHITE HEART QUARRY, NM

The night had been too short or possibly too long. Not enough
sleep, too many dreams. Instead of waking up rested, he'd jumped
directly to agitated. Thousands of ants scrambling across his
flesh. Millions of thoughts chasing in angry procession through his
brain.

Genetically engineered by Bill Mulder to fight a war to save the
world. Really? Not unique in that respect, there were thousands of
files on that computer. So what was supposed to be so different
about him, what made him so damned special? Of course, he only had
Krycek's word that he was in any way different to the thousands of
other failed experiments. Gibson Praise was "special"; they'd seen
the brain scans to prove it. It hadn't helped Gibson or anyone
else.

Being "special" had hospitalized Mulder last year, a set of
drawings sending his brain into a toxic overload that hadn't ended
until Cancerman's butchers chopped out the offending parts. At
least, that's what he'd thought they'd done, what the brain scans
Scully had insisted on afterwards seemed to suggest.

How could he possibly matter to them now, if he hadn't mattered to
them then? According to Scully, when she found him in the bowels of
the DoD it looked like they'd decided to let him die.

"Changing," that was how Krycek phrased it. Mulder didn't know
whether to feel impressed or insulted by the careful neutrality of
the word. Changing for the better or the worse? He already knew
about some of the changes. Changing from Regular Tylenol to Extra
Strength. Changing from screaming nightmares when he was asleep to
terrifying hallucinations when he was awake. Changing from thinking
that Scully loved him to knowing it.

Not the kind of secret weapon that Bill Mulder could have had in
mind. Not much of a weapon at all. He tired more easily these days;
minor illnesses were hitting him harder. He was taking longer to
recover from the aches and pains of everyday life, and the cuts and
bruises of everything else. He'd blamed most of it on age and the
rest on whatever was destroying his brain.

The neurologist had been telling him for weeks how close he was to
a relapse that could hospitalize him. Same problem as before, a
brain running so fast it couldn't even be bothered with minor
details like muscle coordination or speech. The doctor had offered
no solutions, simply suggested a cocktail of drugs that might
temporarily suppress the storm. Drugs that if he took them would
render him unfit for duty.

He hadn't even needed to think about it. The sickness was the
result of an X-File and he'd never just given up working an X-File
because it was dangerous or because his chances of success were
low.

He hadn't told the doctor about the telepathy that had accompanied
the previous incident, not wanting to add a diagnosis of psychosis
to the file. It wasn't as if he was hiding anything, there had been
no glimpses into other people's thoughts this time, just pain in
his head and a frightening weakness in his movements as the agony
took hold.

When the doctor pronounced the death sentence it hadn't even been a
surprise. Not that he'd resigned himself to death, never that. Just
that he'd always understood the dangers of his job and he'd always
accepted them, if not with grace then with resolve.

Faced with one last chance to capture a UFO, how could he resist?
So he'd gone to Oregon. Twice. Alien miracle denied, he'd jumped at
Krycek's offer of another kind of revelation. He could admit that
now - now that he'd been hit by far more information than he'd
bargained for.

The only thing the Consortium's documents didn't explain was why
they suddenly wanted him. If it was true that they wanted him, and
he only had Krycek's word to go on there, despite the passionately
worded memos demanding his capture in the files. Anybody could have
written those.

If Krycek had been playing him then he'd played his cards well. The
thought of keeping the brain alive as the body died was more
frightening than death itself. Wasn't it? Which brought him back to
Krycek and this place and what the hell he'd been doing for the
past week.

Nothing in the files suggested that Krycek had a miracle cure for
the brain disease. So what did Krycek have planned? Did he also have
a scheme to keep the brain alive?

Enough!

Shuddering, he quickly cleaned the breakfast plates, partly from
habit, partly because it seemed like an admission of inadequacy to
let Krycek clear up the mess. Better remember to empty the trash as
well, he thought, amused by his brain's drift from the global to
the trivial in the space of a few heart beats.

The car was too hot; he opened all the doors and loaded the paper
files that Krycek had given him into the trunk along with the warm
jacket he'd worn up in Oregon a week ago. The thought of returning
to DC made him smile. He hadn't checked the weather forecast, had
scarcely looked at the TV at all, just knew it would be beautiful
there.

The first scream made him go for his gun. He spun, weapon at the
ready, but saw nothing. The second scream was painful,
gut-wrenching in its intensity. He ran out of the building, but
found no explanation for the sound. No vehicles, no swirls of dust
anywhere nearby to indicate movement. He turned slowly, looking
into the blank landscape and saw no one, walked quickly around the
building and saw no place to hide.

Another scream, the woman couldn't be more than twenty feet away.

What the hell? It had to be something to do with the shape of the
quarry. He'd only done the most cursory of examinations of the site
in the past three days, content to declare it flat and saucer-
shaped with a single rocky ridge along one edge. Some kind of echo
affect, focused by weird geography and odd atmospheric conditions?

What he knew for sure though was that he was miles from anywhere.
If he could hear a scream then that meant he was probably the only
person who could help. Another agonized howl rang out - female,
fearful, soul-destroying. Somebody was killing her. Where was she?

He ran further from the building, hoping that by relocating himself
he might get more sense of the direction the screams were coming
from. Angry shouts instead, a procession of insults and abuse,
sharp words from somebody standing right behind his back. A litany
of, "Bitch. Whore. Die. Slut. Lying. Fucking." Building to a
crescendo of furious contempt.

Mulder spun, gun solid in his right hand, left hand steadying his
grip, ready for action. He screamed out a litany of his own.
"Federal Agent. I'm armed. Come out where I can see you." He wasn't
surprised that no one replied. The woman screamed again, more
painful than before, but fainter. Mulder knew what that meant - she
didn't have long left.

With nowhere else to go, he started to run towards the only place
he could imagine anyone being able to hide. Ran past cannibalized
cutters, abandoned crushers and the skeletons of heavy conveyors,
ignored burned out cranes and trucks, dodged rusty backhoe buckets
and ducked under the remains of excavator arms. Still shouting out
FBI mandated orders to, "Stop," and, "Identify yourself," as if he
was expecting them to be obeyed.

The screams stopped and so did Mulder, tumbling to the ground, face
and hands hitting the dust simultaneously. His body curled up on
contact with the earth and he closed his eyes, felt the shudders of
pain fold his limbs a little tighter.

Ants crawling across his flesh, an unscratchable itch that started
in his fingers, creeping across his eyeballs, pooling in his ears,
scuttling through his thoughts, burrowing its way into his brain.

The man was still there, still screaming out words of abuse and
hate, swirling in frenetic overlap with cries of horror and dismay.
"She's dead. Oh, God. She's dead." Mulder heard the man's words,
loud and clear, heard the mix of disbelief and panic in them and
was quite sure that the words had never been spoken out loud.

He'd been through this before, or close enough to this. Collapsing
in the hallway of a university, losing touch with reality in an FBI
elevator, trembling and out of control in the padded cell of a DC
hospital.

Voices mingling and merging, screaming and crying, demanding that
he help, begging him to hear. He heard, of course he heard. Didn't
want to hear, but didn't have a choice.

Was this how it felt to be special? Electric shocks of pain
catwalking along his spine. He wrapped his hands over his ears, but
it made no difference to the noise. A cacophony of terror and
sorrow.

Hiding from them, he turned in on himself. Mind fluttering back to
decades before and the sound of Samantha's cries, agonizing shivers
of shame as he heard Scully scream his name on the night that Duane
Barry stole her away, his mom sobbing out her goodbyes to an empty
phone. So many screams. Perhaps he'd always heard them; maybe he'd
just been able to ignore them until now.

--------

Scully hadn't wanted to take the day off, but she was grateful now
that Skinner, bristling with concern despite addressing her in full
AD mode, had insisted that she at least stay away from the office
today.

Last night had been the roughest yet, perhaps simply because the
sheer accumulation of sleepless nights had all caught up with her
at once. She needed sleep; she could admit that to herself even if
she couldn't admit it to anyone else. Pills were out of the
question. She considered milder alternatives but even the smell of
chamomile tea made her feel queasy.

Actually, everything made her feel queasy. She sipped at a glass of
watered down orange juice and tried to ride it out. Lying in bed
just increased her awareness of being awake. And alone. The TV made
a poor companion but it didn't nag, it didn't ask her how she was
feeling; it didn't pity her at all.

The vivid horror of the dreams was no surprise. Men in white coats
poring over test tubes and Petri dishes, working in stark white
rooms where centrifuges spun and autoclaves sterilized. Inevitable
that she should dream of experiments and genetics when her body was
responding to a whole new chemistry of its own.

She didn't like all that nightmare talk about breeding programs,
nucleotide sequences and mutagenic reactions but in the
circumstances it was no surprise that her sub-conscious chose to
label her fears with terms drawn from X-Files and medical science.
While other women feared the "abnormal" or the "damaged" in general
terms; her brain had no shortage of specifics.

Her head was pounding and the Tylenol box was looking more
attractive all the time. She was loathe to use anything, but her
doctor had reminded her that putting up with too much pain could be
more dangerous to the child than the drug she was trying to avoid.
Particularly as there was no chance of being able to eat until the
worst of it had passed.

How much of this was stress, she wondered. Maybe she should talk to
someone? Not Skinner, he looked as lost as she did, even if he had
plucked up the courage to order her to stay home.

Mulder had been missing for a week. It could be months before they
brought him back. Months in which she had to be strong and if being
strong meant admitting that her body could sometimes be weak then
she could learn to do that as well. She'd learned to handle a lot
of things in the past few years. She just missed having Mulder's
faith to lean on while she did.

--------

Ten days after Krycek stopped Mulder from walking into a rendezvous
with hell on board an alien spaceship, he couldn't avoid the
feeling that he was another rescue mission.

He checked the pickup's clock even though he'd read it five minutes
before. Stubbornly, it confirmed that five minutes had passed.

He'd planned on being away for two or three days, and would have
felt comfortable even if it had taken four, but he'd been gone for
six days, fourteen hours and a lot of minutes and he was still
miles from the quarry. Shouldn't have left Mulder alone. Not for
this long. Not at all in fact.

He'd planned how to handle Mulder's captivity with care and
precision, mapped out alternate routes to the quarry starting from
any of half a dozen prearranged stopovers like the hotel they'd
used the first night in Boise. A logistical nightmare to set up,
even using money ripped off from a Consortium slush fund, but it
had been flawless in execution. Even the shopping trips on the
journey down had gone smoothly.

Mulder's response to being allowed to keep his guns had been
particularly gratifying. Krycek had manage to bypass years of
distrust. and even the hours of discomfort the agent had experienced
after his capture. in that one grand gesture.

Everything was perfect - except for the timing, which had gone
hopelessly awry. Should have killed Spender before the trip to
Oregon. Should have killed him a month ago, a year ago, a decade
ago. As it was, he'd been forced to kill him at a highly
inconvenient time simply to stop him from going into hiding and
escaping his fate again.

No choice. Had Spender lived there was always a danger that the
macabre residual connection brought about by that transplant of
brain tissue from Mulder to him could have led the Consortium
directly to their hiding place.

He wondered if Mulder knew about that link, if it had ever run both
ways, if he'd realized just how much of his private life and
thoughts Spender had seen in the past few months. Probably not,
Krycek decided. Probably better off not knowing.

So he'd killed Cancerman. So what? What was the big deal? Nobody
cared whether the old bastard lived or died, not even his one-time
friends and colleagues. What Krycek had omitted from the equation,
perhaps intentionally he now realized, was the fear factor. The
other Consortium bosses were scared. It just was not kosher for one
of the hired help to kill his chief and then to get away scot-free.

Even though he had done them all a favor.

No good deed goes unpunished, he noted, lips shifting into an
uncomfortable smile before tightening again.

The trip up to DC had gone smoothly enough. A helicopter ride from
Albuquerque with a pilot who owed him a favor and knew nothing
about the Consortium. Another hop using an alias that had never
been linked to him. And finally a very public flight, using a
Consortium supplied credit card, from Portland to Washington,
suggesting that he'd flown home having monitored the FBI's failed
hunt for Mulder.

After killing Spender, he'd actually driven halfway to Dulles
airport before he'd admitted that he couldn't take the same route
back. Shouldn't have left a witness alive. When he killed the
Smoker, he should have killed the nurse as well. It was Marita who
said that another killing was unnecessary, that it would be enough
to drug the nurse, buying them a few hours head start.

A head start was all they needed, she said, and Krycek agreed that
the Consortium's bosses would guess who'd made the hit even without
the nurse's account. Which had given him a problem: it would have
aroused Covarrubias' suspicion if he'd killed the nurse. Driving to
Dulles, he'd suddenly realized that by the time he reached the west
coast he'd be on the Consortium's wanted list; so he'd taken the
next exit and driven south.

He'd run, run so far and so fast that he'd nearly led them directly
to Mulder's door. Recognized the tail almost too late and been
forced to double back on himself, eventually leaving a couple more
dead bodies in his wake. Mercenaries, not much to feel bad about
there. Cancerman's old cronies had put a price on Krycek's head: a
million dollars to the man who took him out.

Maybe he should feel flattered? Not quite as good a deal as the one
being offered on Mulder, but if kids could die for a few bucks or a
pair of running shoes then who was he to say that a reward like
that should be ignored? Hell, in other circumstances he'd be
interested in the job himself. He shook his head, amused and
horrified to be feeling quite so hyper. "Sixteen hours straight
driving does that to you," he said, hoping that hearing a voice,
even his own, would help to keep him awake.

Things weren't running according to plan, but he'd lived with an
axe over his head before and he could live with it now. The
artificial hand smacked into the steering wheel and he regretted
the empty gesture instantly as he reminded himself just how easily
it could have done real damage, how tough it would be to get
precision prosthetic repairs done in the middle of nowhere and just
how fast the Consortium would find him if he had that kind of work
done in a city hospital.

The fact was he was too damned easy to track and when Marita said,
"Canada first," he should have jumped in her car and gone with it.
She hadn't believed him when he'd replied with, "Mexico," but then
disbelief was to be expected.

"Just so long as it isn't Tunisia," she'd said, and he'd nodded.
They would meet again; they always did. Getting out of the country
would have been the smart thing to do. He just hoped she'd made it
off the continent before the goons started monitoring all flights.

The trouble was, with a price on his head, he was hardly a suitable
bodyguard for Mulder. Not the point, he reminded himself. He didn't
have an option in the matter. He'd kept Mulder away from that
spaceship and brought him down here for good reasons and those
wouldn't be served by leaving the man to his own devices in the
wilds of New Mexico.

He checked the clock again, another five minutes, another four
miles, still a couple of hours to go. Couldn't take any risks on
unfamiliar roads. He needed to get back there. He just hoped to God
that Mulder would be alive when he did.

--------

The FBI's manhunt was winding down.

The agents were divided. Half of them looked on Scully with pity in
their eyes; their sympathies honestly given to the grieving widow
of a soldier officially classified as missing in action but most
likely dead. The others managed to combine the pity with a little
contempt. She'd seen that look before too, on the faces of cops
dealing with abused wives, in the eyes of agents interviewing women
who seemingly knew nothing of their monstrous partner's misdeeds.

She wasn't quite sure which reaction she preferred. What the hell
did they know about her? What did they know about Mulder? They
thought they knew him, but all they really knew were the tabloid
headlines of his life - the ups and downs of his FBI career, the
outrageous expense claims, the designer suits and the smart-ass
remarks. They knew nothing.

"It seems to me that you're holding something back, Agent Scully,"
said Doggett. Business-like but polite, and with maybe a little
less of the damned pity and a little more determination.

"Such as?"

"Why you're so certain that he didn't just walk away."

Because he wouldn't - didn't really have quite the right ring to
it. She squared her shoulders, and looked Doggett coolly in the
eye. "Because I know him," she said. She knew him and they didn't.
She knew what they were getting at with their pitying glances and
guarded words. They thought the basement pariah had taken one look
at the auditor's report and the doctor's warnings, realized that
his working life would soon be over, seen professional failure and
death as his only prospects and he'd run away to hide.

Of course not. If he were convinced that the Bureau had become a
hindrance not a help then Mulder might turn his back on them. But
to turn his back on her? Not possible.

What about those brain scans that Doggett had showed her? Mulder
had lied to her about those, hadn't he? What about those mysterious
weekend trips? What about the freshly carved gravestone?

But no, there were logical explanations for those anomalies:
fabricated records from some unknown source, maybe even a false
trail left by Mulder himself to mask whatever he was really doing
on those missing days. Whatever the explanation, the fact remained
if Mulder had a choice then he would certainly be at her side. If
he had only a glimmer of a choice then he would have found a way to
tell her that he was alive.

Doggett frowned. "Sometimes it's the people closest to us we hide
from the most."


========
END of Part 4/12

TITLE: Consequential Loss
RATING: R for strong language
ARCHIVE: Ephemeral, Gossamer - yes. Others please ask.
AUTHOR: Joann H - joannhere@gmail.com

The complete story is now at:
http://www.cbcasa.com/new.htm

LEGALLY:
We all know the score. The characters are not mine, never will be.
They're owned by some combination of Fox, 1013 and CC.

For summary and notes on the status of the story please look
in Part 1.

=============

Another stop for gas and a detour around an emergency bridge repair
had helped push Krycek's "away" time to something like six days and
twenty-two hours. Call it a week, he told himself, surprised by his
attempt at evasion. Couldn't be helped. Anyway, by now Mulder was
either OK or not and whichever it was then a clear head and a
cocksure demeanor would be useful.

The truck he'd switched back to the night before kicked up dust and
stones in a cloud behind him as he swung onto the quarry's track.
He slowed a little, not that it improved things much. Why the hell
did it have to be in the middle of a damned wasteland?

The trouble with remote places is that every movement's visible,
and every change logged by a satellite's high-resolution cameras is
obvious. Krycek had to assume the place was still checked from time
to time. Just so long as it was only from "time to time" then there
was nothing to worry about. Only the desperately unlucky or the
cavalierly foolish would get caught by a routine trawl.

The aliens had no reason to look at the place at all. When they
destroyed the men working the site back in 76 they'd also delivered
a warning shot to the Consortium's chiefs. They'd left behind
sensors to look for trucks of magnetite leaving the quarry, but
provided those weren't tripped then the place was not somewhere
they would want to linger.

It wasn't a place that anyone would want to linger. Swallowing
hard, Krycek pulled up in front of the office building, tucking the
vehicle carefully under the shade of the unloading bay and away
from a satellite's prying eyes.

He checked the storage area first. The car's doors were wide open,
the trunk half filled with old file folders and Mulder's clothes.
By the look of the spider working to set up home in there, the
elderly Ford had been like that for a while. He checked the gauges,
it had been moved at some point during the week but it hadn't gone
far. Just enough to check that the thing was working, perhaps.

"Mulder," he shouted.

No reply. Not that he expected one. The man would surely have heard
the pickup coming. He would have wanted to see whoever got out and
Krycek would have spotted the surveillance in return.

Krycek ran up the stairs, two at a time, hoping that Mulder wasn't
watching him right now. He wouldn't want the agent to mistake
urgency for concern. Pushing the apartment's door open, he did a
quick tour. No Mulder. No surprise there. The kitchen counter told
him what he needed to know. The evidence: a glass that had once
contained water and an open box of Tylenol.

Krycek grumbled his complaints to keep the instinctive desire to
rush outside and start shouting Mulder's name from overriding his
judgment. "Got a headache, Mulder? Feeling a little rough? Why
don't you go and lie down? Course not. That'd be too easy."

When then? How long had Mulder been gone? The computer that Krycek
had turned on as soon as he walked into the living room had finally
come up. A few swift keystrokes and it was telling him more things
that he didn't want to know. Hundreds of files opened, some quickly
closed again, others obviously brooded over for hours. All
happening within three days of their arrival here. Which meant that
Mulder hadn't touched the machine for the past four days.

The map on the table told him that Mulder was preparing to run
away, back to an airport, back to DC presumably. Annoying perhaps,
but understandable. Yet he hadn't taken the car even though from
the looks of things he'd been preparing to. Surely Mulder hadn't
invited someone to come here?

A quick test said that the satellite phone hadn't been touched. The
cell phones were way outside their service area.

If someone had come for Mulder then it had been unsolicited and
therefore almost certainly unwelcome. Yet there were no signs of a
struggle. The shotgun was standing unused in its home close by the
door. The knife on the kitchen table had no bloodstains on its
blade. From the look of the eggshells, breadcrumbs and milky cereal
debris in the trash, Mulder's last meal had been breakfast. A big
breakfast. Bacon fat in the pan. Plates and cup left to dry on the
rack.

Mulder was up and awake and preparing for the long day ahead. The
long journey ahead? Even the towel on the edge of the tub confirmed
it. Mulder was a slob, but a tidy one. He might have left the towel
in a heap after drying himself, but he'd have hung it up the next
time he went in the room.

Mulder had taken a change of clothes, bought in an anonymous
Walmart on the journey down here, and placed them in an overnight
bag by the table. Maps, sunglasses, weapons, ammo, notepads. The
bottled water had been cold when Mulder put it there, the dribble
of condensation obvious from the puckering of the paper that he'd
stood it on. The paper was bone dry now of course. Which thought
made Krycek shudder a little. Mulder had left this room days ago
and even if he'd taken water with him then it was unlikely he'd
taken enough.

Mulder's service weapon was missing, but the spare clips were still
on the table. So was his ankle holster with the compact automatic
tucked safely inside. Just the laptop to slide back into its case
and a few more things to throw in the bag and Mulder would have
been ready to leave.

Which begged the question: he was ready to leave, so why hadn't he
gone? Why was the car still here?

A surprise attack catching him off guard just as he was preparing
to go? It seemed unlikely. Mulder, who sometimes seemed to lack the
instinct to survive, nonetheless had proven himself to have all the
required skills. In the area immediately surrounding the building
there were no indications of a struggle and no signs of vehicles
other than their own.

Krycek looked at the guns again. Anyone taking Mulder would have
wanted the weapons as well or else they'd have taken the opposite
stance and left Mulder's Sig Sauer on the table along with the
others. They'd certainly have wanted the laptop. Everything pointed
to Mulder having walked out of the building of his own free will
and without any particular emergency action in mind.

Unless it had started, unless his brain had forced him into action?
Three days - might that have been long enough? But where the hell
would he go without the car? Unless he'd been too ill too drive?

A taxi? It would have been a cool move on Mulder's part except for
the impossibility of calling one on an out of area cell phone, and
of course then he would have taken his stuff, not just left it
here. Had he gone on foot to a callbox somewhere and become
disoriented? Somewhere being the appropriate word. So far as Krycek
knew they were at least twenty miles away from anything that might
offer such a thing. A private house then? Another quarry maybe?
Something, miles away.

He shifted his gun temporarily into the prosthetic hand as he
scratched behind his ear. OK. He'd seen all there was to see up
here. Mulder had been out there somewhere for days so a five-minute
pause for reflection was a necessity not a luxury, but the time for
contemplation was up. Krycek knew he'd taken too damned long to get
back.

He hadn't seen any vultures circling on the way in but then why
would they need to circle if dinner had already been served? If
Mulder was still alive then Krycek was going to kick his ass.

Water, thermal blanket, knife, flashlight, duct tape, drugs; he
looked for anything else that might be useful. A moment of sudden
recall and he was struck by the irony. "As you do to Mulder and to
me - you do to all of mankind." The smoking bastard's final words:
equating himself with Mulder, equating himself with humanity in
general! Krycek threw his dirty laundry out of the backpack he'd
taken to DC and replaced it with a rescue kit of emergency
supplies.

Start at the office building and work outwards. He'd have to go on-
foot, at least this first time, though he would probably need the
truck to bring Mulder back. If Mulder could make a noise then
Krycek needed to hear it. Maybe if he made the signal to Mulder
loud enough? "I don't care what you call me, Mulder. Just call me."

Stopping at the rusty control panel by the outside door he studied
the terrain, reminding himself of the lay of the land before
delivering a short hoot then a long one, on the quarry's blast
warning siren. He paused for an instant, then gave a long, short,
long blast more. If Mulder had gone out and couldn't make it back
where would he have holed up?

He surveyed the horizon to get his bearings. Caves to the east.
Abandoned heavy machinery to the north. Nightmares where east met
north. Thirty men dead in less than fifteen seconds in a radiation
blast that had left machinery intact but had destroyed life in an
instant. The consortium's clean up crew had used explosives to
destroy anything that might tempt looters and burned or buried
anything incriminating, then left the site as fast as possible
afterwards. Krycek had read the report years ago but hadn't
realized how significant the place was until this last few months.

Nodded to himself. Northeast then.

Almost resigned to walking, he listened for a moment more and was
rewarded with a soft woof of sound. A single shot from some
distance? A pistol. Mulder's? In the city, he wouldn't have heard
the sound at all. Out here the problem was the echo. Both the
distance and the direction it had come from were difficult to
gauge, but it sounded like it came from the northeast, which was
exactly as he'd anticipated.

None of which mattered much compared to the big picture - Mulder
was alive and conscious, and not so very far away.

How much ammo did Mulder have left to signal with?

"Show some sense," Krycek mumbled, willing Mulder to read his
thoughts. If Mulder was in one of those caves then he was probably
going to need a few bullets to guide Krycek in. Certainly, relying
on Mulder to shout loud enough was a long shot at best. Krycek was
just relieved the man had been up to the job of squeezing the
trigger.

He decided to take the risk and use the truck. The shotgun and
pistols were loaded and ready to go; he patted his pocket to
confirm the spare rounds were in there.

Taking it slow, he headed out across the rutted surface of the
quarry, mindful that years of storms had rearranged the dust,
hiding potential hazards like jagged rocks and discarded tools.
After a moment he stopped and turned off the engine, shouted a,
"Now," and fired a single shot.

Another gun replied. OK. Right direction but still some distance to
go. He corrected his course and kept moving.

When he repeated the routine for the third time, the reply was loud
enough that he could hear the zing as the bullet hit metal. "Good
man," Krycek admitted. He was not only getting close, he now had
the added advantage of knowing that Mulder had some heavy machinery
parked in his firing line.

If he'd known Mulder was in good enough shape to speak only when
spoken to and not to waste bullets or vocal chords on moments when
no one was listening, then it'd have saved him a lot of worry.
Allowed himself a glimmer of relief at that.

Another drive. This time he knew exactly where he was heading.

Not in such good shape, Krycek realized as he approached the cave's
entrance. Good shape and Mulder would have started walking towards
him. At the very least, Mulder would be sitting outside ready to
make himself known. Krycek shouted again and caught a brief glimpse
of Mulder coming to the mouth of one of the caves and then ducking
back inside again.

"Poor bastard," he murmured, an accidental response swiftly tamped
down. Still it had to be bad if Mulder couldn't even venture
outside. How the hell was he going to get Mulder back to the main
building?

Krycek drove right up to the cave's entrance. Just inside, he found
his target sitting on the ground. Arms clinging to bent knees, head
resting on his chest. A ragged bundle of a man, panting as if that
last sortie into the cave's mouth only a few feet away had
exhausted him. Krycek spotted the drum of water that Mulder had
presumably been relying on and tried not to guess at the kinds of
hazards that might have been stewing up in there, then wondered if
maybe the gamma rays had sterilized everything they hadn't killed.
One thing at a time, at least Mulder was still alive.

"What? You aren't going to hold a gun on me?" asked Krycek,
desperate to see Mulder react. He moved to sit at the agent's side,
pinned the water bottle he'd brought with him in place between
plastic hand and jean-clad knee to open the top before pushing it
towards Mulder.

A faint shrug of acknowledgement but no words. No action either.

"Drink the water." This time Krycek lifted the bottle to Mulder's
lips. "Come on, tip your head back." Krycek cursed the prosthetic
arm; accurate enough to use to hold a weapon steady as he loaded a
fresh clip, good as a club in a fight, but not even up to the job
of maneuvering a dead weight federal agent into a suitable position
to drip water down his throat. Sudden flicker of memory at a
parched journey on a rusty ship. Maybe he should just throw the
water at him?

Fortunately Mulder seemed to get the message, lifting his head and
sharing the task of positioning the bottle.

Krycek, remembering the warnings he'd heard in too many encounters
with EMTs, suddenly felt compelled to say something. "Not too
fast."

Mulder obviously felt a similar compulsion to reply. "Fuck you,
Krycek."

------

Krycek had supplied Mulder with water, chocolate and a couple of
Valium, and even then it had taken three attempts and a lot of
pushing and shoving to get him moving.

Mulder had scrambled, crawled and finally clawed his way into the
truck's passenger seat, babbling in pain, tears misting over his
eyes, clutching his head as all the evils in the world paraded
across his thoughts in sickening panoramic technicolor, surround-
sound and feely-vision.

Well, perhaps not all the evils of the world. Maybe it was just
those in a fifty-mile radius or so.

Since undergoing a little butchery at the hands of the Cancerman's
quacks he'd felt the pain lingering in his head. Throbbing from
quiet to loud, sometimes fading to a whisper, but ever present, an
angry tingle that had sometimes turned into a roar of hurt. The
brain scans taken since the surgery had shown only the damage and
hadn't offered any possibility of a cure.

Yet, even during the worst of the pain and disorientation of the
past few weeks the telepathy had never risen above a murmur, easily
ignored as empathy or insight. But now there was no denying it; the
quarry had brought it back to full strength. The peculiar caves had
offered some protection from its affects. This apartment for
whatever reason seemed like sanctuary.

Krycek was keeping out of his way and had been doing so ever since
the brief incident when he'd attempted to manhandle Mulder into the
shower. The reasoning behind the move, Mulder now admitted, had
been benign and well-intentioned. Days of grime and sweat to scrub
away and a fever to bring down.

Krycek's black eye, though satisfying, had been pure dumb luck; an
ill coordinated lunge that took Krycek by surprise with its wild
inaccuracy. A comic flailing of arms that had ended with the man
stumbling backwards as he tried to keep Mulder from falling out of
the bathtub.

The showerhead had delivered the knockout punch. The recollection
as he glanced over at Krycek's slowly darkening bruise made Mulder
smile. Scowling, Krycek handed him a bowl of soup and walked away.
Mulder didn't say thanks.

Drowsy, a handful of Valium tended to have that effect noted
Mulder, uncomfortable with the self-diagnosis. Fresher though, the
shower had helped, mentally and physically. The food and drink was
letting him feel a little more human.

Feeling better because Krycek was here? The irony bothered him.
Little bubbles of laughter rose in his chest at the thought of how
low you had to get before Krycek's presence constituted an
improvement. "Got any more chocolate?"

Mulder could see Krycek weighing up his options; could see the
moment of indecision as the muscles in Krycek's shoulders tensed.
An explosion was imminent - laughter or violence? "Shit," Krycek
grumbled, turning smoothly to face Mulder, a sour expression on his
face.

Mulder laughed and Krycek looked horrified which made the agent
laugh even more. Mulder shook his head, blinking hard, trying to
chase the snorts of amusement away. Hysteria - just what he needed.
Krycek vanished back into the kitchen and Mulder let his head drop
low, struggling to combine breathing with laughter and failing
miserably.

When Krycek returned he was carrying a glass of milk, which he
placed on the table at Mulder's side. "Valium doesn't really work
very well on you, does it?"

"Didn't I warn you about that?" said Mulder, hiccupping through the
snorts.

"Drink the milk." Just a glimmer of a smile on Krycek's face now.
"So what next - Thorazine, Haldol, Prozac - chloroform?"

Bastard. Mulder scowled; Krycek was taking his life in his hands
with that little reminder of their trip down here. He glared up at
Krycek and saw that the flickers of a smile had been replaced by a
full-fledged flame. Anger fought briefly with amusement and Mulder
raised a single finger in ironic acknowledgement. "They make it
worse. Suppress my ability to control it."

Krycek nodded. "I saw you at the hospital when they took you in
last time - you were pacing."

"I'd have run if I could."

"Is that what happened here?"

"I heard screams. They sounded so close. I thought - "

"You thought they weren't just in your head."

"I was outside, checking the car. Getting ready to go."

"Stealing my computer?"

"You're surprised?"

"Going back to DC?"

"I left it too late. I got out there and heard the voices -
screaming. I ran towards them and it got worse. But I'd gone too
far, couldn't get back, had to take shelter in the cave." Mulder
paused, not ready for the conversation but aware that this might be
as ready as he would ever be. "Krycek - I know what you've done to
me."

"Me? I just did a few repairs."

Mulder's eyes slid shut. He didn't know what Krycek had done, not
really. Just knew that Krycek had brought him here for a reason and
that whatever "changes" had been happening before were nothing
compared to what was happening to him now. Knew that running back
to DC was no longer an option, at least not without heavy sedation
and a nursemaid at his side. "How?" he finally hissed.

There was a rapid-fire urgency in Krycek's delivery that belied his
too even tone. Rehearsed words. "This place amplifies the signals,
gets the neurons in your brain excited - just like they did when
you saw those drawings of the markings on that ship. The nanites I
injected should slow things down enough that your brain can reroute
the information flow - so you don't end up gibbering in a psych
ward again."

"A spin-off of your father's work?"

"Your father's too."

"I should kill you for this," said Mulder, conversationally casual.

"Yeah, you should. But you won't. You found your files?" asked
Krycek, tipping his head to point at the computer and getting a
brief nod in reply. "The most interesting file is in the 73 series
of course, that's when you really start to see the end results.
Telepathy, ESP, the usual stuff."

Of course. The thought more sobering than any drug. "Was Samantha
taken instead of me?"

"Bill Mulder thought if he hid you, it would be enough. They'd take
one look at her new test scores and assume she'd lost it."

He'd seen this at the Strughold Mine, his file overwritten with
hers. Had they done the same in the computer records too,
deliberately transposed results to hide him? Had Samantha died
because she wasn't what her tester's had anticipated, because she
wasn't him? "But the merchandise was fragile and it broke," said
Mulder, recalling the jargon they liked to use in their reports.

"They blamed it on hormone changes - pumped her full of drugs to
try to stop it."

Mulder shook his head, not wanting to believe.

"Why not? Half the world's top gymnasts were getting the same
treatment."

Fucker. He should kill the rat bastard, just to wipe the smile off
his face. But the fact was Krycek's smile wasn't there anymore and
it was the truth that hurt, not just Krycek's rendition of it.

Krycek's voice was quiet, good psychiatrist trying to coax the
overwrought patient down from the ledge. "How does it feel?"

Mulder studied Krycek for a moment, saw an expression that on
another man he might have mistaken for concern and responded to it,
despite it being Krycek. "Like hundreds of radio stations all
playing full blast, all wanting something. But I can ignore them,
if I focus. Can't focus when I'm high on drugs."

"And now?"

"Just whispers. All I can hear is you."

Krycek flinched, turned away, kept it brisk and business like. "The
building's coated in a special paint. Same thing the shotgun
cartridges are filled with."

"Kryptonite?" asked Mulder, not quite laughing.

"Magnetite."

"Which does what?"

"Best I can tell you is it acts like the control rods in a nuclear
reactor - regulating the effect. It can even stop it temporarily.
Too much and it acts as a shield trapping the signals within
itself. The right amount and it directs it, creates a kind of
positive feedback, amplifying it. It affects some kinds of cell
activity so drastically that it's toxic to certain lifeforms."

"So all I need is a hat made out of foil, painted with this stuff?"

Krycek shrugged.

Mulder moved in for the kill. "Or maybe that's what you need. To
keep me out."

"You don't want to know what's in my head."

Perhaps not, but he needed to know. Don't profile your friends; it
had been a self-preservation mantra since Quantico. But Krycek had
never been a friend. He could feel Krycek's discomfort, but got no
sense of the man beyond that. Later maybe. Once the drugs had worn
off completely.

---------

Today was another milestone. This was the first slideshow Scully
had watched down here in the X-Files office since Mulder
disappeared.

Too many memories demanding her attention, competing with whatever
Doggett needed to say. Pictures of puncture wounds on a young
victim's body in Bellefleur, years ago. Vampire activity in Texas.
Photos of crop circles in an English field - she briefly regretted
that scene; she could have joined him on the trip, used the
opportunity to see a little more of Mulder's life. But no, it would
be wrong to regret such a choice, she'd had a journey of her own to
make right then.

She looked across at Skinner and wondered if he could guess what
she was feeling. He shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable, and
she realized that he could probably understand it too well.

Not no