Chapter Text
Day Of Redemption
By Cathi K.
Carren McKenna joined the FBI later than most rookie agents. She had always had the ambition to work for the FBI, but an early marriage to a college classmate, which lasted only two years, had stalled her intended career. She was not surprised that she had been unhappy in marriage; she needed to be more than a wife. She had realized early on that it would not work out, and when Michael agreed with her decision, she was more relieved than sorry. Once she got past the demise of her marriage, she was more determined than ever to try for the Bureau. She was sure that she would qualify; she was intelligent, strong, and inquisitive, with a driven personality.
Most new agents soon develop a focus on a particular aspect of the FBI, and Carren found herself especially drawn to forensics. Her interest in the study of forensics was encouraged by her instructor in forensic pathology, Special Agent Dana Scully. Scully held a medical degree but had never practiced medicine as such; instead, she was recruited into the Bureau shortly out of medical school. Carren knew Scully by reputation before she even took the course - most of the younger agents had heard stories about the "X-Files", the out-of-this-world investigations that Scully and her partner Fox Mulder had made THEIR focus in the Bureau. Carren didn't believe in extraterrestrials, or in any of the other weird cases the X-Files had produced, and she wondered how a woman of science could feel otherwise. Carren had also heard the stories of Mulder and Scully's strange attachment to each other. Apparently at various times over the past several years, they had both come close to being dismissed from the FBI, and each time such a thing seemed possible, the two agents had fought hard to keep their badges and to maintain their partnership. In fact, for a few months not long ago, the X-Files had been closed and the agents re-assigned to such menial and routine assignments as background checks. Carren could imagine how someone as motivated as Dana Scully would despise such an assignment, because background checks were the very first job that Carren herself had been given once she received her FBI badge and her official title of Special Agent. She had been in that office now for twenty long weeks, and was almost desperate to be assigned to a REAL case, one that might involve using at least some of the forensic skills she had learned from Agent Scully.
Carren looked at the clock on the wall and was surprised to see that it was after eight o'clock. She put in extra hours on most days, in part because she hoped her superiors would notice her efforts and give her more responsibility. But it was also true that she had nothing else to do once she left the office at night. She preferred to be here. Still, her cat was waiting patiently at home to be fed and loved, so Carren stood up and turned off her computer. She picked up her attaché case and her coat and switched off the lights in the room before she walked out the door and into the hallway.
Carren was almost to the front entrance of the J. Edgar Hoover Building when she saw Dana Scully coming in her direction from another hallway. She slowed her steps so they would meet. "Agent Scully," she said as they paused by the doorway.
"Agent McKenna," said Scully solemnly before she offered her friendliest smile to Carren. "This is the first time I've seen you since you graduated and became an agent. I'd like to say congratulations."
Carren took the hand that Scully held out to her and shook it. "I appreciate that, Agent Scully," she said as she smiled back.
"Where are you headed?" asked Scully as they walked out of the building. "Anyone waiting for you at home?"
Not anymore, Carren thought to herself. And isn't that the way I wanted it? "No," she told Scully. "I don't have any special plans."
"Why don't we have some dinner, kind of a belated celebration? Does that sound all right to you?" Scully paused for a moment. "I don't mean to put you on the spot, Carren."
"Oh, not at all, Dana." She blushed. "I'm sorry, Agent Scully. I don't know why I called you by your first name."
Scully laughed. "I don't have a problem with people calling me by my first name, Carren." she said. "There are some people who I wish WOULD call me by my first name, at least once in awhile. It would sound kind of nice for a change." Scully thought of Mulder, who she did not dare to call by HIS first name of Fox. Nobody called him Fox. She never did, as much as she was sometimes tempted to do it just to tease him.
"We can walk to the place I'm thinking about, Carren. It's only a few blocks, if you don't mind." Scully and Carren crossed the street and started walking up the block.
Neither of them noticed the dark-haired man who watched them as they passed by the car he sat in. If Scully had seen him, she would have been on her cell phone to Mulder in seconds, to warn him that Alex Krycek was back and his intentions were, as always, unknown.
*******
Alex Krycek sat behind the wheel for at least ten more minutes before opening the door of the car and getting out. He wasn't too worried about leaving the car where he might get a ticket. Nobody was ever going to connect this car to him, nor would they ever be able to find him if they did. Krycek moved in the shadows, both literally and figuratively. Even he was barely sure who he was any more, or who he wanted to be. I wonder, he thought to himself, why I started traveling on this road to my own destruction. Alex Krycek knew just enough about his own past to look to that for an explanation of who he had become. He was an orphan; his parents had been Russian emigres who had disappeared a few days before his eighth birthday. He'd been raised in numerous foster homes that did not exactly "foster" his self-worth as anything more than an unpaid slave and scapegoat for various members of his many so-called "families". All it did for Alex was to harden him, in body and in heart. Escaping that life when he was just 16, he had lived on the streets for two years before meeting the man who would change his life. He remembered the day they first met as though it were a heartbeat ago.
Krycek was determined to break into the car of the man who just seconds ago had almost run him over in the middle of the street. He had just turned 18 and was now free of the threat of being found and returned to the foster care system. He planned to leave the city he lived in for a new life somewhere he'd never been before. That part would be easy; he'd never been anywhere else but here. But he had nothing at all, and he knew he couldn't go far on nothing. The idiot who'd been driving the nice car he was looking over had pulled suddenly to the side and almost hit Alex, who'd been stepping off the curb. The guy had gotten out of the car and looked at him like he didn't even exist. Now Krycek was going to make him pay for both of those insults.
He was very good at breaking into cars, he'd been committing this particular crime for two years. He soon had this one open and the radio out before anyone noticed him. Just for the hell of it, he jammed his screwdriver into the ignition and messed it up just enough so that Mr. Bigshot would have a hard time getting home.
He backed out of the car door onto the sidewalk and felt something hard against his back. He looked over his shoulder and saw the car's owner holding a gun much too close to him. He realized he'd made a bigger mistake than usual this time.
"Get back in the car, boy, right now. Don't be stupid." The man gave him a small shove and he sat down in the passenger seat. The man closed the door and came around to the driver's side. Climbing in, he looked down at the broken ignition and shook his head; then he calmly opened the ignition column and hot-wired the car. He looked over at Alex Krycek and said, "Do you think you're dealing with an amateur here?"
It had been fifteen years since Krycek had met the man he thought of as the Smoking Man. In that time, he had gone from fearing him to respecting him, but from respect he'd gone back to fear. The man was much more than even Krycek had ever known, and he'd learned quite a lot about him in fifteen years. Only months ago, he would have done anything the man told him to do, and without question. But since he'd discovered that the man had shot and presumably killed his own son, Krycek no longer trusted him at all. He knew his time with the Smoking Man was coming to a fast and deadly conclusion. He just hoped that he could make some things right before that happened.
********
Agents Scully and McKenna were waiting for the dinner they had ordered to be served. Carren wanted to let Scully be the first one to speak; she wanted to see what Scully would bring up. Carren was always thinking in that investigative mode now. Maybe later she could get Scully to talk about the X-Files.
"So Carren, I imagine your family is very proud of your success," Scully said as she stirred Sweet and Low into her iced tea. "Can I ask you where you grew up?"
Carren paused for a moment to consider her answer. This was something else she found herself doing since she'd started at the FBI Academy. "I spent my childhood in New York City," she replied. "I lost my parents while I was at college, so I continued to put myself through school at City College while I worked to pay the bills."
"How did you come to work for the FBI?"
"I always wanted to be an FBI agent, since I was ten years old," Carren told her. "But as it happened, I married after I graduated from college, and I didn't expect to ever fulfill that ambition. The marriage, though...well, that wasn't right either."
"So you're not still married?" Scully asked.
"No, not for a couple of years now," Carren answered. "I applied to the FBI Academy on the day after my divorce became final. I was worried that they might not take me; I only had a bachelor's degree in psychology and I thought I might be older than desireable for a new agent. I was very pleased to be accepted into the Academy after just one interview."
"I can honestly say I'm not surprised to hear that you were," remarked Scully. "I saw you as a bright student and I'm sure you'll enjoy your work and do well." She considered asking Carren how she had lost her parents, but she knew it was too soon to get that personal. Scully had become used to relating to almost no one other than Mulder, and she was very careful about who she allowed herself to know. She thought that Carren was just a bit younger than her, and in this she was correct. Carren was 30 years old that year, and Scully would turn 35. Scully was so ambivalent about her own career in the FBI now that she hardly knew what to say to Carren about hers.
After they had finished eating, Scully announced that she needed to return to the FBI Building to leave a folder for Mulder in his office. "If you want to go with me, Carren, I'll give you a ride home when we're finished."
Carren nodded her agreement and they left the restaurant. As they walked back down the street, she decided to bring up the X-Files.
"Agent Scully," she began, and was pleased when Scully said, "I though you were going to call me Dana."
"Dana, would you tell me about the X-Files? I just can't understand how a doctor, a scientist, could seriously investigate unnatural phenomena. Don't you believe that everything that happens has a rational explanation?"
Scully had expected Carren to bring up the X-Files sooner or later. She rarely discussed the subject with anyone but Mulder, and she wondered what Carren would say and think if she knew even a small part of what Scully and Mulder had seen over the years they'd been partners. She found that she was enjoying Carren's respect and attention and she was surprised to realize that she had missed having a "girlfriend" to talk to. But to talk about the X-Files? She didn't know if she was ready, or if Carren was.
"I'd like to think that there is a scientific explanation for the things we've seen," she answered. "But sometimes you just have to give up on trying to find the answers." How true that is, she thought to herself.
Once again they crossed the street in front of the imposing FBI building and walked through the front door. They passed the guard stations and took the elevator down.
"Mulder's office is in the basement?" Carren asked in surprise.
"Yes, and I spend most of my time here also," said Scully. "We're used to it."
Scully reached out and turned the knob on Mulder's door. She and Carren entered and Scully switched on the light. Both women jumped as the door closed shut behind them.
"Hello, Agent Scully," said Alex Krycek, smiling thinly. "It's been too long."
"Not long enough, Krycek," Scully answered as he motioned with the gun he was holding, indicating that she and Carren should take seats at the desk. They sat down and Scully glanced at Carren before she asked quietly, "What is it you want, Krycek? You must be crazy sneaking in here like this."
"Not crazy, Scully. Desperate. I came looking for Mulder, but now you can find him for me. I want to talk to him, I HAVE to talk to him. His life and mine and maybe yours, too, depend on it."
********
Mulder sat in his car in front of Scully's apartment. He'd been waiting for her to come home from work for over an hour, and he was getting frustrated. There were some things that he wanted to discuss with her before their meeting with A.D. Kersch in the morning, and Scully had a file that Mulder would need at the meeting. He couldn't understand what could be keeping his partner. Normally if she had plans after work, she would have told him. He hoped that nothing was wrong. He was just about to try calling Scully on her cell phone when his own phone began to ring. He punched the "talk" button and said, "Mulder."
********
Krycek had explained to Scully that his need to talk with Mulder was real and immediate. "I'm very afraid for all of us right now, Agent Scully," he said. If it had been anyone but the seemingly heartless Alex Krycek, Scully would have thought she heard his voice tremble. What could have affected Krycek so badly, she wondered. She started to feel his fear herself. Could
Carren feel it too? In her calmest voice, she said to Krycek, "Do you want to tell me what this is all about?"
"No way, Scully, not until you have Mulder with you. Can you call him and have him come over?" Then Krycek looked at Carren as if just noticing she was still there. "And can you send your friend away before he gets here? You don't really want her around to hear the things I have to say to Mulder, not unless she's involved in some way that I don't know about." But now Krycek was wondering if the stranger sitting at the desk with Scully was perhaps important after all. Maybe he could use this situation to his advantage. How better to make sure Mulder met with him than to hold a fellow agent as security, so to speak.
"You know, Scully, I think I need some more time to think about this before I talk to Mulder," he said slowly. A plan was forming in his mind. "I'm going to leave now but I'll be in touch real soon. You talk to Mulder and let him know I'm looking for him. Tell him it's very, very important that we meet within the next 24 hours. I'll be getting back to you for an answer and to set up the meeting." Krycek opened the door of Mulder's office and stepped into the hall. "I'm sure you know better than to do something foolish in the meantime." He shut the door behind him.
Scully and Carren looked at each other. Scully didn't have time to think of what to say to Carren before the younger woman asked, "Is that man part of the X-Files mystery?"
"Yes, you could certainly say that," Scully answered as she looked down at the file folder she still held in her hands. "Carren, I think it would be a good idea if you went on without me. I need to contact Mulder and we need to work this thing out."
"But Dana, maybe I could help. I am a trained agent, you know."
You haven't had any training that could ever help you understand what's happening here, thought Scully. For just a moment she considered taking Carren into her confidence, at least in part - after all, she had now met Krycek, and that put her into the middle of a unstable situation.
"All I can tell you right now is that Alex Krycek is a very dangerous person. We're lucky that he left without anything worse happening. Carren, I want you to take my cell phone number and my home number, and give me yours also. That way we can keep in touch in case we need to reach each other."
Scully walked with Carren to the door of the office. "And Carren, please, don't talk to anyone else about what happened here tonight. I'll call Mulder and tell him everything and we'll decide what to do. He may feel that you shouldn't be involved in this situation at all."
Carren was very disappointed as she left Mulder's office. She did not know the truth about the man who'd held her and Scully at gunpoint, and for some reason she felt compelled to find out more about him. She had not been immune to his dark, almost fearsome good looks, nor to the sense of danger that surrounded him. She knew that she would try to get Scully to tell her more about the man tomorrow.
As she exited the FBI Building and stood at the curb, trying to spot a cab, she felt a hand take hold of her arm.
"Don't say anything," she heard Alex Krycek's voice tell her. "I want you to come with me in my car."
"Why would I do that?" she asked him. "Are you forcing me or something?"
"If you want to think about it that way, then yes, I am. I think it would be for the best all around if we spent some time together while I wait to talk to Mulder. I'm pretty sure he won't let another agent be held hostage just to keep from meeting with me."
"Are you serious?" Carren said as he led her around the corner to where his car was parked. "Are you really taking me hostage?" She couldn't believe how fast this had happened. Why hadn't she or Scully forseen this possibility when she left the FBI Building alone? What should she do? Carren allowed herself a small chill of fear before Krycek opened the passenger door of his car and motioned her inside.
"I suppose I am taking you hostage. But not in a hostile way, all right? It's just insurance to be certain that Scully will make Mulder understand that he has to see me."
"But they don't even know you have me," Carren started to say. Krycek looked at her for a moment before replying.
"They'll know when I want them to know," he told her.
********
"Mulder, it's me." Mulder heard Scully's voice on the other end of the cell phone. He smiled to himself. How many times, how many conversations had begun in this very same way?
"Scully, where are you? I'm sitting outside of your apartment building right now, waiting for you to come home. Have a hot date or something?" Mulder knew perfectly well that Scully hadn't had a date in a very long time. Nor had he. Their lives were entwined together so completely that neither of them cared to look outside of their unique relationship for something different.
"Mulder, I'm sitting at the desk in your office. I had gone to dinner with a new agent, a young woman who was in my forensics class, and we came back to your office so I could leave that folder for you. Unfortunately, when we walked in, someone was waiting for us. Alex Krycek."
"Krycek!?" Mulder was very angry to think that Krycek had managed to get into the FBI Building and into his office. His rage was compounded as he thought of Krycek with Scully, and him not being there for her. Not to mention that another agent, who should know nothing about Krycek or the X-Files, had gotten involved as well.
"What did he want, Scully? He didn't hurt you, did he?" Mulder knew that if Alex Krycek ever did anything to hurt Scully, the man would be dead by Mulder's hand before he could worry about it happening.
"Mulder, he says he has to talk to you; that it's a matter of life and death."
"Of course it is, Scully. With Krycek there's always death involved somehow." Mulder tried not to think about how Alex Krycek had murdered Mulder's father in cold blood. There was nothing he would put past Krycek.
"Scully, stay there in my office, all right? Lock the door and wait for me. I'm coming over right now."
"All right, Mulder. I'll be here."
Mulder pressed the "off" button on his phone, and in his office, Scully did the same.
********
Krycek's car had stopped at the corner, where the signal was red. Carren noticed that the car was black, and somehow she was not surprised. It fits him, she thought, it goes with the whole strange feeling of darkness that she felt all around him. To her surprise and dismay, she realized that she was seeing Alex Krycek as some kind of romantic anti-hero. Carren wondered what had happened to her investigator's objectivity. She knew she should definitely be afraid of this man that Scully had warned her was very dangerous. She suspected that he was also extremely unpredictable. She just hoped that he wasn't too unstable as well. She tried to shift into her role as an FBI agent; perhaps if Krycek didn't see her as a victim, she would get through this and come out of it with something that would help Scully and Mulder. She was determined to show them that she could take care of herself in a crisis situation.
"Where are you taking me, Alex?" Carren asked. She hoped that calling him by his first name would make him relax enough so that he wouldn't do anything to hurt her. She wanted to believe what he'd told her, that he didn't plan to use her in a hostile way.
"I can't go back to the place I stayed last night," he told her with a small smile. "I didn't plan this, you know. It just sort of came to me in Mulder's office. I really don't know where we're going right at the moment."
"You know, Alex, that doesn't exactly sound like the work of a hardened criminal. I mean, I was led to believe that you're a real bad guy."
"Yeah, that's right. I AM a real bad guy. I've done a lot of very bad things. It's just that right now I don't feel one of those bad things coming on, so don't worry."
Carren wasn't sure where this was going. It was almost as though they were joking with each other. Keep that word "hostage" in your head, she reminded herself. This isn't your friend sitting next to you. It's the Real Bad Guy. She remembered something she'd heard in reference to the X-Files, like a gag at the Academy: Trust No One. Maybe she should take that to heart for the present.
Carren remembered something then - her cat was at home alone and had not been fed since morning. She'd been headed home to do that when she'd met Scully in the lobby and gone to dinner with her. That had been almost three hours ago!
"Excuse me, Alex. If you don't have an immediate destination in mind, I was wondering if we could stop by my apartment so that I can feed my cat. We don't have to stay there or anything." For a moment, she started to question the wisdom of letting this man know where she lived. But it was too late.
"This wouldn't be any kind of a trick, would it? And what is your name, anyway?" Krycek sounded a little confused.
"My name is Carren McKenna, Alex. Special Agent McKenna, in case you didn't realize that. I work for the FBI also."
"I kind of figured that out, what with you coming and going from the building." Krycek actually did smile at her now. She felt silly and embarassed. She tried to take back the conversation.
"Yes, well, about going to my apartment? Could we do that? You could decide then where you want to go after we're through there."
"All right, Special Agent Carren McKenna," he said, looking at the changing light and the cars in front of him pulling away. "Just tell me which way to go."
TBC...