So Many Monsters by Brenda Antrim I used to be a lunatic from the gracious days It took weeks for the pain to subside. He didn't waste any of that time. He knew, too soon, he would be recalled to Moscow. He had answers to give his 'superiors', and questions of his own to ask. But as he watched an old man pack clean snow on the ruined stump of his arm, Alex Krycek did as he had been trained to do his entire life. He watched, he listened, he manipulated those around him into giving him what he needed in order to survive. "They say the injections will save your life, but I do not believe them. It is better this way." Whispers, in the dark, over low fires, between unlettered peasants, hinting at truths they could never understand. "Black poison stealing our children." "Those left. Those who do not disappear with the light, in the middle of the night." Truths he understood all too well. "So many gone." "It used to be a child's tale, told to frighten other children. Now I think the Devil himself has come, with demons at his side. They will take all of us before they are finished." "And we will no longer be ourselves!" Krycek was entering a new nightmare. "They are monsters. Yuri saw one, he said. Before his village was burnt to the ground." "Yuri's a lunatic." "Sometimes the truth comes from the mouths of lunatics and children, when adults are too blind to see." Six months, an assassination, a trip to Hong Kong and another to the States, and a short interval with Fox Mulder later, he made his move. Back to Tunguska. Back where it all began to make sense. His rank was still in force, and he used it. Within another four months, the networks were in place. A small, deadly cadre of Russian soldiers under his temporary command, for as long as he needed them, and a grass roots intelligence gathering network of rumors, whispers, tales told in the night, from those most in position to know. He listened, and planned, and wove his plans. And when a middle aged woman from Temirtau with a microchip in the back of her neck spoke to him of learning, and expanding, and our friends from above, he knew it was time to put his plans in motion. I used to feel woebegone and so restless nights The night lasted forever. Fox Mulder, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigations, Psychologist, Profiler. Spooky. Lost. For so long, he had held to the security and the strength of his convictions. He knew what had happened to his sister Samantha. He was used to people calling him crazy. There was some truth to that allegation, how could there not be, considering what he had been through, what he knew to be true? He held fast to that truth through years of hell, years of disbelief and scorn, years of distrust and paranoia. He had believed, and the strength of that belief had allowed others to admit that they, too, believed. He didn't know what to believe anymore. His nights were filled with images torn from his waking life. Flashing lights, paralyzed helplessness, fascinated horror as his sister floated beyond his grasp. As his partner, the inimitable Dana Scully, was kidnapped, experimented upon, used as a lab rat, with him unable to do a damned thing to stop it. Having to bear the responsibility for that, for her suffering, her barren state, her cancer, all the horrors life at his side had led her to see and experience. His nightmares were part memory, part guilt, part fear, part paranoia, wholly justified. Now they were changing. Oh, the lights were still there. But now, a face stood in the shadows. A tall, emaciated man with a cigarette in his hand and a half smile twisting his lips. Blood on his chest, but he was still breathing, thin streams of smoke curling around his head like a demon breathing fire. Beside him, another man, shorter, blockier. His face melted, becoming Scully, becoming a stranger, becoming Krycek, becoming his father, becoming himself. Always, no matter the face, the right hand held steady. Clenched in the fist, a small, metallic cylinder with a short, sharp spike extending from the end. Green viscous fluid dripped along it, sizzling as it puddled on the ground, eating into the asphalt beneath the alien's feet. Further back, in the shadows, there was tank after tank of salty water, embryonic fluid bathing the fetuses within. Curled about themselves, eyes tightly closed, waiting. All of them wore Scully's face. Then the scene would shift, the lights flashing like a strobe going off behind his eyelids. Scully was there, strapped to a table, her stomach distended under a sheet, a probe drilling through her abdomen, pinning her in place. She was screaming, her mouth wide, but no sound was escaping. He was there, too, on another table. Chicken wire bound him as tightly as an infant in swaddling, biting into his skin, burning his eyeballs, creasing his lips. No sound came from him, either, although his throat strained with the effort. Had to close his mouth, couldn't let it in. Let it in? It? Crawling all over him. Slick, slimy, cool to the touch, with a presence, an intelligence, that was undeniable. Not mindless, but directed. Capture. Takeover. Control. Wisps of black filling his nostrils, clogging his windpipe. Washing over the surface of his eyes. The pressure built, built, until he exploded from the diaphragm, flash-fire arcing through every cell in his body, incinerating him, the table, Scully, the shadows... His screams woke him. Staring up at the dim ceiling, just now lightening with the first rays of dawn through the small window over his computer desk, he came to a startling conclusion. He wasn't mad. But he had been mistaken. For a very long time. Something inside him tore open and bled at the thought. The loss of conviction left a ragged little hole in his heart. For the moment, the hole was masked by fear and anger, his typical crusader's zeal turned from one course to another with compulsive conviction. But as thoughts swirled around his head, and he decided on a tangential course of action from everything that had gone before, the hole bled. There was some comfort in an enemy he could see. Had seen, had fought, had considered part and parcel of the conspiracy against him, and now wanted, so desperately, to believe was the whole of the conspiracy. He debuted his radically changed views at a collegiate visiting lecturers panel, and faced once more the anger and dismay of disappointed believers who didn't want to hear what he had to say. Their disgust stung. He was used to it. Then Doctor Heintz Werber, the psychologist who had fed and shaped his own forged memories, stepped out from an aisle to block his path, and brought him to meet a new victim of his beliefs. A woman who was convinced that the aliens had not only landed, but wanted to take all the earthlings up in a big hug and teach them any manner of wonderful things. A woman who had been nursing her psychosis for years, bolstered of late by his own deluded ravings. In the strength of his new conviction, he turned away from her. The hole tore a little further, and the blood flowed. My aching heart would bleed for you to see The more rumblings Krycek heard, the more the alarm tightened the pit of his stomach. Slowly, carefully, he began to reel in his information, carefully placing each small piece of the puzzle together. As the picture took form, he began to implement what he could of a plan to keep himself in one piece. He stared around the dimly lit interior of the small peasant hut. Four men, Treplev, Shabelski, Lopakhin and Astrov, huddled around the open fire, warming their hands, drinking their tea, and waiting for orders. He smiled, a friendly widening of the mouth that didn't quite show his teeth. In soft, guttural Russian, he asked for their reports. "Word is spreading among the villagers," Shabelski offered. His large frame contrasted oddly with the withered stump of his left arm. "They say there will be a gathering, and that God will come and gather them up." "Again," added Treplev. He was a ferret of a man, small, inquisitive, and surprisingly fearless. "These are the ones who say they've been taken before, say they've seen the face of God." Lopakhin, the scholarly one, the village teacher, made a thoughtful noise. "Or the Devil, maybe. They talk of lights, and pain, and memories that make no sense. And they speak of a voice that calls out to them, tells them to come." "Come where?" Krycek asked quietly. Treplev shrugged. "Astrakhan. Novosibirsk, maybe. Runyy." "Somewhere in Kazakhstan," Astrov joined the conversation. He was the youngest of the five in years, but one of the oldest in experience. Afghanistan had seen to that. He hadn't needed the peasants to cut off his arm. The Mujahadin had done that for him, with shrapnel from a well-aimed shell. "The talk is getting louder, although it's still in the back rooms, out among the trees, only with those they think they can trust. I've heard Ekibastuz, maybe Semey. Maybe Temirtau." Krycek nodded. That's where their prophet was. That's where the faithful would gather. Leaning forward slightly, catching his team's eyes, he spoke softly. "It will come soon, and it is sooner than it should be. Something is happening, and we need more information to find out what it will be. Keep your ears open, and stay invisible. When you get anything that points to a date or to one place in particular, get it to me. Fast. We won't have a lot of time, and we have to get there first." The other men nodded their agreement, tossed the remains of their cold tea into the fire, and headed out into the frigid night. He watched the door shut behind the last broad back before turning to a small cabinet set under the table. Pulling out a short wave radio, he checked the time and set the dials. There was no wait for reception—she was as anxious as he to find out what was going on. "News?" Short and to the point. That was his Marita. "Some. Not much. An area, restless natives. Indications of disorganization and some haste on the part of Our Friends." "Anything specific?" "Look to the East," he smiled as he said it. "And there will come a great light." She didn't bother to reply before cutting the connection. He carefully replaced the set and settled closer to the fire. It wasn't that he didn't trust her. Well, true, he didn't trust her. But he didn't trust anyone, himself included. No, he wanted to get there first. See how fast she got there on his heels. See just how good her own information gathering network had become. He was not one to surrender trump cards unless they were forced from his hand. And on that front, the oil aliens owed him. Big time. Three days later, Lopakhin strained to listen as two of his young charges were discussing plans overheard from parents late at night. There was a place, and a time, and a meeting settled. He finished putting away his books, and bundled himself up in his coat and muffler. By four o'clock that afternoon, he was in place, in the heart of a deep stand of trees by the small clearing mentioned by one schoolboy. He breathed shallowly, a hand feathered over his mouth to disperse the steam from his breath. Less than half an hour later, he recognized the fathers of the two boys heading into the clearing. The meeting was early, it seemed. Before he could complete the thought, a nightmare vision from hell stepped from the thicket. He opened his mouth instinctively to scream, his horror overcoming his need to remain undiscovered. The face was melted flesh, a mutilated mask atop a huge hulking body. It lifted a pipe, braced its legs, and the world disappeared in flames. Unremitting pain ate at him as the fire raced over his body. In seconds he was a human torch, echoing the fate of the two other men. Then there was blessed darkness, and nothing. The teacher's disappearance was a nine day wonder in the village. They were used to people disappearing in the dead of night, but had counted themselves safe when they had amputated the Devil's Arm, so the camp soldiers would not take them. Now, with three grown men missing, all previously cut, it appeared that the camp needed more laborers. The people huddled in groups, talking very quietly or not at all. No one went out at night unless it was an emergency, and an emergency like that wasn't about to happen. Petya Astrov didn't like it. It didn't smell right to his soldier's instincts. There was an enemy threatening the village, and not just from the camp. A week after the three men went missing, he clothed himself in Spetznaz black from his old days, holstered his contraband automatic pistol, and let himself out into the night. A reconnaissance of the perimeter of the village yielded nothing. Spiraling deeper into the woods, eyes darting in all directions in a disciplined scan for enemies, he penetrated deeper and deeper into the forest. Four kilometers into the wood, he heard it. Faint. Hissing. Strange. Unlike anything he'd heard before. He froze, going still as a shadow, only his eyes moving. The hands came out of nowhere. They wrapped around his throat, cutting off his air. Trained muscles responded with martial precision, but the strength in those hands was inhuman. The world went gray, his gun sliding from his one-handed grip, his legs dangling uselessly. When the light returned to his eyes, it was through a filter. Iridescent black floaters slid past his pupils, but he wasn't aware of them. His hand dipped toward the ground, searching for the discarded weapon. Before the fingers could make contact, there was a burst of fire from behind him. Astrov never felt the flame that killed him. The alien inside him did, and it screamed in silent agony as it writhed inside its host body, unable to seep away, immolated too quickly to escape. A mutilated face watched without eyes as the charred remnants of an alien and its unwilling host crumbled into the moist undergrowth. It was the price of freedom. And his people would have freedom. Krycek was getting nervous. Time was growing short, he could feel it in his gut, in the short hairs on the back of his neck. They were bristling, telling him he was missing something big, and he didn't have the margin of error he needed to miss this one. He warned his remaining two cohorts to keep themselves as invisible as they could, but to get the information that he needed. At any cost. They paid. Mikhail Shabelski was used to hiding in plain sight. People, even those who should have known better, saw his placid face and overgrown body much as they might a cow, just one of the livestock, part of the scenery. He was careful to maintain that image of docile stupidity. It had saved him more than once. Digging away at the nearly barren soil, ostensibly breaking up the stones in the ground to prepare it for planting, he eavesdropped on two women sorting vegetables nearby. They were clearly frightened, not just by the imminent return of god to take them away again, but by the way their menfolk were disappearing around them. They spoke of voices, and his ears pricked. "It will be soon," one said plainly to the other. "I can feel it, calling me, waking me in the night." "I feel it, I know," the other agreed. "It's getting stronger. Pulling at me." They moved beyond his hearing range, and he filed the information away for future report. Needing to hear more of the conversation, feeling he was close to the information they needed, he casually tossed his tools into the basket and wiped his hands on his thighs. Straightening with deceptive slowness, he meandered in their wake. As they passed the baker's shop near the end of the dirt track, he felt a whisper of movement and turned instinctively toward it. The loop of wire around his neck slit his throat with his own forward motion. Strong hands dropped the ends of the loop, caught at the back of his jacket and hefted the dead weight into a pile of rubbish behind the rickety row of buildings. There was no way to hide a body this big, but the owner of the hands didn't have time to care. She would be leaving this hole very soon. The old women had given her what she needed to know. The village resembled a ghost town. The disappearances had been unsettling, but not uncommon. A murdered body behind the baker's was something else entirely. Andrei Treplev was working on autopilot, his mind nearly frozen with a combination of uncommon fear and desperate need to find out what the hell was going on with his comrades. Lurking in the corner of the common room at what passed for a pub, he heard it. A name. Astrov had been right. Very early in the morning two days after Shabelski's body was found, he snuck around to the back of Aleksander Krycek's cottage. "Come in, Andrei Vassilyevich," Krycek invited softly. Treplev slipped in the door and scuttled up to the fire. "We're the only ones left," he began, and Krycek cut him off with an abrupt gesture before he could continue. "And even we won't be here much longer if we don't find out what the hell is going on." "I think I know." He gulped a breath, then continued under the force of Krycek's expectant glare. "It is Kazakhstan." He outlined what he had heard, and Krycek drank it all in. Then a smile crossed his face, and Treblev shook. He never wanted to see that Devil's grin directed at him. "Good work, my friend. Now, I will take it from here." He stared intensely at Treblev, and the older man barely restrained himself from making the sign of the cross to protect himself. "You must stay here. Continue the work we've begun. There is going to be trouble, and we need all the help we can get when it comes." Treblev nodded, and Krycek smiled at him again, god help him. Krycek nodded at the door, and he forced his trembling knees to carry him out into the day, breathing deeply. Yes, he could stay here, and he could gather information, and he could prepare the best he could for whatever the military would unleash on them. He had done it all his life. He would do it until they took his life. He knew no other way to live. It was the work of two telephone calls to Moscow and one personal visit to the gulag at Tunguska, but he had his unit and he had his receptacle. Within the week, he had his gathering. By the time he got there, he had a hell of a lot of roasted meat and very few answers. Happily, she got there after he did. Because along with all the dead ones, there was one live one. And the live one was his trump card. He kissed off Marita, putting on a good show for the blue helmets, gathered up his prize, and headed for Tunguska. The boy Dmitri was a tough nut. He hadn't wanted to talk, not at all. Krycek had needed to be tougher than the boy, and eventually he had. Of course, there was some residual damage where he'd had to beat the truth out of him, but he had at least some of the answers that he needed. There was indeed something major going on. Warring groups of aliens. Some containing oil aliens, as he had, as he was now immune to doing. As Mulder had, and was now immune to carrying. Others, holding flame throwers, pre-empting the work of the oil aliens, charring their willing hosts before those hosts could sacrifice themselves on the altar of interstellar good will. It was a fucking world war on a universal scale. Them versus them with us caught in the middle. It made his head ache. He handed the boy to the good doctors at the gulag, determined to safeguard his information the best way he knew how... lock it away as a lab rat where no one would ever hear him scream. As he stepped from the room where the doctor was gently cleaning the boy preparatory to strapping him to a table and pumping him full of alien spoor, his eye was caught by a small vial on the tray by the door. They had done it. His eyes lit up. He pocketed one of the vials, stared into the room, and made adjustments to his plan. Perhaps there was a way to keep his information, and still have something of great worth to barter to his former masters in the Consortium. It was certainly worth the try. Things didn't quite work out the way he'd hoped. They so seldom did. Krycek managed to contain the alien inside the boy's body by the simple expedient of sewing the facial orifices closed. Then he'd left the unconscious body in the hold, swayed to the head, and vomited. Vision once more clear, now empty stomach willing to face what he had to face, he returned to the hold. Sluicing water gently over the boy, he'd tried to reassure him. Not that it made any difference. He knew from personal experience Dmitri had no knowledge of what was happening to his body. All there was in that filthy hold was a human mule and an alien parasite, frantic to escape and make its way to join the others of its kind. Krycek bided his time and waited until they reached New York. Marita surprised him. He surprised her in return. They came together with typical animal savagery, doing their damnedest to turn one another inside out. Then the bitch betrayed him. Took his trump card, took his bartering chip. Took the fucking alien trapped in the boy and ran with him. Things didn't work out quite the way she was expecting, either. After all, there were a lot of things he hadn't told her. Turned out, it was a damned good thing. Cold water splashed against his face, waking him. It was the Dandy, his own sarcastic nickname for the best dressed of the bunch of bastards who made up the Consortium. They bickered, and bartered, and eventually came to a stumbling halt over the fate of Marita Covarrubias. "Save her life?" He couldn't believe the old man would expect him to give up the precious vaccine to save the life of that worthless cunt. "After what she did to me?" There was a nasty little sneer on the old man's face. "To save your own life," he replied coldly. Krycek thought about it. He knew when he was trapped. But Dmitri and the vial of vaccine weren't his only trump cards. "It will take more than us," he asserted, pushing himself as far upright against the wall as he could with his wrist still shackled to the pipe. "We're going to need other help." The old man stilled, staring at him measuringly. "What sort of other help?" "Mulder." The Dandy's face stilled as he thought it over. Krycek pressed his advantage. "I can get him on our side." The look in those cold eyes showed the old man wasn't convinced. "Agent Mulder appears to have changed his mind about the entire concept of alien abduction, Mr. Krycek. He now says it is all a military conspiracy to test out biological weapons on the unsuspecting masses." They shared a look, silently admitting just how close to the truth Mulder was, even if he was only looking at part of it. Krycek cleared his throat. "I can turn him. I know what buttons to push. What arguments to use. I can make him listen." There was another long pause as the old man thought it through. This time, Krycek gave him the time he needed, confident in the final decision. For they did need Mulder, and he was the best liaison the Consortium would come up with to make sure they got him. After what felt like an eternity, the old man nodded. "Very well, Mr. Krycek, we will try it your way. Turn him back to the path we need him to walk. Or run, very far and very fast, because you will not have another chance. And the third strike will be your last." The door swung shut behind him, leaving Krycek in the dark. His skin began to crawl. He'd had an unreasoning fear of the dark ever since being locked in the depths of a silo with an alien in his body and a ship lurking in the darkness. His version of hell was utter blackness, surrounding him, wrenching itself from his eyes and his throat, leaving him a raw voiced mass of pain on a cement floor. He hated them, these damned aliens. Hated them with a passion, hated them more than anything he could even dream. Oh, he would turn Mulder back to the truth, all right. He didn't have a choice. They needed all the allies they could get. Trying to stave off the panic clawing at his lungs, he stared into the inky blackness and pictured Fox Mulder's face. Soft, wide hazel eyes rimmed with dark, wispy lashes. Strong nose, slight cleft in the chin. That mouth, full, looked soft, he wondered what it would taste like. There was a little mole just at the right corner of his lips. Arousal gradually grew, pushing back the unreasoning fear, fighting back the darkness. As his thoughts became more explicit, he began to relax, and with the release of tension, he finally fell asleep. Not far from the dark, a surgical auditorium, softly lit. A group of men, middle aged, some elderly, peering at a young woman, inert on an operating table. No sound in the room but hushed breathing. Two men, with different agendas, and the same thirst for power. The larger one spoke first, his voice an unpleasant monotone. "We are not strong enough to stop them. Appeasement is our only course of action. Anything else will see us destroyed." A dapper elderly man with cold eyes flicked a single glance at him, then returned his concentration to the woman below. "You have seen to that. You should not have turned over the alien resistor to them. By doing that, you may well have destroyed our last chance at gaining an alliance with the resistance." His voice was quiet but venomous. The big man stared at him for a moment, then turned and walked from the room. One by one, the others followed. Some avoided the elderly man's gaze. Some made direct eye contact. Sides were chosen without a word being spoken. In the silence after the last of them left, he stared down at his hope for salvation. The doctor lifted an eyelid. The pupil was clear. The alien infestation was dead. Resistance was possible. He smiled. It did not reach his eyes. The lover speaks about the monsters Mulder unlocked the door, listened instinctively for any sounds of intruders before he pushed open the door, then laughed silently at himself for his rampant paranoia. If the military really wanted to take him out, they could have, long before this. And why should they? He dumped his coat on the couch, and glanced around the darkened apartment. It wasn't like he was that much of a threat, after all. No one believed him. As usual. A tiny flash of light against the dark carpet caught his eye. A message? Leaning over to read the block writing, he made out the words 'things are looking up' just as a heavy weight came down over his back. He tried to buck it off, but their combined weights and forward motion only ended when he went head first into a table leg. Through the ringing in his ears, he recognized a voice he had hoped never to hear again. Krycek. Fuck. They exchanged their usual pleasantries. The double (triple?) agent told him he was pathetically easy to take. He suggested Krycek go play with himself. His own gun was cocked in his face, and he tried to joke it off. Then Krycek decided to change all the rules. At first, he didn't take it seriously. Another alien conspiracy? Shit, he'd thought the guy was serious. At Krycek's harsh urging, he looked up into the liquid dark eyes staring at him so intently. Staring into his soul. The words made no sense, wrapped as he was in the depth of those eyes. They were so focused they seemed to burn at him. Fight or Die? Fight what? With what? Resist... or serve? Serve whom? Resist how? What the hell was he talking about? Was Krycek going to kill him or just talk nonsense at him? He was so serious about the whole bizarre scenario. There was a moment of tense silence, then Krycek lunged forward suddenly. Mulder flinched, instinctively drew his face to the side—the wrong side. He felt the heat of Krycek's face close to his, the short soft slide of lips grazing the right corner of his mouth before they settle on his skin. He felt the tip of a wet, warm tongue flicker against the slight uprise of the mole beside his mouth. He was frozen, unable to move, unable to process exactly what was happening to him. It felt like it lasted for an hour. Then with a loud smack, Krycek pulled back. He stared up at him, feeling shell shocked. Those dark eyes flickered over him, a sharp once-over that missed nothing, as if memorizing him. Then, with a short nod, he murmured something in Russian. The only word Mulder recognized was Tovarisch, and that was from watching too many episodes of Man from U.N.C.L.E. as a child. His mind spun in a loop as he watched the door swing shut behind his nemesis' back. He'd always thought Solo and Illya had something going. Had Krycek been trying to tell him something? Beyond the nonsensical ravings about alien insurrection and last ditch resistance? He felt the weight of the gun in his hand, reflexively aimed at where Krycek had been standing, His finger slipped off the trigger as the barrel slowly tilted toward the floor. He wouldn't have shot the bastard. Just as Krycek wouldn't shoot him. How he knew, he wasn't certain. But he knew. There was a connection there. Whether he wanted it or not, and God only knew he didn't want it, it was there. It wasn't accidental, but it wasn't under his control, either. It just was, and he supposed by now he should used to it. His mind, dizzy from swooping around all the possibilities, tossed up a word from the torrent of threat Krycek had poured out at him. Weikamp? Other words starting pinging in his brain. Alien versus alien. Colonization. Resistance. Allies. Last chance to fight. Had to believe. War. Tovarisch. He pulled himself up onto the couch and collapsed against the cushions, staring sightlessly into the mid-distance. So many things to think about. So many truths to sift through. So many monsters to fight. Tovarisch. His right hand crept up to touch the side of his face, fingertips lingering over the cooling skin. He could still feel the touch of Krycek's lips at the corner of his mouth. Allies. No fucking way in hell. Not on this earth. He took a deep breath. Hell. On earth. His eidetic memory replayed scenes of horror to him, charred remains that had once been human, curled into fetal balls in a futile attempt to escape their fate. In Russia. At Sky Mountain. On a dam in Virginia. Hell on earth. Perhaps this alliance might not be such a bad idea after all. It wasn't as if he had a lot of choice, anyway. It—they—just kept finding him and pulling him back. And if escape was hopeless, then he was damned if he was going to sit passively by and be used. By anyone. The mass assassinations in Kazakhstan were the beginning of the cracks in the wall of silence surrounding the work of the aliens. As pressures grew within the covert world, fissures formed, and more facts were made known to the public, which misinterpreted them with a will. All except a very few. Special Agent Dana Scully was a scientist, first and foremost. She was a doctor, a law enforcement official, a daughter, a sister, a partner. And, if her own memories were to be believed, an alien abductee. Her hand rose to rub at the back of her neck. A tiny microchip embedded there, that may or may not have saved her life. Made her barren. Given her cancer. Cured it. And a week earlier, had apparently taken over her conscious mind. Led her to a dam in the middle of rural Virginia, to the middle of a battlefield between two alien species trying to kill one another along with any foolish human being who made the mistake of being caught up in the middle. She wasn't too sure she believed a word of it. She rambled, head down, staring at the dried leaves her feet kicked as she walked the streets of her neighborhood. Her hands were buried in her pockets, fists clenched partly from cold, partly from the emotions that were tightening every muscle in her body. The images had been so real. True, it had taken hypnosis to break through the block that was keeping them from her conscious mind, but with Dr. Werber's help she'd managed to recover most of the memories. She stopped, struck by the thought of her own disbelieving reaction when Mulder had told her of his own recovered memories. No wonder he had the strength of his convictions—they felt so real. "Oh, my God." The whisper slipped from her mouth, barely stirring the cold air in front of her face. If he could stand in the face of memories, or interpretations of events, or whatever they actually were, and defy them... if he could stand on the facts he felt he could prove... perhaps he was right, after all. It had been a powerful event. And perhaps she had been listening to his stories, to his convictions, for so long they had seeped into her own subconscious, causing her to interpret the happenings of that late night as another alien abduction, when in fact it might, just might have been the results of the clean up of a military experiment gone horribly wrong. Straightening her shoulders, taking a deep, cleansing breath of the early morning air, she turned toward her car and headed toward Mulder's apartment. They had a lot to talk about. When she tried to articulate her reservations to him, he threw her another curve ball. "NOOOOOOOOOO!" A scream, lingering, agonized. Strangled. The light flashed around him, bathing Mulder in cool terror, as memories of his sister's abduction, his own experience at a remote listening post with only a dead man to witness, melded with the present to tip him from rationality. He didn't know what he was protesting, another, taken from him before he could get his answers, the assassin, stopped before he could plunge the stiletto home, the cowering prisoner, the faceless being hulking in the opening of the tarp at the back of the truck. He didn't know why he was screaming his defiance, but he had no choice. His gun was up, aiming at whom he had no idea, his eyes were squinting against the blinding light. He and Scully had come to Weikamp Air Force Base to see if there was any truth to Krycek's wild tale of alien resistance fighters and inter-alien warfare. Here it was, shining in his eyes, making them water. Making his brain hurt. The truth was in his face, and he was screaming no. There was a joke buried in there somewhere, and he was afraid it was on him. Wind whipped up around them, shaking the truck, battering the heavy tarp covering the flat bed. There was a rattle of steel, an impression of movement, a flicker of... something... just past him. Then the world went white. He came back to reality to find himself being roughly escorted out of the truck and shoved in to the back seat of a nondescript military vehicle. His eyes hurt like hell, and his head felt like there were jackhammers going through it. Scully was beside him. He heard her ask, through the haze of pain, what he had seen. "Nothing." Nothing that he could distinctly recall. But that was the trick with a mind like his. His grasp of the concept of recall was just that slight bit off what everyone else might consider exact. He remembered enough. Scully had known the face of the truck driver. He had looked, and he didn't know the balding, mustachioed man with the disgruntled look on his face. But he had certainly recognized the man who had climbed into the back of the truck. Recognized the face, recognized the pick in his hand. A strong memory of Scully melting into another form pushed to the front of his mind. That same, identical assassin, or his brother, or his clone, killing Jeremiah Smith and the young girl who looked like Samantha. Coming after him, nearly killing Scully... a shape shifter. And not one like their old friend Eddie. One who bled green, whose blood poisoned the air so that humans could not breathe without dying. One who killed others, like himself, who were considered a risk. Shit. Krycek was right. The aliens were here, after all. Something he knew, had just forgotten, had forced himself to ignore. And they were fighting each other. He dropped his hand from where it was shielding his eyes and stared into the concerned face of his partner. "I'm okay, Scully." Well, yeah, it was bullshit. But what was he supposed to say? Forget everything I just told you I really, truly, deeply believe and go back to the old story? Stop, rewind, do-over? He smiled slightly in spite of himself. "Just have some things to think about." Her hand curled over his, tugging at his fingers. He remembered offering the same comfort to her when she was caught up in the nightmare of her recollections of the dam, and his fingers tightened appreciatively around her small palm. They didn't speak the rest of the way back to the base. Transferred efficiently to their own government car, they left with a stern warning. He knew nothing more would come of it—the men behind the snatch, or the exchange, or whatever the hell it had been, couldn't afford the attention such a reprimand might bring. It was a silent ride home, both occupants of the car having plenty to keep them preoccupied. He let her off at her door, watched as she let herself into her apartment, and slowly put the car in gear. Heading through the late night quiet streets to his own apartment, he let his mind wander. There was so much here, so many things to sort through, and for once his famed eloquence had deserted him. How could he explain it to her, when he couldn't even explain it to himself? The language is leaving me in silence Three beers and two hours later, Mulder was little closer to an answer. He had all the elements, but couldn't get them all to fit together. The lock turning in his front door didn't startle him the way he thought it probably should have. Subconsciously he must have been waiting for it. For him. "C'mon in, Krycek. Have a beer." "Don't mind if I do." The damnedable humor was back in the raspy voice. Mulder didn't look over at him as the other man lowered himself down beside him on the couch. When a strong hand took his own beer from his hand and chugged the remainder, he just let his head fall against the back of the couch and closed his eyes. Maybe it would make more sense in the dark. With Krycek, it usually did. "We have shape shifting aliens. We have oil aliens." "Tell me about it," Krycek interjected dryly. Mulder ignored him and continued his inventory. "We have bees carrying plague. We have clones. We have rogue aliens who are running around with melted faces." "The gang's all here," Krycek chirped. Mulder barely restrained himself from belting the mouthy bastard. He cracked open one eyelid and glared sourly at Krycek's profile. How the hell could a murdering, lying, traitorous scum look so fucking cute? Life wasn't fair. It must be the nose. He'd always had a yen for cute little upturned noses. He shook himself slightly and reached to take his bottle back. It was empty. Sighing, he decided it wasn't worth the effort to get another and closed his eyes again. "We have one band of aliens fighting another band." Why? It made no sense. "We have the colonizers and the resistance," Krycek put in, all laughter gone from his voice. "At least among the aliens. Among the humans, we have the collaborators, and the dupes, and the ignorant. We're working on the resistance." He settled more comfortably on the couch, his shoulder brushing against Mulder's. He felt warm to Mulder, warm and oddly unthreatening. A little like it had been at the beginning of their partnership, before Krycek had betrayed him. Pushing the thought down as an unnecessary distraction, he concentrated on the puzzle. He was supposed to be the master-fucking-profiler, so where was the pattern? His mind flashed on Krycek, coming out of the bathroom at the airport in Hong Kong. A diver, covered in oil on the floor of his flat in France. Himself, feeling the slide of slick ooze in his mouth, his eyes, then nothing until the tiny prick of a needle, and the cold stone floor of his cell in Tunguska. A bright light. Two aliens, no, three. One with a recognizable face. Another, mutilated, scars covering their eye sockets, nostrils, mouths. A third, fluid, formless. Resist. Scarred. No entrance. Resisting. Serve. Eyes. Nose. Mouth. Service. Not partnership. Colonized. Slaves. "Holy shit," he breathed, sitting up abruptly and dislodging Krycek, who merely turned toward him and regarded him with a mildly inquisitive look. Mulder stared at him, eyes wide with shock. It fit. Holy fucking christ, but it fit. He took a deep breath. Krycek smiled at him. "You got it. What did you get?" Mulder opened his mouth and the words began to spill. "The shape shifters. They're both resistance and conquerors. Because they're mules for the oil aliens. The ones who resist, the ones who want to stop the colonization, the ones who want to help us fight back. They're shape shifters who've managed to escape being inhabited by oil aliens, or they're immune somehow, or something. Anyway," a slicing hand gesture made it clear that was not important, and would be explained later when more information was available. "The clones are just drones, test subjects. Do the manual labor, be used for the hybridization experiments. The shape shifters, they're a subjugated alien race. It's the oil aliens, the old aliens, that are running the show. They're the ones with the ships, they're the ones that use anyone and anything that gets in their way to serve their purpose." "What about the bees?" Krycek asked, his calm tone belied by the intent look in his eyes. "Fuck if I know," Mulder admitted. "Maybe they're a test of some sort, some kind of method of mass contamination. An airborne plague carrier to cull the herd, take out the weak ones so only the healthiest are left for hosts. Then we have the Consortium-" "Collaborators," Krycek nodded. "With a mole or two of their own." Mulder looked at him sharply. Krycek nodded again. "And the military?" "Collaborators or dupes. Appeal to the power aspect, or the patriotism angle, or hook 'em by one means or another. They're tools, unwitting or not." This time it was Mulder's turn to nod. "So, the oil aliens in league with the military are creating these chips, using them to control people-" "Breeders, mainly," Krycek postulated. Mulder winced at the term, but had to admit it was apt. "They use their shape shifting hosts as their advance force and to do the clean up. Wet work." He glanced at Krycek, reading agreement in his face. He pursed his lips, thinking deeply. "But some of the shifters don't agree. Want to escape, stop being slaves. They find a way to kill the oil aliens, without killing themselves. Inoculate themselves somehow." He felt Krycek start beside him, but was too busy formulating theories to stop and ask what had caused the reaction. "Then go about disrupting the colonization schedule. Kill the willing participants. Force their hand." He ran one hand through his hair, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Now what the fuck are we supposed to do about all this?" "Fight them." It sounded like a command. Mulder shifted on the couch until he was facing Krycek, their knees nearly touching. "Some of the collaborators are making a pact with the resistance. Not all the members of the consortium want to go along with the colonization. So, we band together and we fight them." "And how do you propose we do that?" No sarcasm, it was too serious, too all encompassing, for that. "Any way we can," Krycek responded. "With any weapon we can find." Mulder stared at him. In the small pool of light shed by the single lamp beside the couch, Krycek looked like a demon, or a ghost. Or a hell's angel, all in black leather, all stubble and tired eyes and menace. His eyes traveled along the line of his brow, down his cheek to his chin, then down his throat to his collarbone. Skipping along the line defined there, unaware he was doing it, his gaze wandered down the worn leather sleeve until it got to the hand resting beside Krycek's thigh on the seat cushion. There was something wrong with it. He stared at it for a long moment before it dawned on him. It wasn't real. Wasn't made of flesh and blood. It was held at an odd angle, fingers curved stiffly, wrist unnaturally straight. His eyes wandered back up, and this time he saw the slight bulging of material under the sleeve. The implications hit him like a kick to the stomach, and he took a gulp of air. "What... when ..." He couldn't bring himself to ask the question. Krycek looked at him with cynical disbelief. "What do you think? Or were you just shooting in the dark with that comment about me doing myself with the same hand I took you with? Only one I've got now, Mulder." He leaned forward and set the empty beer bottle on the floor beside the couch, then straightened and glared at Mulder. "When? When I was fucking stupid enough to follow you under that damned barbed wire at Tunguska. The peasants have their own ways of avoiding the gulag draft, Mulder. They chop off the arm the docs use to test the vaccine." Mulder was shaken from his preoccupation with the prosthetic arm to ask, "What vaccine?" Krycek grinned at him. "They're still working on it." Mulder had the sneaking suspicion Krycek was lying, but that wasn't an unusual feeling where his ex-partner was concerned, so he ignored it and inclined his head toward the plastic arm. "Working on that, too," Krycek cracked, bitterness underlying his determinedly light tone. "You have no clue sometimes, you know that, Mulder?" The whiplash of accusation stung him, but Mulder kept silent, waiting to hear where Krycek would go with this. There was a lot of pent up anger in the man. Perhaps it could be useful. He might let something slip if he got a chance to vent. It seemed his silence was all the permission Krycek needed. With an explosive movement, he heaved himself off the couch and began to pace, tight, barely controlled turns across the tiny living room floor. As he paced, he growled, spitting the words from behind clenched teeth. "I've been fighting with fucking shadows for four years, Mulder. Playing one against the other, watching them, doing things... killing people, interrogations, beatings. For them, and to keep myself alive. It was so clear at the beginning. I was doing this for my country. For myself. For the future. Bullshit!" He swung on one heel and towered over Mulder, still seated on the couch. "There's not going to be any goddamned future, Mulder! Not if we don't do something about it. And what the hell can we do? They can look like anyone. They can change form at will. They can take you over and use you and toss you aside, or turn into a little nuclear fireball and crisp anything that gets in their way. And what the hell have we got on our side?" By this time, he was leaning over, his hand twisting in Mulder's collar, pulling their faces close together. Mulder could feel Krycek's breath on his face, practically count each individual eyelash. And it was turning him on. Just when he really didn't need the distraction, his cock decided to get in on the game. Typical shitty timing. Typical shitty taste. He tuned back into what Krycek was hissing in his face, trying to ignore his body's reaction to the other man's close proximity. "An old man trying to stage a coup in the Consortium, a woman with no agenda but her own, an abductee who won't admit she was abducted, a guy who can't make up his mind which obsession to run with, and what's left of me!" The dark eyes were wild, and Krycek was breathing heavily. He looked to be at the end of his rope. "Against the whole fucking universe, with just a few terrified, blinded frankensteins to help us out!" Mulder reached around the strong hand that was threatening to choke him. Trying to get the other man to calm down, he sought to break the iron hold on his collar by sliding his right hand up to bunch Krycek's tee shirt in his fist, slipping his left arm around Krycek's already bent knees, and tugging him just hard enough to pull the enraged man forward. Krycek stumbled, off balance and already leaning in over Mulder, and landed with a satisfying whuff of shock in Mulder's lap instead of on the couch where Mulder had intended him to land. They stared at one another in shocked silence for a long moment "We've all made our sacrifices, Alex," he said softly. Wide, feral eyes stared up at him, unblinking, from an inch away. "And we're going to make more. Because we haven't got any choice." He pulled his hands away from the warm flesh as if it scalded him. "We will do what we have to do. War makes strange allies." He turned away and started to rise, intent on putting some space between the two of them. A strong hand clamped down on his thigh, holding him in place. Trying to ignore the panic making his heart beat in his throat, he glared over his shoulder at Krycek. The ferocity was muted, banked but still there, glinting at him. Before he had a chance to protest, he found himself flipped over onto his back. Krycek fell heavily on him, pinning him to the couch, his hands caught, his right caught between his hip and the back of the couch, the left one pushing uselessly against the solid bulk of Krycek's chest. The dark head tilted, and a hot mouth fastened itself over the artery running up the side of his neck, directly over the pulse point. He opened his mouth to protest. The only thing he could get out past the constriction tightening his throat was a half-choked whimper. Krycek seemed to take that as encouragement, because the biting kiss gentled into a strong suckling. Mulder's earlier erection returned full force. Krycek must have felt it prodding into his thigh, because he began to writhe gently against Mulder. He felt like he'd fallen down the rabbit hole. One minute they're calmly discussing the possible colonization of the earth by hostile aliens, and lending their aid to the resistance efforts of another already enslaved group of aliens. Then Krycek flips his lid, he tries to escape, and next thing he knew they were making out on the couch, dry humping each other. Mulder concentrated on his groin for a second, not a difficult thing to do when it was the center of his universe. Amazing how fast the brain drained along with the blood in times like this. Yeah. He was humping back. "Krycek." God, he sounded like he'd just run a marathon. "hmmmm?" The vibration against his throat sped up the humping by a factor of ten, at least. He scrambled to find a working brain cell. "This is nuts." Crazy. Insane. Stupid. Bizarre. Twilight zone un-fucking-believable. Krycek finally released his mouthful of Mulder's throat and pulled back far enough to meet his eyes. For the moment, neither of them acknowledged the way their groins were dancing against one another. "We are nuts," Krycek answered him seriously. "We're going against unbeatable odds, in an unwinnable war, and we have no choice but to win it. I think this scenario calls for at least a little simple human connection before the shit hits the fan, don't you?" Mulder tried to find the flaw in that reasoning, certain there had to be one. Snatching at straws, he tried, "I hate you." Krycek nipped at his lower lip, then gave it a bath with the tip of his tongue. Mulder moaned. "I hate you, too," Krycek said soothingly. Mulder made another effort to focus on him. "Then why are we doing this?" That made sense! Yes. Something was still working. Not well, but a stray synapse or two was still firing. As Krycek bore down with his hips, rocking with steady purpose against his aching erection, he heard the other man's answer through the growing rush of blood pounding in his skull. "Because we may hate each other," A strong buck, nearly taking him over the edge that time. "But we need each other, too." Warm, soft lips trailed along his cheek, a tongue edged around the rim of his ear, sharp teeth caught his ear lobe, then released it. "And we need each other more than we hate each other." The sucking was back, all along his throat, marking him. Making him completely insane. One last, sharp bite to the tender spot beneath his ear and he came, thrusting hard against Krycek's groin, feeling the contractions rock him. When the shaking finally stopped, he realized that Krycek must have climaxed as well, because he was draped bonelessly over Mulder's front, nuzzling into the side of his neck. Great. He had a crick in his neck from the odd angle he was pushed against the arm of the couch. One hand had fallen asleep and the other soon would, from the weight of the man lying on his chest. His back was already starting to hurt, and his stomach and groin were a wet, sticky mess. He hadn't come in his pants since he was a teenager. He had no idea why he was grinning like an idiot. Sometime later they pulled apart. Mulder lay, watching Krycek, idly scratching at the dried semen sticking his jeans to his skin. Krycek sat on the corner of the coffee table, staring at him in the darkness. "Wanna shower?" It was the first thing he's said since they'd started their crazy version of a lap dance. Krycek grinned faintly at him. "Yeah. Sounds good." Krycek looked down at his lap, unaccountably shy before shaking it off. "Thanks." Mulder swallowed, watching Krycek watching his throat. The man had a neck fetish, apparently. He felt himself getting hard again. It was uncomfortable, trapped in the stained jeans. He reached down to adjust himself, and Krycek's eyes followed his hand. "Yeah." It came out huskier than he'd meant it to sound. He licked his lips. "Need more than hate, huh?" Mulder knew his own vulnerabilities, his own personal weaknesses. Vampires, aliens... Phoebe... if it was going to hurt him, he wanted it. Looked like there was a new addiction to add to the list. Krycek pushed himself back and headed for the shower, tossing a glance over his shoulder. Mulder followed as if towed by a chain behind him. Somewhere along the line his mind had switched off, and he was running on pure instinct. It didn't tell him to trust Krycek. No matter how far gone he was, he wasn't that stupid. But it agreed, loudly and at length, with Krycek's assertion that they needed each other. There had to be some reason why fate kept flinging them at one another. Couldn't just be so they could beat one another up. Or off. So he was willing to try the allies idea. Willing? Eager. His wandering thoughts came to an unexpected halt when he ran nose first into the closed bathroom door. He stared at it, confused, for a moment. As his fist reached up automatically to knock, he stopped and considered. This was ridiculous. This was his bathroom. His shower. His apartment. His... what the hell was Krycek? Lover? Uhm, no. Sort of. Maybe. He shook his head, hard. Whatever he was, he was in the Mulder's shower without Mulder. His hand lowered and he turned the knob. Krycek was just stepping under the steaming water. Great legs. Mulder leaned against the closed bathroom door, taking in the view. Really great legs. Nice ass. Nice, and firm, and round. He licked his lips and forced his eyes up further. Took three tries, but he made it to the small of Krycek's back. He found himself wanting to curl up in that inviting little hollow, lick the dimples at the base of his spine, make camp and stay there for a few months. No aliens, no icepicks, no malevolent oil creatures trying to take over his body. Just Alex Krycek, clean sheets, maybe some warm caramel sauce, and that lovely back. Which then whirled around and presented an equally lovely front, if in a very different fashion. Unfortunately, the move took Krycek off balance and he skidded on the damp floor. Mulder instinctively reached out to grab his arm to steady him. Caught him. Held him steady. Sort of. The stump felt strange, lumpy, seamed, under his hand. Krycek stood completely still in his grip. A fine shiver ran up and down his frame, but Mulder couldn't tell if it was from cold or something else entirely. He couldn't see how it could be the cold, in the small, steam-filled room. The scars covering the otherwise soft skin were rough to his touch. He examined it carefully, eyes intent, his touch light on the ruined limb. As it began to quiver under his touch, he ran his palm gently up to Krycek's shoulder, holding him in place. Finally, he raised his eyes to the other man's face. "I'm sorry." It was a whisper. It also was not what Krycek had been expecting to hear, judging by the stunned look on his face. "It's not your fault," he managed to squeeze out. Mulder shook his head. "Still. I'm sorry." Mulder leaned forward, softly feathering kisses along the scars. They each had paid, in their way. His own scars were less visible, but he could appreciate this sort of pain as well. Krycek was beginning to shake hard now, and he stepped closer, wrapping his left arm around the other man's waist, holding him still. He continued to kiss along the outside of the wasted muscle, easing the pressure marks from the prosthesis, then following the line of arm until he reached the smooth skin of the shoulder. Pausing where the curve of shoulder met neck, he bit down, once, leaving a light semi-circle to mark his passage. Lifting his head, he looked into Krycek's face. The man looked dazed. Looking down, he noticed that other parts of Krycek's anatomy were responding quite nicely. It was Mulder's turn to shiver. It had been a long time since he'd been with another guy, and there was no comparison between college buddies experimenting (even if his college buddies had learned the ropes at the finest public schools in England) and the bundle of dangerous contradictions that was Alex Krycek. Stepping back a pace, he steered Krycek into the shower. "Better use this before it goes stone cold," he suggested, then handed the younger man the bath sponge. Reaching past Krycek's head into the caddy for the soap, ignoring the intent look he was getting, he poured some onto the sponge. "Wash." Krycek looked down at the sponge, back up at Mulder, and proceeded to wash Mulder. Thoroughly. While that wasn't exactly what he'd meant, he relaxed into the unexpected full body massage. He did his best not to melt into the tiles as Krycek turned him and began to run the sponge over his back in wide, soothing strokes. Then Krycek leaned close, running the soapy sponge along his flanks. He felt a whisper of breath on the side of his neck and tilted his head to give better access. Instead of the kiss he was expecting, Krycek spoke into his ear. "Doesn't it bother you?" The sponge never stopped moving. It swirled around the slight indentation of his waist and headed directly for his groin. "No," Mulder managed to answer, closing his eyes against the nubby caress as it swept under his sac, lifting it and teasing behind it. He spread his legs unconsciously to give Krycek better access. "No," he tried again, not paying much attention to what he was saying. "Bothers me that you had to go through that. But I've seen worse thin—god, Alex." He lost his train of thought and his breath at the same time as Krycek wrapped the sponge around his cock and began to squeeze it back and forth around him. It took very few strokes before he was on the verge of orgasm. "Good," Krycek mumbled into his shoulder blade. Mulder had no idea what he was talking about and didn't give a damn. He had to come, soon, or his skin was going to explode. Then the sponge dropped away, along with the pressure, and the cooling water slicked down over the top of his erection. Before he could howl protest, he was shoved sideways, pivoting around to follow the strong arm guiding him. Back to the spray, he looked down in delighted disbelief as Krycek slid down the front of his body, coming to rest on his knees between Mulder's feet. Without so much as a pause for breath, the other man swallowed him to the root. Mulder gasped. Tried to say something, some warning. Tried to stop the hurricane taking him off his feet. Tried to make it last. He failed it all, including his aborted effort to draw a decent breath. All the energy in his body concentrated into a small knot in his stomach, then his balls drew up and he convulsed, coming hard, flying apart. His back arched as he thrust heavily into Krycek's mouth, his hands clenching in the short hair at the sides of Krycek's head. Three, four bursts, and his knees gave out. A long arm wrapped around his waist, guided him into the tub, settled him against a broad, lightly furred chest. He vaguely heard the rasp of the taps being turned off, cutting off the rapidly cooling water before it could turn cold. Before he could quite gather his wits from the four corners of the world where they'd scattered, he was gently turned and draped over the edge of the tub, facing the room. It was a fascinating view on the pipe under the sink, he'd never seen it from this angle. Nearly asleep in spite of the uncomfortable position, he felt a hot thrust along the cleft of his ass. Responding automatically to the urgency of the movement, he pushed back. Krycek looped his arm around Mulder's chest, covering him from behind, and thrust steadily, sliding along the damp flesh. The friction spreading his cheeks and teasing his anus was utterly new to Mulder, and if he hadn't already come twice in just over an hour he'd've found it very arousing. As it was, he relaxed into the sensation, experimentally tensing his buttocks with each upstroke. There was a garbled moan from behind him, signifying approval, and he did it again. A few more thrusts and Krycek climaxed, shuddering against his back. Mulder felt a fraction more energetic than Krycek. Leaning forward, wincing at the now cold tile on his unprotected genitals, he snagged a loose towel and flipped the edge over his shoulder. Krycek took the hint and cleaned up his mess, slowly rubbing the towel in small circles over Mulder's back long after he was clean and dry. Too wiped out to respond, he looked over his shoulder, surprised by the softness in the usually well guarded face. "You're beating a dead horse, Alex. No life left in this one," he admitted. Krycek leaned forward and kissed him, softly, over the mole beside his mouth. A very different touch than the first time he had kissed him there. He still wasn't ready to think about it. He shifted until Krycek obliged him and moved off, then stepped out of the tub. There was a double line of red running across his ribs where Krycek had pushed him into the door runners for the shower doors while leaning over him. He ran a finger around the pressure marks. He hadn't even felt it at the time. Too tired to think about anything, not wanting to go places he wasn't ready to face, he walked into the bedroom. Pulling back the covers, he crawled in and rolled over, staring into the bathroom. "You gonna stay in there the rest of the night?" It was as close as he could come to issuing an invitation. Krycek snapped off the light and walked into the room. Pausing at the side of the bed, he opened his mouth to say something. Probably something Mulder didn't want to hear. "Give it a rest, Alex. There's plenty of time tomorrow." Krycek shut his mouth, settled himself under the covers next to Mulder, and fell immediately to sleep. Nudging the pillow higher under his head, Mulder stared at his bed partner. He had no idea where this was going to lead, if it was going to go anywhere. He might have just made a huge mistake. Or he might have done the only thing he could do that would clear the air enough to allow him to work with this man in the upcoming battle. Before he could come to any conclusions, the events of the day caught up with him, and he finally fell asleep. That night there were no nightmares. Changes are shifting outside the words Bright heat spearing into his closed eyelids brought him awake the next morning. It was a good thing it was a sunny day. In all the madness of the previous night he had completely forgotten to set his alarm. He rolled over, stiffly, feeling the exertions of a rare night of sex pulling at his sore muscles, and squinted at the clock. Nearly ten. Shit. A movement caught his attention, and his eyes widened as he stared at the small figure standing in his bedroom doorway. "Morning, Scully." What was his apartment, anyway, Grand Central? He shook the thought away and sat up, carefully pulling the sheet up to cover the majority of the love bites scattered all along his torso. "Morning, Mulder. There's coffee in the living room." She turned to head back out into the front room. "Been here long?" He couldn't resist. What exactly had she seen? "No," she replied, not turning to look at him. "Get a robe on, Mulder. We have to talk." Boy, did they ever. He took the ten minutes needed to scald the layers of dried semen off his skin, ran a towel over himself, pulled on some sweats and joined her on the couch. He very carefully did not think of what had happened on that spot nine hours earlier. Scully stared into her coffee mug, then took a slow sip. Staring at her partner over the rim of the mug, she waited patiently. He gathered his thoughts, wrapped his hands around his own mug, and started to explain. "There's more than one type of alien, Scully. The oil aliens, the ones they called Black Cancer, they use the second type, the shape shifters, as hosts." He paused, and she inclined her head. She had seen the shape shifters. One, wearing Mulder's form, had nearly killed her. Another, whom they thought they had killed, had managed to survive and then almost killed her. It was an unhealthy trend. "Now these oil aliens are beginning to colonize earth." He explained about the military collaboration, the microchips, the clones, the hybridization. She didn't say a word, listening calmly. When he began to talk about the resistance, she straightened and leaned forward. "They block the openings in their faces because that's how the oil aliens transport themselves." A shudder went through her. He scooted a little closer, trying to be reassuring. "If we're going to stop them, and we have to stop them, Scully, then we're going to have to work with some... unexpected allies." He stopped, bit his lip, wondered how to present this to her. "How unexpected?" At least she wasn't walking out the door. Yet. "At least one of the men in the Consortium. I met him a year or so ago. You met him, as well. At my funeral." She thought for a moment, then nodded. "An elderly man, very well dressed, quiet voice, cold eyes." "That's him. And a woman, she's with the UN. She has been an information source, gotten me documents, leads. I don't yet know the extent of her involvement, but she is in on this." "What changed your mind, Mulder?" It was a legitimate question. Unfortunately, it led directly to the one ally he knew she was going to have the most trouble accepting. "There was a pattern emerging, from all these incidents, from the mass immolations, the extraterrestrial biological entities we've encountered, the events at Tunguska." He looked at her, sincerity shining out of him. "I got some new information. From Alex Krycek." That made her sit up. She set the coffee mug on the table with precise care. "And you trust him?" "No," he smiled, a twitch of his lips. "I don't trust him at all. But he did have the information that made the pattern fit together, finally made it make sense." She was staring at him as if he'd just grown a second head. "So, you're telling me that you won't believe your own recovered memories, you don't believe the description of what I went through on that bridge, you can't continue to accept the convictions that have guided you since you were a child, but you believe the man who murdered my sister, your father, tried his best to kill you and helped whoever the hell took me to abduct me?" She kept control over her voice, but the effort cost her dearly, and it was wobbling a little by the time she finished. She looked like she couldn't believe her ears. She certainly couldn't follow his reasoning. He took a deep breath. He'd known it was going to be a hard sell. "Look at it from his perspective." Glossing over her muttered, "how do you expect me to think like a psychotic killer? That's your specialty" he forged on. "I don't pretend to know his reasons. But he's been right too many times not to listen to him. This time it all fits. He's scared. And he should be. The peasants in Tunguska cut off his arm." She drew in a sudden breath at that. He continued, determined to make her understand. "He knows what they're planning, Scully. He knows what they want, what they'll do. What he said is backed up with what you and I have both experienced, and it makes sense. Frightening sense, but sense that we have to pay attention to, because if we don't, it will be too late." He nodded toward her, eyes going to her neck. "They're calling for a reason. And if we don't fight back, there won't be anyone left to stop them." Her hand rose to her nape, a fingertip rubbing gently over the small raised scar at the base of her neck. He watched her face, saw the grudging acceptance, recognized the willingness to go along despite her reservations. He relaxed, breathing easier now that she was on his side again. She shook her head. "Maybe we're both insane, Mulder," she finally said. "But if we're going to do it we can't do it alone. Watch your back." He nodded agreement. "We'll watch each other's." "First step? Other than committing ourselves to the nearest sanitarium?" He ignored her mild sarcasm with the ease of long practice—his bad habits had rubbed off on her a long time ago, and now he was reaping the benefit. "MUFON." She bit the inside of her lip. She really did not want to ever see those women again. But if Mulder could work with Krycek... she nodded. "I'll make some calls." "I'll contact the Lone Gunmen. See what they can come up with. There are also a few members of Congress who will still talk to me." As she rose and headed for the door, he called, "Scully?" She half turned. "Thanks." One brow arched and she shot him a quizzical look. "For believing. In me. And in yourself." She tilted her head and stared at him for a long moment. "We don't have any choice." He tipped his head in acknowledgement of that truth, and reached for his cell phone as the door closed behind her. It was the next afternoon before Scully had the chance to see her boss in private. An e-mailed invitation, a short telephoned acceptance, and they met in a small café some way from FBI headquarters. It wasn't one either frequented on a regular basis, so the odds of it being bugged were low. Walter Skinner was already at the table when she walked over to join him. He gestured at the opposite chair and they both sat. The menu was quickly taken care of, and the waitress dispatched. He looked at her steadily, waiting for her to find her own approach to the reason she'd asked him to meet her. It didn't take long. She folded her hands in her lap and met his eyes with a steady regard of her own. "Sir, you were right when you said that extraterrestrial involvement was more readily believable than military covert biological operations in the recent mass suicides." He leaned forward, and she took a deep breath. "What I am going to tell you sounds insane. But it is the truth." "In the last five years of dealing with the X Files I've become accustomed to dealing with the insane, Agent Scully," he told her. She nodded her agreement. "But this is more insane, more urgent, and on a much larger scale than anything we have seen before." She sat back, waiting for the waitress to serve them. When the plates were down and the woman was safely out of earshot, she continued. "We have the evidence of our personal experiences as well as corroborating evidence from first hand sources of this conspiracy." She explained about the two types of aliens, the enslavement of one type of alien by the other, and the planned colonization of earth. Skipping over some of the wilder claims Mulder had made, no matter how legitimate they might be, she stuck to the bare bones of the story. Skinner was silent when she finished. Picking up her fork, she played with her salad. Maybe doing this over lunch hadn't been such a good idea after all. She'd completely lost her appetite. "And you believe him?" he asked after taking time to sort it all out for himself. "I believe us, sir," she answered without hesitation. Skinner looked into her face, down at his plate, then back up to her face again. "I'll see what I can find out," he said simply, taking up his own fork and cutting into his pasta. "I still have contacts in the military, and among some of the higher echelon at the Bureau who've proven themselves to be open minded enough to be of some use." She smiled a quick thanks. "Be careful." The light glinted off the lenses of his glasses, hiding his eyes from her for a moment before the angle changed and she could see them again. They were hard and watchful, a warrior's eyes. "Always." Krycek knew the back way into nearly every hotel in New York. The Pierre was no exception. Making his way silently up the fire stairs, he slipped into a small, elegant room redolent with damask and mahogany. Marita was already there, standing beside and a little behind the Dandy. The old man waved a hand toward a cluster of chairs in the center of the room. Contenting himself with one killing glare at his former lover, instead of breaking her neck like he'd fantasized, he bowed slightly from the waist and extended his hand in a polite gesture for them to precede him. They did, Marita watching him warily. The crack of the old man's voice startled them both out of their silent exchange of hostilities. "Enough! We haven't the time for these juvenile games." They stared at him, and he stared them both down. "Now, tell me what progress you have made." Krycek cleared his throat and relaxed into the chair with well-acted ease. Marita perched on the edge of her own chair, careful to keep her hands in sight, not wanting to give him an excuse. "Mulder's in. Scully as well, of course. Scully met Skinner privately outside the Bureau, and indications are he is in as well. That gives us the FBI, some information sources in the military we'd otherwise not have, the abductees who will talk with Scully, Mulder's underground connections, and the ear of some Congressmen who are hostile to the Consortium." Krycek didn't have to say that without him, they would have none of them. It was his insurance that his allies on this side of the equation didn't cut his throat and drop him in an alley somewhere. He knew it, and they knew it. Marita reported on her own efforts within the United Nations. She would be in a precarious position, as would the Dandy, being a double agent within the Consortium. It had taken a lot of groveling, double talk, and heartfelt lying through her teeth, but she had regained her previous position with them. The Dandy had helped considerably, behind the scenes. "There are others within the Group who also see the need to resist the colonization efforts. I am coordinating a shift in power within the structure of the group." The old man sat military-straight in the chair, shifting his glance from one to the other of his subordinates, commanding their entire attention. "When that position is solidified, I will take covert control over internal decision-making within the Group. To that end, I will require you to perform a service, Mr. Krycek." Krycek adjusted his sprawl to a somewhat more attentive posture. "Who do you want me to kill?" The Dandy handed him a picture. He stared at it for a long moment, memorizing the features. Then he rose from the chair, took a lighter from his back pocket, and burned it, watching the ashes fall into the wastebasket below. When it was completely destroyed, he wiped his fingers free of ash and smiled boyishly at the old man. "My pleasure." The big man sat down for his first of many cups of coffee. It was his one weakness, a special dark roast he had flown in from Seattle. No one else touched it, and no one else used the beans, which he ground himself. The individual packages were tightly sealed, and he checked them thoroughly before he opened them to grind them each morning. He was a very careful man. He checked the grinder, freshly washed by his servants. He inspected the fine porcelain cup for any speck of contamination. He was a fastidious man as well. He didn't see the clear coating of dried liquid on the edges of the blades of the grinder. Wasn't aware of the fast acting poison that flaked off into the fresh grounds with every slice into the hard beans. Couldn't smell the faint hint of something alien under the rich aroma of the brew. Tasted nothing unusual in the first deep gulp. For he was also a gluttonous man. A very few moments later, he was a dead man. I used to have demons in my room at night Desire, despair, desire So many monsters Mulder sat at a booth at Lombardi's, on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay. There weren't a lot of visitors on a blowy late Spring day, so it was relatively quiet. The calm didn't last for long. "Fancy meeting you here." Krycek slipped into the booth opposite him and helped himself to a slice of thin crust pizza. Stuffing the end into his mouth, he chewed enthusiastically and stared at Mulder over the top of the crust. Mulder stared back. "What the hell are you so happy about?" Didn't make sense to him. But then, little in his relationship with Krycek made sense to him. Especially the way his body reacted to the man. Just like Pavlov's dog, salivating at the ringing of a bell, he started to drool when Krycek walked in the door. If it wasn't so disconcerting it would be funny. Krycek swallowed the last of the slice and licked his lips. Mulder followed the tongue tip with his eyes helplessly. It was going to be one of those afternoons. "We're not dead. That's cause for celebration. We've made progress. You gonna finish that?" He pointed at the last piece of pizza on the plate. Mulder gave up and pushed it over to him. "Thanks! After lunch, let's talk." Mulder nodded, watching Krycek's jaw move, watching his throat move as he swallowed. Watching. He had a beautiful mouth. Mulder started when Krycek snapped his fingers under his nose. "You in there?" Not yet, but soon. He swallowed the inappropriate giggle that threatened to escape and tossed a twenty on the table. "Come on, let¹s get out of here." They didn't talk much on the way to the motel, inconsequential remarks about the sunshine, the ocean, the few hardy beachcombers. The door closed behind them, Mulder turning to lock it, and feeling a warm weight along his back. He shuddered. "Talk, Krycek," he tried to command. It sounded more like a plea. As expected, Krycek paid no attention to his orders. A hand tugged at his suit jacket, and he gave a second's thought to resisting. Then his body took over while his mind was still considering options, and he moved to strip with no further delay. "Yeah," Krycek breathed, eyes roaming over him. "Get it out of the way, Mulder. Let all the steam out, then you can think again." This man knew him much too well. "Shut up and take off your clothes." Krycek grinned at him. "Make me." Mulder stared at him like he'd lost his mind. "Asshole." Then he proceeded to undress Krycek with as much dispatch as he'd shucked his own clothes. The only time he hesitated was when they were both naked, and he reached for the straps binding the prosthetic arm in place. "Does it hurt?" Krycek started to shy away from his fingers, but Mulder hooked his left arm around the younger man's hips and held him in place. "Let me." "No." It was a shuddering sigh of protest, but Mulder preferred to believe it referred to the first question, not a denial of permission for the actions he was already taking. He unbuckled it carefully, soothing the flesh beneath the cup. Krycek whimpered, deep in his throat. Mulder laid it aside with equal care, then gathered Krycek up in his arms and held him, rocking him slightly, taking the urgency down a notch. Gradually the body in his arms relaxed, and a strong arm inched up his back, hand tangling in the thick hair at the back of his head. His face was turned until their mouths could meet. Oh. That was why he did this. Funny, how easy it was to forget when they were clothed, when the power struggle between them got in the way of the elemental truth of their need for one another. His mouth was open, searching, tasting and being invaded in turn. Krycek was a nibbler, and he felt like he was being eaten whole. It made him feel more alive than anything he could ever remember. Words echoed through his head, beneath the beat of the pulse in his ears. 'We're not dead' Yeah. That was reason enough in itself, and this was validation of that reasoning, verification of the connection between them. The kiss expanded, ranging from mouth to jaw to eyelid to nose back past lips to chin to throat. Somehow they made it to the bed before they fell over. They landed in a tangle, legs entwined, hands groping for purchase against slick skin, eyes still closed, mouths still searching. Mulder gave up any attempt at thought, every nerve feeling as if it was stretched on the outside of his skin, sparking wherever it touched Krycek, which was everywhere. He was blanketed in the man. One hand stroked up the length of Krycek's leg from knee to crotch, parting strong thighs to dive between them and cup the straining genitals digging into his stomach. The other hand slid behind Krycek, soothing over the small of his back, two fingers gently forcing his ass cheeks apart, running fingertips up and down, over and across the sensitive skin there. Krycek's hand finally loosened its grip in his hair and began to roam over his shoulder and back, rubbing small circles, pressing in long sweeping strokes. They were both aching and leaking, rubbing against one another, bracing knees and hips to get as much friction as possible between them. He was close, so close... the hand swept from his back to slide down between them, suddenly, grasping his testicles and pulling them downward. The abrupt move sent a sharp pain lancing through his abdomen, stopping the incipient orgasm. He growled out an incoherent protest. "Not like that," Krycek groaned into his chest, pulling away from Mulder's hands to slither down his body. Coming to rest atop Mulder's thighs, nudging them apart with his shoulder to settle between them, he looked up and grinned wickedly at him. "Like this." He nearly came when Krycek put his mouth around his cock, maintaining eye contact the whole time. It was the lewdest thing he'd ever seen, and he'd made a study of lewd things. "Oh, fuck," he moaned, wishing for a videocamera with the tiny part of his mind that wasn't completely caught up in what was happening. Krycek broke suction long enough to say, "Later," then put his head down and went to work with a will before Mulder could even protest the loss of contact. Mulder felt every muscle in his body tense up like a stretched rubber band as Krycek proceeded to lick and nibble and suck every inch of him, from perineum to crown. He pried his eyes open when he felt the world shift, unaware until that moment that he'd squeezed them tightly shut. Krycek had shifted him so that he was on his back, one leg over the pile of pillows, the other over Krycek's good shoulder. The position left him completely open, and Krycek took full advantage of the fact. The first circling stab of tongue at his anus nearly made the top of his head come off. Yet another first for the Rat, sang merrily through his head, then fingers were milking his cock, that mouth was working at his ass, his own hands were nearly ripping the linens off the bed, and he was coming so hard he could swear his backbone was being pulled out of the end of his cock. He thought he screamed. He couldn't hear anything, couldn't see anything through the red haze clouding his vision, couldn't feel anything but the incredible pressure at his groin. Then there was a different sort of pressure nudging at him. The leg that had been over Krycek's shoulder was now bent back to his chest, held down by the simple expedient of Krycek laying on him. He opened dazed eyes to take in the sight of Krycek's face, close to his. The thought struck him that the other man was beautiful, straining like this, flushed and wet with sweat, and that he should kiss him. Then the nudging burst into pain, and he arched instinctively against it, a move that opened him up further and allowed Krycek to slip deeper into him. "Fuck!" he yowled. "Yeah," Krycek panted out. He didn't know whether to kiss him or kill him. Before he could find enough of his mind to make up, one way or the other, Krycek began to rock. Holy shit. The pain shifted, suddenly, and he moaned involuntarily. His thighs fell further apart, as far as he could get them, cradling Krycek against his pelvis and chest. He could feel the slap of balls against his ass as Krycek thrust all the way in, and an irregular flare of sensation at the height of some strokes. His cock twitched, partially filling at the novelty of being opened and filled, partly at the friction of Krycek's belly moving against him, partly at the incredible turn on of being totally vulnerable, fucked and enjoying it, under his enemy. Yes, he thought wryly, giving up any further attempt at analysis, he was one totally fucked up man. A particularly hard thrust forced another moan out of him, and he nearly laughed. Fucked up in more ways than one. Krycek leaned back slightly, changing the angle and deepening the penetration. Those little flares got bigger, hitting him deep inside with each stroke now. His cock filled completely, hard and aching, and he was thrusting back against Krycek, an active participant now. Krycek wanted more. "Do yourself," he growled through clenched teeth. The force and speed of his thrusts were increasing. Mulder licked his lips, then brought his palm up to his mouth and licked that as well. Krycek watched avidly as he lowered his hand to his cock and began to pull it in counter rhythm to Krycek's strokes. The dual sensations of fucking his hand and being fucked quickly became too much for him, and he threw his head back, closing his eyes. Krycek stopped. He whimpered, opened his eyes, pleading with him to move. Wide, hot eyes stared back at him from a feral mask of a face. "Keep your eyes open, Mulder." He didn't know if he could. But if he didn't, Krycek was more than capable of torturing him there at the edge of orgasm forever. He was just the type to do it, too, damn him. Mulder made a supreme effort, struggling to keep his eyes open and glued to Krycek's. With a grim nod of approval, the other man finally took the initiative and pumped, hard. Within moments, the edge was right there again. He fought to maintain that eye contact as he went over, panting and keening as he convulsed. He'd never come with anything in his ass before, and the feeling of the spasming muscle around Krycek's cock was absolutely incredible. He wrung his cock dry, writhing, impaled, watching himself in the dilated blackness of Krycek's pupils, seeing the heat there reflected back at himself, knowing the exact moment when Krycek came. Not by the convulsive heave of Krycek's groin against his ass, or the hot streams of semen bathing his guts, but by the unadulterated rapture in his eyes. One moment of honest connection. His soul bared, given the gift of Krycek's in return. Then the shutters fell. Heavily lashed lids swept down, covering the naked truth in those eyes, then slowly raised again. Reality was back, where it undoubtedly belonged. Krycek pulled out carefully, his hand soothing the trembling muscles in Mulder's thighs. Mulder took over the job as Krycek withdrew, rolling gracefully off the side of the bed. He lay there, rubbing his complaining quads, staring up at Krycek. Krycek returned the look for a moment, then leaned down and kissed Mulder, softly, at the corner of his mouth. Straightening, he turned his back to Mulder and headed for the shower. Mulder pushed the back of his head against the pillow. Lacing his hands behind his head, shifting to get comfortable, careful of the twinges in his backside, he allowed his mind to start thinking again. Fighting to hold back a wave of depression that threatened to drown him, he forced himself to look at the situation as objectively as he could. Yes, he was probably crazy. No, appearances aside, he wasn't in love with Krycek. Neither was Krycek in love with him. Love had nothing to do with it. They needed each other. And they would continue to need one another. Until this was over, and they had won. When they would probably kill one another. Or until it was over, and they had lost, in which case they wouldn't need to kill one another, because someone else would surely have done it for them. No one else understood. Not Scully, although she understood things about him that Krycek never would. Not Skinner, god forbid. He could just imagine trying to explain a sexual relationship with Alex Krycek, of all people, to Walter Skinner. Not Frohicke, or any of his other few friends. There was a twisted logic to their... union? Liaison. Whatever it was. No one else could ever understand it because no one else could ever live it. He heard Krycek step under the shower, and rolled over with a slight groan. Coming to his feet, he went to join him under the water. After all, he was living it. And even he didn't understand it. The monsters are crazy Lights split the inky darkness of the early morning sky, deep in the forested mountains of the Appalachians, this time with no human bystanders to be caught up between the warring factions. A triangular mass, huge, starred with spotlights, flung itself sideways at high speed toward another mass, equally as huge. Tongues of fire shot out from hidden mouths along the sides of the ship, to be met by flares from the other. Below it, among the trees, fighting with desperate determination, blind man shaped creatures fought others with dead eyes. There were few sounds, other than the hiss of escaping alien blood, the sizzle as it ate into soil, the muted roar of flame-throwers, the crackling burst of pine needles caught in the crossfire. They didn't scream as they died, or if they did, no one heard. Scorched trees, burnt paths along the soil, slowing drying patches of oil marked the battle. Corpses collapsed, burnt to ash, or caving in on themselves, empty shells that quickly disintegrated into the earth. A clash, a conflagration, no quantifiable resolution, no advantage gained or lost. A stalemate, a retreat. To meet and clash again, until the will of the invader was conquered or the will of the enslaved submitted. The battle was joined. There are monsters outside Sequel: Any Weapon bantrim@earthlink.net

So Many Monsters, an X Files conspiracy by Brenda Antrim. Rated NC-17 for violence and adult themes. No infringement intended to any copyright holders. With sincere appreciation to CC and Co. for the Kiss and the Conspiracy and thanks to Diva Annie Lennox for the vocal poetry. back to top

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