I can hear Krycek breathing behind me as my feet carry me up the stairs, one
step at a time; my eyes are shrouded in blackness by the dark glasses I'm
wearing but I let my body melt into the shadows, drift, trusting my muscles
to guide me where my eyes are no longer useful. I should take them off, the
glasses; wearing them upon the last steps of this journey, this
confrontation, is not only ridiculous but deadly.
But I don't. I half-close my eyes instead, feeling the straps across my
thighs and shoulders rubbing, pulling. My heart is pounding just below my
throat, and I can feel my fingers, my muscles, beginning to twitch, to
clench, to get ready. This is it, the last stop, the end of the line. No
more child murders, no more nightmares, no more wondering in the dark if I
could have done one thing, just one more thing. If I could have saved him.
Because that's what I'm here to do.
Save Nikolai from himself.
The door. I pause, draw a breath. Run a hand up my right thigh, feeling warm
leather, cool metal, trembling muscle. I say nothing to Alex. There is no
time for words, no more time to second-guess, to plan, to think. I saw the
movie. So did he. Free your mind.
I am insane, but there is no fear.
I step through the door and he turns, then, across the room, and there is a
moment of deadly silence as his blue eyes size me up, record, remember me.
Nikolai Chenderovich, man of my nightmares. Alex's big brother. Kolushka.
Tall and wiry in his black and leather, we could be characters in a comic
book—only at the end of this issue, nobody's a hero. We just go on.
"You," he breathes, and smiles. "Mulder."
A pause, considering. "Chorny lisa."
I step up the final stair then, and—against everything I know and have
believed—I can feel myself smiling back. I am enjoying this, for Christ's
sake, the adrenaline pounding in my body, and I can feel myself getting
hard, the leather straps caressing my body. I am ready—truly—and the
realization makes me giddy. I smile wider, and reach for the front of my
long black coat. Spreading it like a flasher, slowly, I let him see—the
guns strapped to my thighs, the .22 on my ankle. And, there, on my left
calf, the knife. Black and steel and eight inches of pure Bolvangar death,
taken off him like a trophy the last time we met and brought here, now, like
destiny.
Kolyai's smile becomes a grin.
"So that's how you want to play it?"
All at once I can see his good right hand
But we've just begun.
"Your gun's empty," I tell him, smiling.
"I don't need it," he says simply, and he steps back and tosses the empty
piece to the floor.
I move back, watching him, breathing. All right. I reach up slowly and pull
the dark glasses from my face, tossing them to the floor along with my gun.
This is the truth, now, this is where it gets real. Touching him, being
touched, and if I'm going to take him down, take him out, it's going to be
with nothing but my hands. I should have known that from the first, should
have felt it. Everything has slowed down, slowed to the rhythm of my
breathing, and although I know Alex is lurking, there, in the shadows, I
hope he doesn't come forward too soon. I am all right, and I can handle
this. It is my time.
I launch myself at Kolyai.
Although he is ready for me and bigger than I am, he is still taken by
surprise that I—Fox Mulder!—would leap at him. I catch him around the
chest and duck as he swings a thick fist at my face. Under his arm and
around, up with an elbow into his ribs and another up into his jaw. He backs
away, panting, and we circle.
"Well," he says, softly, with something like pleasure in his voice.
Something like pride. "Looks like you've learned something since last time,
boy."
"I'm not your boy," I tell him—like I'm talking to a four-year-old—and
"Are you having fun yet?" I ask him. "I am."
With a growl, he leaps at me.
I am ready for his charge, but his weight is more than I expect and he is
good, so good. He kicks one of my feet out from under me and follows it with
an immediate left to my face, and I stumble. A strong blow to my chest, my
ribs, and I fall with him on top of me. It knocks the wind out of me, and I
fight for breath as I shake off his blows, jerking from side to side. He
pulls me around and over with an arm across my throat, and I kick and squirm
underneath him, fighting against the black dots that begin to swarm across
my vision almost immediately. He pulls my head back, slaps me hard across
the mouth, and then brings the side of his hand down across my face, my nose
exploding with a crimson rush of pain.
"Are you having fun yet?" he asks, driving a knee into my guts. "Because I
am."
I have had enough .
With a howl of something that is partly pain, partly exertion, but mostly
just pure exultation, I shove Kolyai over backwards and roll out from under
him, gasping for air and shaking my head to clear it. I duck as he charges
me again, catching him on the chin with my elbow, and get to my feet just in
time to catch him in the face with one, two, three blows and make him
stagger backward. I pivot and spin and there he is again, and he crashes
into me with all his moving weight. I catch him, and together we slam into
the knee-high railing behind us and roll over it as one man, smooth and slow
and so like a movie. But when we hit the ground I swing on him again,
hard, no fear but a kind of finality, and when I stand up, breathing hard
for the first time, Kolyai is still lying there.
This is the end , I think.
At last.
I turn toward Alex, turn to reach for his hand, the knife, I don't know. But
before I can turn more than halfway, Kolyai comes alive. He kicks out for my
feet with a snarl of fury, and somehow—God only knows, how—I skid out of
his way. Whirling on my left foot, I lean my body toward the railing and all
in one motion, I lay my palm flat on the wood, pull my legs in, and propel
myself up and over on one hand. Even as I'm doing it I can't believe it— I'm Fox Mulder, how the hell can I do this? —but it is in a distant
way; in the forefront of my mind is only a gleeful exultation, a feeling of
flying, a feeling of triumph. I feel as though all my muscles, every inch of
skin, is working like a hologram, a projection. Like I'm not really here... like I've mastered the Matrix.
NeoFox.
Kolyai circles me again, half-grinning, half-snarling, and I lean forward,
crouching. I reach up to wipe more blood out of my eyes, but there is no
pain, no fear, only a gut-deep insistence that this is right, this is the
groove, that I am still alive . I reach down—holding his eyes, always
holding his eyes, that is the one thing I learned from both Alex and the
basement, if I drop his eyes he'll have my throat, no questions asked—and
in one motion the knife whickers out of the holster strapped to my left
calf. Left hand to right, to left, and the grin fades from Kolyai's face
faster than I ever could have imagined. He begins to smile again as I spin
the knife between my fingers, up and over, showing off now, but I can afford
to. Up and over again, and as it is coming around I suddenly feel myself
losing it, losing control, and my mind flashes in a brilliant surge of blue
light make it look like it's on purpose, God, Mulder, make it look like it
was on purpose or you're dead!! Slick and slippery, the black steel blade
flying suddenly through my fingers and I go with it, close my eyes in the
moonlit dark and just go with it, and as the knife skids from my fingers I
lean with it and swing my arm around.
The knife clatters to the floor—
—and Nikolai's smile is wiped from his face like magic. I can't believe it
but it worked, he believes it was on purpose, and anyone who is crazy enough
to toss away their only weapon in the face of an enemy bigger than they are
either has a hell of a plan or has lost their mind. I see the hole, see his
hesitation, and I make my final charge. He
swings a fist at me and up comes my
My feet twitch spasmodically. That is all.
Oh shit, I have time to think, is that what it feels like? Like a fish out
of water, like all those stories—thousands of them—that I've read, my
brain has lost communication with my feet. Like being paralyzed, like being
terrified, like somewhere in the vicinity of my spine the signals have been
shut down.
Get UP!! My mind shouts.
Okay, say my feet, and twitch again. My body does nothing at all.
I feel a sharp point at the back of my neck, and with an almost superhuman
effort I cry out and roll a foot or so to one side. The cry—halfway—
becomes a scream; Kolyai had embedded the point of the stiletto in the back
of my neck and, as I rolled, torn a three-inch gash in the skin. I lie
there, unable to move, bleeding.
"You know what?" Nikolai says, almost conversationally. "You're going to die
now."
Yes . I am . I shut my eyes.
Waiting.
I hear a sudden rustle and lie there, paralyzed; hidden by the shadows, I
hear Kolyai cry out, see a pair of shadows rolling to one side. I hear
garbled words that sound very much like " You ? How could you, after all-"
And then a thick thwack! sound, and then nothing at all.
The room is silent.
And then I see something that I can't believe—it is a hand, reaching for
me in the darkness.
One hand.
Krycek's hand.
He pulls me to my feet, cradling me with the prosthesis while he holds me up
with the other. I feel blood being wiped from my face.
"Alex. . .?" I stammer, feeling beginning to come back to my body—slowly.
"It's all right," Alex says, his black glove smooth on my skin. "It's over.
The Boys Inside, or the Death of Kolyai
by Fox Mulder
moving
toward the back of his
shirt and I spin
so slowly
and the air is filled suddenly with the reek of cordite
and we revolve slowly, so slowly, like a dance
my own .45 up and out as I move feeling a
tug and then another against the fabric of my coat
and a faraway stinging across the back of my right
hand as I hold it up and out, sideways like a vigilante in a bad
movie and I can see his eyes, now, flashing and he shrieks at me
"Don't you ever fucking die ?" and I feel nothing but time slowing
down like a reel and suddenly he's there, in my face, just like all the
dreams and we're standing together like
brothers, yes, like brothers and the click
registers in my head as I realize he has one hand on my upper arm and that
my left is on his
shoulder as my gun jerks, and clicks on an empty
chamber and I am watching his eyes, now, not a scratch on him but he's not
grinning now, not anymore.
drop to my knees as he charges me. I feel him
hit and we roll
backwards in a tangle of
fists and limbs and I feel his
knuckles crack the side of my face and I shake it off moving
sideways like a dance hearing nothing
but our breathing and his sharp
exhales and I sink a shot
and then another and he is gripping my
hair and I roll under his arm
and pop up shedding my black
coat in one motion like a
bird on the wing and crouching
circling aware of my newfound
grace and not noticing anything no
pain and when my eyes focus we're circling each other again, me in my tight
black jeans and my long-sleeved shirt—that seems to be damp around my
waist somewhere but I toss it off as a curiosity—the straps loose now, all
my holsters empty but the one containing the knife—his knife—, both of
us crouched now like boxers, like street fighters, both of us watching each
other for the hole, the weakness, and I know now that he knows I am
serious, that I am here to kill him. That I don't believe I can be killed,
fatal fallacy but it has kept me up and alive so far. I knuckle blood out of
my right eye and watch him, and begin to smile.
arm in a slick smooth
block and I duck his next
swing and one two three into his
face into the scar, into that
fucking grin and we spin each other like
dancers I feel his blows landing and everything is
slow, so slow and he's really
coming at me now really trying to kill me but I am not
afraid I can't even seem to find that final rush of
adrenaline as we grapple and fall and roll, full of punches and kicks
and knuckle-filled fists and all of a sudden
(like breathing liquid, like the air has become thick and slow)
Kolyai is behind me and I turn to roll out of his way and his huge
hand comes swinging down at me and cracks me across the left ear so hard
blackness fills my vision. My ears are ringing, the left one slowly leaking
blood, and my nose is bleeding now, too. When my vision begins to clear I am
lying stretched out on the floor, trying to shake my head and unable to
because of the pain. Kolyai is behind me, hovering over me, and I hear a
skittering clatter. I can feel him breathing—fuck, I can feel him
grinning —and something in my brain says Okay, Mulder, time to get up
now. Get UP!! Okay, all right, good idea—great idea—I think, and my
brain sends the signals to my body: roll out of the way, get up, duck, get
behind him. Get up.
