It seemed that a padded room was our destiny. It did as much
good as it had ever done. None.
At least it got us out of Diana's hands. Fox-Michael said he'd
rather cut our cock off than have her ever touch us like that again;
he had always hated her for taking advantage of him worst of all.
Not that she hadn't fucked with each of us in a unique way, even if
she hadn't understood what was really going on. He desperately
wanted to let Alex know what she'd done this time; after all, Alex
had called her in to get Mulder out of the stairwell.
We wondered if Krycek would kill her for it. Whether he did or
not would tell us a hell of a lot about her importance to the
remnants of the Consortium or the rebels or whomever else they
were working for. Left to himself, he'd kill her in a second for it.
Whatever mindfuck had been done to us, it didn't seem to hurt as
much when we were all running, online. In other words, if we
were sane, we would be far worse off right now. I would laugh if
our observers wouldn't take it the wrong way.
I sat back and listened to the others. I proudly watched inmate
teamwork in action. Fox-Michael listened to the chaos of distorted
voices and separated them into different people. He saw it as
untangling a snarled mess of many different colored yarn strands.
At this point it was still too early to determine the range of our
telepathy—if that's what it really was—but he planned to devote his
attention to finding out as soon as he had the tangle sorted out.
He sang to himself as he worked, which would have been a
distraction to almost anyone else but seemed to help his
concentration. I heard, "When I grow up, I'll be stable / When I
grow up, I'll turn the tables..." Kid had a cute sense of humor. He
also had a note-perfect memory of the song playing for him. We
all used our eidetic memory in different ways.
I hated to admit it, but he was a godsend here. Our soundman.
The loud, distorted noises that made the rest of us want to gouge
out our eardrums—for all the good that would do against a psychic
cacophony—just made him irritably exclaim that he'd heard worse
on the stage from mic feedback. He'd just wished for some knobs
to adjust and a microphone stand to move.
I wish we had some idea how Gibson Praise had perceived the
thoughts he read. Did it sound like this to him too? If it did, did
having the talent since birth make it easier to take? He didn't seem
to need institutionalization.
Fox-Michael had run the body for a while but had to stop. Singing
and headbopping looked normal in a teenage kid but put him in a
straitjacket and a padded room, and those same gestures took on a
different meaning to observers. Seeing that, the others handed
physical operations and lookout over to me.
Fox Mulder turned our memory to keeping track of the thought
strands Fox-Michael had already identified and separated. Baby
was quiet but waiting for things to get really bad again, as they
always did. Overloaded and shut down, Mulder rested in the arms
of a new personality who'd been born during his recent torment.
She hadn't said a word—though she did croon to him—or named
herself, but I guess she acted as the mother our own had never
really been.
I wish we'd found out about all this with the artifact shit earlier, but
Mulder didn't tell us because he always took the pain. He was
used to it. This time, he kept on taking the pain alone until he
literally couldn't do it anymore. We're lucky we didn't split further
before he pulled us out of downtime.
Fox Mulder signaled me for a conversation. I trusted him to know
whether he could sort and talk at the same time. || Fox had one hell
of a thought, || Fox Mulder said. || A regular person couldn't take
this and still function. An individual certainly couldn't sort
through this mess and impose sense. It needs a multiple,
dissociative person. ||
Fox-Michael usually spoke straight to me. Our project must have
been keeping him busy that he could only talk to the personality
he'd been dealing with directly.
[Is he suggesting what I think he's suggesting?] I asked.
|| It's worth thinking about. We didn't think Dad had a fucking clue
about what he'd done to us, but who knows? Maybe we were set
up to become what we became from the very beginning. I mean,
we're having an unusual reaction to the artifact. Maybe we were...
designed to? ||
Horrible thought, but not beyond Dad or his bastard friends. I
didn't think they could have controlled the splitting process of
dissociation well enough to deliberately create a personality that
had the bent to make sense of the racket of thoughts, but...
Fucking scary.
Speaking of our personality with the right bent, I couldn't be
happier with how Fox-Michael was turning out. Exposure to Alex
Krycek and Daniel Pendrell had changed him, matured him. I'd
been mistrustful of it at first, but the kid was turning into an
intelligent, thoughtful asset that his original child-whore self
couldn't have been.
We all had our roles. What I heard now suggested that I'd failed in
mine somehow. [I don't remember them messing with our head in
an organized way to direct us here.]
|| And you're the one who remembers everything. ||
I hated even thinking this way, but we had to consider it. [Maybe
they got something past me.]
|| We really hoped you wouldn't say that. ||
[If we get too scared to think, we're falling right into their hands.]
If true, the evil, the planning, involved staggered the mind. Yet
Fox-Michael saw the possibility. I heard him listening to Lo
Fidelity Allstars—"Got a revolution behind my eyes / We got to get
up and organize..."—as he untangled the broadcasted mess of
thoughts. [And could you tell Fox that I'm proud of him?]
I felt Fox Mulder smile. || Sure. Be sure to tell him yourself
sometime too. || Then he fidgeted uncomfortably. || Y'know, I
figured you might have some memory holes. ||
[How's that?]
|| I can't believe it took us so long to recognize old man Spender.
He was around enough to make it into our family pictures. ||
/I recognized him from the beginning,/ Fox-Michael said suddenly.
Before we could ask the inevitable, he answered, /No one ever
asked me./
Fox remembered him when the rest of us didn't? [He didn't—]
/No! Hell, no! That's disgusting! Him and me? Gah!/
Dad was bad enough. [We're relieved. Really relieved. What did
he do, then?]
/Said I was a good kid. I don't remember anything else./
I was the memory. I thought I knew everything. This tidbit
seriously worried me.
Fox-Michael stilled. /Alex is here./
We seemed to be the institution's main act; someone should charge
admission. Alex now stood in the monitor room with Diana where
Skinner and Scully had been some time before.
Skinner had left tasting of shame and horror. Far as we could tell,
Scully had finally gone to check out Mulder's claims. She had to
see us brought this low to finally put her ass in gear. I don't know
what Mulder saw in her, but he'd also been the one who'd hooked
us up with Phoebe, Patterson, Matheson, Diana, and Alex Krycek.
Did the people he loved hurt him, or were the people who hurt him
the ones that he loved?
After Fox-Michael's careful work, we could hear Alex's thoughts.
Fox-Michael had to clean them up a bit first to make them easier to
understand, though. I know you never wanted to end up like this.
Dammit, what the hell did they do to you? They never said it
would strike you so hard. If I find out Diana had anything to do
with it, I'll wring her neck. I can't get you out, not with Scully
showing up in Africa. They're paying too much attention right
now. But soon.
[Can he hear us back?]
/I don't... We can try./ I felt Fox-Michael concentrate, focusing his
thoughts. /Alex? Alex, can you hear us?/
[Well?]
/He can't. Either we're a one-way system, or we just haven't
figured it out yet./
[Can we dig through his mind a bit?]
/Mmmm, yeah. He doesn't know much about what happened to us.
He just knows that this what we were kept alive for all these years.
And he's the one who compromised Skinner and threatened his
life./
[Shit. Traitorous bastard.] A look into that rat's mind... We could
find out whatever we wanted about the former and present
Consortium and about Dad. We could see how Krycek had killed
our father. We were sure he had. I wanted details; I wanted to see
the bastard's last moments.
I sent a private thought about that to Fox-Michael, but he just
shook his head. He refused to go in further. He couldn't do this to
me, to us. I worked as the memory; I had to know.
We had a battle of the wills that no doubt only took seconds in the
real world, and it ended in stalemate. The kid had become too
powerful to be forced. Maybe a subtler method would work later,
when he wasn't on alert anymore, but for now he held strong.
On a private line he confirmed that Krycek had killed Dad, and he
would give me details later as long as Mulder never got to hear any
of it. The scraps of Consortium information he found were so
convoluted and complicated that it would take him a while to sort.
I would get what I wanted later.
But I wouldn't forget the show of defiance.
Completely unaware of my struggle with Fox-Michael, Mulder
roused a little and responded to my last public statement. He
sounded dazed and groggy. //Alex has a plan. He always does.
We just walk through fire a bit to get there.// Fortunately, he was
too groggy to think of looking into Krycek's memories himself. I
doubted he could handle it.
[Not good enough.]
/The doctors are coming back to do tests. We've been calm too
long./
[Can't have that.] I shifted my leg a bit to flash the camera that fed
to Krycek's monitor. I didn't know why they put us in this skimpy
little hospital gown, but it had some advantages. Remind him of
what he was missing while he left us in here. The fucking traitor.
//He has a plan!// Mulder protested desperately, trying to convince
himself too.
[He better. The way things are now, we're not getting out on our
own.]
/We need him, William,/ Fox-Michael said.
[Yeah, yeah.]
I felt so tired from all the drugs, but I stood, wandered to the
camera that fed the monitor Diana was staring at, and yelled, "Was
it good, Diana? Had to be better than old man Spender even if I
had been in fucking coma at the time. Do you think this is genetic,
bitch? If you spawn anything from it, you know those bastards
would just take it away and probably shoot you in the head. What
are you looking at? What are you looking at?" We didn't have
much throat left to scream with.
Whatever Fox-Michael was doing seemed to be working, because I
could feel a spike of murderous rage from Krycek and make out
some of his thoughts. He couldn't help imagining what she'd done
to us in pornographic detail. He was planning. Bloody revenge on
Fowley, images that warmed my heart and made me feel better
disposed toward him. Escape for us. But he had to be subtle...
Diana felt even warier. Raping us hadn't been in her bosses'
orders, and now we'd just announced on camera what she'd done.
Lovely.
We were going to get out of here if I had to fuck Krycek myself to
do it, though I was sure Mulder would be more than willing to take
that duty. Then we were going to get better, whatever that took.
Then we would take our own revenge on everyone who had made
us what we are.
I expected dissent on that last bit from the other inmates but heard
none. We were agreed, focused. The unaccustomed feeling of
clarity and unity in the others made me smile. They were with me,
even if we had to kill.
I wandered the room impatiently waiting to hear Krycek make his
plans to get us out. We had so much work to do.
THE END
Inmates
by Viridian5
"You can't escape
What makes you tragic, you know..."
—"Platinum" by Orgy
