"Do you remember?"
He spat the words down, I couldn't see him. I only saw the floor, grey
poured concrete spattered with dimesized polka dots of blood, black in this
light; I only felt the weight of his knee on my back, the pull of his hand
in my hair, the tearing there. It was contact, familiar—painful.
He came into the cell like the angel of Death, there was so much hate and
anger in the air around his eyes that all the sparks between us fell dead
and frozen to the ground like razored snowflakes. Enough to wade in. Enough
for me to drown in cuts.
There was a guard outside and five cameras with audio pickup in there, but
he still jumped me, snarling, and broke his hand on my face over and over. I
heard it only, the bones snapping, popping. I couldn't feel. The blows were
all muted by the cold lockdown inside me. My nerves couldn't move anymore.
I froze open. I couldn't look away. His eyes were leaking, he had a rictus
on and foam at the corners of his mouth. My head bounced against the wall
and I sprawled, on my belly like a snake and he twined his broken hand in my
hair and slammed my face down hard and kicked at my crotch, harder. I
shrieked it all out, then, when I had the excuse. Once.
And he growled and muttered, calling curses down on me, all the maledictions
I'd ever heard and some new, terrible, unspoken one that belonged only to
me. Frozen soul, toppling, breaking... heart rolling in the shards. Not
mine. Don't have one. All gone.
"Krycek, you bastard, do you remember what it was like? Do you know what
you've done?"
Oh, I knew. And my crazy brain locked into the loop, remembering
helplessly, and I snuffled against the floor, smelling industrial cleaner
and old dirt, and said—
"I remember, Mulder. I remember everything."
The Bolvangar Compound
Kolyai is grinning. That is bad news. His face is narrowly, nastily
handsome, high cheekbones and a good chin; even the long vertical scar going
down from his left eye to the corner of his mouth does not detract from that
(a prisoner tried to take his eye out once. And lost both of his own.) Blond
hair, blue eyes, a black glitter of poisoned charisma. But when he grins
he's all rigid teeth and lopsided, bloodthirsty cheer and the grin is so
close to my face, so close. The Boogeyman Is Here.
I push into the wall behind me, staring at the bridge of his nose. If I do
that it looks like I am staring back into the blaze, and it helps me to not
blink or gulp or flinch or whimper, because god help me if I do ... there is
no god. And never mind the knife at my throat and the hand on my chest,
never mind those, he's showing teeth... bright white flat fangs and we're of
a size; if he decides to snap at me I'm gonna be minus a lower lip. Or
worse. Wolf, wolf, black wolf, don't eat me yet again, don't eat me once
í more....
"You're going to, little one. You're going to do this for me, Alexei
Andreijevich. I'm telling you so, golubchick."
I don't say anything. I wait. I think about time, the past—the future.
His breath is hot on my frozen face, his hand heavy on me. So heavy.
"I. Want. Him. You brought him here once. He came back last summer, escaped
again with a whole case of the vaccine. You tricked me. And if you don't
get him for me, you're not done being mangled. I'll make what happened to
you so far, all eighteen years of it, feel like a sweet dream. Do you
believe me, Sascha?"
"I believe you."
I keep my voice low, my breathing even, my heartbeat steady. It's been a
long, long time since I showed him any raw meat. Any raw me. That's how come
I'm alive and missing only an arm. And a heart and a soul and any guts at
all, but that is another ballgame and I've never been in the park. I've been
devoured, I'm down to old bones, I'm safe. I'm alive, I'm alive.... He ate
me all up long ago. Wolf, black wolf... Nikolai Chenderovich, chornij volk
dlya Tunguska. Careful, now. Speak softly, Alex.
"Why don't you go for him yourself, Kolyai? What you want, only you can get,
after all."
"Because they won't let me, little brother. Because the motherfuckers won't
let me leave the country. They don't want me near him. And they need me
here. But you're an American citizen. You can be there and back. You can be
my little carrier pigeon..."
"... And bring him your message."
"Yes. Write it on him. I don't care that he got those kids vaccinated, I
don't give a fuck what Consortium plans he sabotages, but he got away from
me. He can't do that! And you can't protect him! You don't have the right. I
want him, and you. Are. Mine."
"Look, you had him in the basement already. You had your pet guards go at
him, you flayed him, fucked him and ripped him up—what more can I do?"
Even before he moves, I know my mistake. Mentioning that night in the
basement, what folks here fondly call "the Therapy Room," is rubbing
Kolyai's nose in his own failure. Mulder didn't give him an inch. Mulder
almost took his throat out and then bit his dick, for fuck's sake. Why'd I
go and remind him—
Then he's gripping my jaw and I'm breathing around the blade, mustn't
flinch. He never cleans the thing and I taste long-dead meat and blackened
steel... Relax, relax then it won't hurt as much, and I maybe won't make
noise. My tongue sizzles, I swear I hear it open with a hiss...
Then he's grunting through his nose and lapping at my tongue and the roof of
my mouth and biting down. He chews. I freeze my long silence around the
mouthful of lightning and pounding nails and I don't blink; don't blink,
Alexei. Don't breathe. Hush. You're okay. You're safe. You're gone.
"You can do what I tell you to, baby brother. Now. Because you're my boy.
Aren't you? Mine."
I nod, wiping my face. Saltwater and dark red drool.
"Yours."
He smiles then, the daubed, sated one. The blooded smile, not the
bloodthirsty grin. His hand closes on the back of my neck. He pushes me down
to my knees. The gravel of the courtyard bites at my kneecaps. The hand
that's not cradling my skull unzips his black pants, then grips my jaw
again. I taste blood along with the hard flesh of his cock. He pushes in,
the whole huge length of him at once, butting at my shredded, chewed- up
tongue. Kolyai does not get off if it's not a bloodfuck. He plugs my throat
and crushes my face against his belly. I close my eyes. He moves, hungry,
and once more and a third time and a sound escapes me. I let it resonate and
draw out. I rub my bleeding tongue on the underside of his dick. He wraps
warm hands around my head and comes. I swallow hard, once, twice. It tastes
like life or death, ongoing, obdurate. All one.
He lets go and nods at me.
That wasn't so bad. I got off light. Mulder—Mulder won't.
I'm a coward.
Hegal Place
He's asleep on the sofa, long limbs thrown every which way, neck stretched
out. He's tousled and defenseless, his face a pale blob in the light from
the fishtank. He's flung the blanket off. He must've fallen asleep right
after a shower, because he's naked and I know by dint of surveillance he
doesn't leave his back uncovered anymore. There's a little pout on his lips,
and lines on his forehead. He looks like sleep might be hard work... It
probably is, what with the stereo pounding out, loud, insistent and subtly
alien, some alternative rock thing.
What I catch of the lyrics makes me snort. '...finally found a reason, I
won't need an excuse, I got this time on my hands, you are the one to abuse.
You are the one to abuse. You are the one to abuse.'
Maybe it's 'amuse', but I think not. You're a freak, Mulder.
It's a good song, really.
His hair is brutally short, and darker than it used to be. New phobias, Fox?
What a collector you are, what a magnet for maniacs. Look at you now with
your whip-scars and your new nightmares, your no-grip haircut and your black
dye job. You resisted. Was it worth it to you?
I hear Kolyai's voice down the tunnel of time, "it's only a fucking mutt—
stop carrying on." I could kill my dog because he said so. I can horsewhip
a naked, sleepy man. And really, whether Mulder knows it or not, it's the
only way he's going to be even a little safe for a little while. Not very,
not for long.... He'd never believe my take on what I'm doing. I don't
believe it myself. But he hates me anyway. I'll just be the monster come in
the night, it's a lot simpler. Grendel is here and Beowulf nowhere in sight.
Unless that's him asleep on the sofa there. I don't think so.
I put my gun down on the coffee table, and uncoil the horsewhip.
It's the same one we used on him last summer, the rawhide still has his
blood on it. Memory Lane in Hell. Rise and shine, Mulder. The alarm is a
whistling arc and a flat snap; it will wake all those scars out of their
uneasy doze and make them cry. Mulder shrieks and convulses. He stares at me
blankly, making panicky fists. He's back there, all right. Post-traumatic
stress is a wonderful thing. I know.
I don't pull my blows; I watch him open up into liquid truth.
"If you... were going to.. fuck with the... Herod Project... Mulder... you'd
have been better off... buying vaccine from the devil... rather than going
back to... Tunguska." I let the whipcracks rhythm my words. I watch the
blood well up from the crisscrossing welts on his skin. I don't think
beyond. Step back behind the egowall, inside the deepfreeze. Gone.
He's screaming. Naked. Helpless. Screaming and bleeding. Rolling around
bleeding screams. He sounds like anyone at all. He sounds like I used to,
long ago. He's young.
"What the hell do you want...! What do you think this is going to
accomplish? You—you get off using a whip on me—is that it?... You got
a taste for it from last time, right?"
"No, Mulder. But you resisted in the basement. So the Wolf sent me to get
back at you."
It's only half the truth and he's bleeding lies...
"I don't know what the fuck you mean, Krycek! All that happened in the
basement is... They tried to make me torture and rape a boy—a little
kid!... I refused... and they knocked me out. That's all!"
I drop my arm in surprise and stare at him. He absolutely means that. His
eyes are indignant, his voice almost steady. He doesn't remember the rest of
it.... He has no memory of the gang-bang at all. How could he just...
forget? How—
He lunges at me, and I beat him back off. Or I try. He's fighting like a
demon, snarling and bucking, in full berserker mode. Like he's having a
seizure of some kind.
I think maybe you remember more than you want to, Mulder....
We end up in the bathroom, slammed up against the tub and I get my arm
hooked around his neck, bang his head on the tiles, cinch cuffs on his
wrists while he's groggy, and tip him in. Then I turn on the water, full
force and very cold. After some of that he slumps in soggy surrender,
looking black knives at me.
"Do you remember when it was blood drenching you like that, Mulder? Blood
and sweat and come? Do you remember how much your back hurt when they dug
their nails into the wounds? Leave it alone. Don't mess with the Russian
vaccine anymore, OK?"
He spits in my direction.
"You know that Herod was just a peanut-sized practice run, don't you? Five
thousand kids infected with the virus and we saved them and it was only a
test—"
I nod in weary confirmation. "—a test run for Operation Seven Veils, I
know. Half of everyone under twelve in the US to be subjected to same. I
know all about it. It's not your business, Mulder. Leave it be. You can't
change the world. It's not happening to you or yours, and if you want to
live at all, drop it."
It might be entreaty or threat, how do I tell the difference? I know what
Mulder is hearing, though.
"You worthless piece of shit, Krycek, they're children, don't you know
they're just kids? Don't you have feelings at all?"
I shrug. Kids are old enough to bleed, scream and die. Like anyone. Sure I
have feelings. I'm not indestructible. But Mulder indulges feelings the way
a horse tangled in a barbed wire fence will try to struggle free.
He sees his little sister everywhere. How does that make him better than me?
Or do I want to know whether it does?
I don't care. I've bled all I can.
I drag him out and throw him down. He's wet and floppy like a dead fish, and
still he tries to move, still he tries to feel against all the thorns
metallic in his trembling self, drawing much deeper blood than I can with my
measly whip. He twists his head back, wanting to catch my eye, to breach the
wall. Snowball's chance.
"I thought you wouldn't do this... Laugh at me if you want, but even after
everything you did, I still thought you'd have some decent impulses... I was
wrong. You're less than vermin, someone should kill you like a dog, Krycek."
At that I drop onto him, crushing him to the floor, forcing the air out of
his lungs. The smell of his wet hair fills my nose. Water soaks through my
clothes, chilling me. Mulder? Just shut up, Mulder.
She was a small black-and-tan mongrel bitch, just a pound mutt. Her name was
Alicia, pronounce that 'Elitsia', the Russian way. She was the last birthday
present I ever got on the last birthday I ever had. I smashed her head in
when I was twelve. Kolyai told me to, or he would do something to me.
"I like dogs, Mulder."
Then of course he did something to me. Something that involved my cherry and
that goddamned black commando knife of his, the blade not the handle, one
vertical cut and one sideways—and my dog was dead. The look in her eyes
when I brought the hammer down for the second time. That was a lot worse
than Kolyai fucking the wound. I loved her. That's life, Fox. Your only
choice is to make the first blow count so nobody looks at you like that.
Like you look at me always. You're the puppy I never can kill, Mulder. Or
maybe I am, when you train those eyes on me—if only then. Let's drop the
hammer now, either way.
But even with his face pushed into the floor, the idiot must work his mouth.
"That sadistic bastard with the scar lets you have so much power in the camp
—I wondered about that. Your brother. The son-of-a-bitch is your brother.
No wonder you have the run of the place. No wonder you manoeuvered so I'd
take you there the first time. Sadism runs in the family.... How deep does
it go, tell me? Do you rape and torture young boys for kicks, too? Does he
have you hold them down? Join in? Or just watch? Do you have your fun
together?"
"Kolyai's my half-brother, Mulder. And what he does for fun never was any
part of what I enjoy. I don't enjoy much of anything by now. But if you took
advice, I would tell you to stop now. You're on shaky ground here."
I told you a truth, Fox. Will you notice? It's hard for me, doing that.
Kolyai taught me to keep secrets. He taught well. I'm calling from very deep
down, here. Will you hear me or just the roar of your own self?
"Your threats stopped scaring me a while back, Krycek. You're losing your
edge. Aren't you supposed to intimidate the backbone out of me? You're not
doing much of a job. Things are getting pretty boring here."
That sends something reaching beyond the ice, that goes straight to what
crouches there watching and I'm feeling something now. Yes I am.
Bored, Mulder? Let's give you a life. Let's see if you really have no memory
of what came to pass in the basement room with the restraints bolted into
the floor, with the blood on the walls, uncounted layers of a palimpsest
with childhood the first text ever scraped away. The little room where I was
born, where I retreat from worse things, that makes us brothers too, Mulder.
An accident of blood or one of fate, what's to choose between them, after
all?
So I rear back on my knees and pull my zipper down—just for the sound
effect, this is still an experiment. You wouldn't believe it, but I like my
guys willing. I have good cause.
Everything Kolyai did is on me—because I could've taken him out almost
every night for years and I was too cowed to do it. Too fucking broken down.
Anyone else, yeah. Not him. And he was my best candidate of them all.
It's true.
I dream about them.
Everyone in Tunguska. Everyone in Bolvangar. Not the prisoners, or not often
them, but the boys from the barracks the guards call the Joy Division—
that one is a classic, look it up. Dates back to the Nazi konslagers during
World War Two.... Everyone he took, over the long years, and had me help. Or
just sit there and fucking watch and drag the bodies to the lime-pit after.
And mom. Because I told her a secret once.
You think you're better than me. I won't forgive you that, Mulder. You want
to know about righteousness? It stains. It tears. It dies. We can't have you
bored. Nuh-uh, can't have that. Can't disappoint your expectations of me.
He's already screaming, how strange is that? The simple sound of a zipper
and he's howling names of deities he doesn't believe in and begging for
mercy, and something in me laughs out loud like a breaking bone in the soul.
I'm as hard as I ever got and something slow is pounding too fast inside me,
shaking me. I can't breathe. I spread Mulder's ass one-handed and his shriek
escalates into full-blown hysteria. I would worry about the neighbors but
for the stereo still pouring out that lullaby from hell he has playing on
repeat... If they haven't reacted to that, we're fine.
Mulder's ass clenches shut like a fist against the tip of my dick prodding
him there, and he's sobbing pleas in broken Russian now—whaddaya know.
Souvenir from the Therapy Room.
It's gonna hurt, Mulder. Shall I tell you a secret? Everything does. The
trick lies in not feeling it.
If he didn't have that stupid-ass haircut—he understands the finer points
of it now, I bet—I would pull his head back for more leverage. The better
to flash you back with, my dear. But the crook of an elbow around his throat
will work as well.
I'm the pounding hammer now—and the dog too.
"What Mulder did to you last night is going to save your miserable ass,
Krycek. Your lawyers—the Syndicate's lawyers—will have you out of here
in a flash. He assaulted a federal prisoner and bribed a guard to look away.
I wish he had killed you."
I just lay there looking at him. He looked back with revulsion in his eyes.
Boo-fucking-hoo. I mind so much I can't stand it, Baldy. There's nothing in
your eyes I haven't seen in the mirror twenty years ago. Get over it.
"You're a murderer, a traitor, a rapist and worse. And if Mulder doesn't get
over this, I will track you down and kill you. But first I'll—"
He bit his lip and took a deep breath. I could fill in the blank. I know the
look. He'd, what? Shove a .45 in my crotch and pull the trigger? OPR
would love that.
His face hardened a fraction more.
"I know things about what you are that you thought nobody would find out,
Krycek. I read the file on Marfa Arntzen. The uncensored one."
He stared at me.
"Spender kept a copy."
I stared back.
"I know how she died, Krycek."
No you don't.
"I know how your mother died. "
You don't have the right to.
... missed some of what he said...
"—you're not a human being. You weren't even human as a thirteen-year
old, and someday somebody will take you down. I hope it's Mulder because you
owe it to him. But if we ever meet again—see me first."
He spun on his heel and walked out.
The barred door clanged shut.
How cold it is in here.
I did rape Mulder.
It's strange, because I didn't mean to—and yeah, I know how that sounds.
The truth is weird that way. Because rape is not my thing at all.
I slam into him and it burns, it hurts and he screams. I heard him scream
just like that once before. Last summer in the basement.
I slam into him again and I was going to stop and pull out but something
grabs at my guts and clicks and I—
I—
He feels so good. Oh shit. He feels so good, skin so silky-soft and muscles
so hard, he is so warm and I loosen all up and hear myself moaning and
swearing, I'm turning into this monster of noise, I can't get close enough
and it's wailing out of me like a sob through my dick, like calling into
dark night for someone who won't come, like like like sweet lost home
crying, crying, crying, and I collapse through lightning crashes into the
shape where I belong, that his body defines... you call it perfection and I
don't believe in it. Except it's right here.
And for three seconds there, it does not hurt.
I didn't know.
I didn't know the pain could ever stop.
I pull back and stare at Mulder like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming
car. Mulder on the floor with blood running down his thighs, Mulder curled
up, sobbing, sounding like—
—I used to—
Then he turns his head and I see his face.
The look on his face.
I hear Kolyai.
"If you don't, I'll do something to you."
Back when I still had a voice and said, please.
Please don't make me do this to her.
But Alicia and mom are dead, and I raped Mulder too.
And Kolyai says: "Mine."
Come To Grief
by Wildy
"How cold it is in this underground
vault! That is natural—for it is deep."
—Goethe
Tunguska, Siberia
March 1999
Alexandria, VA
3 days later
Night time
I was lying down in my cell when Skinner came. I didn't move. If he was
going to shoot me, what the hell. I hurt. I was tired. Instead, he started
talking, and what he said was so far from what I expected to hear that it
took a while to register.
