Alex mercifully passed out and went limp.

Krycek's silence penetrated Kapustcha's rage as his screams had not.
He loosed his grip and collected his wits. He could still get away.
And with his prize. Quickly, Kapustcha uncuffed the limp body from the
pipes, draped it over his shoulder, and tucked it back into its box.

It was the work of minutes to collect his equipment, the make-up and
dress, the hose, the shaving kit, everything was swept into his
equipment bag where it belonged. Everything but the traitorous
prosthetic, which lay on the grating where he had hurled it,
transmitter and all.

He repacked the van and drove off, not even caring, for a moment, in
which direction he headed, so long as it was away from the warehouse.
But where to go? Home. Home and collect his essentials, for there were
far too many clues in the warehouse to make home a safe destination
for very much longer.

Chesterfield wouldn't be happy about having to arrange another
emergency exodus, but the work had reached a critical juncture, so he
could still count on getting the Smoker's cooperation.

Besides, it's not like he had gotten himself into trouble. Krycek had
obviously tried to entrap him with the transmitter. He could blame it
all on The Cunt. Chesterfield had his own reasons to hate the Slit. He
would be upset. Yes. Possibly angry enough to let him keep the
traitorous Hole. He'd get a new start *and* keep his prize. With that
happy thought, he headed for the Oakland bridge and home.

He'd barely passed the first pylon when Krycek began screaming pleas
to be released and struggling in his suitcase. Kapustcha had to put up
with it as long as he was on the bridge, but the instant he made land,
he pulled over to the shoulder of the road, got out the washcloth and
chloroform, folded the cloth into quarters, and sprinkled the
knock-out solution over it.

He studied the movements of Krycek in the suitcase, figuring out where
the knees and elbows were, then he straddled the suitcase, sitting on
Krycek's midsection in order to immobilize him and prevent him from
escaping. Then he unzipped the bag and folded the flap down to expose
Krycek's head. An invisible cloud of urine puffed up into his face.
Krycek had pissed himself. He didn't seem to have noticed, either.

Krycek's eyes rolled in his head, wide, wild, and unfocused. "Lemme
out! Lemme-- Light. Oh, light! Don't take away the light!" Krycek
whimpered.

Kapustcha pressed the cloth to Krycek's mouth, which was gaping,
gibbering, flecked with spittle. //Panicky, // Kapustcha realized. His
Little Cunt had never liked being in the dark, but this primal,
hysterical response to his temporary prison presented him with new,
deliciously exploitable, possibilities. He smiled as Krycek's heaving
gasps for air forced the chloroform deeply into his lungs. His pleas
faded to whimpers, then to silence as his wide, frightened eyes
drooped and fluttered shut.

Kapustcha zipped the bag back up and returned to the driver's seat.
The rest of his drive was blissfully quiet.

###

Skinner, Mulder, and Scully headed for the Federal Building in the
rental and went straight up to Agent Wong's office. He signed out a
homing receiver to them, then got out a map and drew out the last
heading he'd gotten before the signal had faded.

They piled back into the car and headed for the warehouse district.
Skinner was driving, Mulder monitoring the receiver, Scully was
sitting in the back seat rearranging the medical supplies she'd
hastily thrown into her bag from the infirmary.

Mulder called in a hit within seconds of crossing Mission Boulevard.
They called Lloyd, and he and a team of men assembled in the alley a
block away from the pinpointed location. Cops popped their trunks to
take out flak jackets and assault rifles, then they surrounded the
warehouse.

Lloyd knocked on the warehouse's front door, received no answer, and
called in four men with a battering ram. The door buckled on the
fourth impact. Lloyd was the first man through the door. Walter was
the second. Mulder, Scully, and about eight cops followed on their
heels, fanning out from the door to cover the entire warehouse.

The place was deserted. Just barely. Mulder, following the signal in
Krycek's prosthetic, pointed the team towards the shower stalls. They
rushed the stalls, shoving their weapons in before them, covering all
the exits and entrances. They saw no one.

"Shit!" Skinner cursed as he checked his weapon.

The cops pulled back, holstered their pistols, shouldered their
rifles. Mulder, holding the receiver like a dowsing rod, stepped into
the showers and found the arm, the metal rod used to pry it off, and
the residue of Krycek's stay, including the still wet grating,
droplets of blood, and bits of shit.

Skinner cursed again, more loudly, and longer as Mulder pointed out
his findings to the team. "God damned son of a bitch! He's onto us!"

Scully came in to swab up the blood traces before the water residue
degraded it beyond usefulness.

Mulder retreated to call Agent Wong. "Uhhh...Stanley? We got bupkis
again, man. Tune in the third signal."

Lloyd called in the CSI team. 

The other cops stood around waiting for orders.

Mulder sidled over to Skinner. "No signal from the third device, sir.
But Agent Wong isn't surprised. The tertiary device's signal range is
only half a mile."

"We've blown it, Mulder. We let the bastard get away with our bait.
He's been a step ahead of us this whole operation, and he's got his
God damned heart's desire. What next?"

"We keep looking, sir. We get more receivers, and we comb the city."

"We have no guarantee that he'll still be *in* the city, Mulder. Hell!
He could be on a plane right now flying over the Pacific to God only
knows where, and shoving his victim out the hatch without a parachute
over international waters."

"I don't think so. At least, not about Kry-- sacrificing his victim.
Uh, Percival *is* his heart's desire. He's not going to dump him
anywhere. Not until he recreates his ultimate fantasy." Mulder's cell
phone rang. He held up his hand for silence. "Mulder...." He covered
the mouthpiece.

"Stanley's run the warehouse's ownership. It belongs to Bailey
Pharmaceuticals Ltd. He's got a list of doctors on staff, and the
address of the main facility." He put his ear back to the phone-set.
"He's got a list of addresses for the management and staff and he's
coming over with copies for everybody."

One of Lloyd's men signalled him, and he went over to find out what he
wanted before he waved the fibbies over. "Franklin's found something,"
he said as they ambled over. "Clancy?"

Clancy Franklin took them to a false wall. Behind the wall was a
cabinet, a wardrobe, a vanity, a cot, a toilet, a vaulting horse, and
a St. Andrews cross, the latter four all tricked out with chains or
leather restraints or both.

"All the comforts of home," Scully said dryly.

"Yeah. If your surname's de Sade," Mulder quipped as he eyed the set
up. "I think we've found his playpen. Good going, Franklin."

"With any luck at all he'll have left us enough trace evidence to
connect him with the Derek Fiennes murder at least," Lloyd said.

"How'd you find this place, Officer Franklin?" Skinner asked as he
examined the set of the door in the wall. "It looks to be pretty well
disguised."

Franklin held out a luggage tag. "Whoever was here left in a hurry.
This was caught in the door.

"Well, hush my mouth. Luck seems to have smiled on us, at last," Lloyd
said.

"About damn well time, if you ask me," Skinner said. "I'll settle for
finding Val in one piece and breathing."

"Amen to that," Lloyd concurred.

"Inspector Graham!" one of the other officers yelled. "Crime Scene's
here!"

"Back here and over to the shower," Graham yelled back, pointing to
both locations. "Everybody else, pull back to the cars and lose the
assault gear. I'll have your assignments momentarily."

"Yes, sir."

Stanley arrived a few minutes later, and he and Lloyd divvied up the
locations on Stanley's list among Lloyd's men.

"I suppose it's too much to hope that somebody will be at this
pharmaceutical office on Sunday?" Lloyd said to no one in particular.

"Probably not, but somebody's got to check it out, anyway," Skinner
said. "How many home addresses have you got, Agent Wong?"

"Fifteen doctors and five corporate officers," Stanley said. "And I
brought another homing signal receiver, too."

Skinner nodded. "Inspector Graham, I'm going to let your men handle
the canvassing while you and I take a receiver and work this section
here. Agents Wong and Scully, I want you to take a receiver and work
the rest of this grid pattern, here. Agent Mulder, I want you to get
back to HQ and work the case files, figure out what we've missed. This
man is playing us for fools. I want to wipe the smirk off his face
once and for all."

"What happens if we don't get a signal?" Scully asked.

Skinner's jaws clenched. "We widen the search perimeters. If I have to
close all the transportation hubs within a days' drive, and search
every ship, plane, bus, or train I will --and that includes the Air
and Naval Bases. I want this bastard caught-- preferably while our
hostage is alive.

"Let's get to it!"

###

Kapustcha was busy loading his van with suitcases when he noticed the
automatic lights turning off at his neighbor's house. They had been
gone now a few days. If past behavior was any indication, they'd be
away the remainder of the week. And they had a boat. It wasn't large
enough to play with Krycek, but it would get him back over to the
other side of the bay without risking the bridge again. He smiled. He
even knew the perfect place to wait for his ride out of the country.
//So perfect.// He drove to the marina.

He had gone out on Harold's boat before, with an eye to buying it, so
their slip neighbors thought nothing of his carting his luggage aboard
and heading out into the channel after a check of all systems, and a
casual refueling at the harbor depot. Yes. Life was good.

Kapustcha took a leisurely two hours to get to his destination, then
it was tie up the boat and call Chesterfield. It was just after noon,
here. Knowing Chesterfield, it would only be three-ish where he was.
Plenty of time to start the flight process.

Chesterfield wasn't happy about Krycek's involvement in the scheme to
snare Kapustcha. He even agreed that the rogue agent needed a good
dose of corrective discipline. Kapustcha was ecstatic. Better still,
things were critical at the facility now, and that turned out to be
Chesterfield's top priority.

They couldn't afford to interrupt the tests that were running, to lose
their test subjects, human or otherwise. That meant cleaning up Bailey
Pharmaceuticals' files and Kapustcha's office so there was no mention
of their real work. Their precious xenobiological weapons couldn't be
compromised by the police investigation and end up locked in an
evidence room somewhere, or confiscated by the CDC.

Luckily they already had a train car on the way to the facility, in
anticipation of the end of the tests, mere days away. They could crate
the isolation labs and move them en toto into the special train cars,
and finish the tests en transit.

Kapustcha himself would have to wait until the antidotes and
xenotoxins and test subjects were secured and cleared out of the
facility before Chesterfield would agree to his evacuation.

Kapustcha assured Chesterfield he didn't mind waiting a bit. Of
*course* salvaging the project was more important. He would be ready
to go whenever Spender gave him the word. He promised.

Now, all he had to do was clean up enough of the salvage yard to
create a suitable play area. He needed a shower, a place to put his
wardrobe, a table and chairs so they could enjoy a nice dinner, a
dance floor, and a whipping post.

The first thing he needed to find was the water main. The boat had a
shower, but he'd prefer not to have to cart his prisoner back and
forth in the open air. He left Krycek in the suitcase as punishment as
he went about his self-appointed tasks.

###

Walter sat on the California king-sized bed and sipped his honor bar
Scotch. They had run grid patterns over the entire peninsula. They had
not picked up Krycek's signal. He sighed.

A team of officers had found Kapustcha's house in Oakland but, without
a warrant, they hadn't enough probable cause to break in and search
the place, so they had settled for sending Scully and Wong by with
their homing device, to ensure there was no signal, and placing
continuous surveillance on the house.

In the meantime, he and Lloyd had covered the area from Piedmont to
San Leandro. Scully and Wong had covered Berkley to Richmond and had
even crossed over to San Rafael going down to Sausalito and back
across the Golden Gate Bridge. Back to square one. Back to the Federal
Building.

He and Lloyd had paid a visit to the homes of Bailey Pharmaceuticals'
executives. The five managers hadn't been at home. They had all been
at the office. Called in, said the wives of those that had wives, on
some business emergency.

So they went to the office, even managed to wrangle their way into
Kapustcha's office. They had eyes enough to see that Kapustcha's
office had being sanitized, that whatever he had been working on was
being rolled up, transferred out of the building part and parcel.
Evidence of crimes unrelated were disappearing like wraiths in the
sunlight, but there was nothing they could do about it beyond putting
the business under surveillance, as well. They didn't have a warrant,
and there would be no getting one for anything but items related to
the murder/kidnapping. Skinner knew that for a certainty. He'd run
into enough of these sorts of brick walls to trace the pattern on his
forehead by rote.

So they, too, had returned to the Federal Building. To alert the
transit authorities, the armed forces. To request permission to have
base and port authorities check all containers large enough to hold a
man, and all passengers.  They'd had to explain the whys and 
wherefores. An embarrassing confession for an Assistant Director of
the F.B.I. to admit that he had lost his bait. But his chagrin worked
in his favor. They had agreed. Searches were on-going for all
passengers and any cargo loaded after 9 am that had not already
departed.

It was all Skinner could do.

It wasn't enough.

They'd held a debriefing. Filling in all parties on all the actions
that had  been taken that day. None of which had turned up 'Tucci.' 
They had agreed that their only course of action was to maintain
surveillance, get their warrants as soon as they could, and go back
and look for clues.

Mulder hadn't come back from the Fed, yet. Too busy poring over the
files. Looking for the key to the affair.

If he hadn't been so diligent in his efforts to find Krycek, Skinner
might have allowed Krycek's paranoia to infect him. Krycek had known
he was going to be caught. Known he was going to be tortured.
Suspected he might not survive. Because Mulder had wanted to punish
him for his misdeeds.

Skinner told himself that Mulder wasn't that cruel. Couldn't have
known the assailant was going to strike up on that roof, anyway. None
of them had known. Mulder was too eager to accept all the blame. Too
busy punishing himself for Skinner to need to berate him himself.

On the contrary, all Skinner could do was blame himself. //I should
have done more to protect him. What must he be thinking? Poor Krycek.
In the hands of his worst enemy.//

The phone rang. "Skinner here."

"Assistant Director," hissed a smoky, well-known voice.

Skinner grimaced and reassessed. Kapustcha might not be Krycek's worse
enemy, after all. "What do you want?" he growled.

"A mutual acquaintance told me you were on a case. Involving Krycek."

"And?"

"I want you to back off."

"It's a little late for that. We've got a joint investigation underway
between the FBI and San Francisco P.D. You don't just call them in and
say: oh, well, too bad for our victim, I'm sure he'll turn up soon
without any effort on our part, better luck next time, and let's focus
our efforts on cases we *can* solve."

"I'm surprised by your ardor, all things considered. I should think
you would welcome the loss of such an 'inconvenient' pest."

"Yeah, well, the pest in question wasn't stupid enough to come to my
door with palm pilot in hand. It's with friends. He assures me has
many. If he doesn't come out of this more or less alive and intact,
neither do I. It's the best kind of incentive, or so I've been told."

"I see. It can't be  a very happy situation for you, then. Just don't
make the mistake of thinking that intruding where you don't belong
will motivate me to do anything but allow Kapustcha free rein with our
mutual friend. Do what you must to keep yourself alive, but stay away
from Bailey Pharmaceuticals."

"Listen, tomorrow morning is the soonest I'll be able to request a
warrant, and its sole focus is going to be the discovery of any
evidence relevant to the murder of Derek Fiennes, and Krycek's
abduction. I know you're aware that Bailey Pharmaceuticals is already
working overtime to expunge any references to sensitive projects from
Kapustcha's office. Since we won't have grounds to broaden the search
without cause, your precious experiments should be well protected from
exposure, so you shouldn't have anything to worry about. Of course, if
you'd like to save us the trouble of getting the warrant and searching
Kapustcha's office in the first place, you can just tell me where
Krycek is, and we'll go pick him up."

"Oh, I think not. Mr. Krycek is long overdue for a refresher course on
over-stepping his bounds. He'll just have to accept Mr. Kapustcha's
hospitality for the time being."

"Yeah, well, *I* don't feel like flunking the school of 'Life' just
because Krycek learns his lesson a little too permanently."

"Then it seems it will be a most suspenseful investigation for you. So
much so, that I will be forced to keep a close eye on the
proceedings."

"Yeah, right." Skinner could hear the smirk in Spender's voice. He
scowled. "Anything else?" The sound of the phone receiver hitting the
cradle was his only answer.

"Son of a bitch!" Skinner growled. He punched the 'end' button and
tossed the cell phone onto the foot of the bed. And opened up another
tiny bottle of scotch.

He had no illusions about there being any leads to Kapustcha's
whereabouts in the man's office. They would be lucky to find four
walls and a ceiling by the time they could execute the warrant.
Thinking that there would be clues in Kapustcha's residence was
stretching probability past the breaking point. Krycek and Kapustcha
had dropped off the face of the planet. The boy was lost. Mulder
figured he had another couple of days left. Then he would be dead. And
there was absolutely nothing Skinner could do about it.

He drained his glass, set it on the end table and sighed. "Please,
Mulder. Find something we can use. God help me, I don't want Alex to
die."

He stretched out on the bed, staring at the empty space beside him. He
felt as empty as the bed. Remembering warmth. Remembering presence.
Remembering confidences revealed half-grudgingly. His hand dove under
the pillow on Krycek's side of the bed, but the McDonald's toy was
gone. Packed in Krycek's dop kit, no doubt. He would hardly have left
it for the maid to find, possibly throw away. Not after all these
years of treasuring it. Somehow, it made Skinner feel even more bereft
and alone.

###

Krycek blinked his eyes, but they refused to focus. A dark, looming
presence shadowed him, blocking out the light. "Light," Krycek
croaked. He tried to scoot away, but there was no where to scoot in
the suitcase. Still hazy from the drug, dehydration, and hunger he
gurgled his distress, wondering why his limbs wouldn't move as willed.
He'd been in the trunk since they had fled the warehouse. His limbs
were asleep, cramped, stiff, and wedged into the suitcase. He was at
the man's mercy. And his balls hurt.

"You need a bath, Little Hole."

"Noo!!" Krycek wailed, recognizing the voice, that hateful voice