Chapter Text
Failed mission
by Ratwoman
ratwoman02@yahoo.de
Chapter One
They were acting like beginners. I mean, shouldn't FBI-agents be clever enough to wait until the terrorists had stepped out of the van before they started to shoot?
Of course, the terrorists now stayed in the van, and of course the driver started the engine again. Damn shit, we were escaping! I hadn't given Mulder all the hint just to get away now! He needed to know about the black cancer, the most dangerous thing in the world, but I couldn't just ring at his door, saying: "Hi Mulder, I have some news for you!" I had to make sure that he would listen to me.
Right now, I had to stop the driver. If I didn't make sure that Mulder knew about the black cancer, who should prevent the coming invasion? But I couldn't tell him about the aliens if we were escaping now!
Should I sacrifice the world, or the driver of some mad terrorists? It wasn't a hard decision.
The van crashed into an obstacle after I had shot the driver. I sat there and waited. Soon I heard a female voice, Scully's voice, calling: "The driver is dead!"
Another voice, deeper, told me to get out of the van. I knew that voice, too. Mulder.
Hoping he wouldn't shoot an unarmed man, I threw my gun out of the window before I opened the door and stepped out. Indeed, Mulder didn't shoot me. He just cursed me and beat me down.
Somehow I managed to make him and Scully believe me that I had given them the information about the terrorists. Certainly they despised me for betraying my own crowd, but I did't care. I have more important things to care about than things like honour.
Survival, for example.
I made sure they would listen to me by saying that my information would help to annihiliate Cancerman, the man responsible for the murder of Mulder's father and Scully's sister. I know it's a strange thought, but somehow the Mulder family history reminds me of the antique tragedy of Orestes. Orestes' father Agamemnon was forced to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenie to the gods, his wife started an affair with Aigithos, in our story Cancerman. Well, Mulder's father wasn't killed by his wife and her lover, but by Cancerman, or by an assassin in his commission. If Mulder is Orestes, he'll probably kill Cancerman one day - or me.
I told Mulder and Scully about the courier at the airport and the important and dangerous things he was carrying. Of course, I didn't tell them everything I knew. I had to stay important for them, and, besides that, they wouldn't have believed me. Aliens in oil - it sounds like a joke!
***
Sure, Scully is a very intelligent woman, but at the airport she acted just stupid. The courier was a smuggler, if an FBI-agent walked towards him, calling out: "Stop, FBI, we just want to talk to you!", isn't it clear then that he runs away? So shouldn't an agent with Scully's abilities wait until he's near, and then arrest him? Well, Scully didn't. She just chased him away.
After Mulder had handcuffed me to a column in the hall, - for what the hell was Scully waiting, she could have caught the man in the meantime! - they both started the chase. Soon they came back without the courier, but with the bag. They didn't understand, of course, why a granite block is important and dangerous. They would have to find out on their own, as I said, aliens in oil doesn't sound very serious.
Angry about having all the vexation for a simple granite block, Mulder asked a very >mulderish< question: "What did you get for Halloween, Charlie Brown?" He's sometimes so childish!
But he isn't stupid, he knew that if he took me to prison, I'd be dead in an instant. Instead of that he took me to A.D. Skinner.
"He'll be safe here." Skinner ensured Mulder, as he let me in, but then he rammed his fist into my stomach, snarling: "Relatively safe."
While I was writhing in pain, that bastard bent over me, menacing: "We're not even yet, >boy<, that's a start!" I was almost expecting that he was going to thrash me, but he just tugged me to his balcony and handcuffed me to the railings, where I had to spend the whole frigid night. Though the cold was biting I somehow managed to sleep.
I was a bit surprised about Skinner's behaviour. I'm used to getting hurt by Mulder whenever he finds an opportunity, but I wasn't aware that Skinner hated me so much, too. Some people want to kill me, others beat me up - I think I'll never get used to it.
When I woke up in the morning Skinner had already left the apartment.
Nevertheless I wasn't alone. The courier had broken into the flat, searching for the contents of his bag. If he found me - if he found anyone- he would certainly shoot me to avoid any witnesses. I still clung to my life, it was all I had. This morning I realized how desperate I clung to it.
Chained to the railings I had to find a place to hide from the courier. But where? There wasn't anything on the balcony.
I did the only thing possible. I climbed over the railings - god, it was so high above the street! I hoped with all my heart that the handcuffs would be strong enough to keep me from falling.
Now I nearly find it funny. A wanted criminal hanging at the railings of the balcony of Assistent Director Walter Skinner from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to hide from another criminal who's searching the
apartment of A.D. Skinner for a granite block.
Right then, I wasn't in the mood for laughing. There was an enormous pain in my wrist where the metal of the cuffs cut into my flesh, increased by my whole weight hanging on it. Then I was afraid of falling, and I still feared the courier could find me and shoot me.
He must have heard something, because he came onto the balcony, looking for something or, more certainly, someone.
I had no time to waste. So with the strength of desperation I climbed up, grabbed the man and pulled him over the railings. If you have never hung high above the ground with your own weight and the 180 pounds of another man and the only thing keeping you from falling is the handcuff on your wrist, you can't imagine the intensity of the pain where the metal carves into your skin. It feels as if something is cutting off your hand. (And I know what I'm talking about.)
After I had thrown down the courier, I was so exhausted that I stayed clining to the railings for a while, until I was able to think clearly again. The pain wouldn't go, when I was hanging with my whole weight on the cuffs, so I pulled myself together and climbed back onto the balcony, where I collapsed.
I'd mostly recovered from my exhaustion when Mulder came to pick me up.That bastard! I know he saw the weals on my wrist, but as always he seemed to enjoy hurting me by tugging on my injured wrist when he unchained me from the balcony. The dead courier had already been found. Strangely enough, Mulder appeared to be angry about me having killed the courier. Was he thinking I should have waited 'till the criminal had shot me? Oh, now I understood: if Special Agent Mulder shoots a criminal, it's self-defence, but if I do, it's murder.
It was also dangerous for Skinner with all the cops around. How should he explain them the dead man in front of his apartement-house had been thrown down the balcony by a man Skinner had chained to the railings?
I was curious how Mulder would get me out of the house without the cops noticing it, and I remarked that. As an answer came just a mean, no, childish affront about my "stupid ass-haircut". It's typical for Mulder, if he doesn't know what to say, he always switches over to insults.
Maybe he has the moral right to treat me like that. After all, I killed his father.
We got out of the backdoor without any problems with the cops.
***
The FBI had already found out that the granite block indeed was dangerous, because one of the scientists had fallen into a kind of coma after the black cancer had intruded him.
At that night Mulder left me in the car for some hours, handcuffed to the steering wheel, of course. I didn't know what he was doing at the time I waited dozing away.
When he came back, I asked him if he was going to leave me in the dark about what was going on.
He just hit me in my face, and, with a sick sense of humor, said calmly: "Yeah." I was almost starting to regret my decision to confront Mulder with the perilious black oil. Only almost. There was no one else I knew I could ask to prevent the invasion. If making Mulder see the truth meant accepting some pain from him before, I had to endure it.
When he stopped the car at the airport, I suspected he was going to take a plane to Russia. As I remarked earlier, Mulder isn't stupid, it hadn't been difficult for him to find out where the granite block had come from.
At first he didn't want to take me with him. Actually he told me that he was going to leave me in the car and, if he wasn't back in a week, call Scully that she should bring me some water. I don't believe he really planned to let me wait that long before informing his partner. But I couldn't let him go to Tunguska on his own. Sure, he had to find the truth by himself, or else he wouldn't believe it. But I wasn't sure if he could find it without my guidance.
He walked away and I immediately had to find a way to convince him that I still was important for him. And that without telling him too much of what I knew, because that would only have made him suspicious.
I remembered that he couldn't speak Russian. He would need an interpreter, so I started insulting him loudly in the expressive language of my ancestors.It worked. Mulder turned around and came back, bent down to look into the open window of the car and asked: "What'd you say to me?" He sounded amused. As I looked at him incomprehending he added: "You called me a bad name."After I had told him that my parents were Russian immigrants he mercifully allowed me to accompany him to Tunguska.
If I thought I had been in trouble already, I was wrong. The real trouble didn't start before I set foot onto the country of my ancestors.