Failed Mission

by Ratwoman

Disclaimer: All characters are taken from the X-files without permission. No infringment meant. Suing me would be a waste of time.

Spoilers: Tunguska/Terma

I always found it ridiculous when people said Krycek had set a trap for Mulder by taking him to the gulag. If Ratboy had planned to get caught by the men on horseback, why then was he nearly in panic when thrown into in the prison cell?

So I decided to write the events from Alex's POV.

As soon as I started writing, Krycek's mind was in my head and forced me to note down every word he dictated me within one-and-a-half days. Kind of obsession,I think.

Unfortunately he didn't tell me the name of the bald man in the gulag! :-)For I needed a name, I looked up in a dictionary how to the without name in Russian, it's bjes imja. So I will call the bald Russian Dr Bjesimja, ok?

The opinions expressed in this story are Krycek's, not mine, although I may agree with him in many points.

The content of Krycek's discussion with the guard was really about the same as written in my story, you may as well look it up in a Russian dictionary.

Failed mission

by Ratwoman

They were acting like beginners. I mean, shouldn't FBI-agents be clever enough to wait until the terrorist 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 tips, 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 was listening 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 people, but I don't care. I have more important things to care about than abstractive terms like honour.

Survival, for example.

I made sure they would listen to me by saying that my information would help to annihilate 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, today, 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, 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 by 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.

The next morning I woke up, 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.

Afterwards 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 to fall, 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. Strange 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 tell 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. But fits that really as an excuse for him?

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 admit that he went 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.

Chapter Two

We finally reached the forests of Tunguska. The last couple of miles we had been travelling by truck as hitch-hikers. Now we were walking through the woods 'till we found the barbed wire fence forming the boundary of the gulag.

Mulder started to dig a hole under the fence for he wanted to get behind it. I didn't consider that as a good idea, but he didn't listen to me. At least now he answered when I asked what was going on. He told me about the meteorite, which had fallen down onto Tunguska, and about his theory that an alien organism had come with it. Of course I had known that before, but I hadn't known if Mulder was aware of that, too.

We sneaked into the prohibitive area and found some men who were forced to work in a kind of mine. A group of men on horseback with whips were watching over the workers. They certainly didn't hesitate to use their whips to secure the >co-operation< of the labourers.

Although a lot of people seem to consider me as a monster, I don't like to see people suffering. It's not that I can't stand it, but I hate it.

Perhaps my sixth sense didn't warn me of the coming men, because I was too occupied with being angry. Mulder saw them first, shouting out: "Run!", what I did, of course.

But if there exists a man faster than horses, then it's certainly not me. I slipped on the grit, and suddenly they were everywhere, surrounding me. Rudely they took hold of me, tied me up and took me to their camp.

They locked me up in a sterile room with grey concrete walls, where two men interrogated me, after they'd chained me to a wooden chair. They were maintaining that Mulder and I were spies and - what a surprise - they were beating me. It happens so often, I really should become immune to the pain..

Iswore that Mulder and I only were American tourists, who had lost their way, and at least for the time they were content with my answers. But I was sure, later they would torture me again, but less considerate next time.

They threw me into a prison cell with Mulder. Certainly I didn't make a very reasonable impression at the moment. Until now, somehow everything had gone wrong. Now, in the cell I was almost in panic. No I was in panic. Running back and forth, I stammered something about: "We must get out of here! They will torture us!" Actually, I have no clear memory of what I said, but I must have mentioned the interrogation, 'cause Mulder, suddenly enraged, pushed me rudely against the wall and wanted to know, what I had told them.

Somehow Mulder's aggression helped me to calm down again. Perhaps it was just so normal for me that Mulder was shouting at me. That means, if he wasn't beating me, he was shouting.

I told Mulder what I told our enemies, about us two being American tourists. I also reminded him, that he was dependent on me, if he wanted to get out of here alive. Thereupon he let me go.

I was really fed up with Mulder's violent behaviour. The last few days Mulder had used every single opportunity to hurt me, treatening me as brutal as if I wasn't human, too, certainly worse than he would treat an animal. I was even tempted to find a way out on my own, to leave Mulder back in the gulag. He may as well perish in the dirt, I would not mind!

But one day the invasion would begin. Then someone had to save the world, and if it wasn't Mulder, who else?

So the only thing I said to express my anger was: "Don't touch me again!"

***

Now that I was able to think clearly again, it wasn't so difficult to figure out a way to set us free. I wondered why I didn't remember Dr Bjesimja earlier. I have known him for some years and I was quite sure that he would let me go. Perhaps I would even manage to persuade him to let Mulder go, too, although that son of a bitch didn't really deserve it.

The next time one of the guards came, I snapped at the man, that I was in reality on their side and that I wanted to talk to his superior. Of course, he didn't believe me at first, but he appeared to be uncertain, when he stepped back, shaking his head, saying that he didn't know me. I insisted on

meeting his superior, he would know me, and finally the guard gave in.

Of course we had talked in Russian. Mulder, unable to understand a single word, watched me with growing confusion. Certainly I could have eased his fear by promising him that I was going to use my connections to get him out of here, too, but I decided to let him stew for a while. Perhaps he had beaten me once too often. I even made a little mockery of him by saying, that I'd just told the guard, that I wanted to talk to his superior. Well, it was true, but it must have sounded very strange. I said goodbye to Mulder in Russian and left the cell.

The guard didn't take me to Dr Bjesimja at first, but to the spartan office of another leader of the gulag. I also recognized that square-built man, I had seen him some time ago, talking to Dr Bjesimja.

"That man claims to know you, Sir." the guard reported.

When his superior looked at me, I could see in his eyes, that he wondered where he should know me from.

"Well, actually I don't know you, but I'm a friend of Dr Bjesimja" I corrected. OK, >friend< was a bit overstated.

"Dr Bjesimja?" he repeated. "We don't have a Dr Bjesimja here."

>God, please, let him be a lier!< Maybe, hopefully, he was just provocating, testing my reactions, looking if I'd show my real motives. What should I answer, what was he exspecting? I decided not to show him how scared I was.

"Are you sure?" I asked calmly.

The man behind the desk stared at me with a searching look. Then he asked my name. I told him.

"Where do you know Dr Bjesimja from?" he continued.

"That is a very long story." I said, not willing to tell a stranger more than neccessary.

His eyes narrowed in suspicion. But then he ordered the guard to tell Dr Bjesimja that I was waiting for him, as soon as he'd have finished his tests. Afterwards he focused his attention on his notes.

I was standing in the middle of the room for a long time, at least an hour, getting nervous by the passing minutes. The square-built man at the desk was ignoring me completely, working on his papers.

Eventually the guard came back, telling that Dr Bjesimja was ready for me now. He brought me to another room, a nearly comfortable one, not just with a desk, but also a table and two arm-chairs.

Dr Bjesimja looked like the last time I saw him, a thin, bald man, who would appear inconspicious if there weren't that cruel look on his face.

He smiled at me, spreading his arms to hug me very comrade-kind. I never liked Dr Bjesimja, I didn't like the unscrupulous way he made his experiments even on humans. Maybe this time they were even neccessary, as he was looking for a cure against the black cancer. Nevertheless I had no good feeling with that.

But it was no problem for me to pretend that I liked him. I smiled at him very friendly, very happily - in fact, I was glad to see him for he was my hope to survive.

Sitting on the arm-chairs we were talking about vanities at first. Then he asked me, how I came here. That was the part of our conversation I'd been afraid of, 'cause I had to find a believeable lie.

I told him about some business things I had to do in Tunguska. He knew that my business is always as illegal as his, and therefore I wouldn't - at least at free will - tell him all details. I assured him that it had nothing to do with the gulag and that I would do nothing to disturb his interests. Until now, I had not even lied. I had never been to the gulag before, so I added that I hadn't planned to get into the prohibitive area, that my companion and I had got lost and ended up there.

If Dr Bjesimja had any doubt about the accuracy of my story, he didn't show it.

"The other man, who accompanied me - he's a friend of mine." I said. "Can you let him go?"

"The man who was in the same cell as you?"

I nodded my head.

"I've already experimented on him." Dr Bjesimja said.

>Bastard!<

"I need to see the results of the test. And even if I wanted to, I can't set him free. He knows too much."

"He knows nothing!" I contradicted. "And I'll make sure he won't tell anything."

"You can never be sure about that." Dr Bjesimja said. "Well, we'll talk about that later. You must be very hungry and tired. I'll order the guards to prepare something to eat and a bed for you."

He just didn't want to dicuss with me anymore. Never mind, I was indeed very hungry and dead tired. But I wouldn't give up, I'd talk to Dr Bjesimja later, sure.

***

The next day I found out that no one was preventing me from walking freely through the camp. Seemingly Dr Bjesimja had believed my story.

I was outside the barracks, when the guards brought the prisoners to the outside to force them to work in the mines. I saw Mulder beneath the other men. He was looking a bit sick, but it didn't seem to be very serious.

Still I had to find a way out. I saw Dr Bjesimja standing a few foot away from me, so playing his best friend again, I walked towards him.

After another comrade hug I intended to try once more to persuade him, that he didn't need to keep Mulder imprisoned, but I had no more time to do that.

The security in this gulag was not very cautious, or else Mulder wouldn't have managed to leave his line and rush forwards. He caught me by surprise, beat me down one more time and threw me onto the loading-place of a truck.

Mulder started the engine of that truck and drove through the fence. Of course the guards tried to follow us, but Mulder was driving their only truck, and their horses couldn't catch up with it.

As I looked through the lattice, which separated the driver's cabin from the loading-place, I noticed with concern, that Mulder was trying in vain to slow down the truck. The brakes were defective and the street was running downwards, so the vehicle only became faster and faster. I had to do something! A crash was inevitable, so I had to get off that truck before.

I crawled to the end of the loading-place, summoned up my courage and jumped down the lorry.

Except of some lighter scratches I got off without any injuries. I didn't know by then, but the worst part of this nightmare was still up to come.

I could have traced back the road to the gulag. I should have done that. But I just didn't want to. As I mentioned earlier, I didn't like Dr Bjesimja, I didn't like his methods and I didn't even like the way they treated their prisoners, although I'd never attempt to protest against it.

Instead of going back I chose to walk into the woods. I made a lot of mistakes in my life. This one was the worst.

Chapter Three

As I wandered through the woods, a couple of one-armed men found me. I had heard that some sick minds cut off their left arms, thinking it would save them from the tests.These men certainly were fugitives from the camp. Certainly they wouldn't be very pleased to hear that I was an acquaintance of Dr Bjesimja, so I made another performance for them. I stammered in Russian with an American accent, sometimes strewing in some English words, narrating that I was an American tourist who got lost in the woods. With perfect played panic I said that some men had caught me and accused me of being a spy, that I finally had escaped, somehow. I was really good, it was one of my best performances. They promised, that I would be save here. Very save, thank you!

Those men were weird to me, so I decided not to sleep that night. Nevertheless I must have dozen off, because suddenly the men were grabbing me, tearing off my jacket and pinning me to the ground, while one of them started to cut into the flesh of my arm with a knife he had hottened up in the fire.

I hadn't expected they would cut off my arm without telling me why. If they had asked me before, I could have refused. But seemingly they didn't think, that my agreement was important. They did not even think it was neccessary

to stun me.

As the knife reaped through my flesh and my bones, all I could perceive was pain, incredible pain.

***

When I woke up, I was lying in a hospital bed, Dr Bjesimja standing at the end of it.

"My arm?" I asked, my voice sounding hoarse.

He shook his head. "We found you too late. But we killed those men."

If he was expecting a reaction from me, I must have dissapointed him. I was too tired, too sick, dizzy from anodynes. But certainly I wouldn't have cried a tear for them.

"Your ... friend, if he really was your friend, has escaped." he added. I'm sure he was curious if I would look released or angry about that. But this time I dissapointed him again, for I was just falling asleep.

***

Mulder has gone back to the USA, while I'm still in Russia. Yet he doesn't know, what I had planned to make him see. Maybe he thinks, that this Tunguska-trip had been a trap I'd set for him, that I deceived him again.

Perhaps one day I'll make a new attempt to tell him about the coming invasion. I hope, next time it won't cost me so much.

The End