William paced the long white hallways side by side with the elderly man. A lit cigarette in hand he puffed away contently. He should have been frail for his age; surely pushing eighty, but William dared not cross him. This man had power beyond conceivability; it would have been foolish to test him on that.
The Krycek man wasn't far behind them, he seemed to hover about. He'd worked for the old man before, they clearly had history, but Krycek looked untrusting of him nonetheless. Their footsteps echoed as they moved.
"Do you know where you are right now?" The man puffed a cloud of smoke through his teeth.
"Alcor, Arizona" Will replied bluntly.
"Correct. Do you know why you are here?"
"You pay your goons a decent enough wage to warrant kidnapping a minor and driving him two thousand miles across state"
The man smirked, "You're here, William, because every moment in your life since birth has been leading up to this point in time. This very conversation even, was entirely fated to occur. And what happens next…" He stopped to take another drag of the cigarette, "…Well, inevitably ends in tragedy for one or the other"
The old man blew smoke in his direction and William cringed as the nicotine filled his nose.
"One word, old man. 'Emphysema'. It's what's going to be written in large letters on your death certificate. That is if someone else doesn't put you in the ground first. I'm guessing you have a handful of enemies… my father's clearly on that list"
The cigarette man grinned sinisterly, "You're scared. I can feel the fear you hold inside you." He held his palm up to a key panel and it clicked in acceptance, "Don't be. Not yet anyway, there's plenty of time to come where fear will be very much warranted"
Krycek seemed to leave them, disappearing when they entered the room. It was freezing again, just like the last. William would have asked for a jacket if he didn't despise the man so greatly. They approached an outlined circle in the floor. The cigarette man pushed another button and something rose up from it, a display unit of sorts.
It was like looking through murky water, but there was a definite figure beneath, hidden and encased in ice. William squinted his eyes. It was a young girl, barely in her early teens.
"Recognise her? She looks a little like you don't you think? …Or perhaps more so like her brother"
"Samantha" William breathed in realisation, "…This is Samantha…"
"You know of her. I should have guessed Mulder would have drivelled about his long lost abducted sister"
"What have you done to her?" Will placed his hand flat against the icy surface in shock.
"Alcor is the world's leading company in cryogenics, the 'Alcor Life Extension Foundation' has been bringing people back from the dead for the past forty years"
"That's science fiction" William argued.
"Glad to see a little of the sceptical Agent Scully worked it's way into your genome too"
William ignored him, "Is… is she alive?"
"She's not dead, if that's what you're asking"
The man pressed his cigarette bud against the control panel, stubbing it out until ash remnants littered the floor.
"Frozen in time well into her youth. Pity she didn't get to experience life past the tender age of fourteen, but alas, the new world will be hers for the taking"
Will threw the man a confused look, wondering what on earth he could be talking about.
"The tests on Samantha when she was just a child were to make her invincible, a sort of super-human, an alien-human hybrid destined to rule the new world leading the alien race"
"You engineered her to be a monster"
"I created her to rule over all of us" The man corrected.
"Standing for which side?"
"Sides don't matter. There is only one way this war ends"
William gazed back at the young girl before him. He contemplated how she must have suffered through vigorous testing. Procedure after tortured procedure all in the name of a sick science.
"I brought you here because this is what you are going to help me with. You are going to bring her back to life, resurrect her if you will…"
William scrunched up his face, "Don't you have machines to do that for you?"
"For the average human, yes, absolutely. But a being as powerful as her requires a little more of a kick-start. You need 'life' transference of one person to another. I've only seen it done twice. Once by my hand and once by yours…"
"So why don't you do it yourself?"
"In order for it to work she would inherit your 'abilities', absorb them in a way"
"Good, because I don't want them, I never wanted any of this"
"So this is my deal, my exchange; your abilities for your brother and friend. It's a fair deal, don't you think?"
"I don't make deals with psychopaths. Whatever you're doing is dangerous. I'm sure of it…"
"I wondered if you might respond in such a way. Let me show you something else, something that may serve to sway your decision"
William shadowed the cigarette man as he exited the room and walked across to another door. He didn't like where this was going, and the fear that he was trying desperately to hide was creeping back up on him with every step closer to the room.
"Your brother, and the girl."
William entered the room, it was barely lit, with tubes and tanks in every corner, all hooked up to a number of clear cylinders. Peaking behind the first container he reached was the stunned expression of Rachel, naked and suspended in a strange liquid substance.
"Rachel" He whispered.
Two cylinders down and there was the body of his brother, frozen in animation looking equality as traumatised.
"They're kept cool to slow the damage the virus is doing to their systems. But however low the temperature remains it cannot stop the spread entirely. They'll die… soon enough"
"Let them go!" Will cried, turning on the man in rage, but he was stopped in an instant, the man's slender fingers wrapped tight around his neck, crushing his windpipe.
It was unbelievable strength, a power no man his age could ever have held. Power of a madman fuelled with hate and blackened with greed.
Will's feet were no longer touching the floor as he gasped for air. The man released him and Will staggered on the spot.
"Bastard." He panted.
The figure dragged him by the scruff of his shirt forcing his face against Rachel's cylinder.
"You want to see her pretty little face again, you do as I say. By my watch she has less than twelve hours before no matter of vaccine can save her. The same goes for your dear brother. Now you're going to help me, or you're going to watch them die, and then still do for me what I want"