"So, you think you could lend me a little light here?"
Krycek glared at his cohort, sliding into the driver's seat. Gibson stood on the front step of the trailer, looking sombrely out to the vehicle. Krycek tried to avoid his unsettling stare.
Mulder gently thumped his palms on the steering wheel, mulling the thought over as he chewed on his lip. He looked at his acquaintance.
"For the time I've been here I've been working."
Krycek waited. He gave a sarcastic nod when Mulder didn't seem to get the clue to continue.
"Undercover. A land surveyor," he looked back out the windshield. "They say there are strange things in the desert and they're right."
"A land surveyor?" Krycek said.
"They always look for the forged FBI documents or driver's licenses. I've managed both. You think that would have stopped me?"
Krycek nodded. "Your nerd buddies?"
"Couldn't live without 'em."
"So. What's on this?" said Krycek. He waved the CD.
"That?" Mulder asked. He started the engine of the car.
He looked back at Krycek, giving him a weird little grin.
"That's Pandora's Box."
Out of fifty, it was the fifth-largest state in America. And most of those one-hundred twenty-one, six hundred and sixty five square miles was desert. Expansive, red desert. Desert filled with dust and heat, devoid of water, and be it day or night, things that were very, very dangerous.
It was a place where you could hide something and keep it hidden forever.
And some people had thought they might.
Other people thought better of it.
"It's your Will."
Krycek frowned at the unbecoming disc of silver as he held it up to the high noon light.
"You don't have to think of it that way," Mulder muttered. "I mean. If things go according to plan, it should be backup. That's all."
"Everything. It's all on here," Krycek said, more to himself than his companion. "Every last betrayal and treason."
"The ones that I know about, at least."
"So if not your will, than your memoirs," he smirked and looked at Mulder. "Say anything about me in there?"
"Yeah, it says something alright."
"I don't want to know."
Mulder, with a triumphant grin, turned his attention back to the road. Not that it needed it. He wasn't concerned about accidentally squashing an innocent tumbleweed. They drove quietly for a while.
"So what about you, Alex?" he asked. "What've you got left behind?"
Krycek shook his head. He looked about to respond. He didn't. Mulder waited, but when his answer never came, he looked back to the road.
"You still haven't told me where we're going," Krycek said.
"An old mine shaft. What we're looking for isn't in that particular shaft, but I think they're connected somehow. Backup routes, a method so they don't get lost. People always expect the big metal silo hiding beneath the ground, but the truth is much more real," Mulder said. "Men are still men, after all."
"So we're looking for…more government secrets?"
"Just the next dot on the treasure map."
"You don't know where the big red X is, then."
"The problem is that it seems to be everywhere."
Mulder's expression was one of dry amusement.
"I wish that damned letter would stop following me."
Krycek smirked, then cast a glance down to his cell-phone, half slipped from his pocket and turning on at his touch. The little screen flickered awake and read to him:
Seven missed calls.
His brow furrowed.
"Krycek?"
He snapped back to attention.
"What?"
"You're up for this?"
Krycek smirked.
"I got shot in the face and lived. I think I can handle this."
"Oh no. Oh no. Ohhh nooo."
Jeffrey paced, or rather limped, trying to subdue his worst-case scenario imagination. Seven times. Seven times! And each time his call was directed straight to voice mail.
He must have been captured. Or killed. Or abducted. Or all three. Plus things that were even worse.
He plunked down into the chair.
Of course he didn't give Marita the cell phone number. He didn't trust her, as nice as she may have seemed. She was weak when he met her, an experiment of Theirs, and now suddenly she was back on her toes and ready to help? It didn't make sense. She must have had made some agreement with Them.
Worse, what would happen to him if Krycek was killed? Nobody would know he was there.
He thought he should do something.
He stood up.
He sat back down.
He turned on the television.
What something could he possibly do? All he could think of was to wait.
"This is it?"
It was a mineshaft alright. A very foreboding looking mineshaft.
"You know as soon as we go in there something will pop out of the walls and like, suck our blood out through our nipples or something, right?"
Mulder adjusted his sunglasses, donning an expression of thought.
"No. Those are a type of fairy, found in Germany. They'd be a long way from home way out here. Come on," the agent said, stepping forward toward the shaft entrance.
Krycek opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and continued after his cohort.
Wind whispered out of the entrance of the cave, like the breathing of something great and slumbering. They went in without a second thought, down the tunnel of crumbling walls and rotting beams. It was a mine that hadn't seen entrance in decades. Not usual entrance, in any case.
"You would think there would be a town nearby. If this was an old mine? It wouldn't be out in the middle of nowhere like this," said Krycek, running his hands against the walls and trying to make sense of them.
Mulder clicked on a flashlight.
"See, that's the beauty of it," he said. "People might see it and think it's just an old mine shaft. Condemned. Something to steer clear of. It's one of those unbecoming things that never get a second glance. And that's why it's perfect," he stopped at a fork in the tunnel. "There's no town around it, Krycek, because it was probably never a real mine shaft to begin with."
They stood, looking down the tunnels.
"You want the right or the left?"
Krycek glared at him.
"Just kidding. It's this way."
"How do you know?"
"Because, this was the tunnel with the most planning and detailing on the blueprints I found."
"Er," said Krycek. "So you don't think it would be, y'know, the one that has no real record?"
"Exactly," Mulder said.
Krycek thought about this.
"Reverse psychology," he said. "The only ones even out here would be curious enough to take the tunnel less travelled."
Mulder nodded in the flashlight's buttery light. They continued on for a while. The way they had to move, it felt like the tunnel was sculpted downward. Deeper into the cold earth.
The further they went, the nicer the walls seemed. What should have been rotting wooden support beams became rust-free metal. What would have been the natural scent of musk and mildew was absent. It felt uncannily civilized.
"Hey, you didn't think to bring an extra gun, did you?" Krycek asked, glancing back uneasily over his shoulder.
"Did you think to bring a giant magnet?" Mulder quipped in response.
"Touché."
"If we run into supersoldiers, a gun will only get us so far," said Mulder. "And no offence, but I want to be the one who holds it."
"You still don't trust me," Krycek said.
"Sorry. Force of habit."
"Well what do you expect me to do?"
Mulder didn't answer, because he'd stopped. He turned off the flashlight. With the lamps hanging from the ceiling, it was no longer necessary.
"That's kind of weird," he said.
Cautiously they continued. The dim light from the rickety fixtures was more unsettling than the dark. It made the building itself feel alive. Mulder held his gun, though it was more for comfort than real defence.
The maw of another tunnel poked out to their left. Mulder looked at it.
"So?" Krycek asked. "Do we go down there?"
"I'm going to say no," Mulder replied. "Though I guess we'll find out soon enough."
The tunnel grew cooler as they subtly descended. They rounded a corner, another, and passed another hole in the wall, but it seemed endless.
Then the hair on the back of Krycek's neck stood completely on end.
"Wait."
He turned. He listened.
There were footsteps coming up behind them. They were fast.
"Krycek…"
"Run," Krycek said, pushing Mulder ahead a step. "Run!"
It was blind, their path, but it didn't matter so much as they got away. But where to? There could only be more trouble at the end of their path. The hearts of both men clenched.
"How the hell did they find us?" Mulder spat.
"I don--"
Krycek was cut off as a bullet zinged off a metal support beam. Mulder gritted his teeth and pulled out his weapon. The next few light fixtures exploded, raining glass down on them and bathing the tunnel in darkness. A grunt of displeasure from behind them gave them a moment's worth of stalling, time for their minds to recuperate.
Fingers dug into Mulder's arm. Krycek pulled him to the side, and they ducked through a gap in the wall.
Like blood, the condensation ran from the cave ceiling, pooling and clotting in the constricted artery it called a home. Beckoned down its throat, the two men ran, rather facing the gut of the sedimental beast than what lay behind them.
Yet they could still hear it closing in.
The cacophony of their hard breathing and pounding footsteps was joined by a gunshot, shocking the air and smashing a rock wall ahead of them. Now sprinting faster, blinded in the darkness, the men took little time to examine their surroundings and dashed onto what seemed to be a very old catwalk.
By glancing over his shoulder and past the form of Krycek, Mulder was quick to notice the advance of the intruder behind them, dressed in what appeared to be a slick suit and a solemn expression. For an instant he wondered who he once was; he was older, refined. He could have been someone's father. Grandfather, even. A husband. A neighbour. But it didn't matter now; what he was now was a beast with bloodlust.
Mulder's momentary pause in judgement allowed Krycek to overtake him, only on instinct, powerful legs pumping non-stop. He could see the other side of the gap--
"Wait!"
A metallic shriek cut his thoughts short. The catwalk shuddered under his feet, and he knew it would meet its fate before they found sanctuary.
He also know he couldn't hold on.
Like the jolting of a wicked rollercoaster, the catwalk gave way, swinging backwards. Krycek twisted, trying to mesh his fingers into the grate. He screamed as his own weight pulled down on his single arm.
Mulder, who had a better grip on the grate, yelled and reached down for a moment. His fingers dug into Krycek's collar before he, too, was pulled from the crippled catwalk.
They tumbled down into the cavern below, until not just the surroundings went black.
The man searched the edge, studying the gap. The catwalk dangled weakly, a faint trace of blood over the grate glittering in the dark. He kicked the jutting edge of the catwalk and it swayed, clanging, complaining. He looked over, but couldn't see through the darkness.
But he didn't need to.
Smirking in the most inhuman of manner, he turned on his heel and headed back the way he came.