Opening an eye, Sydney tried to orient on the dim lighting and the awful odors that assailed her. Slowly, fighting a tidal wave of nausea, she managed to sit up and really look around. What she saw did nothing to encourage her. "Lovely place you've got here, Tilly," she muttered. "What a wonderful air freshener." Her knees threatened to abandon her when she stood. She ignored the warning and braced a hand against the cement wall in a valiant effort to remain upright.
It took a while for her mind to sort out pertinent information and draw some sort of conclusion. She was underground in a huge sewer line, presumably beneath the warehouse. And she wasn't alone. There were two other men down here with her; that Mulder guy and the FBI agent. What was his name? Dogs?? Doggett, that was it.
Mulder was scrunched against a wall, looking none too happy, while Doggett stood next to him, gulping air. Both of them had seen better days.
Running a hand through the tangles in her hair, she realized she probably wasn't going to win any beauty pageants either. She knew she didn't want to identify the muck that clung to her skin and clothing. "What now?" she asked, cursing herself at the wobble in her voice.
Mulder glanced up at her, his hazel eyes dead. "We were hoping you could tell us."
"Now you find my damned sword!"
Sydney jumped at the intimacy of the sound. Still woozy from the drug cocktail, she hadn't even realized that she was wearing some sort of radio transmitter, its tiny speaker tucked over her ear.
The imperious orders continued rapid-fire, the voice tinny through the undersized headset. "You have a map in the pocket of your blouse. Open it up and try to follow the directions. Your friend's life, and the life of the woman and the baby, depend on it."
"Nigel!" she exclaimed, a dim memory rising to consciousness. "He needs to be in the hospital! Let him go or I won't help you." She made no effort to hide her desperation. "Look, I already said I'd help you. Just let everyone else go." It sounded pathetic to her ears, but it was all she had. "For God's sake, what do you need with a baby? Let them go!"
"You'll do exactly what I say or they'll all die. Besides, I rather like your little Nigel. He's really quite pretty, in a sort of puppy dog way. I like puppies, you know. They're delicious baked with an apple glaze." The offhand reference to cannibalism carried just enough of a sneer to send a shiver of horror up the woman's spine. There was something convincing about the statement, something that suggested it was more than a threat.
Mulder unfolded his lanky frame and reached for the page. "If you're not hunting for this thing, I am," he announced flatly. "I don't even know if my son is alive any more, but I can't take a chance."
"Here. This is it." Other than the frat party assaulting her stomach, Sydney had more or less shaken off the effects of whatever drug their abductor fed her. She tried to focus on finding the relic, repeating to herself that this was business as usual, nothing more. She couldn't afford to think about the real ramifications if she failed. It might already be too late for the infant, for the grandmother, and for Nigel.
She instantly slammed the door shut on that thought, unable to cope with the knife of worry it sent through her heart.
She stood on tiptoe to peer into the secondary cement line. "It's got to be the one."
Mulder trained his small halogen flashlight on the dirty page. "Any sign of the tributary branch?" he asked.
"No. Yes. Yes, it's there, off to the right. This is it. Somebody give me a boost." She wished again she'd been granted a simple tool kit; a rope, a hammer, anything she'd normally bring along to do her job. Bereft of the basics, separated from her assistant and best friend, she was reduced to giving orders for the obvious.
With a shrug, Mulder stuck the paper into his pocket and interlaced his fingers, forming a stirrup to lift her to the secondary line. "You okay?" he asked once she got inside.
"Nope, but I'm too pissed to stop now." She crawled through the sludge, forcing back the bile that rose in her throat. She reached the junction, but it was too dark to see more than a foot or two in. "I need your flashlight."
Something smacked against her butt and, after a couple of moves worthy of a contortionist, she collected the flashlight. "Got it!" she called. "Heading down the branch."
"Hey, if you find the sword, won't it be solid rust?" Mulder yelled back, and it struck her that he was living the same worries and uncertainties that plagued her.
"It might be. Depends on whether it's been left in the open or if it's sealed in something waterproof, and how long it's been down here. Hey, Mulder, can I ask you something? It's kind of personal, so you don't have to answer if you don't want to."
"You can ask. If I don't answer, don't take it personally." There was a hint of macabre humor in his voice.
She spied a dark mound a few feet ahead, its outlines too indistinct for her to tell if it was what she was looking for or not. "Why do you and Scully call each other by your last names?"
Silence was his reply, and for a moment she figured she wouldn't get an answer.
"We worked together first. She was sent to spy on me, to undermine my work." There was a quiet soft chuckle. "She wasn't exactly what my enemies were expecting. Hell, she wasn't what I was expecting!"
"So you guys were friends first?" Before he could answer, she grasped the tattered leather case, "I got it!"
Navigating backward through the sewer line was considerably more complicated than entering. Mulder picked up where they left off. "We were about as different as they come, you know? I mean, we both were intelligent adults, and we spoke the same language and shared the job, the same passions. Pretty much everything else was different. It took us seven years to realize that the differences weren't important. Either that, or spending all that time together we grew more alike in self defense."
This is waaaay too easy.
Sydney's mind raced through the possibilities. She'd just reached in and retrieved the sword, if in fact the gooey remnants of leather sheathed the rapier. "Hey, Mulder, you believe in fate? You think there are some people we're meant to meet in our lives? I mean, if there's only one person out there for you, would God let you just miss them, or do you think he sets up road signs so you can't miss them?" She continued to crawl backwards through the sewer line. It simply wasn't possible to turn around in the damp, dark confines. "Talk to me, I think I took a wrong turn!"
"I don't see you!" he called back. His voice was muffled, and Sydney realized she had to be moving away. There had only been one turn. How could she have gotten confused in such a simple grid? Her hands flailed out into the inky darkness ahead of her.
Gooseflesh rose on her arms.
The floor of the pipe fell away into nothingness. She nearly tumbled into the hole unawares. Tucking the grimy leather bundle into her shirt for safekeeping, she fumbled with the miniature flashlight. Before she could send its tiny beam through the blackness, it slipped from her slime-covered fingers, clattering against the wall for only a second. Sydney strained to hear it strike the floor. She shivered. There was no reassuring sound of final landing. It was as though she was poised on the cusp of absolute abyss.
She licked sweat from her lips. "Mulder? You still there?"
It seemed an eternity before his words drifted back to her. "Yeah, I'm here."
Drawing a deep, trembling breath, she confessed, "I have no idea how I got here, but I'm lost. I don't suppose you've got another flashlight?"
Seconds later, a second brilliant beam sliced through the air.
And a third.
And fourth, and fifth, sixth, seventh…
Tiny mirrors angled from every crevasse, weaving a kaleidoscope pattern that shifted with each move of the light.
Mulder seemed to read her mind. "Oh shit," he remarked. "You know what you were asking about fate?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm hoping it's true. And I'm hoping it's my fate to choke the life out of Attila the Hun."
Margaret Scully tipped the cup up to the young man's lips. Even with her encouragement, he barely sipped at the tepid liquid.
Their new jail room was growing crowded. Across the bare floor, the trio of computer geeks was scrunched against the wall. All three pair of hands were manacled. There would be no more untied rope, no more futile attempts at walking out unmolested.
And the young British man was failing before her eyes, no matter how much she willed him to live.
"Nigel, can you hear me?" she asked. She was growing increasingly angry at their captors. Children or not, they knew that this man was injured and should be in a hospital. They were little automatons, operating with the cold efficiency of machines. A chill ran through her as she realized that these little soldiers would kill without a second thought.
She'd done all she could to make her new roommates comfortable. Besides her and the baby, only the young Englishman remained unbound. Not that the boy – she resolutely refused to think of him as more than that, though he was probably in his twenties – was in any condition to threaten anyone. The monster who called himself Attila had been here sporadically, requiring the injured man to translate antique gibberish from fragments of parchment and pottery and stone. Nigel meekly complied with the demands despite his body's downward spiral.
Her mind seethed with anger at their captor, the madman behind the abduction and imprisonment. Left physically unable to fight her captor, she allowed her mind to dredge up a list of extremely unladylike words aimed at the monster. Then, in a moment of pure, unadulterated hate, she imagined him in absolute agony.