Lost
28th of January, Wednesday, 2004
Personal diary entry.
We are back in DC. We have even both finished and handed in the case reports. And we are both worried as hell but we are not talking about the problem.
Mulder refuses to talk about how he just left the motel room after we had carried Krycek and her belongings - the quick and the liveless - in it. He didn't return. He didn't even come to say good bye either to her or his son. He drank in the other room, when I finally got there. He sulked the whole day, didn't tell what he had decided in the car - because he had to have decided something, that much I know this man. He climbed into the bed beside me without uttering a word and in the end I had to hold him to make him sleep. Then I had to drive us to the airport, because he had a hangover.
He is suffering.
I can only guess why. He is a man of honour, whatever they may say. He even offered to marry me the day after I announced I was pregnant. Which means that he might have done it even the first time. Right, but he is suffering. He didn't know what to do now when there are two mothers of his children. He has obviously made up his mind to stay with me, (and I might have done something really bad and illegal if he hadn't!) but he is still torn between his inbred sense of duty and his feelings.
I'm worried about him. And damn, I'm worried about Krycek, too. Never thought that this would happen. She doesn't have a clue how to deal with her new situation, she doesn't want to be helped and she is on the run from the aliens with a child who's few days old. I have a bad feeling and I'm sure Mulder has it too. God, I wish he would start talking to me again. I realized that he must have felt the same, when I didn't return his calls. Painful way to learn.
11th of February, Wednesday, 2004, the wee morning hours
My son saved me.
This time.
God, I'm still shivering. He against my chest is the only warmth I feel.
And I'm not making sense.
So let's start from the beginning. I've been trying to cope with this. Being a mother. It's a tough job, tougher than any other thing I had to do in my past. The constant feedings, the regular changes of diapers... How did the mothers of old manage when there weren't disposable diapers, for God's sake? I'd throw up each time if I had to touch the soiled things more than just once in order to dump them. And how did they manage without the formulas?
But anyway... He woke me.
He cried out so loudly that I snapped free.
From the Call.
Yes, the alien siren song. It works on me, and I don't know why. Maybe because I was a test subject, maybe they made me receptive from the day I was conceived. Maybe they implanted something on me when I carried around the oily-ghoul, I wouldn't have noticed but I hear them and it scares the hell out of me.
I was almost gone - totally under their spell, so to say. Willingly going wherever they wanted me to go. They say jump and I do, and roll over and pant happily, too. God, this is awful.
I was at the door, just like I had got up from the bed - barefooted, in shorts and T-shirt - and I was ready to walk out into the snow. No doubts, no cautiousness, nothing whatsoever. They wanted me out and I almost was there...
Without him I would have been there.
When I woke I couldn't understand what in a hell I was doing there. I blinked stupidly, standing in front of the door, staring at it. And I still felt the urge to walk out into the cold somewhere in the back of my head. He screamed louder. I picked him up to calm him and the voice died away, though not entirely: it quieted to a whisper, a constant murmur in the background, but it lost its power.
And I found that I was cold and sweaty and shivering. I got back into bed, still holding him, and so here we are, the lamp in the nightstand giving me the light to write these lines.
But what if they just don't call, but come in flesh? I can kill them one at a time, but not more. A maximum of two, maybe. What then?
If they come here and I have to fight them, then I can't hold him, which seems to be the only thing that keeps the Call at bay. They can just walk up to me and snap my neck, I wouldn't be able to resist them.
And they would get him and kill him slowly with the tests...
Not the future I would want for anyone. Well, Spender Senior might be an exception. But to no one else.
The same day.
It seems that they cease calling during the daytime. Maybe people walking like zombies attract too much attention or something... Anyway, we are driving away now. I loaded everything from wipes to diapers and we are off. Perhaps they won't find us so easily, if we keep moving.
14th of February, Saturday, 2004
The answering machine beeped, but nobody left a message. Scully drifted back to sleep, only to wake again when the cell phone started to buzz and move on the nightstand. 'Why did I forget to turn it off?' She sighed and reached for it.
"Scully..."
Instead of Mulder, she heard a deep relieved sigh and "It's Krycek. Please, don't hang up."
"Talk, but be brief, please. It's... - she glanced at the clock - ... inhumanly early."
"Can you come and fetch my son?"
"What?" She was suddenly wide-awake. She even sat up.
"I'm in DC, at the interstate bus station. Would you please come? Please."
"What's the matter? Are you hurt?"
"Not yet. But I'm running out of time."
"Ou... God, I'm not believing I'm saying this..." Scully rubbed her forehead to increase the circulation. "Give me half an hour."
"Thank you." Then Krycek hung up. Scully shook her head, still not believing what she was going to do as she crawled out of the bed.
She walked into the almost empty station building 28 minutes later.
"The ponytail suites you." Krycek low voice almost gave her a coronary.
"You didn't exactly give me time to visit my favorite hair-dresser now, did you?" she answered and took in the picture in front of her. Krycek, the boy in her arms and one bag over her shoulder, another one at her feet. She herself looking like shit - the dark circles around her bloodshed eyes.
"What happened?" Scully motioned towards the rows of chairs and they sat. Krycek dropped the bag but clung to the child like he was her lifeline.
"You were right, I can't protect him; if they should want to get him. You two have a better chance."
"So you want to give him to me, to us?"
"Yes." Krycek looked at her, and closed her eyes, yawning. "I can't protect him."
"It's not good for children to grow up without their parents..."
"You're telling that to me? To a lab-rat, who has no idea from whose genetic material I'm constructed."
"But you had people whom you considered to be your parents, people who loved you."
"So will have he. You'll be a great stepmom and you'll mould Mulder into a decent father, too."
"But why now? Or why not come to the witness..." Krycek snorted, so she sped up."...we could help you to..."
"And you will. But not that way. I-" She tensed up and hugged the child closer.
"What's the-"
"They're calling me," she gritted through her teeth. "Like they called you to the bridge. They've not come physically to get him or me yet, but they will. They call me and he is the only thing that keeps me from following."
"Then it makes no sense to give him up!"
"It makes perfect sense," Krycek's voice eased up, she sighed and Scully could see a sheen of sweat on her forehead. "He's getting tired of protecting me, and they are getting stronger. Eventually they'll win and I'll follow and I don't want him any where near me when that happens." She sighed and caressed the small head with her fingertips. Now Mulder's son had a bit more down than Scully remembered. "They'll kill him eventually, one way or another. One test subject in the family is enough."
There was a silence between them, until Scully reached out and caressed the boy, too. He seemed to accept her. "You really care about this child, don't you?" She looked up to see what Krycek would answer. The tired mother bit her lip and whispered softly, so Scully heard it with difficulty. "I... suppose so." 'And he's Mulder's', added Scully, knowing that Krycek would never admit this as a part of a reason, at least not to her. Although it might be the main one.
"So what do want to do?" she asked instead.
"I... I must be more tired than I thought...."
"Meaning?"
"I miscalculated the bus times. If I want to survive this night, I'll have to have him for, mmm, (Krycek glanced at her watch), about two and half hours."
"What? Why?"
"Don't you remember? They didn't call you during the day, did they?"
"Come to think of it... No." Scully caught the idea. "You have to have him until sunrise?"
"You are an exceptionally bright Special Agent." Krycek smiled, it was a very tired smile.
"When did you last sleep?"
"In the bus."
"Why the bus?"
"Less security cameras than in airports."
"Right..." Scully wondered for a moment whether she was losing her mind, but decided to figure that out later. "Come to my place and sleep till morning."
"Come on, you can't be serious."
"Very serious. I'm not going to sit in some 24 hour canteen with you for two hours and watch you fall off the bench. It's better to sleep on the couch in my living room, and cheaper, too." Scully was almost shocked by her own words. But they seemed to work.
"Giving me a discount for frequent use of your services?"
Scully sighed. 'Humour. Great. Humour was a bloody weak defence. At least, where Krycek was concerned but it was better than to hearing her admit once more that she loves Mulder. Anything was better than that.'
"Something like that. Come on." She watched her haul the bigger bag on her shoulder, then took the smaller one herself, before Krycek had the time to protest. "You have your hands full, already."
The boy dozed off in the car the second the machine started moving.
"Does he like driving?"
"Yes, seems so. He likes to be constantly on the move."
'Like his mother...' thought Scully, while changing lanes.
"Perhaps because I did it so much, and still do," added Krycek, startling Scully. "When I drove, he slept peacefully, when I stopped he got nervous and cried... So I drove. I couldn't keep it up indefinitely, however." Scully noticed that Krycek was slurring her words, she was talking to keep herself awake, and it wasn't easy any more. "He," Krycek continued after stifling a yawn, "wouldn't have it, of course. There was a danger and he knew we had to run. So I ended up selling the truck and taking the bus to DC. He slept there and I slept there."
They entered Scully's apartment quietly, Krycek padded to the couch, having kicked off her boots and had fallen asleep by the time Scully had locked and deadbolted the door. Alex still held the boy, who lay peacefully on her chest and snoozed, too.
Scully shook her head, listed ten reasons on the topic 'Why this is a bad idea?' then shrugged. She dropped the second bag next to the first one near the wall and walked to the bedroom. She didn't expect to fall asleep, but she did.
She woke up on hearing somebody making a loud and demanding sound. Krycek's son was by her side and a short look through the apartment confirmed that Krycek herself was gone. The door was locked, but not deadbolted anymore, the key, skilfully extracted from Scully's keyring, lay on the floor where the newspapers tended to pile - mostly during the unexpectedly prolonged X-file cases. 'Damn her...' There was also a note on the table:
Sorry to leave like this, but I have no time to waste. There are two full bottles at the top of the bag, the supply of diapers should last about a day and a half, with luck, two days; other things longer. The wad of bills is for his costly habits. You know that he likes to move, but he also likes you. He told me. Yeah, I know what you're thinking now, but ask Mulder, he'll back my story. He's an empath at the very least, if not more. And he agreed to stay with you. Take care of him and yourself and Mulder, too. Oh, yes, and name him. I didn't have time to think about it.
K.
P.S. Remember when you said that you took a chance helping me? I'm taking a chance leaving now. I hope it saves him. And if you want to know more, there is a journal. Show it to him when the time is right.
Scully had the eerie feeling that Krycek meant both important 'he-s' of her life but then the unnamed son of Mulder yelled again and she rushed to warm the milk.
When she finally called him in the early afternoon, Mulder came at once. She had read the journal, and she was shocked but she refused to show it to him.
"She asked me to wait, and I'll do that." Then they sat down, Scully holding the baby, Mulder still puzzled as hell, and Scully went over the events of the previous night.
"And she didn't say where she was going or..."
"No, she didn't. She probably doesn't even know where she will go or where she will end up. But there was one thing in this journal that means something right now." Scully flipped the notebook open, found the passage and cleared her voice: "So, here it is."
"I'm going on a 99,9% certainty, suicide-mission, which may not let me use that puny 0,1%. I know that you came back and survived. I may not. I wish I was stronger, but when there is nothing else left, I'll think of you and wish that it were enough to pull me through. You're my strength, Mulder. I hope you're not angry about that."
It's the last entry in the notebook." Scully closed it. "She really must love you."
"But it also means that she might not come back." Mulder looked at the boy and sighed. "He doesn't deserve to be motherless."
"No. Nobody does." She shifted the baby to lay on her arm; he blinked at her and started to wriggle his fingers.
"And he'll probably be the first to know when she dies." Mulder's words were heavy with concern. Scully gave her finger to the boy to play with and replied:
"If she dies. You came back. You both have come back from no-win situations. You risked a lot, so has she. She risked asking for my help; you trust me, that's a risk too. We love each other, and even that is a risk - we have a line of work that may very easily end and has ended - with one of us standing up alone by the grave of the other..."
"Don't, Scully, please..."
"But it is a possibility. We all run risks, high and low. She still might come back."
However, she could see in Mulder's eyes that he recalled the charred bodies found at Skyland Mountain and in all the other places and, to her great regret, Scully thought about the same things. All of which together meant this boy might never see his mother again.
17th of February, Tuesday, 2004
The darkness of the room vanished in the light, everything faded into brightness and fear clamped down on her throat, and she couldn't move.
She couldn't move and she was lifted, by nothing.
She tried to scream but there was no voice.
Only fear and then such a bright sharp light that...
Scully woke, almost certain that she was whimpering loudly, and Kevin, Mulder's illegitimate son, cried softly in his crib. And she understood: Krycek had been taken, she had not been able to flee. Scully got up, took the boy in her arms and tried to hush him.
The phone rang.
She walked over and picked up the receiver, the child still crying softly against her neck.
"She's gone, isn't she?" Mulder sounded sleepy.
"Yes. We probably saw the same thing. Lights-"
"- and fear. Yeah, seems so. And Kevin?"
"Sad. But she isn't dead, you know." Scully wasn't even sure to whom she addressed this comment.
"Do you want me to come over?"
"We have to go to work tomorrow."
"I'm aware of that. Do you want me to come?"
"Yes."
They ended up snuggling and sleeping in Scully's bed, Kevin with them and this felt almost safe.
Days went by, weeks followed, no information about Krycek but somehow from every other source there started to come unsettling news. There was an outbreak of some new strain of viral pneumonia here and there, nothing very big at first but the death toll was almost 100%. The Gunmen reported that most military facilities were on red alert, that the activity of UFOs was similar to bees preparing to swarm. And Scully was putting on obvious weight just as the world seemed to be ending.
12th of June, 2004
Personal diary entry
It ended on the 6th of June, 2004. The 'it' being the world as we know it. A hot day - that is the thing I remember now, when the radio suddenly turned quiet, quiet except for the white noise, and then the power went out. I sat in the kitchen of the secluded country house Mulder had purchased in the middle of April and wondered what had happened. And then I heard Mulder calling outside.
I walked out, not without some difficulty and I saw what he saw.
The sky was full of saucers. There were dark shape-changing, humming clouds around them. The bees had escaped and were now the world's deadliest swarms ever.
I didn't understand that I was shivering until Mulder came and hugged me from behind, protecting me. He wouldn't have been able to shield me from this danger but I appreciated the gesture nevertheless. We stood there and watched our world become cast over.
We went back inside as there was nothing we could do at the moment. We soon found that all communications were gone: no phones, no radio, no TV. At least we wouldn't feel cold, yet.
Mulder kept hugging me, he was trembling, I felt it clearly. So I asked: "What is it?"
"I remember now, what happened to me during the abduction... It's not pretty."
"I know. I remember now, too." And by the name of Lord, I did. I couldn't move, only cling to him as the blanks in our memories filled with horrid images.
Later we learned that this happened to anyone who had been taken. There were hundreds, thousands of suicides during the next week. The Bee-plague, as it was referred to later, didn't lift the mood either. And those who survived both waves of destruction were few and at first too frightened even to try fighting back.
For the two first days after the colonisation began, we lived in that house, nervous and desperate, but understanding that we couldn't get back to the city, because the roads would be blocked by the escapees and their cars. What distressed us most, however, was the fact that we couldn't get any information about the people who were important for us: Skinner, my mother and brothers, the Gunmen...
"We have to go and see what's going on," Mulder said in the second evening, dead-calm and dead-scared at the same time. We were in the broad bed and we were holding onto each other - which seemed to be the only thing we were doing recently. I shifted a fraction and then nodded. "Though it would be safer for you to stay here and-"
I shook my head so violently that it hurt my neck.
"No. Mulder, I don't want to be alone in this world. If something happens to you out there, then I would sense and worry but not know for sure. And it would feel far worse than knowing, believe me."
"I believe you. But our daughter..." His fingers were in my hair and tried to persuade me to drop the issue. I ignored them the best way I could, with statements.
"Is safe as long as I'm safe. It's probably dangerous every where, even here."
"At least they can't contaminate our pipes..." It was a weak attempt of humour, but I cherished even that.
"Yes, not many, at least."
The house has an independent water supply, a generator supported pump in the spring nearby. When Mulder had started to look for a house outside the city, the Gunmen had given him advice and now this place was as self-sufficient as possible. We do have a generator to give power, yes, but right now we had decided to save it for the rainy and snowy days. Rephrasing this: we didn't want to risk running out of fuel. Although the Gunmen had been adamant about all the supplies, we had hoped that we wouldn't need to rely on this place at all but we had sneaked out of the city from time-to-time to spend some days here. This had been just one of those occasions. Just a weekend trip, only this time the world happened to end.
"We better be armed and perhaps use your car, it's smaller and more economical..." Mulder mused, his fingers still fondling my hair, but his mind already in survival mode - if there is any in his mind.
"I agree. Can you pump the gasoline from one car to the other? My tank was only half full."
"Mmm, when I find the manual pump. Frohike insisted I'd buy it, but I never fathomed that I'd really have to use it..." His voice made me smile - sadly. I rested my head on his shoulder and commented, hearing his heartbeat so close to me:
"Their paranoia now seems the only workable frame of mind."
"Unfortunately it's true." And then he tightened his embrace, as if wishing to remember this feeling forever.
The city was as bad as we had expected it to be - it felt like walking onto a movie set. The abandoned cars were every where, and it seemed that it had hailed dark and dead bees. The insects covered every possible surface.
But this was for real.
"Scully, I feel like I'd been sucked into the Twilight Zone."
"Perhaps we have."
My smaller vehicle made its way slowly way between the cars, some of which had crashed into each other, some of them just parked in the middle of the road or intersection. Death of a world and the only remains are the steel constructs that had once moved and concrete constructs that didn't. It felt, suddenly, so inadequate. And stupid.
"Where are all the people? And why are the cars empty?" Mulder stopped looking for another narrow passage to get through. I felt myself sighing and leaned back in the seat - the third trimester is the hardest and I was very long gone. Nevertheless, I had to think about the question.
"Probably the owners got out when the bees got into the cars. Wouldn't you?" It wasn't the best I could come up with but it had to do for now. He had asked me to keep an eye on the surroundings.
"Knowing what even one sting can do, there is no point."
"They didn't know that. They would've tried to run away from the swarm."
Mulder suddenly gasped: "It's the third day.... We saw the offspring gestate within one day in normal temperature. It's been two days... Do you think there are many humans around at all, Scully?"
There was this burning cold feeling in my throat and my respiratory functions almost failed. After some thirty seconds I managed to utter:
"I don't want to hazard a guess. Though majority of those who got more than one sting would most likely have died."
"So somewhere there are lots of dead humans and even more very angry aliens... Want to go promenading?"
"I think we have to. The road ahead is blocked." So we got out of the car. If anyone had seen us like we were that day, we would have been kicked out from the FBI with no further comments.
We both wore Kevlar, as much as we could - I being almost in my eighth month and he carrying Kevin in the body harness. Frohike had customised the last thing with parts of another bullet proof vest and pockets for extra clips. Always trust him to come up with the craziest ideas to keep the children safe. Anyway, besides those weird items, we had our side arms, M-16-s (another courtesy of Frohike) and four hand grenades for each of us. We had thought to wear something over our equipment, but it was still bloody hot and there was no one to judge us.
It was eerie to walk in the empty streets. To see the Cradock Marine Bank on the corner of E-street and 8th Avenue with its doors wide open and no one trying to rob the unguarded money. To stalk past the hundreds of cars, frozen in their way, to hear no noise of Civilisation whatsoever. We kept close to each other when we walked down towards our work place. We were walking in a dead world.
16th of June, 2004
Personal diary entry
We found Skinner.
He has amnesia. He had lived the passed few days in the FBI building, frightened and almost crazy with all of this. We had to force him at gun point to listen to us as he was so far gone. He didn't know who we were. Mulder had to dig out his badge and also Skinner's, afterwards he was willing to come with us.
The reason for his condition is obviously the result of severe concussion, the evidence of which is a gash on his head, at the back of his skull. He had bandaged it somehow but, as it turned out, it still needed stitches. Fortunately we could get into the labs and I got the things I needed to take care of his head wound.
He told us that all that he remembered was that there had been an alarm and then everybody had started to evacuate the building, but then the bees came in through the air vents and all hell broke loose. He had lost footage on the stairs and fallen. Then everything had blacked out. He had passed out. He had damn good luck not to be trodden on and he hadn't seen any other humans until we arrived.
We took him along with us, loaded with as many guns and rounds as we could carry - and me also with the medical supplies - and decided to visit our homes. We went to my apartment first, then Skinner's - the fact that we knew where it was and he didn't, surprised him in a bad way - and then we went to Mulder's.
I had the hospital bag ready but now I needed to add some personal belongings, because it seemed we had to leave our previous lives and ways of life far behind. Since it was already dark when we arrived at my place, we stayed the night. My last night in my old apartment. Thank God that Mulder was there to hold me when I cried myself to sleep. The only thing I hate about being pregnant is the emotional imbalance.
It was easier with Skinner's apartment, it held no distinguishable emotional values for me, and Skinner couldn't remember much. He packed everything in a cold, military fashion and was ready to leave in an hour. It took longer in Mulder's. Mostly because Mulder couldn't decide what to leave and what to bring. We spent about five hours there, waiting for him. Skinner asked whether I was married to him and I thought about saying "yes" but Kevin saved the day and yelped and I fed him. Our former superior watched us, then came the inevitable question about Kevin. Mulder, who had come into the kitchen, answered before I could even open my mouth.
"He's my son. His name is Kevin." The AD was satisfied with that answer, just like that. The concussion must have been really bad. If I had had the means, he would have gone to hospital for a CAT scan ASAP.
Finally Mulder was ready and we left, leaving Skinner's lost glasses and the Old New World far behind.