5.

Krycek fingered the VCR's control with his good hand, letting his fingers brush over the soft buttons. In front of him the small screen blurred as it rolled quickly through surveillance footage, the dark empty corridors almost hypnotic as the hours scrolled past on the time stamp.

"There," he said suddenly, jamming his finger on the pause button.

Frame by frame by frame he inched it forward, watching the man on screen jog past, keeping close to the wall and ducking low, as though it would make him less obvious than walking upright would.

"Is it Mulder?" Spender questioned pointedly, drawing a breath of smoke in between his cracked lips.

"It's the same height and build," Krycek said, evading the question.

He rewound the tape again, pulling it back until the man first stepped into the frame, and then let it play normally.

"It doesn't make sense for them to kidnap a child," Geoffrey Spender commented.

Krycek glanced at the young man before raising his eyebrows at the man's father. "This is your son?" he asked mockingly.

The older Spender smiled, a strange pull of his features revealing a small glimpse of teeth yellowed by nicotine, coffee and old age. "I want confirmation that this is Mulder, and they have the child before we do anything."

Krycek felt the waves of satisfaction roll through him. "If this isn't Mulder, I don't know who it is."

The smoking man raised his cigarette to his lips thoughtfully.

"Should we make a move?" Geoffrey asked hesitantly.

"No," Spender shook his head, watching the ash flake off his cigarette. "No. We don't need to take the child back now."

"We don't?" Krycek questioned, surprised.

"No," the smoking man said smugly. "They'll come to us when they understand the full implications of what they've done. They won't have a choice if the Others learn of it."

Krycek let his gaze rest on paused image of the man on the screen. Blurred with static and poor quality, the fuzzy outline was hardly recognisable. He flicked the power button easily, watching the screen snap off and the image fade.

Fade. It was easy to make things fade.


Underfoot the rocky ground crushed against itself noisily when he stepped on it, his boots grinding against the small pebbles and scattering them before him. His breath steamed in front of his face – if he were poetically inclined he might imagine them to look like small puffs of stardust as they glistened in the waning moonlight. But Krycek was not poetically inclined under most circumstances, yet even in those circumstances where he was, it was hardly his style to wax lyrical about his own breath in the moonlight.

On his right the train rails gleamed dull silver, kept clean by the passage of trains day by day. He followed the line absently, scuffing his worn boots through the gravel and staring ahead at the muted lights in the distance.

Huddled between the large sheds and sleeping engines, the small boxcar was lost in the shadows. He approached it slowly, wriggling his fingers in his coat pocket to try and generate some warmth in the bitterly cold air before he pulled his hand out and swiped a card through a small scanner next to the boxcar door. A soft beep, followed by a gentle hiss and click, and the door slid open for him, a stark white light spilling out and cutting the darkness in half.

"Krycek?" someone asked as he stepped inside, pulling his balaclava from his head and rubbing his cheeks with it for a second.

"I've come to check on your progress," he answered, jamming the balaclava into his pocket and stepping into the carriage. "Dr. Openshaw said you were getting close."

"Closer," the man corrected, adjusting his tie before stepping around Krycek. "She's still undergoing the procedure, but the modifications and her levels of immunity already are definitely bringing the end in sight."

The end, Krycek thought whimsically, was a lot closer than anyone knew.

"How long before she's ready?" he asked instead, staring at the far end of the boxcar. Huddled around a bench swathed with clothes were several figures in white coats and plastic masks.

"I don't know if we'll be successful this time around, but a few more days and this round will be over."

Krycek nodded. "I'll let them know."

"Anything else?"

"No."

He pulled the balaclava back out of his pocket, hooking it on the plastic fingers of his prosthetic limb to anchor it while he pulled it over his head. When he was satisfied and only his eyes were left uncovered, he turned to look at the man one last time. "Call me as soon as it works."

The man nodded silently, turning from Krycek and looking back toward the far end of the boxcar. "Expect a phone call soon, Krycek."

"I will," he said.

The air was bitterly cold on his eyelids when he stepped from the boxcar, the darkness encompassing when the door snapped shut behind him and he was left in the deserted train yard with only the empty lines for company.

He smiled as he watched his breath cloud in front of his face, seeing how each breath glistened for a single moment before disappearing into the darkness.