A New Beginning – Chapter 4: The Façade
A/N: It's taken a few days to get this posted because it has undergone massive revisions. I'm excited to hear what you think of it, so please read & review. I'm toying with the idea of taking down some of the earlier chapters for revisions also, so I would love to hear any suggestions you have. I know the action up until now has been a bit slow for some of you, but it will start to speed up in the next few chapters. I promise on my collection of X-Files stuff.
Disclaimer: Don't own anyone whose name you know, not making money from them or the new people (who are all mine!)
Kayla Roy-Davis spent the morning in her sunny kitchen, her six-month-old son Michael cradled in her lap. Currently spread on the table before her was a stack of files, profiles of breeding subjects who had recently come up in rotation.
Although she had none of the more obvious psychic powers her older children displayed, Kayla's sense of right and wrong was a highly developed beacon. Sometimes the holes in her memory led her to incorrect conclusions, but more often than not it worked regardless. Her spidey sense wasn't good for much, but Kayla allowed it to guide her in making decisions about combining certain breeding subjects.
Being careful not to unduly jostle Michael, she picked up the file on Dana Scully. She hadn't put two and two together the other night, couldn't really make the information in the file mesh with the woman on her porch despite the picture she'd been staring at for several minutes now. The file indicated Dana Scully had cancer, and had donated her eggs to the project so that part of her would live on. A woman on her deathbed, Dana Scully was not; she had fairly sparkled with health. Something felt seriously wrong, Kayla just couldn't figure out what.
She was tempted to call the number on the FBI business card in her pocket and ask Dana Scully these questions, but she forced herself to wait until she'd spoken to Alex and Anya. They might know more about this. She knew they weren't telling her everything she should know about their work; she wasn't even sure they were telling her everything about hers, but they had yet to steer her wrong and she would continue to rely on them for protection until she felt it was wrong to do so.
Kayla sighed and picked up another file, wondering what to do about it. Jeffrey Spender. Since she'd first encountered his name about ten months ago, she had come to remember him as her younger brother. She had vague memories of them playing with other children on what seemed like a military base. She also remembered an older brother, but she could not remember his name, or what he'd looked like. She knew her two brothers did not live together or know of one another; and that neither of them was the child of Arbutus Ray, the only mother she remembered. She had vague recollections of a blonde woman kissing Jeffrey goodnight and knew this was his mother; but the mother of her older brother was a blank, as was any other woman who might have claimed her as a daughter.
The last time they had asked her to breed Jeffrey, she'd done it. Knowing now that this was her brother, and that he was dead, she was unsure of what to do. How was she supposed to just breed together his genetic material with some strange woman's, then send her niece or nephew off to some unknown place where she would never have a chance to meet them? She'd kept tabs on the little girl she'd made last time as much as she was able, but Nadya had been adopted out of her clinic as part of a pilot program. All she knew was that the little girl lived in Arizona on a military base. That was probably all she'd ever know about her niece.
She thought for a moment about putting Jeffrey and Dana together, but that seemed wrong, so she quickly dismissed the idea. She flipped through Dana Scully's file again to see who she'd been combined with in the past, and frowned. There were four entries, marked with the partner subject's serial number but no other information. That was not standard procedure; every combination of DNA was to be marked in the files of both contributors with name, serial number, and project number. Often pictures were included, and information on the resulting offspring. From Dana Scully's file she couldn't tell if the resulting offspring were control or experimental, much less which of the dozens of projects they were intended for, or even if they were alive. Kayla snorted; whoever had last made notes in this file might as well not have, for all the good they did her.
She thought back to the last time she'd worked on Dana Scully's file. She knew she'd seen the name before, but she couldn't remember. Kayla closed her eyes and took a deep breath, attempting to visualize the last time she'd worked on Dana Scully, when she'd last heard the name, and ended up with a fat lot of nothing. There was only a blank space where those memories should be. The notes had been typed by one of her assistants, so she must have seen them at some point, she just couldn't make sense of it.
She supposed that she hadn't paid enough attention to what was going on with Dana Scully's ovum. Her role was more management than anything; she should be able to recite name rank and serial number for any and all of her subjects. If her lab received orders from the Board that certain DNA went together, she needed to be able to respond with speed and efficiency, or she was screwed. Then again, she saw so many names on a daily basis...
Breath sighed from between her lips as the headache she'd been fighting slammed into her. Her head throbbed as if she had a concussion, blinding pain behind her eyes distracting her so much that she forgot to remember how she knew what a concussion felt like. She stood, carefully cuddling Michael close as she strolled towards his room, concentrating on taking one step at a time without passing out. She shivered in sudden terror as she gently placed her son in his crib, not wanting to dwell on how close she'd just come to dropping her precious baby.
Lurching towards the small half-bath across the hall, she gasped to regain her breath, her knees shaking as she leaned against the vanity in an attempt to stay upright. The pain shifted from a rhythmic throbbing to the stabbing of a hundred needles in her eyeballs, her temples, the back of her neck; and Kayla collapsed into a heap of quaking muscles on the floor as her stomach revolted in sympathy and landed its contents in the toilet before her.
On her way back to the kitchen she caught sight of herself in the hall mirror, and froze. Her eyes were riveted on her hair. When had she become a blonde? She remembered being blonde for as far back as she could remember, in all the pictures of herself around the house she was a blonde. Her husband had teased her one day about the gray in her roots, and she'd dyed it. After that, she kept up with the appointments. She couldn't remember dying her hair before that; yet, suddenly it looked wrong.
She thought back over her vague memories of Jeffrey Spender, and his blonde mother. She had known, at the time that memory was formed, who the woman was, and retained the sense that this was not her mother, but she couldn't have told you why until right that second.
Kayla was a natural brunette. She'd bet her life on it.
"Brandon Davis has become a security risk. He failed to report on his wife's recovered memories, he's been inexcusably slow to act, and he's now refusing to give up the children."
Spender inhaled a lungful of Morley and focused his thoughts. Save his children, his genetic offspring; the rest were expendable. That had always been his focus, and it seemed all the more important as he inevitably came closer to death "What about her doctors?"
"Ivanovich has also failed to report on any recovered memories; although it's possible Kayla has been lying to her, and her mentor Krycek as well. Ivanovich should have picked up on it. I question if she's been doing the required quarterly hypnosis. Krycek would have been easy to fool, especially if Ivanovich was falsifying her notes."
Thank you, Alex, for giving me the means to save you. Wish I could say the same for your wife. "Take Ivanovich back to Tunguska for reconditioning. Her gifts are too necessary; we would have trouble recruiting another so well prepared to work for us. We can send her back to Krycek once she's fixed, and find out if he's part of the problem here. Dispose of Mr. Davis and the older child, then place the young ones in labs."
"And what about Kayla?"
Yes, what about my wayward daughter? Spender considered his options carefully before replying. "Recondition her in the Arizona facility, then set her up as a child-care nurse. We can use a clone to run the egg banks until we find a suitable replacement."
"Perhaps Dr. Scully can be convinced to take over…With the proper motivation…"
Spender's head snapped up. "Scully will be brought in. The timing is my decision. She is not yet vulnerable enough to be coerced easily. Nor is she prepared to participate without coercion. I have a plan for Scully…But not yet. You are dismissed."
"Sir, the timetable?"
"As soon as it can be arranged. Begin with Mr. Davis and Mrs. Krycek."
Marita turned to leave the room before Spender could see her wince. She hated to be reminded that Alex Krycek had been given everything her association with the Consortium had denied her; a family, a future, a chance to escape from the impending disastrous outcome of the Board's sins against the rest of humanity. If any of her coworkers were really human anymore.
Ripped from her parents at the age of five, her sisters long disappeared into testing facilities where they had given their lives to the cause before they hit their teens; her offspring raised in laboratories or foster families, living their lives as test subjects…Marita Covarrubias had never been given the chance to marry or have interests outside of her work; Spender had a way of keeping her under his thumb with threats, intimidation, bribery, and periodic experimentation. At one time it had seemed easier not to fight him; dragging some poor bastard into her dark life would just hurt them. She was potentially lethal to anyone she chose to care about, so it had been easier not to get attached. Now, it was just lonely.
Alex had been a friend since her teens, one of the few she'd ever had, and there was an inherent injustice in the fact that he had always had a seemingly normal family life. Although they worked towards the same goals, Marita sometimes felt like she would willingly sacrifice the fate of the planet if he could feel only a part of the pain she had experienced in her life. Marita tried very hard to treasure Alex's friendship and his concern, and forget that part of her hated her close friend and half-brother.
At least she could get Anya out of the way for a while. Not that she disliked Alex's wife or meant her any ill will, but seeing the contentment they felt together made her jealousy burn brighter, made her uncomfortable with Alex. Having Anya sent away would bring Alex into her confidence without Spender any the wiser, allowing her a bit of comfort in his presence. Better than nothing, and if the last 30 years had taught Marita anything, it was to be grateful for the small things.
Spender sat back in his chair, crushing out his cigarette as Marita's footsteps faded down the hall. Poor Marita. When he'd introduced her into Alex's life Spender had high hopes for their association. Unfortunately, Alex had never shown much inclination towards his pretty sister, unless he was using her to get to Spender. It was probably just as well that marrying them off hadn't worked. Anya was a revelation, a gem that had fallen into their laps. She brought fresh blood and energy, not to mention her very unique talents, to their experiments. Much like Dana Scully. Besides, many of his colleagues worried about too much inbreeding, and the introduction of the other two women had proven them correct.
Marita would just have to stay with him, as she had since she turned 16; a replacement for her beautiful mother as his lover and an invaluable administrative resource to his cause.
