CHAPTER 13
LIBERTY TREE MOTEL
ROOM 602
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 30th, 1999
8.34am
Scully stood in front of the mirror and struggled vainly with eyeshadow and blusher as she tried to disguise the ugly, yellow bruise. It was looking even worse this morning, and the swelling didn't seem to be getting any better. She sighed in defeat, fogging the mirror as she threw aside the brush and grabbed her jacket to head out for some breakfast, but her cellphone started to ring.
'Mulder,' she sighed with relief, 'I'm so glad you called. Are you okay?'
'I'm fine. You?'
'Okay. Didn't sleep so well. Where are you?'
'I'm on my way back. Actually, I'm at McCarran right now. My flight is due to land at Richmond at around lunchtime. Are you still at the motel?'
'For the moment. Doctor Berkowitz is picking us up at nine. We're heading back out to the labs so I'll be there when you arrive. Will you be coming straight here?'
'Probably.' She heard him breathing, and knew he had something more to say. She waited for him. 'I've got so much to tell you. You wouldn't believe what I've uncovered.' He sounded different. There was an edge of excitement in his voice that lifted her. She wondered whether she should be pleased or worried. 'I really missed you last night, Dana. I hate sleeping alone.'
She smiled as she laid back on the bed and closed her eyes, imagining that he was lying beside her. Holding her. Nudging her neck with his nose in the way he knew made her melt like ice in his arms. 'I missed you, too. Just hurry back, okay?'
'Are you sure everything is alright?'
'Yes, fine. Why?'
'Well, it's just…I guess after yesterday, I expected you to yell at me.'
'Would you prefer it if I yelled at you?'
'No, no, of course not. As long as you're sure you're alright.'
'I am, honestly. I'm sorry for the way I was with you yesterday,' she said quietly. 'I'm sorry for everything, and I…we need to talk, Fox. Properly. I…you know how much I love you, don't you?'
She didn't know how to interpret the silence that followed.
'I know,' he finally said, softly. 'I love you too, Dana.'
Behind her closed lids, her eyes burned with tears. Krycek's words were haunting her; twisting deep within her like a dying serpent.
After she'd hung up, she drew her knees to her chest, hugging herself tightly as she tried to dispel the encapsulating loneliness that had shrouded her.
Because, somehow, she already knew that she was losing him.
Doctor Berkowitz picked them up on time and they were in his lab by nine thirty. They were empty as Berkowitz had said, but some of the offices upstairs were being used by people who evidently had too much work than a six-day week allowed for. Berkowitz promised they wouldn't bother them, and that they rarely stepped outside their rooms except to use the vending machines in the hallway, so they more or less had the place to themselves. Scully went straight into Berkowitz's office to call Doctor Morgan while the others went ahead to the lab where Berkowitz planned to start testing possible attack methods on the Nanites whilst in their active state.
Doctor Morgan had managed to track down the records, and as she sat waiting for them to be transmitted through the fax machine, she tried to think of a way in which the chip may have some correlation to the Nanites. She had been told by Pendrell that the chip seemed to be able to read and record nerve signals being sent to and from the brain, and therefore theoretically, could record and transmit every memory, every thought a person had - every thought she had. And if the chip had the ability to transmit, then maybe it could control the Nanites. She had to get copies of the readouts from the oscilloscope to identify the type and strength of the transmissions.
With the faxes in hand, she headed back up to Berkowitz's lab. She shivered, and felt very alone as her footfalls echoed in the empty corridor.
As she arrived at the door, it flew open and Krycek bounded out, almost knocking into her.
'Where the hell do you think you're going?'
'I was looking for you,' he spat breathlessly. 'It's Skinner.'
She pushed past him into the lab, where her heart stopped.
Skinner was lying on the carpet. Doctor Berkowitz knelt beside him, opening his shirt cuff to take his pulse. He looked up as she entered.
'What happened?'
'I don't know,' Berkowitz said despondently. 'He just collapsed. But look at this discoloration over his arms - is this indicative of what happened before?'
Scully took off Skinner's tie and opened his shirt to see the network of distended veins and arteries pulsating with his heartbeat, spreading outwards from a patch over his liver. His entire lymphatic system could be seen just beneath his skin, almost as if it were transparent. His breathing was ragged and shallow.
'Sir? Can you hear me? Sir, if you can understand me, try to squeeze my hand,' she said gently, feeling for his pulse that was a barely perceptible fluttering in his wrist.
His eyes opened slowly, but then returned to narrow slits as the light stung and he struggled to focus on her face. He licked his lips and tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come. His eyes flickered closed and he slipped into unconsciousness again.
'This is worse than before. Much worse,' said Scully. 'His deterioration is vastly accelerated. He didn't lose consciousness until invasion of his vascular system was absolute. He remained lucid and responsive almost to the end.'
'So what can we do for him now?'
She didn't answer, but suddenly spun around to Krycek, pulled out her gun and rushed at him, slamming him against a wall, driven by a redoubtable force that obviously surprised him as much as it did her. She rammed the barrel of the gun up underneath his chin.
'Are you responsible for this, you son of a bitch? ARE YOU?'
'No! I'm cuffed, for God's sake! How the fuck could I be doing it?'
'You lying bastard. You've been playing us this whole time, haven't you?!'
Burning up with fury, she saw him only in shades of crimson as one hand gripped his throat and the other moved the gun to his right eye. She cocked the trigger.
'You fucking crazy bitch, what the hell is wrong with you?! I'm not doing this!'
'I swear to God that I'll kill you, Krycek.'
He groaned, knowing that she was about to pull the trigger, and recoiled from her. He was slick with sweat. She leaned in closer to him and felt the heat from his fevered breath against her cheek. His skin was dark and unshaven, glistening with sweat.
'Where is it?'
'I don't know! I've been cuffed since yesterday, how would I have taken it?'
'Agent Scully - ' Berkowitz began.
But Scully was way past hearing him. She smacked the butt of the gun across Krycek's injured eye. He groaned again and sagged to the floor as she pressed the gun against his knee cap.
'Last chance, before you lose the ability to walk. Where is the device?'
Krycek's head was bowed as he still reeled from the blow. When he looked up at her, his eyes were watery and almost…lifeless. Fresh blood leaked from his cuts and was trickling over his lip, but it was as though he hadn't even noticed.
'Just do it, Scully.' His voice was thin and weak. Broken. 'I don't give a fuck anymore.'
'Agent Scully, I have the device. AD Skinner gave it to me this morning,' Berkowitz said, more strongly this time, his hand on her shoulder.
She blinked, the aura of her anger shattered. She flipped the firing pin back, closed the safety, and lowered the gun. She stood up, crossed to the sofa and sat down, staring at the gun in her hand as though she couldn't understand what it was doing there.
'I'm…I'm sorry,' she whispered. 'I just thought that…that…'
'I know, Dana. I understand,' Berkowitz said gently. He took the gun from her and laid it on the desk. 'But we have work to do. We have to move Mr. Skinner. We can't treat him here.'
'Yes,' she whispered. Then more strongly, 'Yes, of course. I'm sorry.' She stood up and took a set of handcuffs from her jacket pocket.
Krycek was still slouched against the wall. He was staring straight ahead. His eyes bright, yet vacant. Scully put her hand beneath his arm and hauled him back to his feet, walked him across to the chair behind the desk, fastened one end of the cuffs around the chain already linking his wrists, and the other to the thick water pipe feeding the radiator. He didn't fight her. He didn't look at her. He didn't even ask why.
'Doctor, can you monitor if there are any emissions coming from that thing, please? I'll stay with the AD.'
'Of course. It won't take long,' he said and disappeared back to his lab.
Scully went back to Skinner. The vessels in his neck were beginning to distend and pulsate as the Nanites again started to build their blockages of carbon throughout his system. She propped his head up on one of the cushions from the sofa and took off her jacket to put over him because he felt cold.
'I'm not picking anything up, Dana. There are no signals coming from it at all. This isn't what's causing the Assistant Director's relapse,' Berkowitz said when he returned.
'Are you sure?'
'Quite.'
She glanced across at Krycek. The bleeding had slowed. He was just staring down at the floor, so still that he could have been a statue. She felt sick. She couldn't bear to look at him anymore. She blinked and turned back to Berkowitz.
'But if it's not this, then how are they organizing themselves?'
He sighed. 'I wish I knew. But we need to get the AD to a hospital, Dana. Laser treatment seemed to work before. We should try that again.'
'It's advancing too quickly. We couldn't treat him before. We just got lucky,' she said despondently. 'We'd just be prolonging the inevitable. Compounding his pain.' Tears of remorse and sorrow burned her eyes as she looked down at him.
'That's not the Dana I remember,' he said with great fondness, laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder. 'What happened to the determination to prove your tutors wrong? The dedication to your work and your theories that went against the grain? You never gave up then, even though everyone told you that you were wrong. That just made you grit your teeth and dig your heels in harder.'
She sniffed, and touched her eyes to stop the tears from falling. 'I just…I don't know what to do.'
'Just give me some time, Dana. I'll call for an ambulance and take more blood samples. Leave the reports from Doctor Morgan with me, and I promise you that I will do my very best to help him. Go, Dana. Go help your friend.'
She looked up at him, touched by the sincerity in his words, and smiled. 'Thank you, Doctor.'
'You're welcome. Do you want me to call security to take Mr. Krycek?' He asked as he picked up the phone.
'No,' she whispered. 'I'll take him with me. I'd better take the device, too. Do you have everything you need?'
'I think so, Dana. I have your cell number if I need anything else.'
Scully left him to call the paramedics while she went back to Krycek. She grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on Berkowitz's desk and went to wipe the blood from Krycek's cheek, but he snapped his head away from her.
'I don't need your fucking help,' he spat. 'Leave me the hell alone.'
She dropped the tissues back on the desk and walked around to his back to release him from the pipe. Trying to ignore the nausea that was refusing to abate.
'Are you sure you'll be alright, Dana?' asked Berkowitz.
'I'll be just fine. My partner will be back by lunchtime. Thank you so much again. I'm more grateful than I express.'
'Just call me as soon as you learn anything new.'
'I will, I promise,' she smiled as ambulance sirens wailed disconcertingly in the distance.
