I've just realised that the formatting of some paragraphs isn't exporting correctly...and it's not saving the changes in the edit document option. Grrr. Sorry, hope it's not too distracting. I'll try to put some lines in instead, even though I really hate them...like I said, grrrr...


CHAPTER 14

RICHMOND INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

12.24pm

Scully stared into her cooling cappuccino at a busy coffee bar as she waited for Mulder's flight to disembark. He'd landed around twenty minutes ago, so he wasn't going to be much longer, she hoped. She didn't really want the drink, but she needed the company of strangers for a while. It was better than sitting in the car with Krycek, who hadn't even so much had looked at her since the incident at the labs. She was glad for that. Her actions were sitting in her stomach like a bad chilli. All her criticism of others, and in the moment it mattered, she had behaved no differently to those she had condemned. Shame didn't even come close to the way she was feeling.

And bubbling beneath was anger.

She was becoming a person she didn't recognize anymore. This isn't how she was hoping her life would be. She had joined the FBI rather than pursuing medicine because she had wanted something more. To make a difference. Now, it was beginning to seem as though her choice had brought her nothing but misery and suffering.

And Mulder.

She sighed and glanced up at the arrivals board again. Then the clock. Forty minutes.

She tried not to see Skinner's ravaged face that floated on the picture screen of her mind like a ghost signal. She didn't feel comfortable about leaving him at the hospital alone, but she at least had confidence in the doctor looking after him who seemed to understand what she tried to explain to him.

She swallowed the rest of the bitter coffee and checked her cellphone for messages, then decided to wait over at the arrivals door. As she negotiated her way through the crowds, she saw him striding towards her. He smiled broadly when he saw her and opened his arms to her.

'It is so good to see you,' he whispered, holding her tightly and raining kisses onto her hair, her face, ending at her lips.

'You, too.' She sighed when she could see the discomfort and questions in his face, because despite her efforts to hide her anxieties, she had failed. He knew something was wrong. 'Mulder, something's happened since I spoke to you this morning. I tried to reach you, but you must have already been on the plane.'

'What?'

She didn't answer, but took his hand and led him through the airport back outside. Dark, leaden clouds lay so low she felt like she could almost touch them, and the air smelled thick and metallic. A flicker of lightning brightened the sky for an instant as low, basal thunder rumbled like a starving man's stomach, hungry for the Indian summer heat of the day.

'Skinner has been taken to M.C.V. The machines in his blood have been activated again and he has deteriorated rapidly, far more quickly than last time. He's in very serious condition.'

'Oh God,' he sighed, closing his eyes and slumping down onto a bench. 'I'm sorry, Dana. You warned me not to trust that goddamned sonofabitch. I should have killed him when he showed up at my department. But how the hell did he get hold of the device?'

She touched his knee and met his eyes. 'It's not Krycek. Not this time. There must be a second device. The device Krycek had is still at the research centre being monitored by Doctor Berkowitz. There are no detectable emissions coming from it.'

'Where is he?' he managed to get out over the visceral anger that was closing his throat.

'He's in the car. Wearing two sets of cuffs. It was safer than leaving him at the hospital.'

He exhaled a long, frustrated breath and stared out over the car lot.

'Just because it's not that particular device, doesn't mean Krycek is absolved, Scully. He could be working with someone.'

'I thought of that, but I'm not so sure he is,' she admitted quietly. 'He hasn't said a word since Skinner collapsed. I've never seen him like this before. You can't fake the physical manifestations of genuine fear. I really believe that he doesn't know what's going on here. Maybe he's worried that things aren't going his way and doesn't want us to know that he's unnerved, but on the other hand…what if he really is telling the truth, Mulder? What if his life really is in danger?'

He snorted his disgust at the idea. 'So what if it is?'

'I…I don't know, Mulder. I've never seen him like this before. It's…bothering me. He has always protested his innocence over Missy and your father, even though he's admitted to a lot of the other things we know he did. He knows how we feel about him, so what reason would he have to lie to us about it? I guess what I'm saying is that I don't want to be responsible for anyone's death. Even Krycek's.'

'His death would never be on my conscience. I can't help you with yours. Right now, I'm more worried about Skinner. How was he when you left him?'

'Not good. I've asked the doctors to continue with the laser treatment to try and keep the blood flowing, but we can't keep that up for long. The damn things work far more efficiently and quickly than we can. He drifts in and out of consciousness, but the worst thing is he seems to be aware of everything that's happening to him.'

'And Berkowitz is working on tracing the signal?'

Scully nodded. 'All we can really do is wait.'


They reached the car and Scully watched Mulder carefully as his hand moved towards his gun as he opened the back door and slid in beside Krycek.

'You know, you're lucky that Scully is a generous woman. If you were riding with me, you'd be in the trunk,' he said, shoving the gun under Krycek's ribcage. 'I wouldn't twitch, if I were you. My finger is sensitive.'

Krycek sucked in a breath, grimacing a little at the feel of the metal in his side, but he didn't retaliate. He just turned away and sat in silence, staring out of the window, for the rest of the journey back to the hospital.

When they arrived, Mulder took charge of Krycek, draping his jacket over the cuffs before negotiating their way through corridors packed with people and gurneys up towards Skinner's room. Once there, Mulder moved one of the plastic chairs over to the radiator on the far side, pushed Krycek down into it, and cuffed him to the waist-high pipe.

Scully went to check on Skinner, but there was very little change since she had left him. He was still unconscious, the respirator was breathing for him, and the sound of regular beeps from the cardiac monitor was the only one to puncture the silence.

'Dana, can I speak to you outside for a few moments?' asked Mulder.

'Sure,' she said, hooking Skinner's chart back onto the foot of his bed as she followed him out into the corridor.

'I have to tell you who I went to see in Nevada.'

'Great. About time. Go ahead, then.'

'Friday afternoon, the phone call I received was a warning that Skinner's life was in danger. The second call at the motel was the same person, again warning us that they knew where we were. I thought I recognized the voice and I wanted to check it out. Turned out I was right. It was a woman named Marita Covarrubias.'

'Marita who?'

'Covarrubias. I trusted her, and she has suffered greatly for helping me. She was at the CDC centre at Fort Marlene when we were taken there. They had performed the tests for the vaccine on her and she was the only one who survived it. She is the person I went to see. She was the caller.'

Scully shook her head. 'I don't understand. You're telling me she warned you they were coming? How could she have known where we were unless someone told her, or unless she was the one following us? Unless she was, in some way, involved?'

'She has her own sources. She must be helping us or else she could have left us at Skinner's for those men to have finished us off. They can trace not only the computer that Krycek was carrying and Skinner, but you as well, from that chip in your neck. We've always suspected that, but she confirmed it. She knew where we were because they did, too. They've known all along.'

He knew that look of patient toleration; he'd seen it staring back at him more times than he could remember. But the cracks of barely restrained temper were sparking in her eyes. She was still angry with him, perhaps understandably so, and that tainted any hope he may have had of winning her over. Even so, he'd waited for so long - he had to share his joy at finding his sister, even if she wasn't in the frame of mind to believe him right now.

'Mulder, if they knew all along where we were, why didn't they just come in and get us while we slept?'

'I don't know. Maybe because there's another agenda here that we're not seeing. But they've attacked Skinner now. They've made their move.'

'Maybe this is what I told you right at the beginning. A trap for us; for you. Set by someone...probably the Cancer Man, sprung by Krycek. Only something went wrong. Skinner wasn't supposed to get sick again. It wasn't part of his plan. Maybe the people he take his orders from have changed it. That's why he's scared.'

'I'm not sure scared is the word I would use to describe him, Scully. Though it looks as though his little act is working on you.' he said disdainfully. 'He seems to have done a real number on you with his little show of contrition and acquiescence though. Those pretty-boy eyes of his are doing something for you?'

Her eyes widened. 'You're pathetic.'

She tried to pull away from him, but he held on to her arm, forcing her to look at him.

'I'm sorry. That was juvenile.'

'Yes, it was. But it's what I'm coming to expect from you. I would like to know why you're so certain you can trust Covarrubias though.'

'I trust her like family because she is family. She's my sister, Dana. Marita is Samantha. That's who I saw, who I spent most of yesterday morning with.'

He felt her muscles relaxing in her arm as she ceased trying to pull away from him. 'No,' she murmured, near devastation in her eyes. 'Good God, Mulder, what the hell did she say to you?'

'She didn't need to say anything. I knew, I felt it here,' he said, holding her hand up to his chest. 'I know she is my sister. She wants me to go to New York tomorrow to meet with her again. She has so much to tell me, Dana, and I really want you to come with me to hear it, too.'

'I'm not going anywhere, Mulder, and neither are you. What the hell is wrong with you?' She would have been screaming had they been in a less public area. 'Skinner is dying in there because of us. We owe him. We can't just leave him now when he needs our help! And what are we supposed to do about Krycek? Just leave him here?'

He was shaking his head, not even considering what she had to say. Her desire to make him see the truth was suddenly overridden by self-pride that refused to allow her to stand here and try to talk to someone who wouldn't even pay her the courtesy of listening to her. Even if that person was Mulder. She was too angry and hurt to even be around him anymore.

'Then go, Mulder. Don't let me stop you. God knows you never have before. Just don't come to me looking for some sense in all this when you realize that all they've given you is exactly what they want you to see. What you want to see. I don't want to hear it anymore.' She ripped her hand away from his and this time, he wasn't going to stop her. She stormed off down the hall, and he lost sight of her as gurneys and doctors, porters and relatives of the sick pushed him back like a wave. By the time he'd fought his way after her, she was gone.

He headed straight back to Skinner's room, but she wasn't there. Krycek was still in the chair, his head bowed, his eyes closed. He looked up when he heard Mulder entering, but he said nothing. He just shifted in the chair. Flexed his fingers.

'What?' asked Mulder. 'No pithy comment to make?'

'Fuck you,' he muttered.

'Must be a day for precedents.'

Mulder closed the door behind him and picked up Skinner's chart from the end of the bed. He saw nothing there he hadn't seen before. His eyes ran up past the tubes and IV lines over his abdomen and chest that were by now a web of raised, bile-colored tracks that used to carry life-giving blood, but now were filled with sluggish, oxygen-poor carbon, slowly asphyxiating him. His breathing was still shallow, and to watch him struggling for life was almost as painful for him to see as it must have been for Skinner himself. At least he could have morphine. Science hadn't yet come up with a cure for the kind of pain Mulder was experiencing.

'Maybe it's about time you told me the truth, hey, Krycek?'

'Maybe you didn't hear me. I said, "fuck you."'

Mulder sighed and pulled another chair across, closer to Krycek.

'I'm tired now,' he said. 'Really goddamned tired, and I've had just about enough of these games. I don't want anymore people I care about getting hurt. Just tell me what they want from me. I want this to end.'

'What makes you think that I can help you? I told Scully, and I'm telling you the same thing: I don't know what's happening here. I don't know who's doing this.' His face hardened his eyes became glassy and dispassionate again. 'But I do know that you should never have gone to see her. You weren't meant to know. At least, not yet.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

Krycek smirked. 'You'd never make it in my line. You're a pathetic liar. You went to Nevada to see Samantha. You finally figured out who that lying, manipulative bitch, Marita, is and couldn't keep away. She's the one who's been calling you, isn't she? And you still don't see what's going on.'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' he insisted with conviction. 'I haven't been to Nevada.'

'Okay,' Krycek said, raising his eyebrows. 'Fine. If that's the way you want to play it.' He leaned back in the seat to stretch his back. 'Well, for the last few hours, I've had nothing but time to think. I've at least tried to figure it out. If you're interested.'

Mulder chuckled humorlessly. 'Go on then. Surprise me.'

'Either they lost track of you – which is unlikely considering that they have two chips to follow – or, more likely, they needed to draw you out because they couldn't get at you in Ryelands. They started to panic, knew that you might figure that machine out. So they thought that the only way to draw us all back out was to set the Nanites to active mode again, to force you to take Skinner to a hospital where it would be easier to find us. You've as good as killed us all by going there, Mulder. All except you, apparently. I guess they must be ready for you to take your place with them now, if she's finally told you who she is. They're probably already on their way here.'

'This is bullshit, Krycek.'

'Is it? This is part of an elaborate plan, just like I tried to tell you. This is most likely the misdirection they spoke of, while they prepare the way for colonization which will begin on the dawn of the new millennium. It's the end of the world, my friend. They are coming, and this time they're not taking prisoners. This is the end game, don't you see that? It's every man for himself, and Spender figures that if he can give the aliens back what was theirs, co-operate with them, then a new alliance can be forged. His life will be spared, as will that of his family. At least, what's left of it.'

'Spender's family? He has one?' Mulder laughed. 'And you believe him? I suppose you think that by all this, but helping him, by spinning me this crap, he'll help you, do you? You're even more gullible than I am.'

'Of course I believe him. He has proof. Genetic proof. DNA. He is your father, Mulder.'

He started to laugh again, but the look in Krycek's eyes chilled him to his core.

'And you know it, don't you?' he continued. 'You've always known, deep down. Your father arranged for you to be abducted, but Spender changed the names on the files and Samantha was taken instead. He would never have put his own son in jeopardy. That's why your father hated you right from the start. You weren't his, and it crushed him. He hated your mother for what she'd done, and the truth of it tore him apart - tore them apart. Didn't you ever wonder who had been protecting you all this time when the rest of the Syndicate wanted you dead? Your father, Mulder. The Smoking Man.'

'No. You're…you're lying,' Mulder whispered, because he could barely find the strength to speak. All the same, the thought, now planted, took seed and grew into areas of his memory that he had long since forgotten, awakening him. He would swear that Krycek had something that was almost pity in his eyes.

'You know, I feel sorry for you, Mulder. They've screwed with you far more than they've ever done with me. You wouldn't believe me if I told you all the things they've planted to mislead you, all the times they've been listening and watching, orchestrating your every move for you. You've been part of the plan right from the start. Your father, your real father, made sure of that. He created you in every sense of the word. That's why my face never did fit quite right within his little group,' he spat bitterly. 'I was never good enough. Geoffrey was never good enough. It was always you that he wanted. He's the only reason you're still alive. Everyone else has always been expendable. Including me.'

'No. I don't believe it,' he continued to babble, but he convinced no-one, not even himself. 'He can't be my father. My mother would never have - '

'Of course she would. Anyone would have under those circumstances. She never saw him anymore. He was obsessed with his work. You should at least remember his long absences, even if you don't remember Spender's frequent visits after you were born. Ask her, Mulder. Ask her for the truth. It's clear you don't want to hear it from me.'

Skinner's breathing changed. He exhaled deeply and shifted as if he were just sleeping, but then settled back down, as did the blips on the cardiac monitor.

'He's running out of time. Whatever you need to do to get through to your father to stop this, you'd better do fast. See, Mulder, what you don't understand – what you've never wanted to understand - is that I have my beliefs too. I believe that the goals of your father and the rest of the Syndicate were right. Though their methods may be questionable, their aims are in everyone's best interests. They're trying to survive. But there are others who never wanted the Syndicate to succeed. They're working against them, and it must be one of those groups who is trying to gain control of you now before Spender can. You're operating blind, Mulder. You don't understand, and all you've ever done is judge me and distrust me when I have been trying to help you right from the start. You think I'm an evil bastard? Fine. You're not the only one, and you're probably right. But the truth is that I'm just a cog in a machine who believes that what he's doing is right for the survival of our species. I respect you, Mulder. You may not believe that, but I do. You're a player, just like me. You just won't see it. I guess it's just as well for you that your father sees potential in you. I just wish that he could have seen it within me.'

'If you need to keep telling yourself that shit so you can sleep at night, then that's up to you,' Mulder said bitterly because he was hurting and confused and didn't want to think about what Krycek was saying to him. 'But you enjoy every bit of what you do, no matter how you try to justify it. You're a murderer. Pure and simple, and that's what makes you evil. I'm nothing like you. Or Spender. Actually, you make me sick just to look at you, so I don't think I'll do it anymore.'

He abruptly stood and left to look for Scully. He tried to push Krycek's words to the back of his mind and regard them with the contempt he was sure they deserved. But he couldn't. He thought about calling his mother, but didn't feel ready for that. Besides, it wasn't a conversation he felt comfortable holding over the phone. As he wandered along the hall past the nurse's station and other patients' rooms, he started to really consider the possibility, and the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed. It was just another one of Krycek's mind games, that's all, although his motives were harder to imagine. No, he was just trying to get him to give something away. Scully was right. All a set-up. It had to be.

He stopped a little further down the corridor and waited for a weary looking doctor to finish with the faucet, then took a long, satisfying drink. When he'd finished, he straightened up and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

He didn't recognize the eyes staring back at him. They glinted with a darkness he'd never perceived there before and the revulsion of himself weakened his knees and his reserve. He fell against the wall and sobbed.


'Hi. I've been looking for you,' said Scully as she sat down next to him on the bench outside Skinner's room. 'Where have you been?'

He didn't look at her. 'Nowhere. Just wandering around. Thinking.'

'Oh,' she muttered, but he didn't elaborate. 'How is he now?'

'The same. Strange in itself, seeing as Krycek says he should be dead already.'

'Oh,' she said again, more flatly.

A nurse came out of his room, her face clouded as she scribbled something on his notes and walked over to the station where security monitors were out of place next to life-sign readouts from those hovering on the thin line between worlds. The desk gleamed under the flurotube lighting and the tiled corridor seemed very white - blindingly so. He closed his eyes to shut out the stimulus and leaned back, his head touching the wall behind him.

'Dana, I'm lost. I've been told things about myself, about my life, and I don't know whether to believe them. Either way, the person I thought I was is dead. I don't know what I'm supposed to do.'

'What did he say to you?'

She sat and listened patiently while he told her everything; about Marita who used to be Samantha, about his father, and what Krycek had told him about the plans that were still in place for colonization.

'I know it all sounds fantastic, but I've learned not to take things at face value. No matter how much I want at least part of it to be true, that doesn't make it so.' His face was heartbroken, his voice soft. 'Please help me. You've always been my guiding light. Give me something tangible. Something I can hold in my hand. Proof that what they've told me is true.'

'I wish I knew what to say to you,' she said, squeezing his fingers. 'You know that I love you, and I only want what's best for you. But I also know how your desperation to believe can occasionally blind you to the very truth you're seeking. That is when you're at your most vulnerable. When they can hurt you. You are vulnerable right now, Mulder. You need to understand that.'

He exhaled deeply. 'I do, Dana. I really do, and that's why I'm scared. I'm scared if it's not true because it would mean that I've just been a pawn in someone else's sick game all my life. But I think I'm even more scared if it is true - for the same reasons. What if he is my father? What would that mean for me? For us?'

'Even if what Krycek told you is true, and I don't believe for one second it is, it doesn't have to mean anything. It doesn't change anything about the people who raised you. The people who've loved you.'

She could see him slipping from her again, his attention drifting from her eyes to the monitors at the nurse's station opposite them, and then to the people just leaving the elevator. She couldn't even begin to imagine what he must be feeling right now, knowing there was a possibility that such a man could be his father, finding his sister after all this time, knowing what she had been put through. Thinking that everything had been because of him, having the fears he'd been subject to all his life confirmed. How would it feel to be told your whole life was a lie? Part of someone else's grand plan?

'Mulder, your little finger is worth more than a thousand of him,' she said as she pulled him close to her and cradled his head against her chest like a mother comforting a frightened child. 'So what if he does turn out to be your biological father? It doesn't mean anything, not really. Bill Mulder was your father in every real sense. He loved you and raised you to be the wonderful person you are. This doesn't change anything for you. Not really. Do you understand?' He nodded as she slid her hand under his chin and looked into his eyes. 'Are you okay?'

'Yeah,' he nodded, managing a slight smile in contrast to his tears. 'But I'm not so sure that my father did care so much about me. He changed the names on those files, Dana. We saw them for ourselves.'

'You don't know that. Krycek could be lying. Even if he's not, that doesn't mean that your father didn't regret the decision.'

He smiled sadly at her stoicism and pulled her close again. 'Thank you for being here for me. God knows, I don't deserve you.'

Her lips met his, she closed her eyes as he pressed harder, closer to her. The warmth of her…the scent of her perfume…her soft auburn hair. He gently cradled her bruised cheek in his hand when she finally moved away.

'Come to New York with me,' he whispered. 'Please.'

'I wish I could, but I can't. Skinner needs me. I'll do what I can to verify what Samantha told you, but it's going to be difficult, especially if they've erased her identity. I could do a comparison to your DNA, but I'd still need something from her.' She sighed, and pushed her hair away from her eyes. 'I know you don't feel like it right now, but if you really want to know what happened, you need to call your mother. Or better yet, go see her.'

'I can't ask her about that, Dana. How would I even approach her about something like that?'

'I'm sure you'll think of something. When you see her, the words will come.'

He scoffed, and sighed again. 'Maybe. I know you're right. I'll go up today, stay with her tonight providing that she doesn't throw me out. I can still be in New York tomorrow, and there's nothing more I can do here. Hey, I've got an idea. Try Frohike and the guys. They found out where Samantha was and had access to Marita's records while she was at Fort Marlene. There may be a record of her blood type and DNA that they can get hold of for your comparison.'

'Okay, I can do that.'

He stood up and pulled her with him, kissing her once more. 'I have to go,' he forced himself to say. 'I'm missing you so much already.'

'Me, too. Be careful, okay?'

'I will. Thanks, Dana.' He ran a finger along her cheekbone and touched her lips. 'I love you so much.'

'I love you, too,' she said, as she watched him walk away.