Chap 2
The last thing he remembered before the explosion was Mulder's eerily calm warning. A simple "he's here" and a startlingly blank look on Mulder's usually expressive face signaled the start of the inferno that flooded the room.
Choking in the thick smoke, Skinner overcame the searing pain radiating from the cooked skin of his back and called to Mulder.
"Agent Mulder? Are you okay? Agent Mulder!" He coughed once again and noticed the eerie silence after the loud explosion.
No coughs joined his. No answer from Mulder and no coughs. Skinner's heart leapt to his throat, remembering a firm hand shoving him away from the explosion.
He crawled under the smoke, using the residual fires to light his path as he searched for Mulder. Mulder had only been a few feet closer to the bomb, but that distance mattered. Where is he? He wondered. Why isn't he answering me?
Skinner stubbornly refused to believe that the agent was down permanently and crawled farther than he thought the explosion could have thrown Mulder. He found a mass of cement and structural supports. The ceiling had caved in, and sections of the cement floor had been dislodged. It had formed an odd teepee shape. Skinner was about to keep looking, when a scrap of material fluttered in the edge of his vision. A colorful piece of cloth stuck out from the pale cement teepee.
Skinner recognized it as one of Mulder's eccentric ties. Fighting against the thickening smoke and his own injuries, Skinner scrabbled hurriedly at the base of the fortress. Dislodging carefully balanced debris started an avalanche of small fragments and powder and made it even harder to breathe, but Skinner didn't slow.
As he worked, more of Agent Mulder's body came into view. No. He thought. Not body. He can't be dead. Not after all he's survived. Skinner brushed all the troubling thoughts from his mind and continued to dig. Finally, he had cleared enough to pull Mulder from the wreckage, just in time.
Immediately after he pulled Mulder's supporting presence from the fallout, the entire thing collapsed into itself, flatting out to a waffle-thin mass of crumbled building material.
Skinner didn't wait around to see it settle. Instead, he slung Mulder over his shoulder and stood. He couldn't see in the thick black smoke, and the flames were practically flowing towards them as Skinner felt his way to the exit.
Stumbling through the double doors, Skinner coughed until he felt his lungs would come join Mulder on the floor. Mulder. Oh, God. Skinner prayed. Please let him move, let him be alive. Skinner reached his raw finger's to his Agent's dusty throat and felt for a pulse. There was nothing. Grief washed over him in unending waves. Looking down at his agent's, his friend's, closed, still eyes, sorrow turned to anger.
"You're not going to give up on me. That's an order, Agent!" Skinner yelled at the unresponsive body. Plunging his hands down, he pressed on Mulder's chest. One, two, three. Getting into the rhythm, Skinner focused all his anger and grief into one thing. This man was going to live.
Repeating the CPR, only slightly hampered by the continual coughs, Skinner didn't notice a dark presence skulking through the shadowy edges of the hallway.
Between one compression and the next, Skinner heard a weak cough. The spell finally broken, Skinner looked up, elated at the sight of Mulder's bleary eyes.
He helped Mulder sit up and wiped away all traces of the emotions that had been surging through him. He was Mulder's superior, not some overemotional greenhorn. As Mulder coughed, clearing his abused lungs, Skinner scanned him for injuries. Aside from a slightly singed arm and back and a few scrapes, Mulder was remarkably unharmed. Mulder finally regained his breath and looked up at Skinner.
"Are you okay, Sir?" Mulder asked. Skinner scoffed at the question.
"I wasn't the one who required CPR, Agent. I'm fine, just a little burnt and bruised. It could have been much worse." Skinner looked away, towards the flickering light beneath the doors.
"Thank you." Skinner said. Mulder looked up in confusion.
"For what, Sir? I should be thanking you."
"You pushed me out of the way and probably saved my life." Mulder looked down, a little embarrassed.
"It was nothing, Sir. I didn't even have time to think..." Skinner cut him off. Enough chit-chat.
"What did you mean when you said he was here, and how did you know the UNSUB had set a bomb?"
"I had a feeling about the bomb. I smelled an odd almond scent, and I reacted before I consciously knew what it meant. As for the UNSUB, well, that's easy." Mulder opened his tightly clenched left hand. A crumpled and charred piece of paper fell to the floor.
"He left a note." Skinner retrieved the scrap of paper and tried to read the nearly unintelligible handwriting. After all the abuse he had suffered, his glasses were long gone. Turning his back on Mulder, he held it up to the light. He couldn't read it.
"What's it say?" He asked Mulder.
A strange voice answered.
"It says 'One More'."
Skinner pivoted and reached for his gun.