"The Five," Book 1 (1/4)

"The Five," Book 1 (Part 1 of 25)
By Somebody Else

Classification: XA

WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts contain
PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner, Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner)
romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic
violence and/or four-letter words, please do not read this.

International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers.

Summary: A haunting childhood memory, Krycek's return from the missile silo and a Japanese
astronomer's discovery provide Mulder and Scully with the clues they need to begin unraveling
the mystery of Samantha's disappearance.

Disclaimer: All the truly interesting characters herein--the Mulder family, Dana Scully, Walter
Skinner, the consortium members, Alex Krycek and the morphing alien--are the invention and
intellectual property of Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen and Fox Broadcasting, as is the whole concept of the X Files. I swear I don't have any money, and I'm not making any money off this, so there's really not much point in suing me over it.

***********************************************************************

The wise man says, "I am looking for the truth," and the fool, "I have found the truth." - Russian
proverb

April 27, 1995
Washington, D.C.

The omni-morph approached the power plant, then waited, hovered, watching. Despite the
late hour, there were humans in the plant; the omni-morph could smell them, their coppery blood and sour sweat. It would have preferred to remain invisible to them, but it couldn't get through the electrified fence in its invisible form. And it was just possible one of the humans might catch a glimpse of its energy field distorting the light, though the omni-morph had never known humans to be particularly observant. No, better to take a human form.
It waited. It wanted just the right one, and it could afford to wait.
Dawn began to slip over the horizon, and then more humans arrived. Some, too, were leaving.
Still dark enough, just barely. The omni-morph hovered into the parking lot, searching for the
right one. Then it found what it wanted, and touched the human to stun her. It was careful not to kill--it could have killed her, but it was a planner, not one of the warrior circle, and it only killed in self-defense. Instead, it took her security guard's uniform and her shape, and walked into the power plant in her place. The mission was not difficult. The omni-morph quickly found what it needed--a diagram of the plant's circuitry. It imprinted the information and left.

****

May 5, 1995
West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard

The wind off Rhode Island Sound had a damp, raw bite, and despite his long coat Fox Mulder
shivered as he unlocked the door to his father's house. Of course, that might have had as much to do with his chilly mood as with anything meteorological. Even if it hadn't been a cold, foggy
night, this house might have seemed ghostly even to a man with a lot less imagination--and a lot
fewer haunting memories--than Fox Mulder. The house had seen more misery and mayhem than
any structure ought to and still remain standing, and it didn't take much for Mulder to visualize
distress wafting up off the floors.
*Get a grip, will you? It's just dark and empty, that's all.*
While he punched buttons to disarm the alarm system, he distracted himself by wondering who
did actually own the place now. He presumed it belonged to his mother, willed to her after Bill
Mulder's death. On the other hand, it was just barely conceivable Bill would have left it to his
son. *Nah. He'd never trust me with it.* Mulder hadn't inquired as to the terms of the will, and
the only thing his mother had said was that she wouldn't take anything inside the house until he'd
had a chance to collect whatever he wanted.
Mulder didn't want anything out of the place, nothing personal, anyway. And he didn't feel up
to combing through for evidence of his father's involvement in...whatever those files had been at
the mine in West Virginia. Ultimately that would have to be done, but not now, not yet. He had
felt awkward about bringing any of that up with his mom, so he had figured he'd just let the
matter ride for a month or so and see how he felt then. Of course, that was before he'd thought
about poor old Ditzo, abandoned up here.
He shut the front door. It was after midnight, and pitch dark in the house. Mulder suddenly
realized that in his rush to rescue Ditzo, he hadn't given any thought to how he would go about
locating his father's fat, raggedy old tomcat. Especially at night. Surely he wouldn't find him in
the house. Hell, if he'd been shut up in the house, likely he'd be dead by now. Outside, at least,
the cat could've foraged for food and water. No dead animal smell hung in the air; Mulder took
that for a good sign. He left the lights off, trusting to his all-too-accurate memory to take him
past the stairs to the kitchen and out to the detached garage. The garage had a pet door, a vestige
of another lifetime, when the Mulders had been a family and had owned a dog. Ditzo might have
taken shelter there. Mulder fumbled around for the string that switched on the light.
He felt a pang at the sight of his father's car, sitting in the garage with a thin coat of dust on its
slick, black finish. In a sudden burst of old-man-trying-to-recapture-his-youth, Bill Mulder had
bought a brand-new Mitsubishi 3000 GT about three months before his death. Five-speed, turbo
engine, all-wheel drive, compact disc player, gold pinstripes. An adolescent fantasy in the hands
of a man who'd never owned a car with fewer than four doors. Mulder doubted the old man had
ever had it going over sixty. His father had been so damned proud of that car. Like Ditzo, it was
abandoned now.
Mulder fought off an impulse to back the car out and rinse the dust off. It was what his father
would have done. But he hadn't come up here to brood over what couldn't be changed. Of all the
things about his father's death that troubled his heart and his conscience, there was only one he
could do something about, and that was to adopt the cat.
"Ditzo," he called into the garage. Silence. "Shit," he muttered. "Little fucker." Truth be
told, it was himself he was cursing. It was his own fault he'd had to race up here on a Friday
night--he'd forgotten about the damned cat. If he'd had his head on straight, he'd have thought of
it long before this--his father had been dead nearly three weeks. But how the hell did anybody
whose father had been murdered recently get his head on straight? He wondered how long a cat
could live without shelter or care. What if animal control had picked him up?
"Shit," Mulder said again.
*Okay, genius, think--if you were a cat, where would you go?*
Trash cans, he realized. Ditzo had a habit of raiding the trash, up and down the alley. Mulder
fished his flashlight out of his coat pocket and left the garage, locking the door behind him, went
out through the back gate into the alley. He found nothing around the ancient, empty, dented
Mulder family garbage cans. The alley was so quiet--living in Washington he had forgotten how
dark and silent a small town became, late at night. He supposed that had once seemed normal to
him. Now he found it unsettling. He headed down the alley, shined the flashlight around, calling
softly for the cat, hoping he wouldn't wake anybody up.
He had a moment of triumph when the flashlight picked up two glowing green points in the
weeds behind the Brenner house. But when he got closer, he discovered that was Ruth
Willingham's calico cat from the next block over. When he approached, the calico yowled in
annoyance and leaped away, tipping one of the steel cans. Mulder tried to catch the can before it
fell, but he was too far away. It hit the ground with a loud, grating thud.
"Dammit," Mulder whispered.
From behind him a voice called, "You! Get away from there! I've got a gun!"
And if it was who Mulder thought it was, she did, too--a rusty old shotgun that probably
would blow up in her face if she ever tried to fire it.
"Mrs. Brenner?" Mulder said. "It's me, Fox."
"Fox? My land, what are you doing out here in the middle of the night?"
Slowly, he turned. He could barely see her face in the darkness, but in the glare off her back
porch light he made out her thin, stooped form and the shotgun's wicked silhouette. "I'm sorry I
woke you," he said. "I'm looking for my dad's cat. You haven't seen him, have you?"
She chuckled. "Yeah, I've seen him." She let the barrel of the gun tilt to point at the ground.
Mulder released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "Come on inside," she said.
He followed her through her garden, row upon row of rose bushes just beginning to leaf out.
"He came over here when his bowl got empty, I guess," Mrs. Brenner said. She'd been a
widow for as long as Mulder had known her, and he'd known her a long time--she'd been the
principal at West Tisbury Elementary School when he had entered kindergarten. Mulder figured
there was dirt on Martha's Vineyard younger than Mrs. Brenner.
"You know how cats are," she went on.
"Yes, ma'am," Mulder said.
"Your mom said she'd come pick him up, but I guess she forgot."
*Like hell,* Mulder thought. *She always hated that cat.* "She had a lot on her mind," he
said.
Mrs. Brenner nodded, the bun into which she had gathered her thin, white hair bobbing with
the motion. "My Herbert's been gone a long time," she said, "but I remember what it was like to
lose him."
They went inside, and right away Mulder saw the fat orange tabby sprawled in an armchair,
lying on his back with his paws sticking up. Mulder chuckled. "If you look up 'smug' in the
dictionary, there'll be a picture of this cat," he said.
Mrs. Brenner laughed, deepening the heavy lines in her face. "You'll be staying the night next
door, I guess?" she said.
A grim thought. Spend the night in that house, from which his sister had disappeared and
where his father'd had the back of his head blown off? No, not bloody likely. He shook his head
and picked up the cat. "I'm heading on home to D.C.," he said.
"At one in the morning?"
"Uh, yeah. I've got a lot of stuff to get done. But I really appreciate your taking care of
Ditzo. He kind of, well, I guess we kind of overlooked him in the midst of..." He gave up trying
to explain and shrugged.
"He was no trouble. But, look, you'd better let me make you some coffee, if you're driving
back so late."
"That's okay. I'll get some at--"
"No, no, I've already got the water hot." She was headed for the kitchen. The unexpected
kindness made him feel squishy inside--he tended to think of West Tisbury as a painful place.
Often he looked straight past the inherent civility of the people in this neighborhood where he'd
grown up. Some of them refused to lock their doors even now. Most had stopped being so
trusting after Samantha's disappearance.
*As if Samantha's abductors would've been stopped by a dead bolt.*
"Besides," Mrs. Brenner called, "I've got that package for you that the lawyer brought. I told
him I'd keep it for you."
"What lawyer?"
"You know--Brian Gilhooly. Your dad's lawyer. Must've handled the will. Look on top of
the television. I think that's where I left it."
A brown legal-size envelope lay on top of the television console. Mulder put the cat back in
the armchair and crossed the living room, opened the envelope. It contained a copy of his father's
will, and a key ring with one key on it. Mulder ignored the will--he didn't want to read it, not
here, not now. He pulled the key out. A long key, with a heavy black rubber head on it, and a
plastic clicker on the same ring. He didn't have to read the raised letters on the rubber head to
know they spelled out Mitsubishi. His throat constricted painfully.
He heard Mrs. Brenner pour water into her old tin drip coffee pot. *Get it together,
neurosis-boy.* He shoved the key ring in his pocket, drew a long breath to calm himself.
He went to the kitchen. "Listen, I'm going to run next door and get Ditzo's carrying cage," he
said. "I'll be right back."
"All right, dear," she said.
He returned to his father's house and retrieved the cat carrier from the front hall closet. But as
he turned to leave, he glanced into the living room. The floor lamp in the corner by the couch
was on. A bottle of Scotch sat on the coffee table, with a glass and a newspaper beside it. He
had his hand on the doorknob to go, then froze. He hadn't turned on that lamp. He set the cage
down and looked again.
There were ice cubes in the glass. Someone had been in the house, and not long ago. Maybe
still there.

Continued in Part 2.

"The Five," Book 1 (Part 2 of 25)
By Somebody Else

Classification: XA

WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts
contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner,
Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are
present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or
four-letter words, please do not read this.

International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers.

See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary.

************************************************************************

We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self. - Cyril
Connolly.

May 5, 1995
West Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard

*Hell's bells,* Mulder thought. Like a damned fool, he had left
the back door unlocked when he went out looking for the cat. Anybody
could have come in and helped himself to the contents of the bar. He
pulled his gun. "Hello," he called. "Anybody here?"
Silence. He eased his way around the door frame into the living
room. Nothing. Just that crystal glass, sitting there sweating on the
coffee table before the brown leather sofa and the soft pool of yellow-white light cast on the couch itself and the rag rug covering the wood
floor. He noticed idly that someone--probably his mother--had tried to
scrub the bloodstains off the switch where he had turned off the
overhead light the night his father had died.
Well, there was no help for it but to search the house. He
returned to the front door and armed the burglar alarm. Anybody who
opened a door or window now would set it off. He got his flashlight out
again, but left it turned off for the moment--there was no sense in
advertising his position any more than necessary. Then he set himself
grimly to the task and went from room to room, checking the closets,
making sure everything was locked behind him. It took a hellish effort
to force himself into the bathroom where he had found his father's
blood-smeared body weeks ago. The white rug was gone, but underneath
where it had lain, the grout in the green tile was stained brown.
He pressed on through the house. But he didn't find anybody, and
nothing seemed to be missing. He supposed he must have scared off
whoever it was when he returned. He went back to the living room. No,
he hadn't imagined it. The crystal glass on the coffee table had his
father's initials etched in its sweating surface, and three half-melted
ice cubes floated in the amber liquid. Mulder reached toward the glass,
then stopped himself. *Could be prints on it.*
Oh, yeah, like he wanted to call the police. Like he wanted to
wait around for West Tisbury's finest to tell him the culprit probably
had been a neighborhood teen-ager, sneaking in for a snort of Scotch.
They'd write up a report, and it would sit in a file drawer. What was
the point? No harm had been done. This old place had been full of
ghosts for years, and he had no desire to hang around. He picked up the
newspaper lying beside the glass. Today's Washington Sentinel, folded
back to reveal a headline that read, "Amateur astronomer claims Skylab
debris still in space."
A neighborhood teen-age break-in artist with a scientific bent.
Mulder read on. "Tashiri Ono, an amateur astronomer working in Tokyo,
says he has photographs proving that part of a U.S. orbital laboratory
remains in space despite NASA's claim that Skylab crashed to Earth in
the mid-1980s.
"Ono warns that parts of Australia again are threatened if the
orbit of this additional portion of the station should destabilize.
"NASA officials say the majority of Skylab burned up on re-entry
into the Earth's atmosphere and the remainder landed in an unpopulated
region of Australia. 'We believe Mr. Ono has misidentified a
communications satellite,' said NASA spokeswoman Jean Jones.
"'How would they know that?' Ono said at a press conference
Thursday at the Japanese Institute for Amateur Astronomy. 'They haven't
seen my photos.'"
Mulder dropped the newspaper back on the table. Interesting, but
he had a cat to rescue and a long drive back to D.C. ahead of him. He
debated what to do with his father's ever-so-racy car, now left in his
hands. Fact was, he had never had a sports car, either. Had thought he
hadn't really wanted one. But the idea of driving the Mitsubishi was
seductive. It was fast; it was cool; it was *free*. Well, except for
the increase in his insurance rates. Aw, what the hell. He had a
cousin who was just turning driving age--he decided he'd make her a
present of his Buick.
He got the cat's carrying cage, disarmed and then re-armed the
burglar alarm, and went to the garage. Unlike the house, he had left it
locked, and he didn't see any sign that anything had been touched.
The Mitsubishi's alarm system chirped twice, cheerily, when he
punched the button on the clicker. Mulder suppressed a shudder.
Another ghost, speaking from the machine.

***

Washington, D.C.

Ditzo hadn't liked traveling, and he had let Mulder know it by
yowling constantly the whole way. Mulder'd had no recourse but to crank
up the Mitsubishi's stereo and drown the cat out. By the time he got
home, he was exhausted and his ears hurt.
He popped open a beer and turned on the television while Ditzo
explored his new surroundings. The old tomcat carefully inspected a
brown leather armchair, hopped up to sniff intently at the computer and
the globe near the windows, peered through the blinds at the street
below. He gave the fish in Mulder's aquarium a crafty look--eyes
narrowed, tail twitching--then pretended to ignore them. "Don't even
think about it," Mulder ordered, but he doubted that would stop Ditzo
while there was no one around to supervise him.
Nevertheless, after he got the cat's food and water bowls set up in
the kitchen and the sandbox stuffed under the bathroom sink, Mulder felt
restless, sleepless. He knew what it was: unfinished business.
He watched the cat poke around for a few minutes, then sighed. He
pulled his father's will out of the envelope. There was only one
surprise in it.
Bill had left the house to his daughter Samantha, Mulder's sister,
who had vanished in 1973. Apparently Bill had still had some hope she'd
come back one day, and had wanted, in the end, to leave her a place to
come home to.
Mulder wondered what his mother would do about that. Did she still
have enough hope left to avoid doing the sane thing--having Samantha
finally, legally declared dead so the house could be sold? And if not,
did he have enough hope left to fight her?

****

April 16, 1996
Seven miles southwest of Kyle, Texas

Dana Scully wondered if today was the day. The day when Fox Mulder
finally would just go too far, come up with a theory that was just too
absurd.
They were standing in the blistering Texas sun, in a brightly green
spring pasture dotted with white boulders and prickly pear cactus--what
would have been a pleasantly bucolic environment were it not for the
rotting body parts of three mutilated Santa Gertrudis steers, their
reddish-brown abdomens swollen in the heat. And the noxious flies,
maggots and pillbugs that always attended such carcasses. One of the
distended bellies had broken open, spilling white guts and gelled blood
and the brown, rotting remains of what the steer had been grazing on
before it was killed. The bugs and worms were having a feast.
This was the fourth in a series of cattle mutilations that had
started in Oklahoma and headed south over a period of several days.
Scully knew Mulder didn't think much of cattle mutilation cases. The
last one they'd worked, he'd hardly even looked at the scene. But he
had hunkered down to study this one, with that laser intensity only
Mulder could turn on a crime scene. To quiet her worry, she pointed out
to the Hays County sheriff's deputy the scrape marks on a bone.
"What do you think?" the deputy asked. "Some kind of cult?"
"Satanists rarely take just the parts that are good for steaks,"
Mulder pronounced. Scully released a sigh of relief. He was working
out something, all right, but apparently it had nothing to do with
devil-worship, telepathy, mutants or extraterrestrials.
He stood, then climbed up in the bed of the deputy's pickup truck,
shading his eyes and frowning down at one of the steers. Each had a
shiny substance smeared on its swollen flanks. "Rho Rho Chi," Mulder
said.
"Beg pardon?" the deputy asked.
"They've written it on the cows," Mulder said. "Rho Rho Chi. A
fraternity that has a charter at the University of Oklahoma in Norman."
"I'll be damned," the deputy said.
Mulder hopped down from the truck bed. "It's spring break," he
said, carefully separating a burr from his trouser leg. "They're
probably headed for Padre Island."
Scully took a sample of the shiny substance.
"What do you think it is?" the sheriff had asked.
"Hair gel of some kind," Scully guessed. As soon as she'd said it,
she knew what was coming--one of Mulder's wry, gallows remarks.
But his heart wasn't in it. "Dippity-Doo-dah-day," he murmured.
And that had wrapped that up. Half an hour later, he and Scully were on
their way back to the airport in Austin.
Today was not the day.

****

Austin, Texas

Scully stepped up to the counter at the Starbuck's coffee at the
airport. It was her turn to buy. "A small regular blend," she said,
"and whatever he wants." Then she glanced over her shoulder and noticed
that *he* wasn't there. She craned her neck and looked around, then saw
him standing in one of the departure lounges, a tall, lean man in a
black coat with the strap on his computer case slung over his shoulder.
Her partner was frowning intently up at the television hung from the
ceiling.
Scully shrugged at the clerk behind the counter. "Make it two,"
she said, and turned back to see what it was that had Mulder so
enthralled. She saw the CNN logo down in the corner of the picture.
"File tape," it read. She couldn't make out the spoken words, but on
the screen she could see Skylab floating in orbit, against the
glittering blue-and-white Earth. Then the scene cut to a congressional
hearing room, with a sixtyish, graying man in an air force uniform
sitting at a table speaking into a microphone.
Oh, yeah, the whole Artemis thing. A secret, military-controlled
annex to Skylab, detached and left in space when the laboratory's orbit
had started to decay. A Japanese astronomer had gotten pictures of it
in his telescope while looking for comets. NASA and the air force were
trying to explain that without saying much, and without saying anything
at all, publicly, about what Artemis' purpose had been.
Scully had thought Mulder would find those revelations fascinating,
given his bent for anything that had to do with space and/or a
government conspiracy. But this was the first time she had seen him
show any interest in the Artemis news. What a warped, mercurial
character he was, in his own oddly endearing way.
Scully paid for the coffees and carried them over to where he stood
by the television. "Here," she said, holding one out to him. He was
still staring up at the screen. Stock market report now--she knew he
wasn't interested in that. He was processing--that was her word for it--rummaging around in that photographic memory of his, searching for
something, like a computer with its screen momentarily frozen while it
accessed its hard disk. Only she didn't think she'd ever seen him have
to work at it this hard, or this long, before. Usually, he found
whatever he wanted to retrieve and snapped out of it almost immediately.
"Mulder," she said.
He rounded on her, startled, dark hazel eyes wide. Mulder's train
of thought was an intercontinental express--it didn't stop for anything
or anybody--but this time she had derailed it. For a second he looked
as if he didn't recognize her, as if he hadn't quite come back from
wherever he'd been. Then he blinked. "Oh," he said.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Yeah," he glanced away, embarrassed, and took the coffee. "What
time's the flight?"
"We've got forty-five minutes. What's the news on Artemis?"
He shrugged. "I only heard a couple seconds of it."
Scully resisted the temptation to ask, "Then where were you?"
He sat down to wait, blowing on his coffee. Ever-so-subtly, he was
avoiding her eyes, and he practically radiated tension. Something had
rattled him. She gave him a couple of minutes to settle himself. When
he didn't, she turned to him and said, "What?"
She had his number, and he sighed to show he knew it.
"Probably nothing," he said. "Just something I hadn't thought
about for a long time. Eidetic memory's a weird thing to live with--things suddenly come back to you at the oddest moments."
It was all right with Scully if he didn't want to tell her, and she
decided not to push it anymore. She knew very well that Mulder had a
fair number of memories that might discomfit him. If he had any horror
stories she hadn't already heard, she didn't want to know.
Instead she changed the subject. "My theory is that Skinner sends
us out on these cattle mutilation things to give himself a sort of mini-vacation."
Mulder nodded. "It gets me off his back for a couple of days, and
he knows even I'm not going to fall for any 'aliens killed my cows'
bullshit. So there won't be any trouble."
"Well, this one won't do our closure rate any harm."
Mulder shrugged again. Scully knew he didn't care much about
closure rates, although occasionally the number of cases they solved had
been the only thing standing between Mulder and dismissal from the
bureau. And while Mulder might find cattle mutilations dull and phony,
the truth was, he was as much in his element there as when chasing UFOs.
Hell, he had literally written the book on occult-based criminal
activity. He could pick out a real thing or a hoax from a mile away,
almost as if by smell. And he hated the frauds--would track them as
ruthlessly and single-mindedly as a cheetah went after a kill.
It was impressive, too. Like this one today. Ten minutes of good,
old-fashioned crime scene work and they had turned it back over to the
locals. Nothing left but to go home and write the report. When Mulder
was hot, he was amazing.
Now, however, he stared fixedly out the window as their jet pulled
up to the gate, wrapped in his own thoughts. He seemed calmer now than
he had been a few minutes ago, but Scully would have bet her teeth he
wasn't seeing the 727 at all. She resigned herself to a quiet flight.

****

Washington, D.C.

Mulder was still thinking about Skylab as he unlocked the door to
his apartment. Or rather, he was thinking about why he was still
thinking about it. And he didn't know why. He had seen that particular
view of Skylab before--it was NASA file tape that the news dragged out
periodically and that showed up occasionally on documentaries about the
space program. The problem was, it triggered something in him, and he
had never been able to pin down just what that something was. And it
always left him with a kind of free-floating anxiety, a vague, queasy
tightening in his chest that seemed to have no source. Mulder knew he
was paranoid--paranoia was an old friend--but there were reasons for
that. But he could usually trace those fears to a source. Except this
one.
Worse yet, whatever this fear was, it didn't *feel* unsourced. It
felt like a recollection, like the kind of old image he routinely
dredged up, dusted off, used and then refiled in the Chinese puzzle box
that was his eidetic memory. Except that he could search those out and
knew where to refile them. The looking-at-Skylab memory, if it really
was a memory, was information he knew he had, but he had no idea where
it had come from or what it meant.
He knew his memory wasn't perfect; it had failed him badly once
before, when he had forgotten or repressed what had happened to his
sister, Samantha. And the way it worked always had been a little quirky
anyway--it trashed information he hadn't regarded as important at the
time, haphazardly kept or discarded things he hadn't been paying
attention to. He could visualize a page out of a book he had read
twenty-five years ago and quote from it verbatim, but have no idea what
page number it was.
Still, it disturbed him when the damned memory quirked up on him.
He relied on it for so much.
Ditzo wandered out from the bedroom, slinking against the doorframe
looking contented. Mulder checked the food and water bowls. Both full.
He had arranged with a neighbor to come in and take care of the cat
while he was out of town.
There were seven calls on his answering machine, all from someone
who had hung up without saying anything, all dated today. Who the hell
would call him that many times and not leave a message? Mulder
shrugged. What the hell--anybody who wanted to talk to him that badly
would call again.
The phone rang.
Mulder jerked his tie off and picked it up. "Yeah, Mulder," he
said.
A moment of hesitant silence, in which Mulder heard highway traffic
in the background.
Then the caller said softly, "So, Mulder, you want another shot at
me?"
Krycek.
Mulder drew a long breath. *Stay cool.* "Where are you?"
"I want to come in," Krycek said. "There's a lot I can tell you,
*partner*."
Mulder heard the sneer in his tone. Rotten son of a bitch. He bit
down hard on his anger. "In exchange for what?"
"Protection. Things are a little hot out here."
"My heart's bleeding. Do you still have the tape?"
"Bad news," Krycek said. "Bateman's got the tape."
"Bateman?"
"Shelby Bateman. Ugly old dude. Smokes a lot. Remember him?"
*Cancerman has a name. People with names can be tracked.*
"I remember," Mulder said carefully.
"Like I said, I can tell you a lot. All you have to do is keep me
alive long enough."

Continued in part 3.

"The Five," Book 1 (Part 3 of 25)
By Somebody Else

Classification: XA

WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts
contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner,
Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are
present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or
four-letter words, please do not read this.

International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers.

See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary.

************************************************************************

It is your enemies who keep you straight. For real use one active,
sneering enemy is worth two ordinary friends. - Edgar Watson Howe

April 16, 1996
Arlington, Va.

Mulder seethed as he raced out the Columbia Pike toward Annandale.
Krycek had holed up in a tourist trap motel just outside the Beltway,
near Lake Accotink. "Bring some extra ammo," he had said. "They're
right on my ass."
*Yeah, I've got plenty of bullets. Don't you worry about that.*
Krycek was the last person Mulder wanted to protect. In fact, what
Mulder really wanted was to empty a whole magazine right between
Krycek's beady blue eyes. The motherfucker had killed Mulder's father.
He had a connection to Scully's abduction, and while he might not have
been the trigger man when Scully's sister had been killed, he had damned
well been in on it. And now he had the balls to insist that Mulder
should babysit him. Goddamn, but Mulder hoped Krycek would try to
escape, pull a gun, take a swing at him, *anything* to give him the
least excuse!
He had thought about calling Scully, both for backup and because he
figured she had a right to be in on the collar. But even in his black,
frantic eagerness to get his hands on Krycek, the possibility that the
double agent's reappearance was a trap hadn't entirely escaped Mulder.
If so, he and Scully'd both be better off if she didn't get snared along
with him. And trap or not, he couldn't ignore it--Krycek was a murder
suspect and a material witness. All his personal issues aside, bringing
the evil little rat in was Mulder's job and his duty. A pleasure, too,
but that was beside the point.
The RoadRest motel had a garish, flashing sign. Mulder didn't like
the place. Too well-lighted, too near the highway, too populous. Too
accessible to the seats of power. And the U-shaped building had only
one exit from the parking lot, a driveway over a culvert in a deep
drainage ditch. Not good for someone who needed an alternate escape
route. Mulder found a parking slot near the road, in an effort to make
sure he wouldn't get blocked in. The Mitsubishi had keyless entry--the
clicker would unlock the doors and start the engine from twenty-five
feet away at the touch of the button. Mulder set it, unsnapped the flap
on his holster and went to the room Krycek had specified, moving
quietly, casually. He positioned himself between the doorframe and the
window and reached to rap on the door.
The door eased open a crack.
"That you, Foxy?" Krycek whispered.
Mulder ground his teeth. "Yeah, it's me. Let's go."
"Give me a second. I gotta get my stuff." A short silence, then,
"Are you going to just stand out there? Somebody'll see you."
"I get alone in the dark with you, ratfucker, and I'm likely to
blow your ass to hell. Get your shit and come on."
Krycek came out, carrying a backpack. New, from the sharp dye
smell of it. Mulder caught him by the shoulder and spun him around,
forced him up against the side of the building. Frisked him, checked
the bag. Nothing.
Mulder turned him face-forward again and tossed the bag at him.
"A little testy this evening," Krycek said. "Did we not have our
nap?"
"Don't fuck with me, Krycek." Mulder inclined his head toward the
car. "Black Mitsubishi. Move."
Krycek started across the parking lot. "Very nice," he said,
looking at the car. "You rob a bank?"
"I inherited it," Mulder said coldly. "My dad left it to me after
you blew his brains all over his bathroom."
They walked a couple of steps in silence, then Krycek said, "You're
going to kill me, aren't you?"
"Your odds are just about fifty-fifty. Don't push it."
"Look, I didn't kill him. I swear--"
"And you'd never lie to me, would you, Alex? Especially not if
your life depended on it." He shoved Krycek toward the Mitsubishi.
"Get in the fucking car. You drive. Head for the Hoover Building. I'm
sure you know the way." He hit the button on the clicker. The
Mitsubishi chirped twice, taillights blinking, and rumbled to life.
Krycek seemed to have recovered his sense of humor. "Jesus," he
said softly. "To the bat cave."
Just then a helicopter roared up from behind the building, its
searchlights dazzling. "Go!" Mulder yelled, but Krycek had already
leaped for the car, running all-out like a panicked deer. They were
both good sprinters, but government-issue fleet sedans charged in from
the highway before Krycek could get the Mitsubishi backed out and turned
around. Four cars, fanned out to form a semicircle in the driveway,
completely blocking the road. Krycek hit the brakes and stopped. The
3000 GT was no all-terrain vehicle; it wasn't going to make it across
that ditch.
"Shit," Krycek said helplessly.
Mulder just sighed. He wasn't even surprised.
"Fuck!" Krycek yelled. Men-In-Black, guns drawn, advancing from
the front; troops with M-16s advancing from the rear. "Mulder, you've
got to help me! They get me, and I'll be floating down the Potomac in
ten minutes!"
Mulder figured this was the first piece of truth Krycek had uttered
in years. "Okay," he said wearily. "Lock the door."
He pulled his badge, opened the passenger-side door and held the
badge up, slowly got out of the car, hands in the air. "Federal agent!"
he yelled over the chop of the helicopter's blades. "I've got a suspect
in custody." He couldn't see their faces, silhouetted against the
headlights.
One of the MIBs flipped him around and shoved him up against the
car. "Yeah, I know who you are, Agent Mulder," he said.
"And just who the hell are you?" Mulder asked, as the MIB took his
gun.
"NSA." He flashed a badge in front of Mulder's face. Mulder
didn't get a good look at it, but he caught the surname--Jones.
"Oh, bullshit," Mulder said. "Look, this man's wanted for
questioning in connection with two murders. His ass is mine, and you
can't legally interfere without--"
"Shut up, Mulder," the MIB said. "I've got orders of my own. File
a fucking complaint."
One of the other MIBs, this one a blond with fat cheeks, was trying
to get Krycek out of the car, under the watchful eye of two of the
troops. "The door's locked," the blond said.
The MIB holding Mulder thrust one hand into the pocket of Mulder's
jeans, got his keys and tossed them over the car at the blond.
"Ow!" Mulder yelled. "Hey, I was a virgin! You're goddamned right
I'm going to file a complaint!"
The MIB grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. "Look,
Mulder," he said.
"No, *you* look, asshole." He couldn't see it, but he could hear
them dragging Krycek out of the driver's seat, could feel the struggle
through the movement of the car at his back. "You tell me what you're
doing walking off with my suspect, and where you're taking him. This is
obstruction of justice."
"Mulder!" Krycek yelled. He sounded desperate, terrified.
"And don't give me any bullshit about being with the NSA," Mulder
pressed, "because you and I both know that's crap. Who do you really
work for? MJ-12? Falcon? Garnet?"
"I'm going to give you to a count of five," the MIB said. He
started walking away, backward, toward his own car. "And when I hit
five, you'd better be--"
"What's your real name, 'Jones?'" Mulder yelled. "Do you report to
Bateman?"
And then everything went black.

Continued in Part 4.

"The Five," Book 1 (Part 4 of 25)
By Somebody Else

Classification: XA

WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts
contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner,
Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are
present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or
four-letter words, please do not read this.

International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers.

See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary.

************************************************************************

Problems are only opportunities in work clothes. - Henry Kaiser

April 17, 1996
Washington, D.C.

Mulder woke on the couch in his apartment, with a nasty, dry taste
in his mouth, a real screamer of a headache and Ditzo curled up on his
chest. Car parked out in his usual space, as if nothing had happened.
Not a surprise--the MIBs would want to make the incident last night look
like just another of "Spooky" Mulder's little fantasies. He expected
they had done their usual thorough job of it.
Not even a shower and coffee made him feel any better. His head
and his back hurt like hell, and his brain didn't seem to be working at
its usual speed. He dressed and went to work anyway.
*File a complaint,* he thought bitterly. *You bet your sweet ass,
I will.*
Fifteen minutes after he logged in the paperwork, Scully rushed
into the office. "Skinner wants to see us," she said.
"Wow, that was fast," Mulder said.
Scully gave him that look--one hand on her hip, mouth pursed, head
slightly inclined, the young-man-you-are-simply-incorrigible look. Had
she learned that from one of those ruler-wielding nuns in some Catholic
school? "Mulder, what have you done now?" she asked.
"My job," Mulder said irritably. "Or tried to, at any rate. Don't
worry, Scully, all will become clear in a few minutes. And this time,
goddammit, it's not my fault."
She softened. "You look terrible," she said. "Didn't you sleep
well?"
"Oh, yeah. I always sleep very soundly after being cracked in the
back of the head with a rifle butt. It's the waking up that doesn't go
well."
"What?"
He headed down the hall toward the assistant director's office.
"Sorry, Scully, but I just plain hurt too bad to explain this twice."

****

"Backup," Skinner said coldly. "Are you familiar with the concept,
Agent Mulder? You call, assistance arrives. It was covered in your
course at Quantico, was it not?"
*Yeah,* Mulder thought. *You'd have authorized that, wouldn't you?
Sure, Mulder, no problem, we'll send you a dozen agents. Choppers.
Uzis. Yeah, right.*
He bit it back. "Yes, sir. But by the time it became clear it was
needed, I could've called out the National Guard and it wouldn't have
been enough."
"It might've been enough to keep you from getting your head bashed
in," Skinner said.
*Oh, now it's me he's worried about.* Mulder's head felt like it
was about to crack open. "Yes, sir," he said. "I'm sorry, sir."
The assistant director sighed heavily and leaned back in his chair,
his fingers steepled, his eyes masked behind the glare off his glasses.
Mulder couldn't tell how angry Skinner really was, and he didn't care.
"Look, Mulder, I have some issues I'd like to take up with Krycek,
too," Skinner said. "But that's not going to happen unless we actually
get him in here."
"I'm painfully aware of that, sir."
"With all due respect, sir," Scully said, "we've been denied backup
in the past."
"Just about everybody has been, at one time or another," Skinner
shot back, in his ex-Marine, drill sergeant voice. The hard tones felt
like hammers banging against the inside of Mulder's skull. "But if
either of you feel that you can't rely on this division to provide you
with support for legitimate purposes, maybe you ought to consider
reassignment to a division you *can* rely on."
Carefully, Scully said, "It's been my experience, sir, that it
depends heavily on who's defining 'legitimate.'"
Skinner held her look for a long moment, then let it drop. Score
one for Scully. Skinner picked up the complaint form Mulder had filled
out. He gave Mulder a baleful look.
"Should I infer anything from this nearly-unprecedented effort to
proceed through channels?"
"Just that I haven't got a better idea, sir," Mulder said.
"Frankly, I'm not optimistic that this grievance against Agent...
'Jones' will do any good."
"No, sir," Mulder said. "But it's the only shot we've got, at this
point."
"All right," the assistant director said. "I'll put it through. I
wouldn't want the NSA to think it's entirely above sanction."
*It is,* Mulder thought, *but what the hell.*
Skinner glared at Mulder. "If Krycek should call you again--"
"He won't," Mulder said. "He's dead."
Skinner nodded, dismissing them. Mulder and Scully headed back to
their basement office.
"He went pretty light on me," Mulder said.
"Anything else would have been a little like clubbing a kitten,"
she murmured, stepping into the elevator.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Mulder, you're just barely on your feet."
"I'm okay."
She sighed and punched "L" instead of "B."
"I'm taking you home," she said.
"I got here on my own; I can get home on my own. Besides, I'm all
right." Actually, he wasn't so sure he was. His head throbbed, and he
wanted desperately to lie down.
She shook her head. "Look, your eyelids are at half-mast. Come
on." She took his arm, and he let her tow him.

****

Scully knew Mulder really had to be hurting to let her put him to
bed with so little fight. He headed for the couch, but she insisted he
should get in bed, and then she moved the remote control for the
television out of his easy reach. She wanted him to sleep, not spend
the afternoon watching old movies on cable. He hardly even protested,
just kicked off his shoes, laid down on top of the covers and started
handing her the stuff in his pockets--keys, gun, cell phone. They'd been
over this ground before. He pulled off his tie and dropped it on the
floor. She picked it up, draped it over a chair.
She sat down beside him on the bed. "Let me look at your eyes,"
she said. She checked his pupils; they looked okay. "How long were you
out?"
"I don't know," he said wearily. "It's bound to have been
lengthened by whatever they shot me full of to make sure I'd stay out
while they got me home."
"How do you know they gave you a shot?"
"Because I've got a bruise on my butt where they stuck me."
"Where on your head did they hit you?"
He shifted so she could look at the back of his head. Under the
thick brown hair she felt a lump about the diameter of a golf ball. The
blow hadn't broken the skin. Very professional, she thought. They hit
him just hard enough to put his lights out, not hard enough to do any
permanent damage.
"Ow," he muttered, when she touched it.
"I think you're going to live," Scully said. "Just get some rest,
and I'll look in on you again after work. You want me to stay a little
while?"
"No, I'm okay." His voice sounded muffled, groggy. "I'm sorry I
lost him again," he said, miserably.
"It wasn't your fault."
"Skinner's right--I should've called you."
"Even if I'd been there, there's nothing I could've done that you
didn't do."
"Maybe." He didn't sound convinced. "We've got to try to find him
again, if he's still alive. He knows who ordered the hit on your
sister. I'm sure of it."
"We'll find him," she said, with more conviction than she felt.
She stroked his back, just between his shoulder blades. He
stretched a little, like a cat, then lay still. She petted him again
and felt him begin to relax under her touch. "I'll just stay 'til
you're asleep," she said. She knew him so well--how many times had she
sat beside him, in a car, on a plane, while he drifted off to sleep?
She kept on caressing his back, waiting for the long, deep sigh she knew
would mean he had finally gone under. It took about ten minutes.
Quietly, she got up and folded the blanket over him. He shifted and
sighed again.
Scully paused, looking at him as he slept. She sometimes thought,
when he was sleeping, all the muscles of his face relaxed and innocent,
that he was handsome--with his sweet, soft mouth and fine, strong
jawline. Of course, his eyes were closed, and they were his best
feature, dark and soulful or vibrantly green, depending on the light.
She liked watching him when he didn't know she was looking. When he was
unconscious and it wasn't likely he might suddenly do something
annoying. Some days she wasn't even sure she liked him, but he
certainly brought out all her nurturing instincts, there was no denying
that.
*Too bad he's such a pain in the ass when he's awake,* she thought,
and left.

****

Shelby Bateman was not a happy man. He didn't like having to deal
with uppity subordinates, and Walter Skinner had developed a decidedly
uppity streak of late. Skinner was supposed to be one of Bateman's
lackeys, and at first he had performed in a quite suitably obedient
manner. But he seemed to have gotten the idea that it was up to him to
decide when he should follow or ignore orders. That annoyed the hell
out of Bateman.
After their last encounter, Bateman would have preferred not to
deal with Skinner at all. Bateman knew he was a poor loser--he had
enough covert power that he could afford to be. But this business of
raising a protocol complaint with the NSA... Skinner could not be
allowed to get away with it, and it was up to Bateman to put a stop to
it.
Worse yet, if what Skinner's complaint alleged was true, Alex
Krycek was loose. How the hell that weasel could've gotten out of the
missile silo in North Dakota, Bateman couldn't imagine. And there were
some ops units out there, the bozos supposedly guarding the silo and its
precious contents, who were about to feel Bateman's wrath if Krycek
really had managed to escape. First, however, he had to threaten or
cajole Skinner into getting off his back.
Now, Bateman stood in Skinner's wood-paneled office, with its shiny
brass accents, and tapped a Morley out of the pack and lit it, knowing
full well it would aggravate the assistant director to have the room
fill up with cigarette smoke.
"I don't know where Krycek is," Bateman said frostily. "He
disappeared months ago. If he's half as smart as he thinks he is, he's
left the country and won't be back."
"He's been back," Skinner said. "Agent Mulder escorted him from
Hong Kong to Washington a couple of months ago, but Krycek got away in a
car crash."
"Agent Mulder is prone to such fantasies," Bateman said. He blew
a plume of smoke toward Skinner and watched the assistant director
almost keep his lip from curling in distaste. "Besides, it's not my
problem if Mulder can't hold on to a suspect."
"Mulder didn't lose Krycek, this time. Your people came and took
him. And I want him back. I want him *now*."
"You're suggesting that 'my people' took that action without my
knowledge, and let me assure you--"
"No, I'm *suggesting* that you're lying," Skinner shot back. "I
don't believe for a minute that you don't know where Krycek is. You've
got him, and I'm *suggesting* that you'd better produce him before an
interagency squabble gets leaked to the press."
"I would advise you not to do that," Bateman said. A cold anger
gathered along his spine.
"Or what?" Skinner demanded. "You'll have Krycek or one of his
buddies kill me? That's been tried before, you know."
Bateman advanced on Skinner's desk, intruding into his space.
"Just who the hell do you think you are?" he asked quietly. "Do you
imagine for a moment that killing you is the worst damage I could do? I
have the power to reduce this entire bureau to an historical curiosity.
Take care what you do and what you say and to whom, Mr. Skinner--take
care. I've gone through bigger obstacles than you."
"I'm not afraid of you," Skinner said.
Bateman flicked an ash onto the middle of Skinner's desktop. "You
should be," he said. He headed for the door. "If I hear anything about
Agent Krycek's whereabouts, we'll talk again. Until then, you do
nothing--don't even think about doing anything."

****
th Street
New York City

The Consortium's board of directors gathered, one by one, in the
New York Colony Club's sub-basement, a dim, cold concrete labyrinth shot
through with steam and water pipes, and electrical conduit, and its
ceiling dotted with bare, caged light bulbs. Normally they met in more
congenial surroundings, in the clubroom three floors up, but this was an
emergency meeting requiring the utmost secrecy and security. Especially
security.
Roy Higginbotham, the elder statesman of the group, surveyed them
as they came in. They'd been twelve once, but now were reduced, through
death or retirement, to seven. And only four tonight. Three of their
members hadn't been invited. This was among the European members,
leaving the Americans and the Japanese out. Higginbotham hoped tonight,
at last, it would become clear whether the rest of them could still
trust the Americans and the Japanese.
The group had split into factions over the years, and Higginbotham
had lost track of who had changed sides on which occasions, but
generally there were two philosophies among the members on the question
of how to cope with the aliens. Rather fancifully, Higginbotham thought
of them as hawks and doves--those who wanted to do all-out battle, and
those who thought the better course was negotiation, or even outright
appeasement.
And of course, there'd been the occasional turncoat along the path,
like that morph who had called himself "Jeremiah Smith." In the process
of cataloging humans, he had grown fond of them. And then there'd been
Dr. Berube, who had developed a sympathy with the grays and decided to
try to help them win their freedom from the morphs. The morphs'd had
no sense of humor at all about Berube's experiments.
Higginbotham himself had always been a dove. The aliens were
coming, like it or not, he reasoned, and the only realistic approach was
to deal. The only realistic way to save part of the human race. In the
beginning, they'd been lucky enough to have something to bargain with--the hostages from the Roswell crash. And of course, even the hawks had
known they had to *pretend* to deal, and keep up the charade long enough
to make the necessary preparations for the war they wanted. But now it
looked as if the hawk faction had done something rash. It looked as if
they hadn't returned all the hostages as they had promised.
As it had ever been, the group had more Americans than
representatives from any other single nation: two. Higginbotham ran
through the list: Bateman and Tom Corvin, U.S., and Ishimoto, Japan; the
missing members. Himself, representing Great Britain. Duval, France.
Semarone, Italy, arriving a minute or two late, as always. Gerhard,
Germany. All graying, faces lined with the weight of what they'd done,
what they'd known, over the years. Semarone, who had once been thin,
now was nearly as broad as he was tall, and seemed expressionless
because his jowls absorbed all facial subtlety.
My God, Higginbotham thought. How old we've all become in the
service of our masters.
The group complete, they started down a musty, dank corridor toward
the cell where Alex Krycek was being held.
"When did you take him?" Gerhard asked.
"Last night," Higginbotham said.
"How did you find him?"
"We had some assistance from Special Agent Mulder."
Semarone gave a little snort of disgust. "What a nuisance he is."
Higginbotham shrugged. "But often more help than he is harm. We
might never have found Agent Krycek without him."
In truth, Higginbotham rather liked what he knew of Fox Mulder. A
man of intellect and determination, and seemingly bottomless courage.
An endless capacity for moral outrage. Bill Mulder's *enfant terrible*
was a Sherlockian figure, brilliant, daring and eccentric. He reminded
Higginbotham of himself, thirty years ago. None of which would have
stopped Higginbotham from feeding Mulder into a wood-chipping machine if
it had ever become necessary.
*And we are Moriarty to his Holmes.* Higginbotham wondered if it
was an even contest--Mulder's quick wit and youthful physical endurance
against their collective experience, power and cunning, honed over more
than four decades. He decided it was weighted in favor of the
Consortium. They had been able to see Mulder coming before he could
marshal his forces or discover his strengths. They had set traps for
the hunter before he had even known he had prey to seek. And he was
handicapped by an emotional trauma *they* had created for him.
But then, of course, there was Agent Scully to consider, too--Mulder's Dr. Watson--and it was possible she might tip the balance
considerably. There was something about her that centered him,
counteracted his almost suicidal tendency to recklessness. She had
imposed on him a higher standard, and in trying to meet it, he was
coming ever closer to the truth he so desperately wanted to find.
Alone, he was nearly as dangerous to himself as to the Consortium.
Together, he and Scully were a potential threat.
They reached Krycek's cell. A guard with a patch that read
"Majestic" punched a code into a keypad. His pasty white face reflected
that he rarely spent time above ground. The Consortium members entered
and stood silently, looking at the cell's occupant.
He had dark hair and blue eyes, and was tall, well-built and lithe.
He looked the Consortium members over, one by one. And then he said
softly, "Who among you knows where are The Five?"
Higginbotham went cold. *Not Krycek. My God, it's an omni-morph.*

Continued in Part 5.

"The Five," Book 1 (Part 5 of 25)
By Somebody Else

Classification: XA

WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts
contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner,
Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are
present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or
four-letter words, please do not read this.

International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers.

See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary.

************************************************************************

Dreaming men are haunted men. - Stephen Vincent Benet

April 17, 1996
New York City

Duval and Semarone bolted the room; Gerhard charged the dark-haired
figure. Higginbotham simply froze while what they had thought was
Krycek snapped Gerhard's neck with a quick chop just under the jaw. The
German representative's head lolled, his body twitching uncontrollably,
then he fell in a heap, still convulsing, eyes and mouth open and empty.
His sphincters let go, the smell of shit and urine suddenly sharp in the
air.
Then "Krycek" began his change, to a taller, heavier, creature,
with light brown hair and pale blue eyes--a human face, but one so
brutal and crude it seemed human in shape only. It turned a cold,
baleful look on Higginbotham, and despite himself, the old man shrank
against the wall, mortally afraid.
"We will have The Five," the omni-morph said. "Your time is up."
It didn't run, just walked past Higginbotham and out the open door.
"Don't shoot it!" Higginbotham shouted. "Let it go!" If its skin
were punctured, the fumes coming off its green blood would kill them
all.
In horror, Higginbotham watched it go, unimpeded, the humans in the
building seeming to melt away out of its path.
Dear Lord, it was true. The Americans had kept The Five for
themselves. God help the human race.

****

Washington, D.C.

Scully returned to Mulder's apartment just after sundown to find
the place dark and silent. Amazing--maybe the king of the insomniacs
had actually slept all afternoon. She had brought him Chinese food, egg
rolls and hot-and-sour soup, figuring he wouldn't have eaten anything.
She set the box down on the tiny kitchen counter. She flipped on the
kitchen light. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of
two glittering green eyes and whirled around, startled and reaching for
her gun, then realized they were cat's eyes. A plump, self-satisfied
orange tabby sat on top of the refrigerator, staring down at her
curiously.
When the hell had Mulder acquired a cat?
She heard a low moan from the bedroom and frowned. "Mulder?" she
called softly. Silence. She headed toward the bedroom, then heard
something else, a gasp or a sob; she couldn't quite make it out. In the
glow cast by the kitchen light, she could just see that he was curled up
in a ball in the middle of the bed. She went to him. "Mulder?" she
said again. "Are you all right?"
Another shuddering sob. He was dreaming. She knew he had hellish
nightmares--sometimes when they were on the road she heard him cry out
from the hotel room next door. Once she had telephoned him late at
night and had wrenched him out of one, his breathing harsh, his voice
trembling with it. But she had never actually had to confront him face-to-face while in the throes of one. She sat on the bed so she could
reach him and gently put a hand on his shoulder. He came out of it
suddenly, flinging himself up and toward her. The next thing she knew,
he had her pinned to the mattress by the shoulders.
She yelped--more in surprise than in fear or pain. He froze at the
sound and seemed to get hold of himself. "Scully," he whispered. He
was panting, trembling, and she saw tears sliding down his cheek.
"Oh, God," he said, and let go of her, let himself roll backward
onto the bed and then over so that he faced away from her, toward the
wall.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"Leave me alone." He was crying.
"Mulder--"
"Just go away!" This came out in a wail.
*No way, mister,* Scully thought. *That'd violate my Hippocratic
Oath.* She slid across the bed until she could sit on the edge of it,
then lifted his head onto her lap.
"Don't," he said thickly. But he didn't try to pull away from her,
and Scully wasn't letting go.
"Hush," she whispered. She stroked his hair with one hand and
rubbed his chest with the other, like she would have done to quiet a
tired, cranky child. "Tell me what you dreamed," she said.
"That doesn't help," he said.
"Tell me anyway."
He was trembling. She felt a tear wet her right pants leg.
"Tell me," she pressed.
"It's dark," he said. "Some dark place, like all the light in the
universe has gone out. I can't see anything but blackness. And it's
cold." He shuddered, remembering. "And then I can hear somebody crying
and screaming in pain, and I want to go and help, but it's too dark. I
can't see, and I can't find her. And then suddenly I realize the person
who's crying is me..." He trailed off, and Scully felt another tear,
hot where it soaked through the fabric.
*My God, no wonder these dreams make a mess of him.*
"This is a recurring nightmare, isn't it?" she asked.
She felt him stop for a moment. "How'd you know that?" he asked.
"You're describing it in the present tense."
He thought about that for a moment. "Damn, you're good," he said.
"Ever think about switching over and becoming a shrink?"
"No. I wouldn't enjoy it." But she sensed that somehow she had
calmed him, either by making him tell her the dream or by causing him to
think about it in a more professional sense, in a way he could deal with
it. The worst had passed.
He lifted his head and rolled onto his back. Scully let him go.
"I've had that dream in bouts, every two or three years, ever
since..." He hesitated.
"Since Samantha," Scully put in.
"Yeah. I'll dream that every night for a couple of weeks, and then
it just goes away for another few years."
"Is there any pattern to it? Any way to know what's triggering
it?"
"Skylab," he said.
Scully blinked in surprise. "Skylab?"
"Or in this case, Artemis." He shook his head, slowly. "I have no
idea why, but when I see or hear something about Skylab, I get a sort of
anxiety attack, and then I have that particular nightmare, like I said,
over and over again for a couple of weeks."
*That explains why he hasn't been hanging all over the news--he's
been trying to *avoid* the news.*
"Interesting," she said, not knowing what else to say.
He groaned. "That sounds like the kind of 'interesting' that
doctors use when they're thinking, 'for God's sake, get a straitjacket
in here now.'"
"I'm thinking no such thing--after all, if you've been having this
dream since 1973, it's clear you've developed some means of coping with
it, even if only as simple as gutting it out for a couple of weeks."
"I think that's what they said about Ted Bundy, too."
"Don't be ridiculous, Mulder. You're no Ted Bundy."
"Scully, if I did my own profile, I'd go get the straitjacket
myself. It's part of the reason I'm good at profiling--I don't have
wild urges to hack people up, but I do have an uncanny knack for knowing
how people like the Unabomber think. I know how they *feel*, because I
have some of the same kinds of traumatic emotional shit in my own
background. So why don't I feel compelled to mail-bomb the Pentagon? I
don't know."
"I know," Scully said. "Because you never really bought it that
you're inherently evil and worthless and deserved to be traumatized.
And consequently, you identify at least as much with victims of crime as
with criminals. You have moments when you doubt yourself, but you don't
ever sign the check."
He didn't respond to that. Instead, he said, "I didn't hurt you,
did I?"
"I'm fine, but you gave me a helluva start. How's your head?"
"It's a little better. Have you been here all day?"
"No. I brought you something to eat."
"Oh. Uh, at the risk of seeming ungrateful, I'm really not feeling
very hungry."
"It's just egg rolls and some soup. I want you to try to eat a
little of it, okay?"
He sighed. "Yes, doctor." He climbed out of bed, heading for the
bathroom. "I'll meet you in the kitchen in a couple of minutes."
"Okay. Uh, Mulder?"
"Yeah?"
"Did you know there's a cat on your refrigerator?"
He nodded. "As long as he's not *in* the refrigerator, we're
okay."

****

An omni-morph sat beside a young man's dead body in an apartment
directly across the street from Fox Mulder's building, watching
intently. It had hoped there'd be no need to kill the tenant who had
occupied the lookout it needed, not because it had any feelings about
killing a human--it was of the warrior circle and unsentimental about
its function. But it didn't know how long it'd have to wait and watch,
and it knew that eventually the human's body would smell even worse than
it already did. That might attract attention the omni-morph wished to
avoid. Perhaps it would be able to dispose of the corpse at some point
before a problem arose.
A red-haired woman entered Mulder's building at around six-thirty,
carrying a box. The omni-morph didn't want her. She didn't know where
The Five were being kept. Mulder didn't know either, and even if he
had, the omni-morph couldn't touch him. The Third Circle had taken the
unprecedented--and very controversial--step of declaring Fox Mulder an
Inquestor, despite his being a human. According to the Premises, any
harm done to an Inquestor was punishable by the last of the deaths.
The omni-morph had had one death, and it had not found it pleasant.
It did not wish to have eleven more on account of a human, even if the
human was an Inquestor. When the other humans had come at the hotel and
had struck Mulder, the omni-morph had stretched its hearing to the limit
until it had heard Mulder's breath move--and that breath had been the
only reason the remaining humans still lived. One could hide things
from an Inquestor, one could thwart an Inquestor's search, but dealing
him a death was not permitted.
The omni-morph didn't want Mulder.
It wanted Krycek, who would lead it to the Responsibles--those
humans who had taken The Five and held them hostage for so long. It had
not succeeded in reaching the Responsibles by posing as Krycek; it
needed the man himself. So the omni-morph watched Mulder because it
knew that eventually Krycek would come to the human Inquestor.
Krycek had nowhere else to go.

****

April 18, 1996

Scully was ready to call it a day when the fax machine rang.
"Are you limping?" Scully asked, as Mulder shuffled over to the
machine.
"Yeah. I think I strained something in my back the other night,
while I was out trying to save Krycek's ass. I'm okay."
She saw him frown at the fax. "What is it?"
"Uh... Holy shit."
She got up crossed to stand beside him as he looked down at the
sheet of paper that had scrolled out of the machine.
"Oh, my God," she said. The picture on the sheet was the face of a
man she had last seen falling off a bridge. "Mulder, this is the man
who took me hostage in exchange for that woman who claimed to be your
sister." She didn't say that she also had seen him morph--from a
flawless impersonation of Fox Mulder, he had changed his body into the
one shown on the fax. She still wasn't sure that had really happened;
after all, she had banged her head up against a wall moments before
seeing it, so why give Mulder ideas?
"As far as we know, this guy's dead, right?" she said. "So why
would somebody send us a picture of him?"
"No," Mulder said grimly. "He's not dead. Or at any rate, the
last time I saw him, he was quite thoroughly kicking my ass."
"I'll run the phone number on the fax machine."
"Okay. You're going to find it doesn't exist, but it's got to be
tried. I'm going to try something else. I'll call you if I get
anything; otherwise I'll see you in the morning."

****

When Mulder got home, he headed straight for the roll of masking
tape on his desk. Before he got there, he sensed a presence and spun
around, gun drawn.
Krycek, half-ducking behind the kitchen counter.
Or was it the alien?

Continued in Part 6.

"The Five," Book 1 (Part 6 of 25)
By Somebody Else

Classification: XA

WARNING: NC-17 because some parts contain VIOLENCE and most parts
contain PROFANITY. No sex, no (Mulder/Scully, Scully/Skinner,
Krycek/Mulder or Mulder/Skinner) romance, but UST and Mulder-angst are
present. If you are under-age or sensitive to graphic violence and/or
four-letter words, please do not read this.

International readers: Chock full of third season spoilers.

See Part 1 for disclaimer and summary.

************************************************************************

Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable. -
Cyril Connolly

April 18, 1996
Washington, D.C.

"Don't shoot me, okay?" Krycek said. "Look, Mulder, I know what
you think, but you've got to listen to me."
Mulder had no intention of shooting him. If he turned out to be
the alien, toxic fumes would escape from the wound. Mulder had been
exposed to the retrovirus in those fumes once, and had no wish to repeat
the experience. But he kept the Smith trained on Krycek...or whatever.
"How'd you get away from the NSA?" he asked Krycek.
"NSA, my ass. Those guys are no more NSA than you are."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"The alien got one of the guards, and then it fried the rest of
them. Look, Mulder, you mind if I get a drink of water or something? I
was stuck in that goddamned missile silo for a month, and I've been on
the run ever since, trying to get back from North Dakota. You ever try
to go four thousand miles with no money, no credit cards? I've been
sleeping in ditches and eating garbage. I had a bath in a thunderstorm
three days ago, but I don't think it helped much."
*What the hell's he talking about?* "Where were you night before
last?" Mulder asked.
"Philadelphia. I hopped an eastbound freight train yesterday--I
just got back into D.C. last night."
"Shit," Mulder said. Either he was lying, or the "Krycek" he had
met at the hotel hadn't been Krycek at all. How the hell would he find
out which? He gestured with the gun. "Get your drink," he said, to
give himself stall space in which to think.

****

The omni-morph had been following Mulder all day, waiting with
the patience of a creature who had eleven more lives to spend in
achieving its objective. It couldn't see the other man in Mulder's
apartment, but it stretched its hearing until it heard him speak. And
then it knew.
The wait was over.

****

"All I know is, besides the one that took me over in Hong Kong,
there are five more of them," Krycek said. "And the aliens want them
back, and Bateman doesn't want to give them up."
"That doesn't explain why they were keeping you in the silo,"
Mulder said. He had let Krycek sit down--the double agent had looked
like he was about to fall down. And this time he had called Scully.
She was on her way over. Mulder still had his gun in his hand, but he
had stopped pointing it at Krycek. In the meantime, he was trying to
get some answers out of the double agent while he could.
"I don't know. They didn't tell me that. It wouldn't trouble
Bateman's conscience any just to put a slug through my brain--he already
tried to off me once--so you know they have to have been saving me for
something. Otherwise, why bother to shove in food and water twice a
day?"
"Why would Bateman want to kill you? You're on his side."
Krycek gave a hollow, bitter chuckle. "Nobody's on Bateman's side.
He uses people up and gets rid of them like the rest of us throw
away paper towels. He was done with me. And he was sure you'd never
stop looking for me, not after I killed your father."
Mulder heard the words numbly, his anger cold and hard. He said
nothing. Nothing he could've said would have been adequate.
Krycek stared at the floor. "Look, Mulder, all he had to do was
keep his mouth shut. He knew that. Nobody wanted him dead, but he
didn't leave us any choice."
"You babyfucking son of a bitch," Mulder growled. His hand
tightened on the gun.
Krycek looked up, his eyes dull and exhausted. "Go ahead and
kill me," he said. "I know you want to. What the fuck--I'm a dead man
anyway, one way or the other. But what's that going to do for you? I
was just the trigger man--you want the guy who ordered the hit." He
shook his head. "I can't help you get him if I'm dead."
"That assumes that you actually have any intention--" Mulder broke
off as he heard footsteps in the hall. The tread was far too heavy for
Scully. The steps stopped at Mulder's door. Mulder motioned Krycek
toward the bedroom, then stood up and held his gun behind his back.
Krycek didn't quite make it out of sight before the door came crashing
in.
The morphing alien came right behind it.

****

The omni-morph reached for Krycek. Mulder lunged forward, thrust
himself between them, brandishing the gun. "Back off!" he yelled. "You
can't have him!"
The alien hesitated, puzzled, out of program. Surely Mulder knew
he couldn't shoot without endangering himself and Krycek. And the omni-morph couldn't do permanent harm to Mulder--the Premises forbade that.
It reached to the other side, but Mulder moved with it, keeping himself
in the way. It tried again, reaching to one side, then the other, and
back again. It saw Mulder watching it, saw something dawn in the hazel
eyes.
"Alex, stay behind me!" Mulder yelled. "Just get behind me and
stay there!"
*Circles condemn these humans,* the omni-morph thought in
frustration. The brave ones were dangerous, the smart ones infuriating,
the strong ones nearly as hardy as one among the warrior circles. This
Mulder was both brave and smart; Krycek was neither of those, but he was
strong.
The two of them, joining forces, would be formidable.
It had to do something, and do it now.

****

Mulder couldn't imagine why the alien didn't seem to want to
touch him, but he wasn't above using the advantage it gave him. Keeping
the gun in the alien's face, he reached with his left hand for his
cuffs. Krycek got it; he cuffed himself to Mulder.
The alien roared in frustration. Mulder recoiled backward,
startled. It left him off-balance. The alien got the Smith by the
barrel and simply twisted it out of Mulder's hand, tossing it across the
room. Then, with its other hand, it grabbed the chain connecting the
handcuffs and dragged Mulder and Krycek forward toward the kitchen.
Krycek fell sideways, slamming into the broken jamb of what had
been Mulder's front door. Mulder stumbled, but the alien caught him
before he went down on top of Krycek, and pulled him back to his feet.
Mulder stared at it. The last time he had encountered this thing, it
hadn't had any compunctions about beating the shit out of him and
exposing him to the retrovirus. Why was it handling him with kid gloves
now? He would have liked to test how far the alien would let him go,
but he was afraid to--Krycek might suffer for it, and Mulder could not
afford to lose him.
The alien held him at arm's length with a grip that felt like steel
and, with its other hand, simply pulled the handcuff chain apart. It
hauled Krycek up by the collar, then shoved Mulder away hard. It had
the strength of a rhinoceros--Mulder went flying and landed on the
couch. The already-strained muscles in his back locked up, sending a
lightning-hot pain lancing from his back down his left thigh. Mulder
groaned and struggled to his feet, but Krycek and the alien were already
gone down the hall. He stumbled after them.
He heard Krycek scream his name.

****

Scully's hand hurt from pounding on the steering wheel of her car.
She'd been stuck in traffic for twenty minutes before finally finding a
place where she could bail off the freeway and race on to Mulder's
apartment.
Just as she arrived and started looking for a parking space,
Mulder's black Mitsubishi burst out of an alley directly in front of
her. Scully slammed on the brakes, just missing the sleek sports car.
"Dammit, Mulder," she yelled. She hesitated in confusion, then noticed
another car roaring off ahead of Mulder. She hit the gas and followed,
realizing what must have happened--Krycek must've gotten away, and
Mulder was chasing him. She floored her Nova as Mulder took off south
on State 120.
But he quickly, steadily pulled away from her. She reached for her
cell phone and prayed he had his with him--her car couldn't pace that
hot rod he was driving. But then, he never had his damned phone when he
really needed it. When she needed him to have it.
She couldn't believe it when he answered. "Scully, is that you?
I'm--"
"I know; I'm right behind you. But I can't keep up. You'd better--"
"He's headed for Lake Accotink Park."
"Mulder, are you sure? How do you know?"
"I'm sure. And if I told you, you'd never believe it. Just trust
me and head out the Columbia Pike to Annandale, then turn south on 617.
I'm going to follow him out around the Beltway and let him get a little
ahead of me, let him think he's lost me. Scully, he's with that...guy.
The one in the fax."
Scully felt her jaw tighten in resolve. Like Mulder, she had a
score to settle with both of them. "Lock and load, partner," she said.
"Damned straight." The phone beeped off.
For a few minutes she could still see him far ahead, the
Mitsubishi's red taillights gleaming like a distant beacon. But he
turned off on the Pike, and a truck pulled between them. She didn't see
him anymore after that.

****

Alex Krycek had never been so scared in all his life. He knew
little about the creature beside him in the car, but he knew it had
absorbed the oil-based alien in missile silo. And the oil-based alien
had a single-mindedness beyond anything Krycek could imagine. It didn't
sympathize, and it didn't even understand the concept of mercy. It
needed...something. And it needed it bad and wouldn't think twice about
crushing Krycek like a bug. He knew it was holding a thing like an ice
pick at the base of his skull while he drove where it told him. He knew
if he gave it the least excuse it would shove that ice pick into his
brain. He knew that much.
"Look," he said, as he drove, "just tell me what you want. I can
be cooperative. Maybe I can help you."
"Tell me where are The Five," the omni-morph said, in its flat,
dead voice.
"What five? I don't know what you mean." The ice pick jabbed into
his scalp. Krycek jerked, starting at the pain.
"The Five you kept," it said coldly. "We will have them."
Ah, so that was it. The five aliens that were still alive.
Survivors from Roswell that hadn't been destroyed. Trouble was, Krycek
didn't know where they were. He said so, and got another jab for his
trouble.
"I'm telling the truth," Krycek said. "They wouldn't tell me
something like that. I'm just an errand boy, just a drone."
There was a short silence. Then the alien said, "The Third Circle
will find out what you know. And then they will make use of you, if
enough of you remains."
Jesus, Krycek thought. He searched the rear-view mirror in
desperation.
*Mulder, where the fuck are you?*

****

Scully drove and drove, out into the countryside, where the road
got darker and darker. Finally she saw the entrance to the park and
turned in.
Her phone trilled. "Mulder, where are you?"
"In the park." He was whispering, and she could visualize him
stopped in the night, holding his hand over the lighted buttons on the
phone to keep from giving himself away. "How far away are you?"
"I just went past the boat ramp."
"Veer to the right toward the soccer fields when you hit the
turnoff, then cut your lights. He's left his lights on, so you should
be able to see him." The connection broke.
Scully followed his directions. She eased the car to a stop after
she turned off the headlights, waiting for her night vision to cut in.
She could just see the other car through the brush, lights casting
a beam out across an open field. Soccer field, Mulder had said. She
idled her Nova forward a few hundred yards, keeping one eye on the other
car. As she watched, she saw Krycek stumble out into the light. He had
his hands up, backing away, as if pleading with someone she couldn't
see. She stopped the car and got out, drawing her gun, and moved
carefully toward the car, sticking near the brush so as not to give
herself away.
She felt, more than saw, Mulder approaching from the other side,
like a moving shadow, a dark wraith. Then she saw the man with Krycek,
a tall hulk with light-brown hair and a hard, savage face. He stepped
forward and grasped Krycek's arm. Krycek yelped in pain, and his knees
seemed to go out from under him. The other man just stood there,
holding Krycek's arm.
And stared up at the sky.
Scully took her chance at it, a crouching run to the back of the
car. The brown-haired man, if he heard or saw anything, gave no sign.
The car's lights flickered and went off. Scully just stopped herself
from gasping in surprise. She had lost her fix on Mulder's position.
There was a little faint moonlight; she looked around and saw him
holding himself flat against a soccer goal. The moonlight glinted dully
off his Smith as he trained it toward Krycek and the other man. Scully
motioned at him, but he didn't respond. Instead, he straightened,
standing upright.
And stared up at the sky.
What the hell? Scully thought. She looked up. This time she
couldn't stop herself from gasping.
Something huge and black hovered overhead. About the size of a
747, triangular in shape, seeming not to move but to grow larger. Then
it blocked out the Moon. Stunned, Scully realized it was descending
straight toward the car.
Suddenly everything was bathed in a brilliant, blinding blue-white
light. Scully knew she couldn't remain hidden, not in that glare. She
whipped up and around, swinging her gun to point at the brown-haired,
hard-faced man. And froze there, paralyzed, staring while Krycek
scrambled under the car.
She knew what she should do, what she should say. The words
screamed in her head. *Federal agent! Don't move--you're under
arrest!* She couldn't get her mouth open, couldn't get her body to obey
her commands.
Everything turned blue. She found her feet coming off the ground.
An eerie blue light bathed her, seemed to dance along her skin.
Impossibly, she was floating slowly up toward the black thing in
the sky.

Continued in Part 7.