Post Extremis
by lisby@earthlink.net

Category: Angst
Rating: PG. Really.
Summary: Post-Gethsemane, in the wee hours after Mulder's suicide. A
prequel to "Stretched Between Gray" that answers the burning question "How
*does* Mulder get his face back, anyway?"

Disclaimer: They aren't mine. I'm not making any money off 'em. Don't hurt
me.

Archive freely.

For Marlene Morris

3:45 a.m.
Smoke in his lungs. The air warmed and thickened by fire's indiscriminate
translation of matter--Oh yes, at first there was a ghost, a silk flow of
gray over sepia-stained lips--but then the ectoplasmic ribbon thinned,
became a mist. Became gone.

The red digital numbers morphed from one to another and there was the
slightest whirl of mechanisms as the elevator dropped. Beside him, the
broad bulk of the Being was inconsiderable, vestigial. It made no sound-not
even of breath.

The Being beside him did not need to breathe.

The smoker's lungs were almost as silent. He knew that if they cut him
open, the tissues would be pink and healthy as a child's. He rolled the lit
cigarette's fragile paper tube between his thumb and forefinger, teasing
himself. He could wait a moment before he put it to his lips--just a little
longer before another long draw into clean, spongy sacks. It would feel so
good.

A tiny lurch when the elevator stopped, then the smooth action of rollers
drew back one side of the box, revealing a corridor, straight and dim. At
its horizon, two small windows in metal doors were opaqued by manmade
frost. The denizens beyond that boundary would be cold and hard, their
softness leeched by time post-extremis.

The presence of the Being heavied as it came alive--shifted massive
shoulders, curled beefy fingers toward palms. Smooth paper around tobacco
enticed the Smoker as they walked the hall, as the smells thickened.
Chemicals and formaldehyde, Vicks Vaporub. Odors that accompanied precise
incisions and weights and measures of things that once were, but had become
gone. Of things no one believed could breathe again.

At last he slipped the soft cigarette between his lips. Shivered inside as
both hands pushed through icy gunmetal doors into deeper obscurity. There
was no one in the holding room who needed light.

His steps were loudest as they approached the refrigerated steel
bins--filing places for bundles to be probed by pathologists. Beneath his
suit his skin stippled and he sucked in through the Morley's filter,
seeking warmth, as the Being crouched to scan name tags.

The Smoker already saw the temporary tomb's inscription: knew the first
name by its brevity without distinguishing the letters. "Third from the
left." Fog escaped with words. Took another slow, shivery drag. The Being
glanced at him--empty, nothing--then a strike of oscillation. The Smoker's
lungs and limbs froze. His eyes snapped wide until the beam was broken when
the Being refocused on stainless steel.

"You don't like the name because you did not choose it. Because the name is
not of your people." The voice was flat, curiosity a subtext.

The smoker stared at the back of the Being's head, coughed out a cloud,
drew in cleaner air with trembling lungs. "Yes." Hoarse. Another cough and
stronger, "Yes."

The Being was at the right bin now. Giant hands snapped the padlock as
easily as the neck of the night watchman. "You named the clone series. Yet
this did not abate your feelings."

Of course it hadn't. How could it? "No."

The Being's empty eyes flicked up again to meet his own, but no electric
sizzle. "Do you wish to view the shell in its present condition?"

A burn beneath the paper skin of cheeks. It provoked a reflex suck of hot,
thick air. The smoke's steadying effect let him answer immediately. "There
is no reason to avoid it. Proceed with the work."

Void eyes lingered, unblinking. The Smoker stared back impassively.

The bin's hinges and slab's rollers weren't oiled like the elevator door.
The squeak then the grind reverberated in the Smoker's teeth, in root
nerves deep in his jaw.

The moment was postponed by a scrub-green sheet. Planes and angles of
draped cloth conjured the form beneath--familiar, reflecting the Smoker's
donor layers: Mother's long fingers remade as a man's; the square forehead
and wild hair of a great-grandfather posed stiff for a glass-plate image;
long shanks and big, flat feet--gifts from Grandmother's someone, from the
forgotten lines of another land in auld lang syne.

The Smoker squinted minutely as the cloth's hem was lifted, exposing brown
hair matted with russet. Felt a line deepen between his brows and fixed
instead on the red ember of the Morley's stub. He threw it to the floor,
crushed it with a grinding heel. Sparkler nerves again--no breath--when his
returning gaze was intercepted by the Being. The energy skewered, took
everything, and in the everlasting pause the Being's eyes
reflected...something....Concern? Perhaps their neural networks did adapt,
after all.

The Smoker coughed, fumbled in his breast pocket for the cardboard packet
and lighter, had to feel the reassurance of a cigarette between thumb and
forefinger before he could look at the Lazarus.

Oh.

The sheet was folded back just below purple pinpoint nipples. Alabaster
pectorals and shoulders were mottled by faint blue-greens. Dried blood
glazed the profile; the dilated pupil of a glassy eye half-hidden by the
lid, full lower lip slightly parted from its other. No expression. Stone
lacking animus. The fire had fled.

The Smoker stepped around the slab, felt no heat from the mammoth as they
stood side-by-side. The corpse's opposing profile was ruined, just red meat
and skull splinters and exploded gray matter. Instant dead. Instantly
translated from the reach of demons who had dogged a little spy.

"Bring him back." The silver lighter flashed in his faux-steady hand. The
leap of butane flame and a shaky inhalation.

"Do you wish to watch the process?" The Being questioned with the tiniest
inflection.

He shifted weight from one foot to the other, dragged on his burning tube.
"Yes."

"The discharge will affect you. It will not feel the same as when the drone
cured you." Monotone. Niggle implied.

The Smoker's heart pumped harder, but he drew himself up to meet the
Being's stare. "The reasons for that transaction have been approved and
you're wasting time with unnecessary words. Now proceed."

There was no change of expression on the Being's face--then, unexpectedly,
complete change: an emptying, draining. The surface of the Being's eyes
misted over, turned cataract white. Jesus....

All right...It was all right. The Smoker sucked hard on the smoldering
Morley. He'd seen this before: the Being was collecting up strength.

The Smoker slid his hand into his pocket, needing the photograph. His
fingers stroked emulsion, touched creases and worn-away corners. In his
mind, the icon's blends of gray reproduced with perfect faithfulness:
Mother and miraculous child. Christina and the first prototype.

The Smoker turned to look at the vandalized wreck on the slab. Willfulness
was one of its flaws--one of many, some of them dangerous. Yet the Copies
were easily corrected during gestation. They were still the
best--unmatched--their vigor was the unique gift of this prototype. The
Smoker liked to believe that vitality was his doing and hers: the pattern
egg had been fertilized in utero.

There was movement at the border of his vision. He jerked his head around
to find the Being reanimated, clear-eyed and ready. The Smoker nodded once
and stepped aside. It leaned in, its back blocking the Smoker's view of the
devastated face.

For a moment nothing changed and then an almost sound--a sub-aural tone--it
made the Smoker's skin itch. He hissed as it gained strength, narrowed his
shoulders and pulled into his suit as microsparks burrowed to burn his
nerves. In an instant he was coated by a sheen of cold wet and he slapped
at his prickling arms, trying to put out little fires.

The Smoker staggered further away, coughing on traces of tobacco smoke. The
unbearable, unhearable hum and his own banging heart drove his hands to his
ears. The corpse was vibrating--rattling on the slab--sheet puddling at the
hips then slipping sideways to the floor.

Shimmering. Everything. The air seemed wet and charged. He watched softened
flesh jiggle, a frozen fist loosen. The eyelid slipped shut and a rose
blush crept up the chest and throat. The body twitched--fingers and toes,
knees, cock...the pinking of circulation spreading down lanky legs.

The Smoker's body felt pinstuck, chest reverberating to a vortex note. The
cigarette fell from his lips as he bumped the steel bins. Pressed his back
against the glacier firmness and let it anchor him in the invisible,
inaudible maelstrom. There was nothing to see and yet the struggle was
plain--vision atop vision--something ephemeral and white coiled and
wriggled, clawing at the Being's bulk. Weakened--dissipated, sank like mist
to coat the corpse's nakedness.

Everything stopped.

The Smoker's chin sank to his chest as he gasped on wetness. Other sounds,
in tandem--an echo, almost....Lifted his eyes to see the Being slumped
forward....His chest drew a reflex breath and he heard the sounds again,
saw the behemoth's back shift just a little and, suddenly, the Smoker
understood. The pit of his stomach turned sickcold as he pushed off the
metal bins, made his rubbery legs take three steps toward the slab.

The shoulders of the corpse were pinned by the Being's elbows, its big
hands tangled in blood encrusted hair. An ugly expression--beatific--as it
stared down at the dead man. The Being inhaled--the Smoker, too--and the
body. A deep, gape-mouthed inhalation. Again...again. They all breathed
together. God....The Smoker's hands fluttered at his throat.

Air in. Air out. A whistle in the corpse's windpipe distracted him from his
intubation, brought his attention back to the dead man's face. Saw symmetry
there. Regenerated flesh. His eyebrows raised at the odd, pale--almost
waxy--composition, but at least the brains were in the skull inside skin.

The Smoker flinched as his lungs inflated. Air in. Air out. The corpse's
lungs, too, for Jesus' sake.

The nonsound rose up without warning and mini-pyrotechnics on the surface
of his gooseflesh and everything in the room shook although nothing moved
at all. Then the Smoker saw it again: a thing he should not see--the white
swirl--churning, spiraling up, then cascading back down. The body
spasmed--that much was real--knees drawing up to hide the cock and dark
public hair, shoulders squirming, fingers raking the slick, gray surface of
the slab.

The Smoker stumbled around the Behemoth, gripped the icy steel edge of the
plank at the Corpse's head. Panted with lungs that were his own again, and
looked down into open eyes.

The prototype's eyes.

They were full of tears. The drops leaked, tracked a course over dried
blood, over the strange new flesh, onto the gripping hands of the Being.
The Adam's apple bobbed, mouth moved--a string of sounds like sandpaper on
glass--"I'llseeyouinhellI'lleeyouinhellI'llseeyouinhell...."

The Smoker felt a twist of dread. A dead man tells no tales. Does he also
speak the truth?

The Being had straightened and reached into its jacket. It was ready to
finish the task. "Wait." The Smoker caught its eye and was instantly stung,
stunned--the fear, the desire--everything sucked away in the electrostatic
funnel. Body and brain tingled....Mother of God....No matter how often it
happened, he could never get used to it.

"Conduct your transaction." The Being nodded once. No trace of the emotion
it had wicked away.

The Smoker's answer reflected its emptiness. "Yes. I have things to say."
He tried to feel something as he went through the steady sequence of
lighting up: the menthol kiss of the filter, the snap of flame and the
ember's glow, the long draw and exhaled plume.

Looked down. The prototype was trembling on the steel plank, new pulse
pounding its jugular, its pupils wide and black and lost as the first time
it beheld its creator. The Smoker smiled with hairthin lips. Pride. He felt
that.

He could step around the slab now, stand opposite the Being, and pinch the
prototype's chin to turn its face toward him. The skin was fever hot under
the pads of his fingers. "You remembered," he said to it quietly.
Hyperdilated pupils-black and reflecting the galaxy of a dim overhead
bulb-snapped to watch the Smoker's mouth. "That treatment you had helped
you remember. I heard the gunshot over the monitor. You shouldn't have done
that. It wasn't time. Now I've brought you back where you're needed."

"No." A moan. A little resistance as the Prototype tried to roll its head.
"No...."

"Don't worry." The Smoker lessened the pressure of his grip until he only
cupped the chin. "You won't remember the tests or the sampling. I've never
made you remember before, I won't make you now."

The tears pooled, sparkled, spilled. "Let me die."

"I can't. You're too important to the project. You have to go on. We'll
always bring you back."

The Prototype sobbed. Squeezed eyes shut. Maybe there had been more for the
Smoker to say, but those things were nonessential in the proper moment for
action. The small-caliber gun was in the Being's hand. A quick movement and
it replaced the Smoker's hand beneath the Prototype's chin.

He'd expected the bang to be louder in the harsh acoustics.

A small entrance wound, oozing red blood, a larger exit hole near the right
ear, the trajectory non-fatal. They did not need to rouse the Prototype
again. The Smoker took another draw, pushed smoke out through his nose.
"Very good. I'll call 9-1-1."

There was a wall-mounted phone near the doors. The receiver was cold in his
hand and beeped as he punched the keypad. He didn't listen for the ring,
just left the receiver to dangle from its cord. Heard the tiny, hollow
voice of the dispatcher and the bubbling of blood with the Prototype's
breath as he followed the Being into the corridor.

End.

Okay, since I have been inundated by e-mails consisting of the single word,
"Huh?", I promise cliff notes to anyone who really needs to know what the
hell is going on here. Send plaintive requests or other feedback to
lisby@earthlink.net.