Lights Go Out: Part Two by Jintian

The sun burns the vision behind her closed eyelids into a fire of orange, jerking her out of her doze. Time passes for her not in lucid minutes but in great flashes. She loses long periods in the endless drift of miles they travel.

The car moves west now. After staring for hours the Great Plains have become only a blur rushing past the window. Krycek speaks, but she no longer makes any move or no visible effort to respond. Most of his words don't even make it through the fog surrounding her. At times she senses him turning to look at her, moving his mouth, disturbing the air with his sounds, but the part of her brain that interprets language now works only on an intermittent basis. So only occasionally does she understand something he says.

She drifts in and out of comprehension, in and out of herself sitting in the car. When she is there she hears him, his velvet voice covering the edges of her consciousness. When she is not she is anywhere and everywhere, lost in the ocean of memories that beat against her, threatening to pull her down.

For a moment out of reality she floats in the past. She is once again walking down that dark basement corridor for the first time, knocking on the door to the X-Files office, hoping her nervousness doesn't show. Feeling the swell of curiosity and excitement, the cusp of something new and important she's going to reach despite the dimness and distance of this dark hole in the Hoover Building.

Mulder's voice, reedlike and God -- the sound of it so achingly familiar to her in the seashell echo of memory. But can she recall the first words they ever exchanged? What had he said? Something like -- "Nobody here but the FBI's -- "

" -- gone, New York -- gone, Philly -- gone, every fucking city in the world now -- gone, I'll bet." Krycek glances over to see her reaction, but of course there is none. She stares out the window, lets short-term memory file away his words.

In the middle of a field, all of a sudden, she sees something. A farmhouse and a pale metal silo, breaking the waves. She sits up straighter. Krycek notices the movement. Sees what she sees.

"We're here already," he says. "Guess I drove a little faster than I planned." And why not, with the roads empty?

He slows the car down, then turns off right into the grass, not even bothering to look for a driveway. They drive straight in, invading the plains she has been staring at all day.

The grass here is tall and brown. Some of it brushes against the car, making her draw back. Her mind transforms it into reaching strands, something alien, foreign -- trying to grasp at her. She shivers.

The buildings loom, thrusting up out of the field as they draw nearer. Except for the ghost town where they got gas that afternoon, the farmhouse and the silo are the only signs of civilization they have seen all day.

But the buildings also have the same desolate, deserted feel of the Texas motel from last night. They had woken this morning to find it empty, unstaffed. Krycek had said -- casting his gaze around the lobby with its absent clerk and interrupted feel, the TV at the desk tuned to news coverage of Colonization -- "Everyone's gone to ground, gone home. Hiding with family and valuables. Either that or they're already succumbing to infection." His face was blank, betraying neither worry nor concern. "The Syndicate predicted this."

So they had packed and left without bothering to search for clerks or cleaners, skipping town with about $50 less on Krycek's fake credit card.

Or rather, Krycek had packed their belongings, while Scully stared at the television.

Eight hours later, in the waning sunlight of late afternoon, she is still staring.

Krycek stops the car in front of the farmhouse, and the cessation of movement jars her back into reality, Dana Scully pushed without grace into the present. He looks at her, unbuckling his seat belt. "Are you going to get out now, or are we going to have problems again?"

Her mind struggles, recognizing his question, not knowing the answer. What is he even talking about? "Wh-what?"

His eyes are green, searching her face, and remind her of seaweed, floating on the ocean. "Never mind. Welcome back to the real world."

He cuts off any further response by getting out of the car, and not knowing what else to do, she gets out of her side as well. As he walks up to the farmhouse, his head swivels, taking in their surroundings and possible hidden dangers.

But still everything has that empty, lonely feel to it. The only movements are their own and the grass under the wind.

He pulls his gun anyway, held pointing to the sky in his right grip, and walks up the porch steps to the front door. Coming up close behind him, she sees that it is not latched and swings open easily under the pull of his plastic hand.

She does as told, turning away from the house and its gaping mouth of a door. She shuffles back across the porch and descends the steps, stepping back out into the yard.

The house is a large, rambling two-story affair, and to the back right side of it the silo rises in a modest metal tower. Probably used to store products of the farm -- anything from wheat to corn to hay -- she muses, unable to recall much about agriculture.

The trunk of the car is warm, and the heat suffuses through her body as she sits, facing the plains. The last of the sun is setting to the west, disappearing behind the waving grass, leaving everything in a wash of purple dusk.

God, I'd love a cigarette comes a thought, unbidden, surprising. It stays with her, as she waits for Krycek to come out -- the inexplicable urge to drag a deep breath of the sweet burnt taste, to expel it in a cloud and watch it disappear into the encroaching twilight. Once upon a time she spent a summer or two like that, sneaking off with the other kids in base housing and smoking in the woods, in backyards when adults weren't at home. The feel of the air on her skin now is the same as it was then, despite the fact that this is the Mid-West and not near the coast at sea level.

And if only she could feel the same air in her throat and lungs she might be transported back, back to those days when she had no other worry except for her parents finding out what she was doing.

Tired of watching the house, she leans over, resting her head on her knees. And just then a breeze catches her hair, making it cover her face, so that she smells herself. Her unwashed hair and body, the clothes perhaps several days old.

She sits up straight and frowns, lifts her arms and takes a whiff on purpose. Runs her hands along her scalp and the skin of her face. Then rubs her fingertips together, feeling the oil that makes them slick.

What the hell, Dana? she asks herself. What is going on with you? She pictures herself at the motel, staring in shock at the TV. Had she forgotten to take a shower then?

Somehow the question is too confusing to answer. After a moment she loses interest, raising her head again to breathe the wind from the plains and the coming night.

When the third star has already blinked into the sky, Krycek strolls out from behind the corner of the house, gun tucked into the front of his jeans. "All clear," he tells her. "There's no one here." A note of -- what? confusion? frustration? -- slips into his voice before he regains control, makes it into the same deep toneless velvet she's become so familiar with during her time with him. "I checked the silo too. But there's plenty of supplies. So we'll stay here for the night, decide what the plan is for tomorrow."

Without waiting for her to respond, he walks to the back of the car and opens the trunk, lifts out his bags with his right hand and starts carrying them to the house. Their weight pulls him to the side, shortens the stride that is usually long and muscular.

Tomorrow. What the plan is. Jesus, what if tomorrow doesn't even come? She gets her own bags out of the trunk, slams the door shut with a *thunk!* that makes a satisfying interruption to the quiet. Krycek has already gone up the porch and been swallowed by the house again. She moves at a more leisured pace, looking up at the stars beginning to peek through the blackening sky. Tomorrow, they will disappear again in the bright new daylight. And what will the sun shine down on then?

Alex had waited a few minutes after Marita and the smoker pulled away before hiking back up to the top of the bridge, turning towards Philadelphia. He had barely noticed the city's skyline, how the electric lights lightened the sky. All he knew was the rhythm of his feet and the occasional car passing. His thoughts were buzzing, angry and confused.

It made no sense. Why? Why Dana Scully, and why did he have to be the one to do it? And now of all times, with Colonization most likely to be accelerated because of what Mulder had stumbled upon.

He had entered the city, seeing it through the eyes of memory. A lifetime ago, he'd run through these streets, stealing anything from cars to guns to drugs -- witnessing more urban nightmares in real and living color than any teenager had a right to. Than any teenager should be cursed to.

One night, he'd seen a man killed in an alley, stabbed in the back of the neck. Only it wasn't a man. It couldn't have been, the way it had disintegrated into green ooze before his eyes. Another man stood nearby and watched it happen, dressed in a dark suit.

The killer bent and pulled the knife out with a rough yank, only it wasn't a knife, either. It was a retractable metal spike, and when the man looked up and saw Alex hovering in the shadows, it disappeared with a sound like death hissing.

With his other hand, the man pulled out a gun, one type of weapon Alex recognized better than his own reflection. He ran, and the men chased him.

He knew the streets, knew his weapon and his own body. He knew the stakes of his flight from the gun the man carried. He took cover in another alley as a deadly calm coldness slipped over his senses. He dived behind a dumpster, heard gunfire open up as the men pounded into the alley behind him.

Crouched in his hiding place, he drew a bead on the man in front, the one with the strange knife. His aim was true, despite the moving target -- Alex had had more than enough practice at this sort of warfare already.

The lead man dropped, and the other darted to the side of the alley, hiding in the shadows. Gunfire flared from his position -- the second man must have a gun, as well. Alex fired back, forcing the panic away, feeling only the pull of the trigger and his weapon's recoil. The shocks drove deep into the muscles of his arm, spreading a warm and painful tightness along his bicep and below his elbow.

And fuck, now he was running out of ammo. Only three rounds left. He hunkered down, waiting as the shooting ceased.

Silence filled the alley for a few moments. Alex's nerves were strung tight and high. His breathing was raspy and shallow. He swallowed, trying to pierce the darkness with his eyes, searching for movement.

There! A motion, just before another gunshot rang out. The bullet pinged against the corner of the dumpster, just above his head. He took aim where the shadow had moved and fired, and a body slumped to the ground.

In the rush of adrenaline his finger had squeezed the trigger twice more before he could stop himself, and then his gun gave off nothing more than an empty clicking.

He was the only thing that moved in the alley as he slipped from his hiding place. He put his gun back in his belt and went to the killer's body, bending over it with a boy's curiosity. Alex, at his age, had already made close acquaintances with death -- enough to realize the futility of guilt -- but never had he met it in such a thunder and lightning fashion.

The man with the metal spike had died clutching it. Alex took the weapon from his hand, balancing the weight, the strange heaviness in the handle. There was a button. He pressed it, jumping back when the spike hissed out. He pressed the button again, and it retracted.

He bent back over the body, making a quick search of the pockets. Nothing valuable. No wallet or ID. He straightened and backed a few steps away, ready to leave.

A soft sound nearby -- a match striking -- jerked him around. Someone else was walking up the alley towards him. Lighting a cigarette. Another man in a suit, older and thin.

"You're lucky they're human, and not something else," the man called, gesturing at the bodies with the cigarette. He drew closer.

Quick as lightning, Alex raised his gun, aiming at the man. Fuck! Last two rounds wasted! Should have taken the other guy's gun! He glanced around the alley. If the other man was armed as well, he might pull his own gun, and then he might figure out that Alex himself had exhausted his rounds. And he was cornered; there was no way out of the alley except the one blocked by the smoking man.

The man's words registered suddenly, just as he began coming forward again. Alex called out, "Don't move. Whaddoyou mean something else?"

Alex scowled, hefting the metal spike in one hand and the gun in the other. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"But I think you do," the older man said. He had not stopped, only slowed his pace. "I watched you, watching them."

Alex tensed as the man came near enough that he could smell the cigarette smoke. "Stay where you are, fucker. Don't think I won't do you just like I did these guys." He gestured with his gun.

The old man spread his hands, showing he was unarmed except for the cigarette. "But that's another thing we should talk about. Somehow, you managed to kill two of my men."

Alex glanced past the man. If the guy thought his gun was loaded, he could just walk right out of the alley --

But suddenly, the darkness was torn apart by car headlights. A dark sedan had pulled into the alley behind the smoker. Alex was blinded by the brightness.

He heard the car door open. Someone scrambled out, and then a deep male voice said, "Drop the gun."

Alex could see nothing but the light. His breath came in pants, panicked and short. Kill him, kill that smoking fucker NOW Alex! his mind screamed, and something animal and unreasonable clawed its way out of him.

He raised the metal spike in his hand, thumb mashing the button so that it unsheathed itself, and rushed forward.

When it entered, the bullet pushed his shoulder -- already weak from the shootout before -- back with a white hot pain. The force of it flung him down, and as he fell he realized what had happened. He landed on his ass with a grunt and flopped onto his back.

Someone pinned his wrists above his head -- fuck! my shoulder! -- and yanked the gun and the metal spike from his hands. Then the smoker knelt carefully beside him on his other side, filling his vision. The headlights illuminated him from behind, so that his face was shadowed.

"There are no rounds left in this gun," the deep voice said from behind the smoker.

"Well, so he's a decent bluffer as well as a good marksman." The scent of cigarette smoke filled Alex's nostrils, burning the air he breathed. "Now then," the smoker continued. His voice filtered through the sound of Alex's pounding blood. "I think we've taken care of any foolish impulses in the future. Why don't you get in the car?"

"Think, boy. You came out on top with my men, but you've got the short end of the stick now. You didn't watch your back, and now I've got better plans for you."

Again, the chuckle, husky and melodious. "Get up. Get in the car." The foot on his wrist lifted, and the two men backed away from him.

Wincing against the pain that screamed in his shoulder, Alex stood. There was a man a few feet away pointing a gun at him, holding Alex's weapon in his other hand. He was huge, suited as well, and his face bulged beneath light brown hair.

That fucker shot me, Alex thought, realizing he could feel blood soaking his clothes. He felt lightheaded, dizzy with the blood loss. He'd be unconscious soon, he knew.

The car's back door was open and Alex crawled in. The smoker followed, pitching his cigarette. The inside light turned on and illuminated the caverns of his face.

"Don't worry about the gunshot wound. That can be taken care of soon and you'll be as good as new," the smoker said. "What's your name, boy?" His tone was completely expectant of an answer.

The driver's door slammed shut, and Alex felt the rumble of the car starting, the painful bumps that jarred him as it backed out of the alley.

"Alexei," he muttered, sullen. The waves of fire in his shoulder tried to pull him down, down into darkness.

He swam through the haze in his head, searching for the memory. It had been so long, and he was so tired all of a sudden. "Kritschniskaya," he whispered. He looked down at his arm in the dim car light, looking at the dark wetness. That's my blood. Mine and it should be inside me, ME, not outside on my clothes. That's wrong, the wrong place. His eyelids drooped and he felt himself slipping.

"Alexei Kritschniskaya." The old man nodded, studying him as he fainted, head lolling against the car seat. The coppery smell of the boy's blood filled the car, and he cracked the tinted window down a bit. "You're young yet," he said to the unconscious form. "But you'll get more than enough growing up with me."

There is food in the farmhouse, canned soup and vegetables stocked in the pantry. But the rest of the house doesn't look like a house at all; there is no sign that it served as a home to anyone. On the walls there are no decorations, no curtains at the windows, no personal furniture of any type. Every room, whether the dining room or the master bedroom, has been stocked with bunk beds, as many as can fit with space left to maneuver. The only exceptions are the kitchen and the bathrooms, and one large room off the back hallway, which has been equipped with chairs and desks.

Walking through the house, counting the beds, Scully estimates that the place could hold over fifty people. Yet, she thinks, standing in the strange room with the chairs and desk, where are they?

She whirls, sees him standing just inside the doorway, looking around with a strange blank expression. She realizes she must have spoken aloud.

"This house was prepared for emergencies," he says. "In case the Syndicate had to leave headquarters in the cities, go underground, so to speak." He pauses. "And there was also the need for a place to live after Colonization, because the deal was that they got to be hybridized and kept alive, separate from the rest of the human race."

She holds silent, not interrupting him despite the questions bubbling. He's revealing to her now information she and Mulder spent years searching for, but what good does it do? The truth at the end of their quest can no longer serve as protection or defense, because the truth has shown its monstrous face before they ever found it. Arrived from the sky to break the earth before she had even really believed. And now, now -- the truth can be used only as a lens to look at the past.

But she shivers anyway, at the thought of what could have been -- this house serving as a haven from the Colonizers, a haven for those who had sacrificed their own humanity.

"We must be the first people to actually use this place. It doesn't look like anyone's been here."

She lets a question escape her, phrased in the form of a statement. "But you were expecting that someone would be."

Who? she wants to ask. Weren't they all burned to death? What aren't you telling me?

But of course, the answer is that there are volumes he isn't telling her, all of it hidden behind his emotionless facade. There are cracks in the mask, but they are only moments where she catches glimpses that add nothing, really, to her whole picture of him.

Another question, general and nonspecific, but not enough to get past his wall. "What are we going to do?"

Nothing to do then but follow him to the kitchen, where she watches as he sets up pots on the gas stove, picks out cans of beef vegetable soup and yellow corn. She stands in the doorway watching, studying the movements of Alex Krycek. Was it only a week ago that she had thought him so far removed and foreign to her, an entity of evil she didn't dare come near except with a gun in her hand, with Mulder beside her?

Again, the thought of Mulder has to be wrapped and hidden, like a jagged piece of glass.

Now, observing Krycek attempt to open the cans with one hand, observing the way his shoulders fill his dark collared shirt, the muscular stance of his legs…. It no longer brings that sense of distance, those questions she used to ask herself at the start of their long journey -- What are you doing, Dana? Why are you with this man? How can you even share the same space?

He doesn't even bother to voice a reply, simply shaking his head. He has been using his prosthesis to hold the can of corn in one place, while he operates a can opener with his right hand, but as soon as he manages to puncture the top it slips away and falls off the counter, hitting the floor. A spray of white juice shoots out with the force of impact, splattering the floor and his pants.

"Fuck!" The expletive is a thunderclap in her ears, making her wince. He has not often gotten angry in her presence, and she is not afraid of him when he does, but what it signifies to her is a loss of control. She has to fight the urge to close her eyes, to deny the event.

He throws the can opener down on the counter with a crash, sending it skidding onto the stove and knocking the pots off of the burners.

"Fuck!" he shouts again amid the noise, "fuck, fuck! Where the fuck are they? Where the fuck!"

It's that pharmaceutical company in Atlanta all over again, the one they broke into after Skyland Mountain. She might as well be standing in the bowels of the building once more, watching Krycek stomp around the lab, destroying everything in his path. "Where the fuck are they?" he kept shouting. "What the fuck did that bastard do with them?" Every malevolent muscle unleashed in a storm of fury.

They had broken into the company because Krycek had said it was one of the centers of experimentation on the alien DNA. The samples and documentation were supposedly all there, the lab located in an underground section. Once they had the raw materials, he told her, she could use them to manufacture Mulder's cure. She had swallowed enough of her distrust and disbelief to follow him as they slinked past the cameras he had disabled, through the security doors he had decoded.

But in the end, of course, there was nothing to be found, no evidence of the kind he had promised. The only lab notebooks they found had recorded routine experiments on chemicals she recognized as components of cold medicines, and she wasn't surprised, wasn't angry or indignant, even. The years with Mulder had immunized her to the fury of disappearing evidence. She had believed Krycek, enough at least to follow him, but the tangible results of her belief were the same as they had always been since joining the X-Files.

That time, she had let his fury run its course, had not stepped in to interfere. She had simply stood there and let him destroy, understanding his anger only on its surface. And really not caring for his frustration, but concerned only that they had not made any progress for Mulder.

Now, in this strange kitchen in this strange house, in this terrible place where Mulder doesn't live anymore, she is again witness to his anger. His back is turned to her as he punches his fist into the kitchen cupboards, lifts pots and hurls them away.

But instead of standing aside, she takes a step forward, moving herself into the vortex of his rage. She reaches out, places her hand on his right shoulder.

His arm, raised and ready to throw another can to the floor, stills at her touch. Beneath her palm she can feel the muscles, hot and tense. Silence now in the kitchen, broken only by his heavy breathing. The scent of his sweat and the stench of her own body makes her nostrils flare.

Finally his arm drops, making her hand fall away as he turns to face her. His expression surprises her. It is not a blank mask but an open door, showing her a despair and a…a yearning she hadn't thought possible for him to possess.

They stand close enough now to breathe the same air. She meets the emotions newly revealed in his eyes with her own calm gaze, as if the life he exposes now weren't something raw and bare and immediate. They remain locked in their stares until his breathing is as slow and quiet as hers. Until she can't remember any other eye color but green, deep furious green.

And then he breaks the moment, shouldering past her and out of the kitchen. The warmth of his body brushes against her for the briefest of moments, but still it is a physical engulfing of her senses compared to the feather lightness of her hand on his shoulder.

There were other things besides Skinner's micro-organisms that he'd raided from the Consortium labs. When he first gained access to them he'd occasionally just pick things up at random. It was impossible to tell what might be useful in the future, even things like unmarked videotapes. The one he'd stolen from the DC lab turned out to be a routine surveillance on Mulder and Scully. It was something he thought a strange coincidence to find, considering all of the other things that had probably been preserved on the Syndicate's home video.

Back in his apartment after the meeting with the smoking man, he put the tape in. It had been quite some time since he'd even seen Dana Scully, either in person or on film. In the video, she and Mulder were sitting in the bright window of a diner at night, conversing over the table. There was no sound, and the camera watched from across a semi-busy street, but the picture was clear and in color. He sat in the dark of his apartment, nestled like a viper in the shadows of his temporary home, and stared at the TV.

Mulder leans toward her, gesturing. She shakes her head, red hair brushed sleekly back from her face. Her arm is extended across the table's surface, clad in the usual business suit, and she taps her hand in rhythm with the movement of her lips. Beneath the table her crossed leg is visible swinging lightly, just missing Mulder's knee.

At the sight of her, Alex shifted. It seemed a lifetime ago when he was supposed to have killed her the first time. That week he had traveled up and down the East Coast, meeting murder in every city where he stopped -- Bill Mulder among them. His nerves were strung tight, suspending him between the dark nights, naked and visible to the other killers prowling. They were there, slinking about. Some of them were the same brand of killer he was, bound to the Syndicate and sent out to hunt because of the digital tape Fox Mulder had stumbled upon. On a fateful evening he'd let one of those others pull the trigger, and it turned out it was the wrong woman he shot.

Cardinale had muttered, as they got into the car and drove off, "Pretty. Pretty woman. Too bad she's dead."

He hadn't answered, swimming in the nausea of fear. That red hair, surrounding a stranger's face.

But by the morning, he was over it. She wasn't the first innocent who had fallen during this long war, certainly not even the first he might share responsibility for. And soon, he had other things to worry about, like the consequences of a car bomb explosion.

He realized, watching his TV as she and Mulder got up from their table, that she'd probably escaped death as many times as himself, perhaps even more. Those were the consequences of pursuing the truth in high visibility. If you hid yourself well enough, as in his case, some wouldn't even realize anyone was there.

Mulder walks just behind her, hand positioned at the small of her back. As always, he was at once more familiar and more intriguing to Alex than the serious rigidity of Dana Scully, but his business was not with Mulder anymore.

The other man makes his goodbyes to her just outside the door of the diner, crowding her space even though his hand has fallen away and he has stopped touching her. Her face is luminous, turned up towards his.

They separate finally, and Scully walks to her car. Just as she unlocks the door, her head jerks up -- probably something catching her attention -- and the camera zooms in on her face.

Alex paused the tape there, so that her expression filled the TV screen. Her eyes were blue, so blue, directed over the roof of her car, still unaware of the surveillance. He got off of his couch and knelt in front of the television so that he could touch the screen, running his fingers over the arch of her brow, her curving lip. Except for that time, years ago when she was centuries more innocent, when she came to help Mulder with Duane Barry, this was the closest he had ever seen her.

The last survivor with a chip. He knew what that meant. He knew what was done to her, what was put into her body and what was taken out. Some of it he'd known about as it happened, on the other side of the wall from him when he'd hitched a ride on her train car from DC to Pennsylvania. So he knew, more or less, what evidence she embodied.

And because of that, he knew also that he couldn't kill her. As a result of her abduction, she was too important, too useful. The cigarette smoking man must have recognized this. In a flash Alex understood. He had been ordered to kill Dana Scully because her death would be a blow to both the Colonizers and the Rebels. The smoker, in his newfound status as the last member of the old Consortium, was trying to remove this human contribution to their struggles.

Alex didn't pretend to understand why. The time he had spent with the old men in the Syndicate -- and the smoker especially -- had taught him how to figure out their motives, but where those motives came from, he never knew.

To keep Dana Scully alive, then, to be the one who had her in his possession, that would be the ultimate stacking of cards in his favor. The smoking man was wrong to want her dead. Alex turned the tape off and began to move around his apartment, packing his belongings. All of a sudden, his plans had changed.

Listening to her clean the mess in the kitchen and start a soup on the stove, he remembers when it all went to hell, those plans of his. That night, waiting with her in the clearing on top of Skyland Mountain.

She hadn't known, she'd thought they were waiting for a man to bring them a cure for Mulder, she hadn't known that it was really a Rebel that was supposed to meet them. Alex had decided, not really wanting Colonization to take place, that he would offer her to the Rebels to take Cassandra Spender's place. One of them was supposed to meet them at the abduction site on Skyland Mountain, to test her and ensure that she was what Alex claimed. It would then let the rest of Its race know the deal and contact Alex later. They would let him know if they could use her to win their struggle against the Colonizers.

After only an hour of waiting she had started to get restless. She had not betrayed much nervousness at being here again, this place that had started all of her troubles, but now some of her reserve had slipped. He couldn't see much of her in the dark, but he could hear her pacing back and forth. He had told her there would be a ship, that it was supposed to rendezvous with a member of the Consortium and that the cure for Mulder would be exchanged between them. That they would take it from the human receiver as soon as the ship was gone.

Lies, all lies. He still wasn't sure how much she believed him, but it was enough. She was there waiting with him, wasn't she?

But where the hell was the Rebel? Something was wrong, and he knew it with a piercing dread that cut his very bones. They couldn't stay here much longer if it was a trap. Fifteen minutes, he decided, and looked at his watch, trying to suppress his anxiety.

"Think you might have gotten your flight schedules mixed up?" Scully asked then, and her sarcasm bit hard enough that he almost broke his silence, opening his mouth to answer.

That was when it happened -- the gunshots erupting out of the night, cutting his words off. He lunged and pushed Scully away towards the trees, feeling a bullet shoot past his ear in a hot rush.

He moved fast, but she was smaller and less sure, and he knocked into her, tripping them both up. They landed on the ground in a painful tangle. "Fuck!" he swore, yanking out his own gun. He maneuvered them behind a tree and covered her body with his.

As far as he could tell, she barely batted an eyelash. "Guess this wasn't the ship you were expecting," she said, pulling out her own gun. "Now who should I point this at?"

"Just not me," he told her. He'd decided in the end to let her carry her weapon, knowing it would make her feel safer with him, knowing that if the Rebel ship showed up it would render her weapon useless anyway. Now he was glad she had it.

Alex rolled off her, listening to the sudden quiet that had fallen. The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention. But everything was cloaked in the black of night. His eyes searched the darkness but he couldn't see a damn thing.

His mind raced, touching on all the points he needed. The shooter was probably hiding in the trees surrounding the clearing, probably using infrared or night-vision goggles.

He had a pair of night-vision goggles in his knapsack, but his only arm was occupied already with his weapon. How the hell would he get the goggles out of the bag and on his head without dropping his gun? He listened to Scully's accidental sounds, her fumbling in the leaves and pine needles as she sat up and crouched behind him, knew he didn't have a choice. Fuck..

"Scully," he said. Her movement stopped. He made his words curt. "Take my knapsack off my back. Feel around inside for a pair of goggles."

He could tell she hesitated, surprised at himself that he could sense her taking a breath and disturbing the air as she reached out to find him. He felt her hand on his face even before it happened, was already jerking away even as she withdrew it.

"Sorry," she muttered, and the hand drifted down, pulling the straps of his knapsack from his shoulders. She eased it first down his prosthesis -- he could tell, somehow, that she gritted her teeth -- then down his gun arm, careful not to disturb his grip.

She searched through the contents for a minute, in the process probably touching everything he'd hoped she'd never find, before pulling out the goggles. "Now what?" she asked.

He debated a moment, but really there was no question. One arm or not, he still considered himself the real gunman of the two of them. "Put them on me," he said.

Her hands were cool, gentle as they settled the straps of the goggles around his head, adjusted them over his eyes. He could see her face in a wash of electric green now, her eyes wide and focused somewhere to the left of him as she worked. There was no fear in her expression. Only determination.

"Okay, that's good enough," he said, and got into a crouch, peering around the trunk of the tree. "Stay down," he told her.

The goggles illuminated the clearing in shades of light and darker green. He scanned the trees on the other side, but nothing moved except the wind in the leaves. Still his sense of danger remained, almost palpable.

"Do you see anything?" she whispered, and her breath was a tropical heat wave in his ear.

There! Something pale, peeking out through low bushes. His choice of action was quick, decision snapped out with a survivor's logic. His finger tightened on the trigger, and he fired a shot off at the target.

Movement now on the other side, and he shot again toward it, lightning fast. A body stumbled into view, face eclipsed by another pair of goggles. He shot one more time and watched it fall.

He watched the clearing for another few minutes, but there was no more to be seen other than the stirring leaves. "Let's go," he said to Scully, and rose.

They moved around the perimeter of the trees, dodging behind them to keep out of the open. Sometimes he heard her cursing, as she stumbled over things he saw and avoided with his night-vision. But he didn't stop to help, only slowing their pace once they neared the area where the shooter had fallen.

He allowed himself a moment of surprise when he removed the goggles from the body with his gun grip. Her torso was punctured with three bullet wounds -- he must have hit her each time.

Marita's face was pale green from the goggles he wore, the blood that trickled from her mouth a thick stream. Her eyes fluttered. He crouched low and pushed his face near hers so she could tell it was he despite the goggles.

Marita rolled her eyes toward him, and pain slashed across her gaunt face. "Learned from the best…didn't I?" Her accent still butchered the Russian, just as he remembered.

She blinked, and when she opened her eyes again they were blank, unseeing. "You're dead, Alex," she whispered. "No vaccine…. You're dead," she repeated, her words fading.

Through the cloud of his fury, he heard Scully nearby, demanding he use English. He ignored her, still speaking Russian, mind racing on Marita's words. "What do you mean, no vaccine? What are you talking about?"

Something like a smile twisted her face, and maybe it was pain, maybe amusement. She wheezed out her broken accent between struggled gasps for breath. "Sorry…about the boy -- Dmitri with black oil. All those tests…they did to me. Tunguska…vaccine wears off. Syndic…made…new version. Med base…two four one." She choked on the last word.

But she didn't speak, and her eyes remained closed. Scully brushed past him, blind fingers feeling for a pulse.

"Marita!" he shouted. "Answer me, bitch." He pinned her shoulder with his gun, anger making him illogical. Her goggles swung from his hand and hit her breast.

"Stop it!" Scully pushed his hand away, her voice like dry leaves. "She's dead."

He looked at her, the transformation of her face to pale green in his night-goggles. "So do I," he said. He stood, looking back at the clearing. The sense of danger was still there in muted form, as if hovering just past his vision. They had to leave, quickly. He looked at Scully, the bargaining chip for a deal that Marita had destroyed. There were questions in her eyes, questions he knew he couldn't answer. Not to her.

Shock flooded his head -- the vaccine wears off? it wears off? -- but he pushed it down. He had to think. Where the hell was the medical base? It could be any of two hundred and fifty cities around the US that the Consortium had entrenched themselves in. His mind raced. The closest one to Skyland Mountain was…Atlanta.

He shoved the goggles into Scully's hands and pulled her to her feet. "Let's go." He waited until she'd fitted them over her eyes and adjusted the tightness, then pushed her ahead. "Run," he told her, "back downhill to the car." She nodded -- still no fear in that hard expression, and he followed her through the trees.