Title: One Thought Author: probe Classification: Halloween challenge fic - post invasion? Disclaimer: I'm just a fan with an over-active imagination. Please don't sue me! (18 months earlier) February 1999 El Rico Airbase West Virginia I had wrapped the alien fetus in newspaper before stuffing it into my backpack - the truth was that the thing scared the fuck out of me. I didn't want it defrosting on my watch, couldn't risk anyone else, of any species, getting pissed off at me this late in the game. I slung it over one shoulder and bolted out of that place - the faceless rebels were on my tail and we were all screwed - deal off and no survivors if they got that frozen freakshow before I did. I had the company car's speedometer buried 50 miles over the limit until I reached the hanger doors at El Rico. If the cops tried to stop me, I was fully intending to mow them down with some of the company arsenal I had piled in the company backseat. Old Spender took the fetus off my hands as soon as I got there, it looked like he didn't bother letting Jeffrey in on the big exodus from earth. I shrugged it off. That was his business. The hanger was damn cold and the looks I was getting from my fellow space bound passengers was equally icy. Diana made it a point to avoid eye contact - to let me know she was avoiding eye contact - like staring me down and then turning away as if she didn't recognize me. I guess she wanted it obvious that she now considered herself far above the assignments we'd shared in Europe, especially those parts where we'd fucked. She was part of the elite inner circle now, the nameless, and she expected me to act accordingly. Bitch. Casandra Spender got wheeled into the mess. I guess we were all ready to go, me, and a bunch of people who would just as soon kill me as let me die. I have to admit it, eternity was already looking a little tarnished before Mulder and Scully showed up. Skinner was behind them - head shiny and sweat dripping down the sides of his face. Mulder nodded at Diana and got the privilege of a return nod. Mulder was about to charge my direction and I have no idea what he might have said, maybe he just wanted to hit me one last time before his close encounters wet-dream was realized. God forbid I should hit him back and scratch that priceless alien enhanced head of his. How the hell had they gotten him here? I was wondering. Maybe Diana deserved her haughty stance by near the old boys. Mulder didn't quite make it into my face though a small hand had his arm. Scully wasn't staying. "This isn't right Mulder." Her voice was breathy and low and absolutely certain. "It's the only way to survive," Mulder told her and he sounded primed for a fight. Before anyone could blink he had his gun out and trained on his partner. This was getting interesting. "You're not going anywhere." All conversation stopped and Diana joined Mulder behind the barrel of his gun. "Agent Scully, what's the problem?" she said in her newly awarded voice of authority. See this was why it took someone like Diana, someone willing to do whatever it takes to work her way into this hanger, so damn long to get out of those vague European assignments - she just can't objectively judge her own success and failure. "He won't shoot her," I said calmly. And that was the truth, even if Scully and I were the only ones who believed it. "Put down the gun, Mulder!" and Skinner had his out too. I know the bluebloods in the room had to be wondering who the hell had stopped to let these three climb aboard. Someone behind me actually gasped, and it was all I could do not to turn and stare. Give me a break! Like there was anyone in this room was innocent of spilling blood - letting it be spilled for them. "Mulder," Scully put her hand on the gun. Her pale skin was nearly glowing in that Gray-lit cavernous room. Outside, a powerful wind rattled the entire building but the low tones of her voice were plain. "You go on," she said. "I know that you need to go on." Scully looked unafraid to face a firing squad for what she believed in. It affected me - that's all I can say. I felt something watching her give up this escape I'd prized so highly for so long -- something that I hadn't felt before. Of course I could fucking kill myself for whatever that was now - what an asshole."You need to see your sister and you need to see the truth," she told him. Diana seemed fucking relieved when Mulder lowered the gun and hung his head to put it back in its holster. He started crying. Of course. Pussy. I remember thinking - I give him a year, maybe two, without her by his side. And then I remember realizing that there was one innocent person - someone who wouldn't spill blood, climb over the corpse, just to save herself. And this is the part that continues to fuck with me. What is that? What the fuck did she do to me? Skinner had her by the lapels of her trench. "Scully, you'll die - they're all going to die..." but even Skinner knew he stood less chance than Mulder of swaying Scully's opinion. "I want to do what's right." Mulder dragged her into a bear hug. He was sobbing out loud, by then...very pathetic. Probably Skinner was crying too. Little did he know that there was no chance in hell his name had made the guest list for this cruise. Looks like he could have used some of Scully's heroism that night. What a shame. The hanger doors opened and light spilled into the room. If Scully was going to leave then it was time to go. I pried then apart, "Come with me," I told her and I actually pulled her from her trench coat because Mulder had it like a vise. Don't even ask me what I was thinking - I'd take it back if I could. I nodded Mulder towards the light. "There they are," I told him. Oh, he looked - of course he fucking looked. I mean, here they were...the answers, the truth, the missing sister! Hell, Scully would keep just a little longer. And that was it. He turned to see and I took Scully into my jacket and dragged her away - outside the hanger and outside the light to the darkness on the other side. She fucking pulled me, fucking blinded me with her fucking idealism spell and I gave up certain survival - some kind of possible comfort that might have been left to me if I'd stayed with the rest of them - the traitors. That was where I belonged!But I couldn't get over my thought - she was the only innocent and she didn't belong in that hanger with the rest of us cowards, saboteurs, murderers, science experiments. Maybe Mulder regrets that moment - turning to the light of the ship and away from her just as I regret not doing the same. But this is how we both wound up: Me, with all the hell of catastrophe, plague and invasion, fighting beside a tiny woman who I believe in but who hates my guts and him... Well, I have no idea where he ended up. ____________________________ Halloween 2000 Camp Four - Human territories Eastern Colorado? My mother had made a batch of stick figure dolls out of twigs and strips of cloth for the two of us to give away. The first group of children came by at dusk. The last group would probably pass before the stars came out. That was when the war and all its fireworks would take over as the night's entertainment. We were all so desperate to act normal - Halloween, whatever it meant before, was a human celebration, and taking part seemed interwoven with survival and every act of defiance against the Grays. It meant that we were still here. The adults in camp scrounged for something to give away and for costumes the children turned their clothes inside out, wore them backwards, switched with friends. "Trick or Treat!" they whispered outside of our little shack. We were close enough to a war front for the mandatory silence to be held until complete darkness. Whispering would be allowed this one evening. I let my mother give out the dolls. The children cradled them in their palms, "Thank you," whispered solemnly in return. Well, it wasn't food but it was the best that mom and I had to give. Anyway, I knew the couple living in the tent beside us was giving out goldfish crackers because they'd let Mom have one. Me, they didn't like very much. "Trick or Treat!" Mom held the twig dolls rolled in the hem of her shirt and I tried not to notice how thin she was, how the bones of her spine were a knotty rope beneath her t-shirt. One little dark head poked around our cardboard door. "Doctor?"-- Adam was the little boy's name. I tried not to know their names and never gave mine while we were in a camp, but I think I melted a little at the boy's almond eyes and his plump lower lip. "Yes?" "It's me, Adam Treemont. You set my arm two days ago?" he held up the newspaper and glue cast I had made him. He hadn't cried at all and I bet it hurt like hell when I had to press my fingers into his arm to feel for the break. Tough kid. "I remember," as usual my voice was far to flat for my mother and she shot me a pained look over her shoulder. Why can't you be nice to them? I ignored her. Adam dragged a tall girl into our shack. They were both red cheeked and panting from the cold. "This is my cousin. She just came through." Here is what that meant: that the girl had been cut and bled to prove she was human. It was usually a slice down one arm for the blood and one on the back of the neck for the chip, both cuts ideally made quickly and with a clean razor blade. But no such luck for Adam's cousin. Her arm had two jagged wounds that looked like they were made by a saw and on the back of her neck was a crooked smile cut some 5 inches across. "Who did this to you?" It came out shrill and she looked back, afraid, and tried to pull her arm from my grasp. The children at the door scattered. "Dana!" my mother gasped. "Look at this!" I twisted the girl's ragged arm to show my mother and the girl whimpered. "Sorry Doctor Lady! Sorry!" The girl was pleading and pulling her arm from me. Adam had his hands over my mine. "Doctor! Please, just forget it okay? Okay?" I let her go. "Sorry," just as flat as before but without the answering criticizing look from Mom. Both she and the girl were trembling I noticed. When did I become such a bully, such a bitch? I used to believe in this. I sighed. "I'll get you something for that," I told her and I went behind the curtain where my mother and I slept and where I kept all my instruments and medicines and my gun, although I hadn't had to use it once since that night I shot the train carrying Casandra and this horrible fate of this world. "You're a lucky girl, I actually have clean bandages on hand." We boiled cloth in a tea made form onions to kill bacteria and help prevent infection. After the cloth was all gone as wrapping on their heads and arms and legs and stuffed into tooth sockets and padded over swollen eyes, my mother sometimes let camp children and women dip their hands in the pot.It made me sick to watch children clamor for the pungent stuff like they had for candy or soda in the days before the war with the Grays. If I wasn't treating patients I just kept to myself. "What's your name?" I asked Adam's cousin. She whispered Cindy or Linda or Sandra...I didn't ask her to repeat it. I squeezed the onion tea over her wounds and wrapped her arm tight. Once it was clean, the neck wound didn't look so bad. "Why don't the two of you go next door and see if they have any goldfish crackers left." Ahh that perked them up...crackers. "The man you came with gave us these," said Adam and he held out a little matchbox car and what looked like a diamond engagement ring. "Really?" I smirked. The boy flicked his eyes at my half-smile with interest. I guess he thought he was on to something that might make me happy - pay me for my trouble. "He had a bunch of things - toys and rings and a harmonica." No I couldn't really smile for Adam, although I appreciated the attempt he made. God he really did remind me of...well, the eyes and the lower lip and the general dark haired lankiness of the boy... I had treated his mother and his father for respiratory infection and there was no relation. He just looked a lot like...him. And then I was certain that I wasn't going to smile. "You better get going." My mother said something nice and showed them out. I went back behind the curtain and flopped onto the mattress we shared. She enjoyed the banter, the attempt at normality but I was just too exhausted. My stomach rumbled. I closed my eyes. So, Krycek was giving children trinkets from his little tent guarding us? Probably the things he found using a metal detector the last camp had paid us with. I had started to tell them to forget it; we didn't need anything metal, we needed food. But Kycek never turns down a payment of any kind. Fine. Let him lug it through the apocalypse with him. Whatever. Children whispered at the door again and I could hear my mother scooping up the dolls but I stayed on the mattress with my eyes shut. So much for Halloween. At least this year I wasn't in a muddy trench waiting to be killed, listening to a recording of Diana Fowley's voice telling me, "People! The aliens mean us no harm - they want peace, just like us!" The idiots poking their heads out in hope were killed immediately of course. You'd be amazed how long a simple trick like that worked - people want to believe. Maybe I dozed off because the trick or treaters were gone. The cracks in the roof showed the sky glowing red and orange with explosion. I pulled the curtain aside to find that my mother had left the shack. Great, just great. I opened the door to find Krycek huddled in conversation with some other men. No sign of Mom. I hung by the door and waited for Krycek to finish. This camp had wanted my services and I suppose the men respected that my mother and I were with a man but you just can't be to careful. Better not to draw attention to myself - get anyone started thinking of me as anything other than the doctor. The men stayed their distance and Krycek strode back over to me. The cold didn't bother him as much as it bothered me. I was rubbing my hands together and breathing into them for warmth. He hadn't even zipped his battered black leather jacket. "Where's my mother?" I asked him. "She said she wanted to go for a walk since the silence is lifted for the night." The aliens had some kind of weaponry that sought targets by the variance in natural occurring sounds. A waterfall crashing against rocks or a thunderstorm might make a nearby human voice imperceptible to a human ear, but the aliens could zero in on what wasn't belonging to a place no matter how loud the surrounding natural noise. The weapons were specific and deadly - the Grays wanted the planet mostly untouched and the people eradicated. "Do they want you to fight?" sometimes this was part of the deal. Krycek would have to join with the other men in camp to sabotage alien outpost machinery or shoot missiles. "No, they want you actually." I raised an eyebrow. After over a year together I wasn't too worried about what that might mean. "For what?" I asked him. "Hey, it's some equipment they have. I told them you were a scientist and used to be FBI," he grinned at me. The rat. "What the fuck did you do that for?" Because, guess what - there was no FBI - but there were plenty of people ready to blame them and the CIA and DOD for the shit we all lived in now. Military was the only large organized presence still functioning in the world- rag tag, scattered, doomed to failure. "Scully, just do it. Okay?" He leaned in on me - that was bothering me lately - Krycek always hovering and leaning breathing into my hair to whisper in my ear. "Why should I?" "Because..." the flash of his white teeth again, "I think they found a message from Mulder." Okay so I'd done more than kick up dirt in search of Halloween treats. I'd snooped around - wanted to see what was here. That was the great thing about the metal detector; it was maybe the perfect alibi in this fucked up world we were all dying in. Someone comes by - hey you - what the hell are you doing over there? I give him a handful of buttons or a broken army knife or a piece of jewelry and he lets me go on my way. I mean I wasn't taking food and the thing just lit up instead of beeping so it was all good. Scully just wasn't one for seeing the potential in things. I'd gotten us in this camp because it was close to a front and it was poor, dirty and over-crowded. Oh and the crime was supposed to bad here - lots of killings lately - murders. Lots of suspicion that the camp had been infiltrated by shape-shifters so lots of cutting and bleeding. I was desperate because the good camps were doing her no good. Scully was losing her faith. We were losing. Well, that was just to be expected. We were going to lose, we were always going to lose, but it hadn't mattered all that much. I mean - I was doing what was right. I was following someone I could trust to lead me towards this...rightness...this... moral ground that I had never stood on before. Laugh all you want; I had found atonement. It was something I was crazy with - obsessed - I guess. And now the bitch was going to fuck the whole thing up! She'd lost it - whatever made her give up life at El Rico and had led me like a damn apostle behind her. Scully - I guess I pictured her as the last human on earth - the Grays circling in on her like a pack of wolves - her saint like death. She made me... believe... and I wanted, no, I needed that back before they got me, killed me. I was going to die clean. This Camp Four - might have been just the shit hole to perk up my floundering messiah, but despite all their attractive flaws, and hey...it was all true and worse...but the place did have one hell of a stealth operation going on against the Grays. They had stolen all kinds of shit - tanks, instruments that they couldn't work and weapons (they wanted Scully to take a look at the weapons - fuck saving human lives for killing more Grays - a position I could respect.) They'd gotten their hands on some of the noise busters - those things that can pick up a baby's cry in a hailstorm and blast the thing from its mother's arms. Amazing shit. They had even identified an alien base that they could hear with the thing but - you guessed it - the mother-fucking Grays don't make a peep. Occasionally they picked up really distant sounding human voices but they were snatches of conversation - nothing. I could listen if I wanted. Yeah. Sure. Why not? I thought I might look around for stuff to steal while I did. The thing is like a VR suit these clamp on armbands and silver mittens, no thumb obviously, oh and I just have the one arm that is good for the thing. Surprise! No on ehad noticed until that moment. Then the helmet clamps on behind your ears. These giant smoked bulbs lower over where a Gray would have eyes - "don't even bother looking in those - we can't adapt them to humans" -- fine by me, right? We were in the same bunker the camp hid most of it's food stores and I was trying to make out what they had in the pilfered clone tanks - popcorn? Rice? Was there any chance I could get in here alone. Then I heard the stuff they had been listening to - recorded silence - like a blank tape or an empty record and then a muffled word or two... "about"? or maybe "again"? And then more silence....then the word "please" definitely "please" louder and some kind of moaning or singing... Okay so I'm thinking about how they'd blindfolded me on the way down here but I'd counted the steps, the turns, hell they didn't know who they were dealing with -- I would need something to carry the rice in if I stole it out of the tank.... And then I heard it - just a little more clear than the other crap - "TO THEE old cause! Thou peerless passionate, good cause, thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea, Deathless throughout ages, races, lands after a strange sad war..." Son of a bitch! It was Fox Mulder quoting from Leaves of Grass. That poor, pathetic piece of shit. If that was him, begging, moaning, "please" - and I could see it now - I had one guess what he was longing for, what he wanted... "Gentlemen," I announced, and what a joke because we were all filthy, hungry, and longing to kill, "I think I can help you work this thing" - I yanked my hand from the listening contraption, gestured at the stock piles of alien bounty, "help you work all this shit and even get you inside that base if you wanted" I had them. NOW, They weren't just shooting the shit, letting the one-armed metal detector freak try out their cool outer space gadget. Well, actually, I think they wanted to cut me again, check my blood, cut my neck to double check for the chip. "The doctor I'm with?" some of them nodded, "she used to be a scientist with the FBI, was trained with listening equipment, high tech stuff. She was one of the ones who tried to stop the invasion." "No one tried to stop it," someone said from the dirty little crowd of men. "Some did - this doctor did. She can help." We needed to get a message to that base is what we needed to do - let Mulder know that Scully was here. Then start making our demands. "Electronic Voice Phenomenon," I whispered to Krycek once our hoods were off and we stood in the bunker. "What the fuck is that?" he shot back. One of Camp Four's finest came forward and ended any chance of private conversation with Krycek. "He says you might know how to work some of this." I was ushered to a long row of items they had removed from various raids on alien outposts. I didn't feel like explaining EVP to Krycek anyway - one of the less interesting cases the X-File division never solved. 'Spirits in the room caught on tape' is gist of it. Alien invasion had made me a believer in all Mulder's theories, even the ones where I once thought it was perfectly clear I had proved him wrong. Mulder was dead and some remnant of his spirit was left in the air and audible only to electronic recording devices ...well I didn't really commit his entire theory to memory...remember, it was a boring case. I strolled the line of objects. The big finale to this display was going to be the listening weapon, I wasn't excited. Mulder was dead. I knew it - the way that I knew once that he wasn't. I'd heard him, his voice talking in my dreams, he was hurt and begging for me. I really heard him. It nearly drove me crazy, I fought so had to get to him, to defeat the Grays and save him. I forgot about right or wrong and my stand in the hanger at El Rico - Mulder was suffering and he needed me. I needed to save him. Forget the world. But then he came to me, a vision, a ghostly form of light in the night, a presence - "Scully?" maybe I heard it, maybe I didn't. "Yes? Yes?" I shouted to the glowing orb, but it was like he couldn't hear me. And then I realized that I was the one who couldn't hear him. The begging and calling had stopped. He must be dead, I realized. And here I was...in the world, without Mulder, still and doing what was right, what I thought was right but without him. I shook my head. Whatever Krycek had planned here wasn't going to work - Mulder wasn't at that base...he couldn't be. Oh look. I lifted the silver wand and gave it to the man behind me. "This will kill the shape shifters - plunge it in the back of their necks." The gruff flannelled men circling me seemed impressed. "You must be very precise." That advice hadn't worked for me but... I shrugged and silently wished them luck. I swear I was going to fucking kill that bitch before she picked up the shape shifter weapon and made the needle pop out. Damn, that was slick. Totally won them over. Of course Scully won't work some kind of bullshit on the stuff she doesn't recognize. Would it kill her to just grab something and pretend that it emits poison Gray killing gas or phones up the rebel aliens, or fuck - helps you shit out the alien embryo...anything? But no, Scully's completely legit, doesn't lie, doesn't even stretch the truth. God damn, if she wasn't my ticket to the big El Rico airbase hanger of the afterlife I would seriously fucking kill her. So after the alien equipment dim sum party, we got rounded back to the silver helmet of the listening weapon. They snapped all the shit on her. She gets both arm bands and silver mittens and I wondered about her reaction in there - was it going to be stronger or was she going to be okay because I had only had the one armband - maybe gotten half the effect. The smoked bulbs lowered down - only they lowered way down - like they suddenly were automated. The guy fitting her up said so too. "I think this thing is working better." Scully gasped and straightened up like she could really see something. "What did you do to it?" All the Camp Four tough guys were jostling the technician. "I don't know! I don't think I did anything to it!" "Well you must have done something because you made it work," I told him, but I didn't really think that was it. Scully had the chip. It was dangerous, right? She kept this slice in her skin just below it and mostly no one checked to make another slice. She was the doctor and they were busy making whatever deal with us - board and food for doctoring and maybe fighting, usually and she was already cut so... "I see the base," she said. We all shut up. "Tanks," she was whispering like we were outside and it was daylight. "Grays....it's a big base," her voice is all screwy, hoarse and cracking. "there isn't much noise but I can hear some of the people from El Rico...." "What's she talking about?" someone grabbed me by my prosthetic arm. "I don't know," I told him, yanked my arm free. Scully was crying, tears dripping down from under the silver mask and onto her jean jacket. "I see Mulder," she said. "Who the fuck is Mulder?" someone grumbled behind me. Scully sniffed, started to laugh... "and I think he sees me." But it wasn't the right word, he wasn't seeing me but, I think, feeling me. I remembered the balled light that I somehow known was him - his presence. He seemed aware of me watching him in that same way. He had been waiting for me, eyes closed, kneeling in darkness, waiting for me to see him. When the helmet came of I was still reeling from what I had experienced. It had been like moving around inside the base and not just watching it or listening in. "Does this mean they see us as well as hear us?" a man said over my head but not to me. Already someone else was pulling the weapon from my hands and arms and putting it on. "Well you have the weapon trained on the base, don't you?" I asked him. All the men looked down at me. "I don't think that they see us until after they pinpoint our location by sound." I wiped at my tears with the palm of my hand, tried to be as matter of fact about that as possible. "It isn't working again." The newly suited up man said. "I think my partner influenced it somehow," I said but I was suddenly very aware of the chip. Mulder seemed like he was waiting for me to find him using the helmet, but not like he was powering it or controlling it. "Your partner?" that voice sounded like he had found new lynching material. "She was an FBI agent, I told you, her FBI partner was kidnapped by the aliens," Krycek was going to try and spin this and I needed to let him, trust him. This was his talent after all and my mother and I had lived by it for all these months since the invasion. "The Grays don't kidnap, they kill," the lyncher talking again. "This FBI agent was special - the government - his family let the government experiment on him - he can talk to them," Krycek was waiting between the information he gave them to see how they swallowed it. "Then he's a traitor," someone growled. "NO he isn't a traitor," I said. "What my friend says is true. The Grays wanted to see how his brain worked. They wanted what to take away our successes at understanding them and they have him there now - watching him, studying him." Krycek looked at me with astonishment but thank God the Camp Four men didn't notice. They were actually considering all that I had said. So I lied a little? Krycek lies all the time and I don't get all wiggy over it. "Johanssen, Vaughn!" it came as a tinny, echoing page in the concrete bunker. "Get up here! There's been another one!" There was a scramble to the north end of the room where a metal door led to a dark stairway to the camp grounds. It seemed that Krycek and I weren't going to be blindfolded on the way out. "Another what?" I asked the sweating bearded man trudging the stairs beside me. "Jack the Ripper," he grunted. "What?" Krycek breathing in my ear again, "They've been having murders here - nasty ones." "This is a great place you picked Krycek." He passed me on the stairs, watching me until a missile flair lit all of us in gold and he found whatever he was looking for in my face. "I think it is," he said thoughtful. God, I think he was about to touch me, stroke his one living hand down my cheek. But the shock on my face must have scared him off. I got the bright grin instead. "Yeah, definitely a great place," he said before loping away in his casual, shit eating way. His good hand was in a pocket and his face tilted upward toward the exploding sky, he looked like it was the most pleasant evening he could imagine to be out for a stroll. I shook my head and started back towards the shack. I hoped my mother was back because I really wanted to apologize to her - what had gotten into me these months? I felt my old certainty again. There was hope - I would die if I had to but I would have hope. In the shack my mother was pacing. "Dana!" she pulled me close to her, pulled my face into her collarbone the way she had when I was younger. "Dana - something evil is in this camp. We need to leave here." I pulled away, "What are you talking about?" I wasn't going to leave now...not now. "A murderer - killing women - children," she was hoarse but still shrill. Her walk tonight. Oh God. Jack the Ripper. "Mom, one of the camp leaders said something about murders happening here. You have to be careful." I could leave the theatrical tag that the bearded man on the stairs had offered until daylight. Her hands were like ice holding my cheeks, "I've felt it Dana, when we first came here and tonight on my walk... places the temperature drops, the sadness...women were killed here," she let go of my cheeks and covered her eyes. Her rosary was looped around her wrist into a tight bracelet. "I can feel these things, Dana. I try not to, just like you, but I can..." her voice broke and she was crying. "It's such a terrible gift God's given us." "Lets get you in bed, Mom." She had been through so much, crossing the country with me and a man I wouldn't let her speak to. I had acted so terrible tonight after she worked to make the little dolls, all she wanted was a little happiness, a little normality. I led her to the mattress and tucked our clothes and coats over her. We had one wool blanket and I folded it double and put that on her to. I doubted I would sleep tonight. "Dana?" "I'm right here Mom." "Alex isn't a bad man, is he?" I stiffened. I hadn't told her, of course, about Krycek and his part in Melissa's death. "It's better if you just let me talk to him, stay away from him, Mom, trust me." I couldn't tell her that it made my stomach roll to think of her making conversation with Krycek, to think of the secret I was keeping from her. Her eyes were closed and she was drifting off. She looked so old to me right then, the weight loss and the constant exposure to weather and grief had left her face wrinkled and scarred. I brought my knees to my chin and watched her sleep, listened to the sky crackle overhead, flexed my toes inside my boots to keep them warm. One thought, under my breast, beat time with my heart, He's alive. He's alive. He's alive. He's alive...