TITLE: 'The Beginning And The End' (27/?)
AUTHOR: XSketch (XSketch@hotmail.com)
WEBSITE: http://thesketchfiles.bravehost.com
CATEGORY: MSR. S, A, DRR, Myth-Arc, Post-'The Truth', CD,
Work-In-Progress
SPOILERS: The whole series
RATING: R (though most parts are PG-13)
DISCLAIMER: See part 1 for all disclaimers.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I never gave up with this story but my
ability to write over the past couple years apparently
went on vacation and got lost :( I'm trying to get back
into the swing of things, but for whatever reason I'm
really struggling to string my sentences together as
descriptively and fluidly as I would like, so please
bear with me! Hugs to everyone who has followed this in
the past and is reading it now!
---------------------------------------------------
NAVAL BASE SAN DIEGO
THREE WEEKS EARLIER
3:02AM
As thick fog blanketed the harbor, the captain's tired
eyes lowered away from the telescope to once again
consider the telegram that had just been passed to him.
Since the 'scientists' (or whatever they really were)
had taken over the docked ship and two hangars at the
isolated far western end of his base, he'd had a bad
feeling about what they might be up to. If this
information was correct, his concerns would be
confirmed, but at least he would hopefully be able to
finally do something to get rid of the shady
infiltrators.
A loud sigh pushed past the naval officer's lips before
he reluctantly turned to the young man that had
delivered him the unsettling news.
"Let Professor Kaplan know I'm on my way over to see
him," he instructed, pocketing the piece of paper.
The petty officer nodded and shuffled awkwardly on the
spot. He was new to the base, as green as they came...
and had quickly read the telegram before entering the
office when his curiosity had beaten down all moral
sensibility. He could be in serious trouble for even
thinking about opening a top secret message, but the
cryptic note had clearly unsettled the captain, and he
needed to know if he should get his cowardly ass out of
here ASAP or at least phone his girlfriend to let her
know he wouldn't be coming home ever again.
"Captain? ...Is--"
"Just do it, now!"
With a salute, the younger man hurriedly left to follow
his orders.
Captain Aron Antwile sighed once again as he turned back
to glare out at the unseasonable-yet-aptly-ominous thick
fog and reached for his jacket.
He had to put an end to this, and now, before anymore of
his men were sacrificed.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
TRUCKEE, CALIFORNIA
PRESENT DAY
7:47AM PST
All three figures were slumbering when Kimmy's laptop
came to life and let out a loud, ear-piercing alarm.
Yves was first to rouse, looking up in puzzlement at the
flashing 'Match Found' alert on the monitor as she
brushed back her dishevelled hair.
"What the--"
"I got it!" Kimmy exclaimed, snapping awake and jumping
into action - hitting several keys until the blaring
sound stopped and a map popped up on his screen.
Still confused, Harlow moved to sit in the seat next to
him. "What is 'it'?"
"I got a code sent to me by a fellow hacker, while you
were sleeping, to help crack the firewall that was
stopping us from tracing where those calls were coming
from," the spectacled geek explained. Several more key
strokes made the image filling the screen zoom in to
display a more detailed road map of the South San Diego
area. "I set it up to hunt down the number's origin
before I put my head down."
Frowning, Yves ventured, "Are you saying you know who
made those calls?"
The map focused in even further on the bay area of
National City.
"I don't, but *it* does!"
A beacon flashed to indicate the San Diego Naval
Station, and then zoomed in even more to show a group of
buildings. Another window popped up on the screen and
countless lines of text appeared as the program hunted
down its target. Both Kimmy and Yves watched intently
as digits for an extension number started to appear, but
their attention was wrenched away when Jimmy suddenly
sat bolt upright in the drivers' seat, hit the horn with
his elbow, and cried out at the top of his voice "Guys!"
The computer finished its work.
There was a moment of stillness and indecision as all
three glanced at each other. Bond had only just woken
up, yet the expression on his face gave the impression
he knew exactly what they were about to discover.
Harlow stared at him, once again contemplating their
conversation from yesterday as she bit down on her lip,
before she slowly looked back at the monitor...and
snatched in a breath.
"That's..." Kimmy paused, gulped, and slowly stood up
from his seat. "...Isn't that Dana Scully's brother?
The one they're meeting today?"
Harlow was about to answer, when suddenly a cellphone
trilled to life from the front of the VW bus.
~~~~~
"Dammit! You need to get a hold of Monica or Mulder and
Scully *now*!"
John Doggett ran through the airport as fast as he
could, barely able to hear his own cavalcade of thoughts
above the din of the meandering travellers around him as
he barked his desperate plea into the phone.
At the other end of the connection, a still-shocked Yves
Adele Harlow coughed to clear her throat. "Agent
Doggett?"
His gate was in sight. There was no time for
explanations. Twenty minutes of fruitlessly trying to
contact Monica had his nerves on edge, and all he could
hear was Matheson telling him over and over again that
Bill Scully was part of the supersoldier program.
"They can't meet up!"
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
THREE WEEKS EARLIER
3:17AM
Antwile wiped a sweaty palm down his tired face as he
waited impatiently outside the large keypad-locked iron
door that separated him from one of Professor Kaplan's
laboratories, and then thumped its cold, rustic surface
yet again. He'd been standing here for five minutes
already, and the older man's complete disrespect for
authority ('Top Secret Access and Immunity' or not) had
worn through on the captain's nerves. Respecting that
these people were here at the behest of his superiors
and, in turn - or at least so he'd been led to believe -
by high-ranking government officials, was one thing, but
losing complete control over the flow of information
about what was happening at his base was another that he
could no longer tolerate.
He pulled the telegram out of his pocket and read the
message for the tenth time.
'EXPERIMENTS ON PERSONNEL AT ALL
MILITARY BASES UNDERWAY. STOP.
WORKING TO ALTER AND DESTROY
MANKIND. STOP. MUST BE STOPPED.
STOP.'
It sounded like a headline from some unknown, back-alley
tabloid, but Antwile's gut and growing concern over what
was going on behind these closed doors made him trust
the unknown source of the information...
...That and the fact that a number of ensigns and seamen
of differing rates under his command had disappeared
without warning over the past fortnight, only to
reappear days later with completely different
behavioural attitudes.
Another hard thump on the door as the captain slipped
the crumpled paper back out of sight.
"Professor Kaplan, open up now!"
There was the sound of a heavy deadbolt sliding back,
the keypad on the wall turned green, and then the heavy
door slowly creaked open to reveal a scrawny
thirtysomething-year-old straightening his lab coat.
"The professor is busy right now," the tech-head
informed, struggling to make eye-contact with the
officer. "You'll have to come back another time."
He started to push the door shut again, but that was the
final straw for Antwile and he put his full weight
behind his shoulder to force his way into the laboratory.
"Captain, you can't--"
The younger man's voice trailed off as Antwile made his
way through the inner-sanctum, ignoring the rows of
tables, cabinets and equipment, and headed purposefully
toward the tall, balding man stood with hands clasped
behind his back in front of a large screen at the far
end of the room.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
PRESENT DAY
Glancing up and out through the windshield to look at
the early morning sun, Monica Reyes hesitantly unbuckled
her seatbelt. She couldn't put her finger on it, but
despite Gibson's silence - resulting in no warning
signals - something felt awry. She'd once had a talk
with Dana about trusting her feelings, but too much was
at stake here, and if she made the wrong call,
everything would fall through for nothing.
'If I receive any word or sense that something's wrong,
I'll get you out of there straight away.'
Her promise to Maggie echoed in her head, and she
quickly turned to the boy next to her.
"They're wondering why we're just sat here," he almost
robotically remarked before she had chance to ask her
question.
Forty minutes on the road with nothing to distract him
from the myriad of panicked thoughts emanating from her
had been torturous enough, but his primary concern was
the fact that he could only read the minds of three of
the people in the minivan ahead of them. If Praise was
honest, he hadn't been feeling quite right since their
visit to the motel in Minnesota - residual fragments of
the visions that had bombarded him there refusing to
fade away completely - but this wasn't about him...
Something was blocking his attempts to read Bill's
thoughts, and that had never happened before, not even
with the supersoldiers. This was the nugget of
information he knew Reyes needed to pull the plug on the
meeting, but there was a level of curiosity - no matter
how dangerous - that needed to be answered; if this was
a new technique that had been mastered, they had to be
prepared.
And so he said nothing.
"I..." Reyes hesitated and cast another glance out at
the rising sun before looking over at the family
stepping out of the other parked vehicle. They still
had over an hour to go before they needed to be at
Mendocino, but it had been arranged that they would stop
at a McDonalds near the beach for breakfast before
completing the trek. For that reason, the federal agent
was even more concerned - feeling anxiety at the gardens
was one thing, but this unease felt immediate, as if
something was about to come around the corner.
A young couple walked out of the nearby fast food
restaurant, sharing a joke as they picked at their
meals, and Reyes turned her attention on them - smiling
when the woman (who looked like a much younger version
of herself) reached to steal some of her partner's fries
until he playfully swatted her hand away. Thoughts of
John quickly seeped into her mind and Monica had to look
away - cursing herself as she felt a tear slip out from
the corner of her left eye. This was a simple escort
mission - if they couldn't pull this off they had no
hope for the coming battle that had to be fought - but
after the encounters with Billy Miles and Shannon, she
couldn't stop worrying about her partner's safety.
Suddenly she understood a little of what Dana must have
gone through when Mulder had gone into hiding.
There was the sound of tapping on glass, and Reyes
opened her eyes to see Matthew at her side of the car
shortly before he opened the door.
"Can we go?" he smiled, impatiently bouncing on the spot.
Monica returned his smile and was about to reply when
the boy's father barked out his name, calling him away.
Before he could follow the order, though, she quickly
leaned forward and excitedly replied so he only could
hear, "Let's go get that Happy Meal."
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
There were no words - or, at least, certainly not enough
of them - to describe the panicked commotion that
wracked the VW bus parked on the outskirts of Truckee,
California as Jimmy Bond switched on the ignition and
threw the vehicle into gear, Kimmy reached for a
disposable cellphone from the crate to his left and
tapped in the number for Mulder and Scully, and Yves
tried to calm John Doggett on the phone she was still
clutching in her lightly-trembling hand. The newly
discovered information had shocked all of them, but
Harlow was taking it the hardest as she felt responsible
- she should have been on top of their game and realised
when they'd forgotten to check on AD Bryant's phone
activity much sooner...
"We're trying to contact them now," she shakily informed
the FBI agent, glaring at Bill Scully's file on the
computer screen. "How did you find out?"
"It's a long story that I'll fill you in on later,"
Doggett replied. There was a pause and the sound of a
distant woman's voice thanking him before he continued,
"...Let's just say I met a guy who knew these things but
decided to just feed us cryptic clues for a while."
Despondent sigh. "Look, I'm just boarding my flight out
of here. Please, just..." He faltered, feeling
helpless. He'd only had little over eight hours of
broken sleep since leaving Monica and Gibson in St. Paul
three days ago. The culmination of fatigue, stress and
worry was starting to take its inevitable toll, and as
his free hand reached out to press against the wall of
the jet bridge, he felt his knees begin to buckle under
his weight.
'It seems as if these developments are new because
you've only just started exposing some of the results
like the ship in Baltimore and your 'changed' buddies
from the Corps,' Matheson had explained last night as
they'd sat in the lounge of his large colonial home,
'but, in fact, these experiments have been in progress
for decades. Trying to create infant supersoldiers is
just a new procedure they're trying to add to their
arsenal. Why wait to merge the virus with a fully-grown
human's DNA when you can have your drones working on
your side from day one?'
John shook his head to clear the memory as he tried to
regain his equilibrium. Just a few more steps and he
could rest on the plane before landing in San Diego - he
couldn't hold anything up.
"We're on it," Harlow assured down the phone line,
unaware of Doggett's dizzy spell. She was about to say
more when the computer in front of her unexpectedly
beeped to life and the map that had zoned in on the SD
Naval Base reappeared on the monitor.
Throwing aside the phone that had had no luck connecting
through to Mulder, Kimmy wheeled his office chair up
against the desk and tapped the keyboard a few times.
"Somebody's calling Bryant again from that number," he
exhaled, clicking several more things until another
window opened on the system.
Yves forwarded that piece of information to the federal
agent and then held the phone up as two voices filtered
through the laptop's speakers.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
NAVAL BASE SAN DIEGO
THREE WEEKS EARLIER
"I don't care what Admiral Swanson has to say - you tell
me now what you're doing here or I'll move Hell and high
water to get this operation shut down!"
Professor John Kaplan briefly glanced over his shoulder
at the approaching officer and then turned back to the
woman on the large wall screen.
"I will have to get back to you later, Dean Douglas.
Rest assured the next phase has been set in motion and
our subject should be making contact soon."
Cami Douglas gave a nod and then the video link went
dead.
Kaplan, frustrated by the sudden intrusion, whirled on
his heel and shoved both hands into the pockets of his
white lab coat. He spied two uniformed men moving in to
interject, but nodded his head to make them back off.
He'd heard the stories about what had happened to
Nordlinger on the east coast last spring and Wesker in
Florida at Thanksgiving after they'd been asked too many
questions, so he had no desire to go down the same fatal
path, but at the same time he wanted to keep the peace
as much as possible. If that meant putting this
imbecile at ease, even for the shortest of times, so be
it.
"Your breach in protocol is rather unnerving, Captain,"
the professor calmly remarked. "I was told that you'd
been given orders to never interfere with my work."
For the first time since entering the room, Antwile
looked around at the large array of paraphernalia -
primarily of a surgical nature - surrounding them. When
he spotted a bloodied bonesaw resting on a gurney in a
far corner, he felt a chill run down his spine.
"Not if your work involves using my sailors as test
subjects."
A sick smile lifted the professor's cheeks at that.
"What if my work involved people other than your
sailors? Maybe their families, perhaps?" he quizzed.
Antwile frowned, confused and caught off-guard.
"W-what?"
"You don't have the clearance to know any details of my
work, Captain, so by even telling you that I have
breached my contract with my employers," Kaplan informed
offhandedly, taking a step toward the younger man. "But
let's just say, just because I'm working on a military
base doesn't mean I'm necessarily using military
personnel as subjects." With that the professor
shrugged and turned away.
There was a pause as Antwile thought about the telegram,
the officers that had sporadically disappeared, the day
the base had been taken over... He looked again at the
bloody utensils and tried once, twice, to find his voice
before lunging forward and grabbing the older man's
shoulder to turn him around. "What the *hell* are you
doing here?" he almost screamed in Kaplan's face, unable
to control his frustration and anger anymore.
Yet again the uniformed men moved forward to interject,
but this time Kaplan didn't stop them.
"If you don't tell me now, this place will be swarming
with press tomorrow," the captain pressed, struggling to
fight off the arms that were pulling him back.
This had gone on long enough. Kaplan raised a hand and
stepped away as the tall guards manhandled the officer
toward the lab's exit. He'd played along for as long as
he could without setting off alarms in the heads of
those that were watching him and now he needed to get
back to work. Antwile's protests could be heard until
the secure entrance to the laboratory slammed shut, at
which point a figure silently stepped out from the
shadows - familiar perfume alerting the professor to the
person's presence.
"Was that a good enough show for you?" he snapped,
taking off his spectacles and wiping them on the edge of
his white coat.
The newcomer shook her head, refusing to turn her
attention away from the door that Antwile had just been
pulled through for several more seconds. "He knows too
much--"
Kaplan snorted dismissively, "He's a curious moron - he
knows nothing."
"You'd be surprised how much a curious mind can uncover.
He needs to be stopped."
"Nobody will listen to his baseless ramblings - why not
just ignore him?"
"Either he needs to be stopped..." The woman paused and
turned to glare at the professor, flicking back a strand
of blonde hair that had settled over her brow. "...Or
the man that didn't send him away needs to be disposed
of."
The rubbing of cotton on glass came to an abrupt stop.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
PRESENT DAY
The sound of rhythmic beeping floated into Jeffrey
Spender's consciousness as he felt himself slowly
beginning to rouse. Unfamiliar noises were next to
filter through, and as his eyes experimentally opened a
fraction and eventually focused on the wall to his left,
he knew he wasn't at home or the Van De Kamps' ranch.
What he didn't know was where he actually was or how
he'd gotten there.
Tired eyelids blinked several times. A fog filled with
pain and numbing drugs was making it difficult to fully
regain control of his senses, and it took several
minutes for it to even register that there was someone
else in the room. He slowly turned his head to the
right, blinked several more times, and then stared in
confusion at the stubby, spectacled man sat in the
nearby seat.
"W-who..." Searing pain rasped down Spender's throat as
the shaky word passed his lips. He trailed off and was
grateful when the stranger looked up to acknowledge him.
"Oh, thank God! You had us worried there!" Chuck Burks
exhaled in relief, leaning forward.
It had been a tense sixteen hours - most of which had
been spent on the road in a bid to get as far away from
Douglas, Wyoming as possible. After crossing the Kansas
state line, the university professor had deemed it safe
enough to finally stop and get the medical help Spender
had urgently needed, but the doctors at Logan County
Hospital (after failing to conceal their disgust at the
ex-FBI agent's scarring) had been a little uncertain
about giving a definite prognosis - unsure if existing
medical issues would cause complications. Not helping
that was the fact that not only did Burks know
absolutely nothing about the man he'd been sent to help,
but even if he did, he'd had to be as secretive as
possible to avoid detection by 'Them'.
Spender swallowed and then tried again, "Wh-who..."
"Oh!" Burks exclaimed, realising his error. "Of course!
I'm Dr Charles Burks..." He paused and cast a cautious
glance at the door behind him before leaning in even
further and finishing in a hushed tone, "We have mutual
friends and acquaintances..." His voice trailed off, as
if that was enough to clue Spender in on what he was
talking about.
Ironically, it was.
Spender let his eyes slip shut again as he tried to
recap the events that had led him to be here. A
searing, painful muscle spasm in his back instantly
triggered a flow of memories from the struggle at the
farm, and tears burned at the back of his eyelids as
William's wails echoed over and over in his ears.
Helpless...So very helpless...
Adrenaline pumping through every cell of his body.
'Your fight is futile, and you know it.'
The supersoldier's leering face comes into view and
Jeffrey's eyes snap open, his head sharply turning to
face Burks again.
"W-wher--" He snatched in a ragged breath and cough and
tried again. "Where's t-t-the b-boy?"
Yet again the spectacled man gave a cursory glance over
his shoulder (leaving the ex-FBI agent with little doubt
that this man was definitely one of Mulder's friends)
before quietly but assuredly replying, "He's absolutely
fine... I don't want to say too much here, but I left
him with a nearby relative before coming here." Chuck
paused and considered the panicked, stricken expression
that refused to leave the scarred man's face. He hated
being vague, especially when the man in the bed was
desperately clinging to every morsel of information
being given, but if there was one thing that had been
imbedded into the professor since just before Doggett
and Reyes had visited him at the university, it was that
the walls have ears and eyes, and no one could really be
trusted - not even at a hospital.
There was a still moment when it seemed Spender had
accepted this explanation, but then he started to fidget
and pull the IV tube from his arm. Burks quickly got up
to stop him, but the younger man pulled away.
"H-have to...get...out o-o-of here," Spender implored,
desperately staring into Burks' eyes. "N-n-not safe..."
Chuck shook his head. "The doctor said you could be
here for the rest of the week."
"No!" Crying out at the pain that ripped through his
body as he shakily swung his legs out over the edge of
the bed, Jeffrey refused to be deterred. After what
seemed like a lifetime of searching for the baby, and
then almost losing his life whilst trying to rescue him
from the supersoldiers' grasp, Spender didn't want
William out of his sight again until he was handed back
to his parents. Sure, that plan completely contradicted
what he had insinuated to Scully when he'd encountered
her a few months ago, but he'd come to learn that the
Scully-Mulder family were far more essential and a much
bigger key to the salvation of the planet than he ever
could have conceived possible. If there was to be any
hope, they needed to all be together, and that - aside
from trying to repent for his misguided actions in the
past - was why he'd strove so hard in his search,
despite Gibson's doubts. "M-must get h-him!"
Uncertainty creased the professor's brow. He could see
the desperation and urgency in the younger man's eyes,
but logic told him to make sure they waited until
Spender was fit to be back on the road.
"P-please..."
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
"You have no idea of the shit that I've been putting up
with here, so please say you have good news!"
Doggett couldn't help but let a smug grin slightly lift
his cheeks at the sound of Bryant's desperate,
frustrated voice over the intercepted phone line. There
was something rewarding in knowing that his initial
distaste of the 'man' on their first encounter with him
at the Bureau had not been unfounded.
There was the sound of papers being rifled through at
the other end, and then a man the agent didn't recognise
snapped, "*You've* been through shit? From what I
heard, you're living on easy street considering a good
number of your friends were recently 'disposed' of. I,
on the other hand, am constantly under supervision! As
it is Kaplan has just been replaced by some new chick,
and she has seriously honed skills."
Also listening in to the conversation, Kimmy, Yves and
Jimmy looked at each other with raised eyebrows.
Bryant let out a deep sigh. "You really want to get
into this childish human debate of who's worse off?
Look, I just need to know our agent is ready to
manoeuvre and make contact with the secondary targets."
"That would be an affirmative - T-minus seventy minutes,
give or take a few minutes for traffic and queuing for
admission."
Kimmy sharply looked at his digital watch and then
quickly moved into action, trying to dial Monica Reyes'
cellphone - hoping he had more luck than Doggett had had.
"Good," the false assistant director breathed, wiping a
hand across his brow. "That smoking bastard has been
watching over me and waiting for me to fail so that he
can order my extermination - it'll be nice to have one
up over him after he screwed up the collection of the
child yesterday."
The blood ran out of Doggett's head and he found himself
struggling to remain standing again. There was the
distant sound of a flight attendant informing him that
if he didn't get on the plane now it would take off
without him, but he didn't have enough energy left to
answer or, even, really care. He knew Spender had been
searching fruitlessly for William...Had the shamed FBI
agent led the supersoldiers right to him? There was the
up side that it sounded as if any attack had been
thwarted, but surely that meant the kid was now on their
enemies' radar?
The call between Peter Bryant and the unknown lab
official at the San Diego naval base came to an abrupt
end and Yves turned her attention back to the phone in
her hand while Jimmy put his foot down on the VW's
accelerator pedal a little harder and Kimmy, who had
given up unsuccessfully trying to contact Reyes,
redialled Mulder's number. She couldn't even begin to
comprehend how much bigger this whole plan seemed to be.
They had started out with a simple 'set up a meeting for
Scully and her mom' request, and that had turned into,
essentially, a rescue mission from forces that appeared
to know even more than they had ever imagined.
"Does Mrs Scully have a phone?" Jimmy suddenly asked,
glancing up at the reflection of his friends in the
windshield mirror.
Kimmy froze in mid-dial and looked up at the driver with
a mixture of frustration and admiration - annoyed at
himself that he hadn't even considered that. He
cancelled the number he'd been tapping in and diverted
his attention back to the computer to look up Margaret
Scully's cellphone details.
Back at Dulles airport, the flight attendant that had
been trying to get Doggett's attention had called for
back-up. Now a tall, balding security guard was tugging
at the agent's arm.
"Sir, if you don't move, I'm gonna have to detain you,"
the older man informed.
"Agent Doggett?" Yves called down the phone line upon
hearing the stranger's order. "Agent Doggett, you need
to get to San Diego *now*!"
So tired...
If he could just rest...
Everything was falling apart...What did it matter if he
just closed his eyes for a minute?
"Agent Doggett!"
"Sir, this is your last warning."
'Get Gibson as well as yourself safe. I'll catch you up.'
John's eyes snapped back to attention as his words to
Monica echoed in his memory. This wasn't just about
Maggie or even Mulder and Scully - Reyes and Gibson were
in that motorcade as well...If the shit hit the fan,
there would be even more lives on the line. He stood
upright - wavering slightly as he tried to regain his
balance - and turned to stare at the puzzled security
guard.
"I'm a federal agent," he informed, using his free hand
to quickly flash his badge. "I have to be on this plane."
The older man stared back at him sceptically for a
minute before taking a step back and giving a slight nod
of his head. The flight attendant gave a relieved sigh
and outstretched a hand to gesture toward the plane's
entrance.
"I'm on my way," Doggett growled down the phone before
pocketing it and boarding the flight.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
RANDALL BURKS RESIDENCE
WINONA, KANSAS
The soft sound of happy gurgles were filling the air as
Walter Skinner shimmered into existence to watch over
William, who was contentedly staring at the large
stuffed animal in his hands. The assistant director
sighed and felt the pride swell within him at how much
the child had grown during his time away.
"Looks like his old man, doesn't he?" Krycek's voice
chuckled as he, too, came into view.
Sensing the younger man's presence, William immediately
looked up and frowned at him.
"His temperament as well. Poor kid."
Skinner turned to see Alex casually resting against the
nearby doorframe, arms crossed over his chest. For
goodness sake, how much longer would he have to put up
with his company? Hadn't he suffered enough already?
William continued to stare at Alex, seemingly trying to
drive the unwanted ghost away with his thoughts.
"What do you want now, Krycek?" the former assistant
director barked, stepping in-between the two.
The younger man smiled enigmatically. "You just refuse
to get it, don't you? I'm here to help."
Without warning, the baby on the floor started to
sniffle and threw his toy on the floor, as if he was
about to throw a tantrum. Skinner quickly turned on his
heel and lowered to comfort him.
"Hey, Will, what's up? It's okay, your Uncle Walt's
here," he cooed, reaching for the discarded teddy.
Krycek quietly watched - the smug grin never leaving his
face.
"It's okay - you're gonna see your parents soon," Walter
continued to console, devastated but not surprised when
his hands went straight through the object he'd been
trying to pick up without grasping any purchase on the
fabric. Time was slipping away, and at that instant he
realised he didn't have much longer to go before he
would be absolutely helpless and useless.
"You might wanna check this out before you go making
promises like that," Krycek remarked, gesturing over his
shoulder at the kitchen.
Slowly, cautiously, Skinner stood back up and moved into
the next room, where Chuck Burks' cousin was stood with
a cordless phone pressed to his ear.
"Yeah, he stopped by, just as you predicted," Randall
drawled into the receiver, not noticing his two
observers as he idly turned a business card over and
over in his free hand. "The kid's here now."
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TO BE CONTINUED...