Extreme Measures (1/?)

Extreme Measures (1/?)

by Sagittarius325

Title: Extreme Measures - Chapter One
Author: Sagittarius325
Email: Sagittarius325@hotmail.com
Part: 1 of ?
Season: Five - Post The End/Pre Fight the Future
Spoilers: Deep Throat, Tooms, Ascension, Apocrypha, Little Green Men, Memento Mori, Pine Bluff Variant, Folie a Deux, Patient X, The Red and The Black, The End, Fight the Future, any Alex Krycek episode
Rating: NC-17 most definitely
Pairing: Mulder/other, Mulder/Krycek
Warnings: This fic depicts extremely graphic m/m interaction, rape, non-consensual sex, violence and bad language. If any of these subjects offends you, if you are underage or the laws of your country prohibit you from reading such material, then go no further!
Summary: When interests converge, the Consortium goes to extreme and horrifying lengths to destroy Mulder.
Disclaimer: The characters Mulder, Krycek, Scully, Skinner, Cancer Man, Well Manicured Man etc are the properties of CC and other fortunate people. No infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: Hey, if you've got this far and you're ok with the subject matter, then you want to read the story not my insane ramblings, so off you go...

CHAPTER ONE - Lure...
Urgent, strident tones broke through the half-sleep Fox Mulder had fallen into and he was blindly groping for his ringing cell-phone before his brain had fully registered the sound.
"Mulder," he answered, hoarsely, dragging himself to a more upright position on the leather couch, blinking dazedly as bright images from the muted TV screen flickered madly across the dark room.
"It's time." The voice that spoke in his ear was deliberate, soft and enticing. Promising much, giving nothing away.
Mulder could have told him the effort was a wasted one. The mere thought of gaining vital information in his hunt for the truth was the lure, the irresistible pull. And any chance of saving the burned out X-Files division now that it was under threat from the Justice Department was worth any price. "I'm listening," he replied, carefully.
For a week now, he had been courted by this mysterious stranger, phone calls in the middle of the night, cryptic messages left on his desk at work. Scully had even gone so far as to accuse her partner of a secret, torrid love affair. That had made Mulder smile.
He wasn't smiling now, as the man continued.
"I have what you need. You know where to meet me."
"I'll be there," Mulder promised, solemnly.
"One hour. Come alone."
Of course.
The click over the phone signalled the end of the conversation and Mulder dragged a weary hand across his face, scrubbing at the raspy beginnings of stubble peppering his chin.
For a moment, he considered calling Scully, but just as quickly discarded the idea. Not only would his partner disapprove, she would insist on accompanying him. And it wasn't really fair to call her in the middle of the night just to say 'I'm off to meet an unknown informant at some abandoned factory, where he may or may not try to kill me, but hey, try not to worry...'
She'd have his balls for breakfast. Flicking off the TV, he stumbled into the bedroom to dress. Before leaving, he carefully checked the clip on his FBI issue Sig Sauer, before strapping on his ankle holster and slipping into it his backup. The snub-nosed .38 had saved him from some pretty hairy situations in the past and he never felt entirely comfortable without it.

The drive across the city was uneventful, with only a single cop car racing down the lanes. Apparently all the good little drug dealers and hustles and other various and sundry criminals were tucked up in their respective lairs. Mulder's fingers twitched on the steering wheel as the red and blue lights of the wagon crossed his vision, a blare of sirens that rose and pitched, before discordantly fading into the background noise of a regular DC night.
Eventually, even those disappeared as Mulder drew further away from the city, his unease growing as he pulled up at his destination. A lonely street, a broken and twisted chain link fence, the requisite dark and abandoned factory setting...ah the life of a Federal Agent, he mused, wryly, attempting to banish his doubts.
Despite Scully's, and on occasion Skinner's inference that he had the survival instincts of a suicidal lemming, Mulder was not completely reckless when it came to his own safety. He never fooled himself, knowing that he could be taken down any time simply on the whim of his enemies. It was just a question of whether he considered the risk to be greater than the reward. Most times to him, it wasn't.
As he climbed out the car and tucked the Sig into the back of his jeans, Mulder judged this to be one of those times. If the Consortium wanted him dead, there were any number of ways they could do it. Gunshot, poison, stabbing...Or maybe something more subtle and insidious like cancer from passively inhaling from Morley man.
Shaking his head at his own grim humour, Mulder clambered through the chain link, wincing and cursing as his sweater snagged on a rusted piece of metal and ripped. Some days, it wasn't the constant threat of bodily harm and death that depressed him, but the wear and tear these illicit outings had on his clothes. He'd mourned the loss of more than one Armani in his day, but even the destruction of his regular wear was a grievance he could do without.
Jogging across the damp concrete, he paused and scanned the desolate grounds, searching for any sign he might have been followed, before slipping through a door and entering the crumbling plant.
Inside, the air was stale, but warmer and Mulder took a breath before casually slipping the Sig from his waistband and flicking the safety off. Streetlight from the sidewalk glinted through the shattered windows, jagged edges of glass casting crazy shadow patterns across the high walls.
Quietly crossing the short distance from the door to a concrete column, Mulder slid a glance into the deeper recesses beyond and was rewarded with movement. A lone figure slipped fluidly out of the shadows, oozing out of the night like oil separating from water. For a moment, Mulder almost anticipated familiar, husky tones, a cocky smirk set in the face of a fallen angel, but he shook off the feeling. This one hadn't the temerity. Mulder deliberately removed his finger from the trigger of his weapon where it had strayed on instinct, then began walking towards the man.
"Agent Mulder," the shadow greeted him, cool and professional.
Mulder simply nodded, using the moment to assess the man before him - white male, early to mid forties, military trained, black ops. Yep, just another faceless Man in Black disillusioned by the lies, the threats, the killings, yadda yadda.
"I have what you're looking for," the man was saying, as if Mulder hadn't heard it all before.
He was tempted to ask 'You mean you dragged me all the way out here just to give me season tickets to the Knicks?' but something told him this man would be unappreciative of the humour.
"What is it exactly that you think you have?" Mulder demanded cautiously instead.
Then stood back and waited for whatever substance would spew forth from the enigma before him. Information, of course, maybe in the form of a file or a DAT tape, offering tiny, tantalising glimpses into the secret world of the men who would be kings. Mulder had no doubt that it would be snatched away just as quickly as it had been offered, taken from him before the bigger picture could be discerned, leaving him with a scattering of misplaced, displaced jigsaw pieces that made sense only to the old men in power.
Leaving him with just another, useless slice of the puzzle held tight in one childish grip, waiting for a time that might never come when all such pieces would fit together.
The psychologist within demanded time and again for Mulder to examine this twisted need, begged to be allowed to question why he let his quest for the truth determine his path, to manipulate his actions. And in those brief moments, Mulder had only ever let himself hear the one obvious, oft spoken answer.
Samantha.
The Man in Black was holding out a file, surprisingly, satisfyingly thick, and Mulder found himself taking it without thought, eager to open up those pages and read the secrets contained therein, swiftly imprinting them on his mind before they were inevitably taken from him.
"Is this it?" he asked, not quite managing to conceal his growing excitement, the familiar thrill of having a piece of that black-lunged bastard's conspiracy in the palm of his hand.
"Read," was all his mysterious benefactor said.
Mulder tore at the bindings, as eager as a kid at Christmas. Well, as eager as a kid before his sister had been abducted and Christmas became just one more holiday that went unmarked. His long fingers opened the first page, tipping the stained papers towards the faint, broken light, eyes adjusting to make out pictures, hastily scrawled notes, a typed report down one column.
And as he read, Mulder's mind started to race. If the file was genuine, its contents truly authentic, then all what he had seen and done, all what he had experienced during his time on the X-Files could finally be validated. And not only that, the conspiracy that had foiled his every move towards the truth could be blown irrevocably wide open. He drew a sharp breath, then exhaled and looked up at his informant. "You know what this is?"
"Of course. I worked on it for seven years."
Mulder flipped through the other papers, barely registering the information that passed before his eyes. "Is it...?" He paused, not daring to voice aloud the question.
"Proof," the man offered. "And it's still out there. Waiting to be found."
His tone was strangely paternal and Mulder's head snapped up, suddenly wary. Before him stood a man no longer tormented by his demons, a man at peace... a man prepared to die. And the Man in Black smiled.
An instant before the left side of his head collapsed and the right exploded in a thin spray of dark, cerebral fluid.
Mulder dived for cover, grasping the file to his chest as an unlikely shield, bringing his gun up as he searched for a target. No follow up shot came, no high calibre, armour-piercing bullet to bring him swift, silent death. He scrambled for cover, slamming backwards into one of the pillars and crouching low on the floor.
Outside, glass crunched underfoot and Mulder's already taut-strung nerves tightened. He snapped a quick glance that way, saw two black-clad figures approaching the windows, a long rifle held casually in one of the men's grip. Spinning back to his cover, Mulder flexed his sweat-slicked fingers around his Sig, then clenched them fiercely. Perhaps Scully as backup wouldn't have been such a bad idea.
Mulder slowly, carefully rose to his feet, backing away from the windows, a vague plan of slipping unnoticed out the back forming in his mind. They knew he was in the plant and it was only a matter of time before they found him.
Something struck between his shoulder blades, a punch that sent him staggering forward, the hand gripping the file flinging out to instinctively cushion his fall. Adrenaline briefly surged, then faded abruptly, leaving Mulder to sink softly, bonelessly to his knees, slumping face first to the unyielding concrete below.
Nerveless fingers allowed the precious file to slip away, its pale contents billowing out onto a dirty, dust-laden floor, as darkness fell.

A silent trail of cigarette smoked snaked an upward curl, before dissipating into the close, musty atmosphere. Dark furnishings lent the room an oppressive air, the aura of a bygone era, a time when terrible pacts sealed were as young as the men who made them.
The three who now sat before the cold hearth were no longer young. The consequences of past choices weighed heavily across the years, counterbalanced only by the privileges enjoyed by the immoral power they had gained.
"Has Mulder seen?" the first asked, staring intently at his silent, chain-smoking colleague.
A brief flare of the cigarette butt, before the unblinking, reptilian gaze drifted over the other two men. "He has."
The second man shifted angrily, an unconscious testament to his continued support for the elimination of the troublesome Agent. "Then we have no choice. The others will..."
"...still refuse to sanction Agent Mulder," the smoking man interrupted, the faintest trace of a sneer on his lips. "They always have. But there are other methods of ensuring Mulder's silence."
"The procedure," the first agreed, "was successful. The incident at Ellens Airbase proved that. It will give us time to shut down the project."
"And begin another," the smoker noted, with inscrutable calm.
The first leaned back in his chair. "The others do not want Mulder harmed. What do you suggest?"
"We take his memory," was the cold reply. "All of it."
"The procedure has never been tested that far," the first began to protest. "Nor on someone with Agent Mulder's unusual capabilities."
"All the more reason."
"But if there were to be...complications..."
"The others could not object if Agent Mulder were to become permanently decommissioned as a result."
"Brueller has been making enquiries," the second said, suddenly, folding his hands over his ample stomach. "We would do well to keep the Dutchman compliant."
"Kill two birds with one stone," the smoking man mused, nodding. Then added, "Or one fox with two."
The first man gave a silent, heavy sigh of self-knowledge. It was concepta extremus what was being proposed. Extreme measures. He could object, could call in the others, but now was not a time for a struggle between powers. Their need for unity was too great, so a sacrifice would have to be made. And accepting the smoking man back into the fold so readily was one he already had cause to regret.
"Very well," he conceded, at last. "I agree."
The smoker rose and roughly shoved his glowing stub into the ashtray before leaving. The first man watched the last of the grey tendrils of smoke disperse and reflected that it had taken only as much time to consume a single cigarette as it had taken to seal a man's ruin.

Lights, painful and glaring, seared through burgeoning consciousness, burning through retinas to stab into the softer, fleshy matter of Mulder's brain. He emitted a low moan of protest at this rude and unpleasant awakening, helplessly flailing for a return to the numbing darkness.
"He's coming round," a voice announced from somewhere above.
The thumbs holding up Mulder's eyelids were abruptly removed and he let another groan pass his lips, this time in gratitude, allowing his eyes to close against the blinding strip lights overhead. He leaned into a pleasant tide of nothingness that swept gently over him, promising to draw him back down into the still, soothing motions of sleep.
"Then get on with it."
Abruptly, the tide turned and washed him back onto the rocky shore of awareness, leaving him naked and chilled. That voice, that hated voice. Mulder recognised it even through the drugs that numbed his mind. It brought with it a pit of memories, a multitude of thoughts and emotions that clamoured and scrambled for attention all at once, pouring a torrent of cold water over his lassitude.
With a wrench of effort, Mulder opened his eyes, squinting against the brightness, but desperate to locate the owner of the voice. A face, craggy and grey, returned the look with its usual aloof disdain. No burnt end of a cigarette graced either fingers or the hard line of the mouth, but the smile was still as enigmatic as the Sphinx.
Mulder raised his hands, or tried to as wide bands of leather wrenched abruptly against his wrists. The effort exhausted him and he allowed his head to flop back to the table he was strapped to. He knew that he should be afraid, but the drugs had safely ensconced his fear in a soft ball of cotton.
"Bastard," Mulder muttered, by rote, the word sounding thick and slurred as if he had gone six rounds with a bottle of tequila. But, however unintelligible, he had no doubt Cancer Man could hear the loathing in his voice.
"It's time to say goodbye, Agent Mulder." His voice was clear.
Unfair really, considering he should sound like someone had shoved a chainsaw down his throat from all those cigarettes. The satisfying image those thoughts conjured almost made Mulder smile.
And suddenly the dazzling lights were gone as that face loomed over him, so close Mulder wondered whether his eyes were crossing.
"Enjoy your new life, Agent Mulder," his nemesis murmured, stale breath tickling at Mulder's ear. "I hear ignorance can be bliss."
Before Mulder could respond to the veiled threat, the smoker was gone. Another face appeared, this one unremarkable in its anonymity. A mask concealed all but the eyes and forehead, a blue surgeon's cap covering the hair. Androgynous, the figure stared down at Mulder with clinical curiosity, before nodding to someone out of sight.
A hand entwined itself into Mulder's hair, pulling his head back, then another hand was placed firmly on his forehead, effectively pinning him beneath the circle of lights.
Fear had begun to break free of its prison of drugs, a distant, frantic clawing at his chest. Mulder heaved a heavy breath, feeling trickles of nervous sweat break out across his chilled body.
"Don't," he whispered, against the hands, the probing fingers, as one eyelid was forced back.
A droplet hung above his unprotected eye for a tantalising moment, then fell. Mulder blinked once, automatically, and felt the viscous liquid enter his tear-duct.
Then screamed as agony ripped a blinding streak of red across his vision.

Outside in the sterile corridor, Spender lit a much-needed cigarette. The process would be a long and arduous one; memories would have to be stripped, blocked, twisted - a rape of the mind first. But it would give him time to plan, to assuage the Elders, to take care of all the irksome details Mulder's abrupt departure would create.
He listened dispassionately to the continued wails of pain that seemed to stretch and echo down the long halls of the facility, before turning and striding away.
END OF CHAPTER ONE

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