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Chapter 11: Useless
Well it's about time
It's beginning to hurt
Time you made up your mind
Just what is it all worthAll my useless advice
All my hanging around
All your cutting down to size
All my bringing you downWatch the clock on the wall
Feel the slowing of time
Hear a voice in the hall
Echoing in my mindAll your stupid ideals
You've got your head in the clouds
You should see how it feels
With your feet on the groundHere I stand the accused
With your fist in my face
Feeling tired and bruised
With the bitterest tasteAll my useless advice
All my hanging around
All your cutting down to size
All my bringing you downAll your stupid ideals
You've got your head in the clouds
You should see how it feels
With your feet on the ground~Depeche Mode
"Are there any survivors?" I asked her, doubtful. The rows of yellow body bags were barely sheltered from the soft rain by the enormous tarp that had been erected.
"No. Not as of this moment," Scully answered predictably.
She let me know they'd been burned. That part was pretty obvious. It was hard not to gag.
"Any preliminary theories?" I asked her.
"Well," she sighed. "It appears they all came by car. Most of the dead are congregated in a wooded area a short distance off the road."
I knew what I would have been thinking a year ago. The conclusions came, just as fast and strong as if my belief structure hadn't changed: Skyland Mountain, mass burning, Cassandra's warning...
Now is a time of war and stress among the alien nations. The different races, they're in upheaval. I will be summoned to a place, just like Duane Barry.
Summoned. Like Duane Barry. To Skyland Mountain. Where we were now. Where we were again.
"Self-immolation?" I asked.
"There's no evidence of that right now. There are no accelerants, no incindiary device," Scully replied. No, of course not, I thought. The smell wasn't the only thing making me nauseous.
"And what was their relationship to each other? Were they families?"
Cassandra is experiencing the sensation that she's about to be called.
I will be summoned to a place, just like Duane Barry....
"There's no way to ID their bodies right now," Scully answered, frowning. "It's going to be a painstaking dental process. Mulder, why are you tiptoeing around the obvious fact here? I mean, this is Skyland Mountain. We're right back here on Skyland Mountain."
My intestines coiled tighter at her imploring tone, her frustration with me. "And you think it's related to your abduction from the same place?" I asked her. That'd be ironic, wouldn't it? I bit back my anger, going hollow and blank inside and out.
"Well, you can't deny the connection."
Sure I could. It was done all the time. The world was full of denial.
"You think this is some kind of abduction scenario?" I pushed. Maybe I wanted her to say it. If only so that I could rip her to shreds for it. Technically, there was nothing here to promote that theory. God, had I just grown a brain only to be replaced in the Spooky, laughing stock hall of fame by my own partner?
"No... I'm not saying that," she insisted. She was caving so easily.
"Do you have any evidence of that?" I continued, knowing she didn't. Knowing she'd have to concede that. Knowing it's what she needed and what I'd come to accept as the basis for my own truth.
"What do you mean by evidence?" What did I mean by evidence. Jesus. I wanted to tell her that if she was going to ape me she was going to have to put in a little more effort. That is if she wanted to get anywhere close to my old level of faith in my baseless, fantastical claims.
"That's what I'm asking you," I told her. Conversely, I felt I had a pretty good foothold on apeing Scully's stoic insistence on reality checking.
"Well, are you going to give me your theory, then?" she huffed.
"No," I informed her. "I'm going to give you an explanation."
I turned away, wading back through the brightly colored body bags. She could follow me and listen to the truth or not. She wasn't going to get any more half-baked visions out of me, any more Mulder insights which turned out to be nothing more than vagaries and pretendings. Nothing less than the brain-child of my mind-rape, planted there to discredit me and fool and enslave a planet.
No, she'd get none of that, and if that's what she now wanted, she could call the psychic friends' hotline for companionship or buddy up with Cassandra Spender. What she'd get from me from now on, all I had anymore, was all that was left: reality. As ugly and non-supernatural as it really was.
..............
"You're probably thirsty." He had an unbreakable habit of politeness, an English inbred calm that I always found slightly offensive. But it was hard to turn my rage in his direction. Not when the bitch that deserved it was long gone.
"Remind me to complain to the captain about the service," I quipped, still breathless. I don't think I'd taken a breath since I'd come around the corner and seen the empty room. Her lingering perfume was a foul stench in my nostrils. Not that I'd trusted her for a moment. I'd only fucked her to get her away from the boy in the first place.
"You may have that opportunity. This ship is bound back to Vladivostok tomorrow. I gather there'll be quite an enthusiastic homecoming," he said cooly. I wondered which side of the fence he was playing. Theoretically, he and Covarrubius were both still aligned with the syndicate. Of course, I was walking proof that that fact alone meant next to nothing.
He held a cloth drenched with foul water over my mouth. I was just thirsty enough to still want it. It wasn't until I was about to swallow some down that it occured to me, it could be not only foul but deadly. I spat it out, glaring at him.
"Do you have the boy?" I breathed, trying not to picture what sort of deal they might have struck. I was disgusted enough with myself.
"No," he confided. "Ms. Covarrubias took him. Your alliance with her was as misguided as ours." It was hard to bite back the anger that swept through me, the desire to make perfectly clear, to this man whose intention was probably to have me killed as soon as possible, that I wouldn't ally with Covarrubias for all the vaccinations in the world.
The well-groomed Englishman went on, "But it appears she was unaware of the consequences of her deception. You were clever. Infect the boy to ensure infection of anyone who tried to learn what he knows, who would cheat you."
She was infected then. She'd gotten her due. "Then where's the boy?" I asked.
"Dead," he repsonded. "Victim of another mysterious holocaust. Unable now to tell what he knew or saw."
I thought fast. "Then you've got no choice but to deal with me." The restraint was feeling tight. I could feel the rage and beginnings of panic combine in my gut. I was having visions of beating the old man to death with my prosthetic arm if I could just get out of the cuff.
"I'm afraid there's no deal to be made," he informed calmly.
"I'm the only one who knows what those incidents are. What they mean. I know what that boy saw," I persisted. It was the truth. They had to deal. He had to fucking DEAL! Goddamn it, this couldn't be another Hong Kong! The DAT, my arm, the boy... The line of things I'd lost to the cause was lengthening. This was IT for me. God, this was finally my straight shot to the top of the food chain, to freedom.
"You've as much as told me what I need to know."
He was bluffing. "You know nothing."
"If the boy was your trump card," he began, and my heart sank into my boots. "Why infect him unless you could also cure him? With a vaccine developed by the Russians. One that works. It would mean that the resistance to the alien colonists is now possible."
"You're dreaming," I snarled, sick.
"Do you have the vaccine?" he asked, and it was the first evidence of tension in him I had seen. He did need what I had. I was still in the game.
"You need what I know," I reiterated, unwilling to turn over the one thing that was right now making me valuable.
"Do you have the vaccine?!" he shouted, kicking the bucket and covering me with filthy water.
"And give you the means to save Covarrubias after what she did?" I retorted, stalling.
His answer was unambiguous. "The means to save yourself."
I squinted, measuring his degree of sincerity. How many times had his group tried to off me? What would stop him if I handed him the vial? And yet...
Save yourself.
The means to save yourself...
What I wouldn't give.
I turned my head away, feeling his gaze, how it never lost intensity. I swallowed around the heartbeat in my throat. I looked back at him, knowing the only thing I had the power over right now was how fast or slow my death came.
"The vaccine, Alex," he said, controlled now. "The vaccine for your life." Then, "Maybe for your soul."
I frowned at that, but my breath caught at the seriousness with which he said it. And in the next moment, I found myself nodding, consenting.
"Very good, Alex," he said. "Very good, indeed."
..........
I saw the red hair as the zipper began to close up the bag. The wind whipped my tie around as I ran toward it, trying not to trip over the other bodies, some still smoking.
It all happened in a vaccuum: Skinner, Scully alive, the helicopter, Agent Spender blaming me for his mother's abduction... I just didn't breathe until I saw her lying there. All I could think about was how cold I'd been. How unjustifiably cruel.
Cassandra Spender was abducted at Skyland Mountain. That's where I was taken, where Duane Barry took me.
The woman is a nut, Scully.
It says here that she has an implant...in the base of her neck.
Where the government no doubt removed her brain....
Jesus.
When she woke up and she asked me what time it was, I smiled for maybe the first time in weeks. Possibly months. God, a year? More? How did this happen to me? When did it happen? I found myself wondering if whatever I'd lost...if I could get it back somehow. Not the belief. That was long gone. But was there still some purpose left for me? Or was it just going to be moments of relief like this one replacing the constant drive I used to know on a daily basis?
"I don't know what to say," she said now, in a different hospital room, back in D.C. She woke me from thoughts that had been plaguing me since I heard about the Pennsylvania burnings and realized my partner was there on that bridge. I tried to tune in to what she was saying now. "I mean, I...I don't have the first clue. There's nothing here."
"Well, at least you're not alone," I told her, the answer seeming so lame after the remarks I'd made about Cassandra Spender's implant just the day before. "None of the other survivors have been able to give a cogent account, either."
"Mulder, I have never been here. I couldn't tell you how to get here, let alone drive it."
"Do you remember when you last saw Cassandra Spender?" I asked.
"She was there, too?"
I nodded slowly. It was all so familiar. So many tapes I'd listened to. So many videos I'd seen, scoured. People's stories, all so similar, haunting. Being called, not knowing how they got there, not remembering afterward.
But the burning was different. It didn't fit the profile. Not of alien abduction. It fit, all too well, the most ghoulish tales of government experiments and agendas. The Nazis, the Spanish Inquisition, ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe...my father...and the Syndicate I now knew he belonged to and that I had no doubt was behind these incidents.
"I ran more x-rays. I haven't told anybody yet what I found, though," I confided.
"You found more implants?" she asked breathlessly.
I nodded again. "That would explain how you were directed to the site, and why you can't remember. It would explain the sensation Cassandra Spender was describing, her abduction fantasies. It would explain Skyland Mountain."
"Yeah, but it wouldn't explain why they would want to kill me. And it doesn't explain why I survived."
"It all comes down to a question, Scully. One that hasn't been answered or I don't even think honestly addressed." I took a breath, and at her frown, continued. "Who made that chip in your neck? That chip was found in a military research facility. Our government made that chip, implanted it in your neck as part of a secret military project to develop a biochemical weapon, to monitor your immunity or to destroy you like a lab rat if the truth were to be exposed. Your cancer, your cure, everything that's happening to you now...it all points to that chip. The truth I've been searching for? That truth is in you."
I thought she'd be relieved to hear the truth, something disturbing, yes, but tangible, maybe even provable. Instead she looked...worried about me. More than that. Sad. Resigned.
"Mulder, when I met you five years ago, you told me that your sister had been abducted...by aliens. That that event had marked you so deeply that nothing else mattered. I didn't believe you, but I followed you, on nothing more than your faith that the truth was out there, based not on facts, not on science, but on your memories that your sister had been taken from you. Your memories were all that you had."
I was becoming frustrated by her little speech. I reminded her, "I don't trust those memories now."
"Well, whether you trust them or not, they've led you here. And me. But I have no memories to either trust or distrust. And if you ask me now to follow you again, to stand behind you in what you now believe, without knowing what happened to me out there, without those memories... I can't." Her pained look turned to a stoic strength. "I won't."
God, I wanted to strangle her. No, not her. Just...something. That we could come this far, five years, as she'd taken pains to remind me, and we still could not see eye to eye, not even for a breath. We remained diametrically opposed.
I turned and looked out the hospital room window, seeing nothing but that I had to sway her. To finally, in this dark hour of human history, wake her up to her own predicament, her own truth. A truth it was my curse to carry, like a flag held aloft into battle, destined, more likely than not, to fall, unsung by anyone.
"If I could give you those memories," I pleaded. "If I could prove that I was right and that what I believed for so long was wrong..."
She interrupted me. "Is that what you really want?"
What I wanted... The question, and the complicated, painful answer, that I didn't even know, struck me where I stood. What I wanted. What I wanted no longer mattered. It never had. All that mattered was the truth. And I knew of only one way to try to get at the truth inside Scully that she couldn't, or wouldn't, access. One way to prove what I knew to her.
I placed the call to Dr. Weber. He said he'd see her in two hours.
To Be Continued...
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Series Name: History
Title: History, Chapter 11: Useless
Author: Sage Fyre [email/website]
Details: Series | NC-17 | 14k | 06/30/07
Pairings: Mulder/Krycek
Category: Drama, Angst
Summary: See previous.
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