Warnings:  This one's dark and pretty angsty in places.  A box of tissues next to the PC might be prudent. Specifics would spoil, so suffice it to say that people of an over-sensitive disposition should give this one a miss. People who love a tortured rat and a big protective bear, on the other hand, can  settle-in, kick-back and enjoy.

My sincere thanks to Laura for the beautiful cover, Gaby for the encouragement and the painstaking beta of such a long story ( above and beyond as always, honey ) and to Amazon X for insisting there couldn't be this much hurt without a lot more comfort  -  which turned an already long story into a novella.

The story is set a few months after the 'The Truth', and the events in 'Existence *did* happen before the commencement of this story.  That in itself should warn you this isn't going to be an easy ride. But if you make the journey, I believe you'll find the destination worthwhile.

“I’m sure this is all very interesting,” the recently appointed new Deputy Director of the FBI, Walter Skinner, said, gesturing vaguely over the reports she’d placed on his desk with a look of mild distaste on his face. “But when you asked for this meeting, you gave me the impression you had something more significant to discuss than simply another standard update on the results of this state-sanctioned torture.”

“I realize you’ve always been ambivalent about this experimentation. You haven't even visited Penzbech during the last six months, so I have no illusions about your feelings about what's going on there. That’s the reason I chose to bring this to you, Sir. I’m hoping you’ll at least listen to me with an open mind.”

He raised a brow in an arch of mild amusement. “Are you channeling Mulder, Doctor Scully?”

She frowned at his use of her medical title – his not so subtle reminder that neither her nor Mulder’s roles at Penzbech were officially sanctioned. As far as the world in general was concerned, they were no longer Agents of the FBI. Mulder was even still officially an escaped convict with a death sentence hanging over his head.

It had to be that way. Because only a small select group of people in the higher echelons of the Government were aware of the existence of Penzbech and, of those, only a few were party to the actual details of the Project taking place inside its walls.

“I wish I were,” she said, her expression rueful. “I’ve certainly gained a new appreciation, these last weeks, of how it feels to be the only person willing to believe an unpalatable truth. I’m out on a limb on this one. Even with the evidence staring him in the face, Mulder’s point-blank refusing to believe.”

“I never saw Mulder as a man who required evidence in order to believe anything,” Skinner grunted. “But I’m even more hard pressed to envisage him deliberately denying any truth, no matter how personally distasteful he might find it.”

She nodded, her eyes sad. “I think it’s not so much a refusal to accept my hypothesis, as an inability to face its consequences,” she admitted carefully. “Drake dismisses my evidence as ‘hysterical nonsense’ and the rest of the team is denying my conclusions because they don’t want to face the moral implications. But Mulder…well, it’s more an emotional crisis for him. He can’t afford to believe.”

“Believe what?” Skinner growled impatiently.

“There’s been a…development. I have reason to believe that the Supersoldier virus doesn’t kill the original human host, after all. The body is changed at a genetic level and the alien functions with complete autonomy but the original human consciousness remains.”

“That’s not possible,” Skinner denied, color draining out of his face.

“We always knew the new host had access to the original human’s memories,” she pointed out. “But in view of the complete cellular change of the body, and the complete absence of any genuine human emotion, we naturally assumed any human infected with the virus ‘died’ and was replaced by a Replicant. Certain… anomalies in the latest experiments made me question that original assumption. I now believe that the Supersoldiers aren’t Replicants as much as hitchhikers. Or, perhaps, the original hosts remain as hitchhikers inside the new Replicant bodies. Either way, the hosts aren’t dead.”

Skinner looked appalled. “Assuming you’re right, are they self-aware?”

“I believe so,” she said, refusing to meet his eyes. “As far as I can tell, it’s a similar scenario to the Oilien possession. The human host remains awake and aware, but unable to control the actions of the alien possessing their body. They’re just carried along for the ride.”

“Can these ‘hosts’ feel pain when it’s inflicted on the Replicant’s body?” he demanded urgently.

“Up until a couple of weeks ago, I would have said ‘no’. But I’m not so sure now,” she said, with a sad exhalation of breath.

“What do you mean, ‘now’?”

“You know we’ve been working closely with the subjects, continuously testing them…” she swallowed heavily, “to destruction.”

Skinner nodded, his face expressionless, only a slight narrowing of his eyes indicating his personal distaste for the scenario.

Despite his lack of verbal censure, Scully blushed and dropped her eyes to the floor. “You’re not the only one, Sir. Mulder is equally sickened by what we’ve been doing.”

“But he accepts the necessity, as do I,” Skinner interrupted. “We’re fighting for the survival of the human race, Doctor Scully, and while it sticks in my craw to support the deliberate torture of any creature, even an alien Supersoldier, I accept that we’ll lose this war if we don’t learn new practical ways of destroying the enemy.”

“That’s what I told myself as I subjected the captives to experiment after experiment. The first time I ‘killed’ one of them, I was physically sick. But, somehow, the fact he climbed back to his feet ten minutes later, completely unscathed, made it easier to ‘kill’ him the next time. Within a month, I was testing how long it took different chemical reactions to burn them alive and feeling more irritated by the headache I got from their screams than nauseated by my ability to emotionlessly inflict that kind of agony on any creature.”

She raised her head and met his appalled stare with shadowed, haunted eyes.

“But, two weeks ago, I ‘killed’ one of them and he didn’t come back to life. His human host did.”

Skinner’s careful mask slipped a notch. “What?”

“When I returned to the testing chamber, I didn’t find an emotionless Supersoldier smirking at me. I found a sobbing ‘man’, who was begging me not to hurt him any more.”

Skinner shook his head slowly. “I don’t understand what you’re implying.”

“I believe the alien gave the reins back to his host in an attempt to prevent any further experimentation on the body they share,” she explained.

“How do you know it wasn’t just a trick? A game the alien was playing with you?”

“I didn’t,” she sighed. “I assumed it was a deception. I went ahead with another series of tests. The subject became increasingly distressed. He portrayed every symptom of a nervous breakdown. After the third test, the subject committed suicide. He deliberately threw himself against the magnetite shielding of his cell.

“I repeated the experiment with three further subjects. With the same results. Testing the Replicants to destruction ultimately results in the alien consciousness retreating from control and the original host then taking the ‘human’ decision to end its torment with suicide.”

“What happens if you stop the testing?”

“Once the immediate danger has been averted, the alien consciousness swiftly re-establishes control of the subject.”

“So you’re saying the only way to get the alien to relinquish control is to subject it to repeated, intolerable pain, but the minute you remove the threat the alien takes over again?”

“Yes.”

“No wonder no one wants to believe you. You’re telling them that every time they kill a Supersoldier, they’re also killing a human being. A human ‘captive’ of that Supersoldier. A self-aware, innocent victim. And you have no way of separating the hitch-hiker from its host. If that’s even a safe analogy. The changes made by the alien virus change the host body irrevocably.”

She nodded sadly. “But, moral implications aside, if we could remove the alien, or at least find a way to give control back to the host permanently, we’d have our own *human* Supersoldier. That, at least, has caught the attention of some of the Military. But then, you know how the military mind works. They accept the ‘theory’ as being plausible, but there’s no way of actually ‘proving’ that it’s the original human consciousness which takes over and then decides to commit suicide. They say it could all be an elaborate deception, with certain aliens being sacrificed to fool us into stopping the experimentation completely.”

“But you don’t believe that?”

“No, Sir. I don’t.”

Skinner adjusted his glasses and took a deep breath. “Is subject 42 still alive?”

Scully flinched slightly. “Yes. I demanded a temporary halt on all further fatal experimentation as soon as I began to suspect the hosts were self-aware. It hasn’t made me popular.”

“Move subject 42 back into the test to destruction program, and call me when the alien appears to retreat. I want to talk to him.”

“Sir, I don’t think that would be possible...”

“You have no authority to stop me,” he snapped.

“That’s not what I meant. 42’s behavior has always been somewhat atypical so I don’t think you’ll be able to make a valid judgment. Somehow the alien in his body has always been able to mimic the original host’s behavior patterns almost flawlessly. The other subjects produce reasonably good facsimiles of their hosts but 42…well, if you didn’t know better, you’d swear he’s the genuine article.”

“What if he is?” Skinner suggested quietly.

Scully looked momentarily horrified by the idea, but then shook her head firmly. “It’s not possible,” she stated firmly. “The only incidents of hosts apparently regaining control have been aberrations where the aliens have allowed them to temporarily retake the reins during moments of great physical pain. The hosts are incapable of permanently reclaiming control.”

“You’re probably right,” he agreed. “But I have to see for myself. If it’s really him, I’ll know.”

***

Skinner stared expressionlessly through the two-way mirror. Although the thick glass had been silvered with a thin layer of magnetite, he was still careful to keep his hand near to the handle of his special-edition revolver. If, by any chance, the Supersoldier managed to break through the glass, he’d be met with half-a-dozen 9mm shells molded from solid magnetite.

To an innocent onlooker, the naked, shivering man huddled in the small cell would have appeared harmless. Broken, even. A victim of inhumane treatment and inexcusable torture.

But Skinner was no innocent and he doubted the man in the cell could ever be described as harmless.

Pitiable in his current state, admittedly. And, if Scully were right, he was suffering a kind of hell that even his worst enemy couldn’t have wanted for him. It was no wonder Mulder was walking around looking like his puppy had died.

Because nobody, human or alien, deserved what was happening to subject 42.

Yet, Skinner wasn’t a fool. Regardless of his sickened feelings, he’d draw his weapon without hesitation if the Replicant so much as moved towards the mirror.

“I want to talk to Drake,” he said, and one of the soldiers flanking him nodded and left to find the Doctor who was heading the Penzbech Project.

Skinner was surprised, and gratified, that when he spoke his voice had emerged calm and cold, with no tone of the personal revulsion he felt over the whole situation. Any protest, no matter how mild, would be perceived as weakness and he’d be removed from the Project. No matter how little overall authority he had in this hell-hole, it was better than being cut out of the loop completely. At least one moral man needed to stand witness to what was going on.

Besides, he owed subject 42.

It had, after all, been his bullets that had put him into the grave which the military scientists had dug him out of.

‘I didn’t know,’ he whispered silently through the mirrored glass. ‘I didn’t know you were infected. I swear, as much as I hated you, I wouldn’t have wished this on anyone. I just didn’t know.’

His silent apology was interrupted by the arrival of the chief military scientist.

“You wanted to see me, Deputy Director?”

“He’s got two arms. When did that happen?”

Drake flicked through the papers on his clip-board. “The eleventh re-gen. Approximately five months ago. That was the first time he experienced total physical destruction. We immersed him in hydrochloric acid. That’s why I can’t accept Dr. Scully’s hypothesis. This subject is absolute proof that the human host is no longer present,” he announced smugly.

“How so?” Skinner demanded.

“The first ten experiments resulted in the subject’s ‘death’ and a varying amount of fatal physical trauma. On each occasion, the subject subsequently regenerated himself back into the human form he had at the time he was infected by the alien virus. As you can see from these photographs, the Replicant was a perfect copy of Alex Krycek down to his physical scars and his missing limb. Presumably, the template for that appearance was stored along with Krycek’s ‘memories’, and the alien could access the information as though it were held physically within the brain it had invaded. After the total destruction of the subject’s body, however, the Replicant regenerated itself without scars and with both arms. One can only conclude that this pattern was obtained from the host’s DNA, rather than from the host’s ‘memory’ of appearance. So even if the consciousness of Alex Krycek was still in existence through the first ten experiments, it’s safe to assume it was no longer present after the eleventh. Whether you believe human awareness is a chemical state or a spiritual one, it exists somewhere inside the human brain tissue. The acid bath reduced the subject to a single metal vertebra in which human consciousness could not have survived.”

“Yet the alien consciousness survived, with a memory of Krycek’s DNA,” Skinner pointed out. “How is that possible?”

Drake shrugged angrily. “We aren’t certain.”

“Which somewhat undermines your argument, doesn’t it? If you don’t know how the Replicants survive being ‘killed’, you aren’t in a position to categorically state that a human consciousness can’t also survive that ‘death’.”

Drake flushed slightly, then shrugged. “It’s irrelevant anyway. Even if he were still carrying a dual-consciousness, there’s no way to separate the man from the alien.”

“I’m going to talk to him.”

“It’s not advisable to go in there,” Drake protested.

“I didn’t ask your advice,” Skinner snapped. “I want to talk to him, face-to-face. I once knew the man he was. I’ll know whether it’s him I’m talking to or an alien wearing his face.”

“Very well, Deputy Director. I can see I can’t talk you out of this ludicrous plan, so I’ll arrange for him to be restrained for you and you can find out for yourself that I’m right.”

Skinner began to nod his assent, but then hesitated. “How do you restrain a Supersoldier?”

“Fire, Sir,” one of the soldiers explained helpfully, slightly raising the flame thrower at his side. “We burn them down to the exoskeleton, then fasten them into magnetite restraints before they can regenerate enough muscle to move.”

Skinner’s stomach churned, but his face remained stony. “Why don’t the magnetite restraints kill them?”

“We lost a few that way in the beginning,” Drake interrupted, “but now we use a special alloy that has enough magnetite to keep them restrained but not enough to generate the chemical reaction that destroys them. It just burns them a little. We’ve done the same with the shielding in the cells since the … unfortunate incidents. We can’t afford to lose any more test subjects.”

“So, let me get this right. You burn them almost to death, then you put restraints on them that keep burning them even as they attempt to regenerate?”

“We have to move them back and forth from their cells to the laboratory somehow, Sir,” the soldier pointed out defensively.

“Can’t you just threaten to shoot them?”

The soldier flushed. “Well, we used to do that,” he admitted. “But now they’re all trying to kill themselves anyway, it’s hardly a deterrent is it?”

“We can’t afford to lose any more test subjects,” Drake repeated firmly. “We’ve had no success in actually capturing an active Supersoldier. All our subjects were collected before they transformed. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find human bodies that are carrying the virus?”

“Do you have any idea how impossible it would be for me to carry out a lucid conversation with someone while they’re burning alive?” Skinner countered. “Human OR alien? Forget the restraints. I’ll talk to him as he is.”

“Forgive me for saying this, Deputy Director, but even if your crazy theory about 42 still being ‘human’ is right, I would have thought you’re the last person he’d react well to seeing. Aren’t you the man who killed him?”

“Yes.”

“Then even if that’s Krycek in there at the moment, rather than the alien, walking into that cell is committing suicide. If, and I don’t believe it but if, he is Krycek, he’s still in a Replicant’s body and he’s probably spent the last 18 months dreaming of the moment he’ll get his hands around your neck.”

Skinner stared through the mirrored glass. “I wouldn’t blame him,” he muttered. “But Krycek’s too smart to do something that stupid. He kills me, he gets a moment’s satisfaction inevitably followed by some dire punishment.”

“We’d acid his ass,” the soldier confirmed, with a smug grin.

“Sadistic little shit, aren’t you?” Skinner said, his tone quiet and unemotional.

The soldier blinked rapidly, clearly trying to work out whether he’d just been praised or insulted.

“So he won’t hurt me,” Skinner continued. “He’ll try to work me, gain my sympathy, and he can’t get that by killing me.”

“Perhaps,” Drake allowed. “But that won’t prove anything. The Replicant has Krycek’s memories. If that’s how Krycek would have reacted to you, then the Replicant will know that and act accordingly. No matter how much 42 acts like Krycek, going in there won’t prove anything. You still won’t know.”

“I’ll know,” Skinner replied firmly.

“Well, as much as I’d like to witness your little experiment, I have an experiment or two of my own to check on,” Drake said.

“Don’t let me keep you. Finding new ways to kill your test subjects must take a lot of your time,” Skinner replied.

Drake frowned at him, found nothing in Skinner’s expression to confirm his suspicion he’d just been insulted, and shrugged.

“You can leave too,” Skinner told the soldiers.

“Our standing orders are to…”

“Obey senior officers,” Skinner interrupted. “And I may not be military but, as a Deputy Director of the FBI, I can assure you that pissing me off will get you stationed in Kazakhstan by tomorrow night.”

“Yes, Sir,” the soldiers replied, saluting sharply and leaving the room.

Skinner took a deep steadying breath and then activated the complex three-door system that would allow him into the cell. Between each door, he was bathed with a magnetite-rich gas. It made him cough a little, but he knew it was harmless to a human. It wasn’t a high enough dose to kill a Supersoldier either, but if Krycek tried to pass through the door himself, without the gas being turned off at the guard station, he’d not only be in a world of pain but the chemical reaction of his body to the gas would trigger a sensor which would not only activate an alarm but also several jets of acid.

By the time the soldiers responded to the alarm, there would be nothing left of Krycek except a vertebra or two which would be scooped up and thrown back into the cell to regenerate.

Apparently none of the Replicants had ever tried to escape their cells twice.

Between the second and final door, Skinner unholstered and double-checked his weapon before entering the room. He wouldn’t have entered at all if he hadn't been sure Krycek wouldn't attack him. But he still took the precaution of drawing his weapon and aiming it at Krycek’s head as he stepped inside.

Despite the loud clanging, as the door closed and locked behind Skinner, Krycek didn’t look up. He remained huddled against the far wall, visibly shaking, and his only reaction to Skinner’s entrance was a low, fear-filled moan. It was immediately clear he’d learned to associate all visitors to his cell with being forced to participate in horrendously painful ‘experiments’.

“I’m not here to hurt you, boy,” Skinner said gruffly.

At the unexpected, familiar voice, Krycek’s head jerked up and his eyes met Skinner’s.

“Skinner? Oh god, Skinner. It’s you. It’s really you. Help me. Please. Oh, God, you’ve got to help me. PLEASE. Get me out of here,” he pleaded.

He looked impossibly young. Younger even, perhaps, than when he’d first been assigned to work with Mulder. Regeneration had taken years off him, had removed all the faint lines from his eyes, and even the familiar pensive crease between his eyebrows had disappeared to leave his face innocently smooth. His hair was almost to his shoulders but his face was clean-shaven, with not even a trace of dark shadow. Skinner was momentarily surprised by that, since he couldn’t imagine Drake giving a Replicant a razor, but then he realized that all the Replicants were beardless unless their hosts had had beards at the time they'd been infected with the alien virus.

The Replicant’s whole body was unblemished. No scars, no wrinkles, no bruises, just an expanse of perfectly flawless skin.

But he was clearly severely underweight, despite the defined musculature of his body.

“Don’t they feed you enough?” Skinner snapped, in an attempt to mask his sudden feeling of disorientation at Krycek’s disturbingly youthful and ‘innocent’ appearance.

Krycek blinked and shook his head in apparent disbelief at the question. “Feed me? They’re torturing me to death almost every fucking day and you’re worried I’m not eating enough? For God’s sake, Skinner, get me out of here. Please. I’ll do anything. Anything. I know you hate me, but shit, Skinner, you can’t leave me here. Please. Oh, God, PLEASE. I’m begging you.”

There was a time Skinner would have felt ecstatic at having Krycek on his knees, pleading for mercy. Under the circumstances, he just felt sick to the stomach. But he kept his expression stony and shook his head.

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. The minute you step out of this cell, the alien will take over again, won’t it?”

Panic flashed over Krycek’s features and he licked his lower lip desperately as he rocked back and forth on his knees, hugging his arms around his waist in an obvious attempt at self-comfort.

“No,” he said. “It’s gone.”

“Lie to me again, boy, and I’ll be gone,” Skinner snapped.

Krycek’s eyes flared with terror. “Okay,” he gasped, nodding furiously. “You’re right. It’s just lurking. Waiting to try and catch me unawares. The minute I’m distracted, or I sleep, it’ll try to break out again.”

“Break out? It isn’t deliberately hiding?”

Krycek’s lips twisted into a smirk. “It was,” he hissed, checking over his shoulder furtively as though the alien was standing behind him. “It snuck deep inside me, leaving me to face the shit, but I found its hiding place and locked it in. It’s banging at the door. Trying to get out. Trying to sneak past me and take over again.”

He giggled wildly, a crazed sound, and then sobbed, clutched his arms tighter around his middle and started rocking again.

“I’m too late,” Skinner groaned. “You’ve gone mad.”

“MAD?” Krycek screamed. “I’ve got a fucking alien in my head. I’ve turned into Frankenstein’s monster and I’ve spent the last god knows how long being ‘tested to destruction’. Who the fuck wouldn’t be mad? And YOU shut the fuck up too,” he added, hitting the side of his head with his hand.

“Hearing voices?” Skinner asked. “Is it talking to you now?”

“Fuck you.”

Skinner sighed with relief. Krycek was clearly, and understandably, on the edge. But he wasn’t mad yet. And, more to the point, he was still Krycek.

“Look up, Krycek. Look at the ceiling. What do you see?”

Krycek tipped back his head and frowned. “The sprinkler system?”

“Tell the alien if it tries to take over again, it won’t be water coming out of that system.”

Krycek cringed and huddled into himself, his eyes panicked. “It wants…wants to know what.”

“What do you think it will be?” Skinner demanded.

Krycek’s eyes went huge with terror, glassing over with a sheen of threatened tears. “Acid? Oh god. Oh shit. No. Nonononono. Don’t… don’t… oh don’t burn us again.”

Skinner swallowed heavily and forced his face to remain expressionless, despite the wild roiling of his stomach at the frantic note of terror in Krycek’s voice.

“I’m here to help you, Krycek. YOU. Not that creature inside you. Nobody wants to hurt you, Krycek. If that thing stays inside you, you’ll be fine. But if it comes out…well, let’s just say all bets are off.”

###

It took all of Skinner’s strength not to stagger out of the cell and immediately throw up. Maintaining a cold façade in front of such human terror made him feel like the monster. So on finding Mulder standing in the anteroom, having clearly watched the whole ‘interview’ through the mirror, he let the younger man have the full brunt of his anger.

“What the hell are you doing here, Agent Mulder? Still think that’s just an alien thing in there? Want to burn him alive again? Want to chop him into little pieces, an inch at a time, just to see how nicely he screams for you? Want to torture that poor bastard some more?” he roared. “You going to stand there and call him the monster? Because I’m telling you, if the cost of saving humanity is to become what we’ve become then maybe we aren’t worth saving.”

“You’re right.”

The simple agreement took the wind out of Skinner’s sails and he dropped into a chair, rubbing his forehead with both hands. “That’s Alex Krycek in there. Whatever else he is, he’s Krycek too,” he muttered. “And whatever Krycek did, he doesn’t deserve this.”

“No one does,” Mulder agreed.

Skinner looked up at him in bemusement. “Scully said you didn’t believe…”

“I didn’t want to believe,” Mulder corrected, with an embarrassed smile. “Not the Mulder you know and love, huh?”

“No one would want to believe,” Skinner replied. “What the hell are we going to do, Mulder?”

Mulder shrugged. “We have no choice except to go ahead with the mass manufacture of the magnetite weapons. We carry on developing the chrondrule shields, since the testing has proven they successfully interfere with the Replicants’ ability to communicate telepathically with one another, and we keep testing the subjects for weaknesses. But,” he said, as Skinner opened his mouth to protest, “subject 42 gets removed from the ‘test to destruction’ program because Krycek’s possibly the real key to finding a better way to defeat the aliens.”

“Then you do believe he’s still somehow alive?”

“I’d say ‘I want to believe’, except even the thought makes me sick under the circumstances. But if the human consciousness does survive and the alien presence can be removed, then our best defense against the Supersoldiers would be to ‘unmake’ them. At the very least, we’d have our own human Supersoldiers to help us fight the colonization.”

“I can’t see Krycek helping us to anything other than early graves even if we do somehow separate him from his ‘hitch-hiker’. When I think about how much I hated him for killing me once with the nanocytes, it makes me shudder to think how much hate he must be carrying after being deliberately killed dozens of times in the most painful, horrific ways.”

“Well, you’re certainly not endearing him to you by telling him there’s acid in the sprinkler system, are you?” Mulder chuckled wryly.

Skinner flushed slightly. “I was improvising. It seemed smartest to get Krycek to admit himself what the alien fears the most. We need to generate a Pavlovian response, where the alien automatically retreats at the first sign of danger.”

“You do realize we’re probably going to have to actually do it now, don’t you? At some point, the alien’s going to test the water. It’s going to force a confrontation to see whether we’re serious.”

“Oh shit.”

“It’s okay, Sir. Remember, it’ll be the alien in control if or when we do it. We need to develop a system of punishment and reward. The longer Krycek remains in charge, the more comfortable his life becomes. But every time the alien takes over, he goes back to first base again.”

“It won’t work,” Skinner argued. “What Krycek perceives as ‘rewards’ are highly unlikely to coincide with the alien’s needs. It doesn’t have any requirement for physical or emotional comfort. Why would the alien co-operate to make Krycek happy?”

Mulder shook his head and laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Skinner growled.

“Me,” Mulder admitted, with a wry shrug. “I just realized the irony of my answer to your question. You’re right that the alien won’t give a shit whether Krycek’s happy or not. My idea was we’d keep the alien in line with the stick, and use the carrot to motivate Krycek. But none of this is going to be worth a damn unless Krycek himself learns a way to keep the alien permanently suppressed. And what’s ironic is that, out of all the subjects here, Krycek’s the only man who stands a chance of actually achieving that.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he’s a self-serving ratbastard. No seriously, Sir,” Mulder continued, when Skinner gave him a look of disgust. “I actually don’t mean it as an insult in this scenario. Every other test subject we have is ex-military personnel. Krycek is the only surviving, if that’s the word, subject who wasn’t a soldier when he was infected. I realize the aliens have their own consciousness but their behavior as Replicants is constrained by the memories of their hosts. The other hosts were soldiers. They’re used to being told what to do. They’ve spent years eating, sleeping and shitting on the command of their superior officers. To put it bluntly, they were military puppets a long time before they became alien puppets.”

“You’re saying they’re mentally predisposed to be ideal hosts?”

“Exactly,” Mulder agreed, with a wolfish grin. “Stupid bastards probably like not having to even pretend to think for themselves anymore.”

“I doubt they like being tortured to death daily,” Skinner snapped, deeply offended by Mulder's rude and dismissive attitude towards military personnel.

Mulder’s grin slipped several notches but he still held Skinner’s eyes and stood his ground. “Maybe so, but they still  haven’t got the guts to do anything about it except kill themselves. I don’t see Krycek throwing himself against his cell walls, do you? He’s a survivor. He’ll take the pain, the agony, the sheer fucking terror, and he’ll keep taking it because, at some level, he still believes in himself and in his ability to somehow claw his way out of this nightmare he’s found himself in.”

“Even ratbastards have nervous breakdowns eventually, Mulder. You might be the psychologist here, but I’m telling you that man I just spoke to is nearly at the end of his rope.”

“Yeah,” Mulder sighed, his eyes suddenly haunted. “We don’t have much time. He’s holding on to sanity by a very fine thread. But he is still reachable if we act quickly and he’s the only subject who’s got a chance of severing the alien’s hold over him.”

***

The tentative knock made Skinner look up from his overloaded desk with an irritated, weary sigh. Since he’d left standing orders with his secretary that the only visitors he would receive that afternoon were Scully or the Director himself, he was pretty damned certain this wasn’t a social call. As his visitor poked her head around his door, he repressed a groan, ignored the sudden churning in his stomach, and gestured her to take a seat.

“More bad news?” he sighed. It had been three days since his visit to Penzbech and since then Mulder and Scully had only contacted him to report on problems.

Scully gave him a wry smile. “Mostly bad, but some tentatively good.”

“What’s that?” he said, gesturing at the video in her hands.

“Brace yourself,” she replied. “I decided it was easier to show than tell.”

“So give me the good news first.”

“Following your orders, my team came up with a new form of non-magnetite restraints, and Drake’s reluctantly given them the go-ahead. It’s now possible to restrain the Replicants without hurting them.”

“Why do I get the feeling there’s more to it than you’re telling me?”

“I’ll show you,” she said, crossing the room and slipping the video into his machine. She let the tape play for a moment, and then freeze-framed on a picture of a naked Replicant strapped to an examination table with restraints cuffing his hands and ankles and a wide metallic band across his chest.

“The hand and wrist restraints are just high-tensile steel,” she explained. “Enough to keep the subject immobilized, but with enough effort he can break free of them. The true restraint is the contraption over his chest. It’s steel too, but it’s hollow and filled with hydrochloric acid.”

“So if he breaks it….”

“Watch,” she said. Then muttered ‘hope you didn’t eat lunch’ under her breath.

She turned the video back onto play.

Skinner watched as a soldier approached the restrained ‘man’, and touched his genitals with an electronic prod. The Replicant screamed, arched his body in agony and struggled wildly against the restraints. The soldier leaped back out of the way as the Replicant’s arms and legs broke free of the steel cuffs in a spray of blood. Then the Replicant began to sit up and the main chest restraint began to buckle and crack under the pressure. A second or two later, it split in half and a gush of liquid spilled out of its center and spilled over the Replicant’s torso in a bubbling, steaming flood.

Scully let the video play for two more minutes, but deliberately muted the sound.

She freeze-framed again when all that was left of the Replicant was a twitching head and shoulders connected to two frantically kicking legs by a half-dissolved spinal cord.

“Excuse me,” Skinner gasped, struggling to his feet white-faced, and almost running into his personal bathroom.

“Sorry about that,” he said, emerging a few minutes later, still pale and wiping his mouth.

Scully met his sickened look with an expression of sympathy. “If I had to count how many times I’d thrown up at Penzbech, I’d need a calculator.”

“Why the hell didn’t Drake just tell the poor bastard what would happen if he broke the restraint?” Skinner growled.

“Drake’s a great believer in the test subjects learning by experience. He says no amount of words educate as well as practical demonstrations. Before he agreed to allow the new restraints to be used, he played that same trick on each and every one of the subjects.”

“Even 42?” Skinner snarled.

“Since he blamed their implementation on your new standing orders over subject 42, he was the first Replicant who received the benefit of that little demonstration.”

Skinner’s face clouded with fury. “And that’s your idea of good news?”

“In the general scheme of things,” she shrugged. “The point is that now the Replicants are too terrified to struggle, regardless of what’s being done to them, they’re suffering a lot less unnecessary pain. At least these restraints don’t burn them while they’re behaving themselves.”

Skinner nodded his reluctant agreement.

“So what’s the bad news?” he growled.

“This next part of the tape shows the new experiments being run on subject 42.”

“I said he was to be taken out of the program,” Skinner roared.

Scully shook her head. “You said he was to be taken out of the ‘test to destruct’ program. There are still a lot of experiments that don’t fall under that category. And before you watch this and go crazy, please bear in mind that the information we obtained from this experiment was absolutely crucial. I may not agree with the methods used, but it gave us information that we had to have. The bad news isn’t what you’re about to watch, sickening as it may be. It’s what we learned from doing it.”

She clicked the video back into play, but left the sound muted and gave her own commentary.

The television screen showed subject 42 in a large laboratory filled with white-coated scientists and gun-toting soldiers. A naked Krycek was shackled by the new ‘kinder’ restraints to a metal examination table. The one difference between his posture and that of the previous Replicant was that his legs were bent and raised, with his feet locked into what looked like gynecological stirrups.

“What the fuck?” Skinner growled, as he watched one of the scientists attaching a cup to Krycek’s limp penis.

“Our greatest concern,” Scully said, as they watched the screen, “was to know how the Supersoldier virus can be spread. We’d already tested saliva, urine, stool and blood, so we knew it couldn’t be passed by those bodily fluids. As long as it couldn’t be passed sexually, we at least would know that new Replicants can only be created by direct alien intervention. But if the Replicants can reproduce themselves, we’ve got one hell of a problem, Sir.”

“I don’t believe this,” Skinner growled, as he watched Krycek thrashing wildly on the table as one of the scientists inserted a slim metal rod into his anus.

“Vets use a similar method to obtain sperm samples for artificial insemination,” Scully explained emotionlessly. “A small electric shock applied directly to the subject’s prostate gland. It causes an immediate ejaculation.”

“So I see,” Skinner snarled. He was glad the sound was off, so he only had to imagine Krycek’s scream as he arched against his restraints and came into the cup.

Scully flipped the video into fast-forward. “Just more of the same,” she muttered. “Suffice it to say that a Replicant can regenerate approximately every ten minutes. So Drake continued taking samples for over an hour.”

She freeze-framed again at an image of a petri dish, then moved forward frame-by-frame as the video zeroed in on its contents.

“We discovered two pertinent facts about subject 42’s sperm. Firstly, it’s non viable. In other words, he can’t impregnate a woman or a female Replicant. Secondly, and more importantly, it does contain the virus.”

“He’s a Typhoid Mary?”

“All the Supersoldiers are. And that’s not all. They’re all homosexual.”

“How the hell can you know that?”

“Every single subject was immersed into a sense-deprivation tank and then subjected to an overload of sexual images. Deprived of all other sense-input, they couldn’t fail to respond physically to the only information they were allowed to process. Regardless of prior orientation, each and every one of them responded to images of naked men rather than women. The only possible conclusion we can reach is that the aliens intend to encourage their hosts to reproduce as rapidly as possible and to concentrate that reproduction on male victims.”

“Because, theoretically, males make better soldiers?”

“Exactly. It begs a question though, doesn’t it? If Krycek is in control of his alien, why is his sexual preference still being dominated by the alien imperative? Drake says this proves subject 42 is faking, and I find myself wondering whether he’s right.”

“Unless Krycek is gay anyway,” Skinner pointed out. “That would throw a spanner in your theory, wouldn’t it? You’re a scientist, Scully. It’s not like you to jump to conclusions without knowing all the facts.”

She gave him a wry smile. “I accept your point, but we have absolutely no data about his previous life and I can hardly ask Krycek whom he used to sleep with, can I?”

“So, the Supersoldiers can infect people they have anal sex with? What happens if they catch, rather than pitch?” Skinner mumbled, blushing slightly.

Scully grinned briefly at his terminology.

“Well, there we come to the really bad news,” she said. “At first, we simply continued ‘encouraging’ subject 42 to ejaculate and took a number of anal swabs. Regardless of how sexually excited he physically became, we found no trace of the virus in his rectal fluid. So, theoretically, he couldn’t infect a man who was penetrating him. Dr. Drake, however, is an extremely thorough scientist who never takes results on face-value.”

She put the video-recorder back into play.

“You’re not going to like this, Sir. I confess I screamed blue-murder when he told me what he was going to do. But….well, watch and see for yourself.”

Skinner’s jaw tightened as the scene rolled out in front of him, but despite the fury burning in his gut, all he said was, “Who are they?”

“Soldiers. Volunteers, although you have to use the term loosely when you’re talking about enlisted men. Drake’s theory was that at least if it went wrong, we’d have more test subjects with few questions asked.”

“The man’s a monster.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “but watch.”

Skinner watched in horror as the first soldier dropped his pants and scivvies, walked between Krycek’s open legs, shoved his cock inside the helpless ‘man’ and began thrusting.

“This is obscene,” Skinner growled. “It’s rape. Worse than rape. The bastard didn’t even damned well prepare him. Krycek’s clearly in agony. I want his name. Let’s see how the bastard feels when he spends the next ten years in military prison as someone’s bitch himself.”

Scully winced at the pained grimace on Krycek’s face at the brutal penetration. “Remember he’s a Replicant, Sir. He wasn’t actually harmed. Ten minutes after this footage there wasn’t a mark on him. But, believe me, that soldier’s already paid the price for his brutality. Watch.”

On the screen, Skinner saw Krycek’s body arch into an involuntary orgasm. He ejaculated onto the soldier’s chest. For a second or two, nothing happened as the soldier continued to thrust to his own completion. But then the white spatters of Krycek’s semen began to move on the soldier’s chest. They flowed together until a myriad of tiny white liquid worms began moving upwards toward the soldier’s face.

Even without the sound on, it was clear the room erupted into panic.

The soldier began to struggle, batting helplessly at the ‘worms’ and trying to back away from Krycek. But, somehow, it seemed that his cock was clamped tight inside Krycek’s hole, preventing him from moving, and the worms continued to wriggle their way up his neck, onto his face and then slid inexorably towards his mouth, nose and eyes.

“Why the hell is no-one doing anything?”

“Drake ordered the room cleared. He couldn’t run the risk of anyone else becoming infected. The subject’s semen acted in exactly the same way as the oilien infection,” Scully said, turning off the tape.

“The soldier’s been quarantined. We’ve tested him and he is carrying the virus. All our efforts to cure him have failed. It appears that the form of virus carried inside the Replicants is a different strain from the original. In less than three days, the soldier is already showing symptoms of infection. This strain of the virus gestates inside a living host and, if current indications are anything to go by, creates a new fully-fledged Supersoldier in approximately a week.

“In other words, any of the Supersoldiers currently at large are possibly creating more Replicants at an exponential rate.”

“Oh my God.”

“So while I share your disgust at the methods, I can’t find it in myself to condemn what Drake did to subject 42.”

“His name’s Krycek,” Skinner barked. “And you’ll excuse me if I find it more difficult than you to accept any excuse for sexually abusing and raping a helpless prisoner.”

“As I said, I’m disgusted by what Drake did. But I can’t deny the importance of the information he thereby obtained.”

“What is the military saying?”

“They’re in a panic, naturally. Unless we can find a way to ‘neuter’ the Supersoldiers, this has blown their plans for trying to tame one of them to work for us. Basically, they’re saying that even if we manage to separate an alien from its host, they can’t let that host out into the world and run the risk he’ll create more Replicants.”

“Maybe the infection would leave the body at the same time as the alien.”

“Perhaps. But maybe it’s part of the irreversible physiological change. Drake’s working on the problem. He’ll find out the truth, one way or the other.”

Skinner stood up. “I’m coming back to Penzbech with you.”

“That’s the other reason I came,” Scully replied. “Subj…Krycek’s been asking to see you.”

***

“Jesus,” Skinner said, looking through the mirrored glass with an expression of horrified fascination.

“I know,” Mulder agreed. “It’s pretty obscene. But all the Replicants are wearing them now as a safety precaution.”

“It looks painful.”

“Probably is,” Mulder muttered, absently rubbing his own crotch in sympathy. “But given the results if it’s activated, it seems fairer to have it tight enough that they can’t forget they’re wearing them.”

“What exactly are the results?”

“Works on the same principle as the chest restraint. But it’s a lot more fragile. If he becomes erect, he’ll snap the ring and the acid will immediately castrate him. That’ll give someone ten minutes to get the fuck out of his cell before he regenerates. It’s the only way to be absolutely certain he can’t infect anyone.”

“And he’s wearing it permanently?”

“Well, until they come up with another alternative. Scully’s team is working on the idea of injecting a low level of magnetite solution directly into both the scrotum and prostate of a subject. Just enough to kill off the infection. It’ll only work until the subject’s next regeneration, of course, but seems a kinder solution on a day-to-day basis than wearing an acid-filled cock-cage.”

“Why the scrotum and the prostate?”

“Because Scully can’t establish for certain whether the infection is carried in the semen or just the sperm. Under test conditions, the infection within the ejaculate remains dormant. That makes it pretty impossible to run conclusive tests on its individual properties.”

“How is that possible?”

Mulder shrugged. “Scully believes it may be programmed to only become ‘live’ on contact with human skin. She thinks it’s a kind of chemical reaction. She can’t prove her hypothesis, though, without risking another soldier becoming infected, so she’s simply going to cover both bases by injecting both the prostate and the scrotum with the ‘cure’.”

“And how near finding that cure are they?”

“They’re already there. It’s just a matter of working out the right dosage now, apparently. Too much and the Replicant’s balls literally explode. Not enough and they’re still potentially infectious. The poor bastard they’ve been using as a test subject spent all day yesterday continuously regenerating his balls and most of today being alternately injected and then forced to ejaculate so they could test the effectiveness of the dosage.”

Skinner frowned suspiciously at the way Mulder was refusing to meet his eyes as they spoke. “Who are they using?” he barked.

“Krycek,” Mulder admitted, with a slight flinch at Skinner’s immediate glare of fury. “It’s our fault, according to Drake. Since Krycek’s the only Replicant not on the ‘test to destruct’ program, Drake says he’s the logical choice for that kind of non-fatal experimentation."

“The whole fucking point of removing him from the program was to try and help him break free of his alien co-habitor. Not torture him into insanity.”

“I know,” Mulder agreed. “And Drake has agreed that he’ll leave Krycek alone from now on. He’s now our baby.”

Although there was nothing on Mulder’s face except an innocent smile, Skinner noticed him rubbing significantly bruised knuckles with his left hand.

“I hope you really hurt him, but if he reports you…”

“I didn’t hit him anywhere that he’d want to admit,” Mulder snickered.

“Oh?”

“Put it this way, Krycek’s not the only one with ball ache today.”

Skinner looked at him in surprise, but didn’t even try to prevent his own smug smile. “Good,” he breathed. “Now I’m going to see if I can undo some of the damage that fucker’s done.”

“I’ll go see how Scully’s doing.”

At Skinner’s frown, Mulder stiffened defensively. “It’s not her fault, Sir. She loathes all this as much as we do but, as she said herself, if they don’t find a way to control the risk of further infection, the military is going to order Penzbech shut down and all the Replicants will be destroyed. You might not see it, but she’s trying to give Krycek a chance.”

Skinner breathed heavily and nodded. “I understand,” he said. “I don’t like it. But tell her I understand.”

***

“I’m sorry,” Skinner said, without preamble, as he entered Krycek’s cell. “I know what they did to you, and I’m sorry. If I’d known, I would have stopped it.”

Krycek’s only acknowledgement of his presence was to pull himself into a tighter ball of misery.

“I brought you something,” Skinner said, reaching into his overcoat.

Krycek shivered and whimpered low in his throat.

“Something good,” Skinner clarified. “Chocolate.”

For a moment, Krycek still remained frozen but then, painfully slowly, he raised his chin and risked a careful look in the direction of Skinner’s outstretched hand.

“It’s Valrhona,” Skinner said. “I couldn’t believe the price of it, but Mulder said he remembered you liking it so I brought you a couple of bars.”

Skinner saw a brief spark of interest in the haunted green eyes, but then Krycek sighed and dejectedly dropped his head back on his knees.

“You don’t want it? Come on, I know you want it. You really look like you could use some fattening up,” Skinner coaxed. It was the weirdest thing, but it actually hurt him that Krycek was showing no interest in what he’d hoped would be a genuine treat.

‘The man’s just culminated eighteen months of horrific torture by being sexually abused and raped, you asshole’, a voice snarled in the back of his head, ‘and you really think a bar of chocolate is going to help him feel better?’

“Not ‘llowed,” Krycek mumbled, his voice dull.

Skinner blinked in confusion. “Not allowed? What the hell do you mean it’s not allowed?”

Krycek raised his head again, and this time his expression was bitter. He gestured over to a low platform on the far side of the cell where there was a large plastic jug of viscous white liquid and a small plastic mug. “That’s my dinner, Skinner. And my breakfast. And my lunch. That’s the only fucking ‘food’ I’ve eaten in this place. And you wonder why I’ve lost weight? You try drinking that vile shit and see how much weight you lose.”

“Why?” Skinner demanded furiously.

Krycek cringed, obviously certain Skinner’s anger was directed at him. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled frantically, and began trembling violently again.

Skinner was torn between guilt and irritation at the reaction. ‘Why wouldn’t he think you’d hurt him?’ that insidious voice whispered in his head. ‘Who the hell hasn’t hurt him over the last year and a half?’

“I meant why are they being so cruel to you?” he asked, keeping his voice deliberately soft and sympathetic.

Krycek risked a disbelieving glance in his direction. Something in Skinner’s eyes must have convinced him the question was serious, because he stopped trembling and shrugged slightly.

“Expediency. Don’t you know that’s Drake’s personal motto?”

“I don’t understand.”

“If he knows exactly what’s going in, it’s easier for him to monitor what’s coming out,” Krycek snarled, gesturing towards the commode in the far corner of the cell. “They check, measure and weigh every shit and piss I take. They record it too,” he added, pointing at the cameras in the cell. “Every fucking bowel movement I make is on video.”

Skinner stared at the cameras in disgusted fascination. He’d already absently noticed Krycek’s complete lack of privacy for personal functions, but what Krycek was suggesting was obscene. “But why?”

Krycek shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he thinks I’m planning to infect the whole population with an infected dump.”

It made a certain amount of sense to Skinner. Of course Drake wasn’t going to let any of the Replicants’ bodily waste enter the public sewerage system without being thoroughly checked for infection, but the cameras were a totally unnecessary indignity in his opinion.

“I’ll see if I can arrange for a low screen,” he offered. “You have to be monitored 24/7, so I can’t give you true privacy, but you’ll get whatever limited dignity I can afford you from now on.”

For a horrible moment, he thought Krycek was going to cry. The green eyes filled with tears and Krycek sniffled into his lap, but all he actually said was a muted, though seemingly genuine, ‘Thank you’.

“Secondly,” Skinner continued, “I’m going to have you changed onto a proper diet from today. If that makes them work harder to monitor your…um…waste products then so-be-it. So take the damned chocolate.”

Krycek shook his head and shivered. “Drake won’t be happy,” he whispered fearfully.

“You’re not one of Drake’s test subjects any longer,” Skinner replied firmly. “From now on, Mulder and I have sole authority over you.”

He’d hoped that the announcement would pacify Krycek. Instead it seemed to terrify him. He scrambled backwards across the floor until he was as far away from Skinner as was physically possible in the tiny cell.

“Why does that scare you?” he asked, deliberately repressing his automatic irritation at what he perceived as Krycek’s irrational ingratitude.

When Krycek finally answered, Skinner’s gut churned.

“At least Drake doesn’t hate me,” Krycek whispered, then dropped his head onto his knees and began to sob.

Skinner took a step towards him, but then hesitated. Krycek looked absolutely terrified and if Skinner’s approach made him panic there was no knowing how he might react.

‘He’s a fucking Supersoldier,’ Skinner reminded himself. ‘He could rip you apart with one finger.’

“Neither Mulder nor I have any reason not to hate you, Krycek,” he replied calmly. “But neither are we intending you any harm. A few days ago, you asked for my help. So I’m helping you, to whatever limited extent I can under the circumstances. In exchange, you’ll agree to give me and Mulder your full co-operation.”

“If you want to help me, let me go,” Krycek snarled.

“You know that’s not possible,” Skinner retorted sharply. “I’ll give you some time to think about what I’ve said.”

He laid the chocolate bars on the low platform, grabbed the jug of unappetizing ‘food’ and let himself out of the cell.

***

“How did it go?” Skinner asked.

It was almost midnight by the time Mulder had arrived at his apartment clutching a bag of Chinese take-out.

“Drake pulled another hissy-fit when he found out you’d arranged for Krycek to get ‘real’ food, but he…um… saw sense eventually.”

“Don’t tell me you hit him again?” Skinner groaned, reaching for another piece of lemon chicken.

“Nah. I pulled in the big guns. Between you going back to work and Drake finding out about the new arrangements, I had a long chat with Senator Matheson. I explained what we were trying to do with Krycek and why and managed to sell him the idea. He pulled a few strings with the military and we got virtual carte blanche.”

“Define ‘virtual’.”

“We can’t do anything that might compromise the safety of the base. Krycek will be subject to whatever safety measures are deemed necessary for the other Replicants. In other words, he gets the injection same as all the rest.”

“Scully’s managed to perfect it?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I don’t see a problem with that.”

Mulder winced. “It apparently hurts like fuck,” he admitted. “We’re basically burning their balls from the inside out. And it’s to be administered a minimum of once daily.”

“Why daily? I thought it would work until a Replicant regenerated himself.”

“The prostate injection will. But even with 24/7 monitoring, it’s theoretically possible for one of the Replicants to mutilate his scrotum without us realizing. For instance, Krycek could roll over in his sleep, ‘accidentally’ damage his balls out of camera view, and then regenerate them. So either he has to be permanently restrained, or every time he’s been left alone he gets injected again before we’re allowed to visit his cell.”

Skinner shuddered. “Alternatively, we could continue to use the cock-cage. I don’t see how we’re going to create any trust with him once he figures out that a visit from us means a burning needle in his balls.”

Mulder shook his head. “Three of the subjects triggered their cages today. All the others got pretty damned close to setting theirs off too. After a few hours they seem to get driven crazy by the pressure. Scully doesn’t even think it’s related to the discomfort of the cages. She believes the Replicants have an inbuilt biological imperative to reproduce. The inability to become erect plays incessantly on their minds until, eventually, they stop caring about the consequences and start clawing at their groins anyway.”

Skinner shook his head in bemusement. “We’ve never noticed an overwhelming sex-drive in Supersoldiers before.”

“Yeah, well I think we can blame Drake for this. My theory is the Replicants remain sexually dormant until ‘triggered’. Presumably, the aliens didn’t want to move too fast so they inbuilt the potential, but left it inactive. Immersing the test subjects in the sensory deprivation chambers and ramming sexual images down their throats has forced them to prematurely jump into reproduction mode. Apparently most of them are now acting like cats in heat. Constantly touching themselves and acting in … um… suggestive ways with their guards. It’s become a whole new security nightmare.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

“What about Krycek?”

“To an extent,” Mulder admitted, “but he’s definitely more in control of himself than any of the others. It supports his claim that he’s managing to keep his alien influence suppressed.”

“I probably don’t want to know the answer to this, but I can’t walk into that cell without knowing exactly what Krycek’s suffered today, so tell me, Mulder. How does someone apply an injection directly into the prostate gland?”

Mulder shuddered slightly. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask,” he admitted.

“That bad?”

“Worse than you can imagine, Sir. Drake’s initial idea was to apply it anally, like they’ve been applying the electrical shocks. Only it turns out that the application of an injection is a lot trickier. He used a mechanical dilator to open Krycek’s anus wide enough to get his whole goddamned hand inside. But he still couldn’t see what he was doing. So he tried to open him up even wider. By that time, Krycek was struggling so hard that they had to swap back to the magnetite restraints. He was screaming the place down, Sir.”

“The fucker,” Skinner snarled, visualizing shoving his own hand up Drake’s ass and seeing how loud he screamed.

“Anyway, by that time, Krycek’s body had begun regenerating the damage from the initial dilation and his ass suddenly clamped down so hard on Drake’s wrist that Drake’s whole lower arm is now bruised a spectacular shade of purple.”

“What did Drake do?”

“Well, if Scully and I hadn’t been there, I think he would have really hurt Krycek in revenge. Instead, he just had him turned over and restrained on his back. Then he cathetered Krycek and injected him that way. It seemed to hurt. A lot.”

“Drake injected him through his…his… his penis?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Skinner rubbed his face with his hands and sighed heavily. “How the hell do we do it, Mulder? How do we walk into Krycek’s cell and ask for his co-operation after something like that? How can the poor bastard even still be sane?”

“Bottom line, Sir?”

Skinner nodded grimly.

“Because, in the scheme of things, Krycek had a pretty good day today. Compared with what’s happened to him over the last eighteen months, the tests today were a walk in the park. It’s pretty sickening to admit it, but he’s survived a lot worse.”

“Jesus,” Skinner cursed. “Did he at least get a decent dinner?”

“Nothing heavy. He hasn’t had solid food for a long time, remember. But he had soup and some scrambled eggs. Oh, and he ate the chocolate. Both bars. You’d better go shopping again,” Mulder chuckled.

“Damn,” Skinner sighed. “Why the hell couldn’t Krycek’s weakness be sunflower seeds? How the hell am I going to explain expensive French chocolate on my expense accounts?”

“You’re a deputy director, Sir. Why not set up a special Valrhona budget in the interests of national security?” Mulder snickered.

***

Mulder took a deep steadying breath, then let himself into Krycek’s cell. Of necessity, he was going to have to do the majority of the ‘work’ with Krycek. He was assigned full time to Penzbech, while Skinner still had the many duties of a Deputy Director to fulfill in addition to the Project and so would only be able to visit Krycek in the evenings.

Yet, despite Skinner being the one who had finally killed Krycek, Mulder was damned sure that it was going to take a lot longer for him to gain Krycek’s co-operation. There was too much bad history between them for Krycek to see him as anything but ‘the enemy’.

That’s why he’d arranged for Krycek to be restrained for his first visit.

It had been easy enough to organize. Krycek had been allowed to eat his breakfast in peace and then had been subdued and taken to the laboratory for another scrotal injection. All Mulder had done was ask the soldiers to leave Krycek restrained when they wheeled him back into his cell

“Good morning,” he said, entering the cell, and Krycek’s head whipped around in panic from the examination table.

“I hear you behaved yourself this morning,” Mulder continued, ignoring Krycek’s terrified stare. “Climbed into your restraints without argument.”

“That’s because I actually imagined it would hurt worse to be shot with a flame-thrower than to co-operate,” Krycek snarled. “If I’d known they were about to burn my fucking balls off I wouldn’t have been so fucking stupid.”

“Get used to it, Krycek. From now on, you get that injection every morning,” Mulder advised him bluntly. “If you fight them, all that will happen is you’ll get burned to a crisp and then taken to the laboratory for your injection. So think of co-operation as the best of two evils.”

“You fucking heartless bastard.”

Mulder just shrugged. “I just thought you’d rather know the truth. We aren’t going to achieve anything by lying to each other.”

“Wasn’t it you who said I wouldn’t know the truth if it bit me?” Krycek snapped.

“My, you are feeling better this morning, aren’t you? Amazing what a couple of decent meals can do to chirp someone up.”

“You want fucking gratitude, is that it? Well okay, Mulder. Thanks a fucking bunch for the French toast. Shame about the needle in my balls.”

“Yeah well, life sucks, Krycek. Get used to it.”

“I was used to it. Until that fucker Skinner murdered me.”

Mulder shook his head and tutted loudly. “Is that any way to talk about the man who’s practically put his ass on the line getting you removed from Drake’s clutches?”

“I’m not seeing any significant improvements,” Krycek hissed.

“No? Well think about this, you ungrateful little fuck. Every other subject got that same injection this morning but they aren’t having conversations right now. They’re too busy screaming their asses off while Drake tries out their reaction to having a napalm shower,” Mulder retorted angrily.

Then he felt sick, and guilty, when Krycek immediately turned frighteningly pale and began to throw up.

It took him a couple of frantic seconds to find the release for the restraints, but he managed to help Krycek sit up before he choked on his own vomit.

“I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly, patting the Replicant’s shoulder. “I just wanted you to face reality, not choke on it.”

Then he swallowed heavily and took a nervous step backwards as he belatedly realized that Krycek was now free and he was unarmed . “You aren’t um… um… planning to kill me, are you?”

Krycek gave him an incredulous look then gave a brief significant glance at the overhead sprinklers. “For a bright guy, sometimes you’re a complete asshole, Mulder.”

Mulder rocked back on his heels, staring at Krycek with clear bemusement.

“WHAT?” Krycek snapped.

“It really is you,” Mulder breathed. “I wasn’t sure… but you really are Krycek, aren’t you?”

“So fucking what? It doesn’t change anything, does it?” Krycek said, his tone bitter. “Maybe it even makes it worse. Makes it personal.”

Mulder felt an irrational flash of hurt. Krycek honestly seemed to believe he was taking pleasure in his misfortune. But, then again, why wouldn’t he?

“It just makes wanting to get that alien fucker out of your head personal,” he said.

Krycek gave him a look of clear disbelief, crossed to his water jug and took a deep gulp to rinse his mouth, then walked to the far corner of his cell and hunkered down into a crouch. “What the fuck do you want from me, Mulder?”

“For starters, I need the answers to a few questions.”

“What’s the point? You’ll just accuse me of lying to you. What’s it this time? Something new or an old favorite? Let me guess…. It’s ‘Did you kill my father’?”

A flash of old fury thundered through Mulder’s heart.

“This is fucking pointless. I think I’m going to call Drake and tell him he can have you back,” he spat.

Krycek’s reaction was both immediate and sickening. His face flooded with terror and he threw himself forward, crawling towards Mulder in a posture of absolute submission. “Please, oh god, please. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please. PLEASE. I’m sorry, Mulder. I’ll be good. Anything. I swear it. Anything you want. Please.”

“Shit,” Mulder gasped, as a huge ball of bile rose in his throat.

He’d never, in a life full of remembered horrors, witnessed anything as heart-wrenchingly pathetic as watching a naked, broken Alex Krycek crawling across the floor like a whipped cur, begging desperately for a mercy he clearly didn’t believe he’d receive.

“I didn’t mean it,” he snapped desperately. “Listen to me, Krycek. I didn’t fucking mean it. You know what a fucking nasty temper I’ve got. So…so… so just don’t push me in future, okay?”

Now curled in a shivering, terrified ball at his feet, Krycek nodded frantically. “Anything you want,” he husked. “Anything. I swear.”

“Are you gay?”

The non-sequitur was enough to shock Krycek out of his sniveling contrition. His head jerked up and he looked at Mulder incredulously. “What?”

“Just answer the question. Yes or No. Are you, or more to the point, were you gay?”

Color flooded Krycek’s cheeks, he dropped his gaze to the tiles at Mulder’s feet, and he mumbled something incoherent towards the floor.

“I didn’t hear you,” Mulder barked.

“Yes,” Krycek whispered, his head bowed in miserable defeat.

Mulder nodded. Skinner had been right. Krycek’s homosexuality wasn’t a side-effect of his transformation. Another possible confirmation that Krycek’s alien was no longer in the driving seat.

“That day you kissed me, what was that all about? You got a thing for me, Krycek?”

Krycek moaned miserably and began to tremble.

“You said ‘anything’, Krycek. I want the truth. Are you attracted to me?”

“Yes,” Krycek whimpered.

“Then you’re an idiot. Even if you weren’t a rat-bastard, I wouldn’t have looked twice at you. You’ve got too little tit and too much cock for my tastes.”

“I know,” Krycek mumbled into the floor. “I always knew. It… it didn’t matter.”

“Why?” Mulder asked, his tone gentling.

“Fantasy,” Krycek replied simply, then fell silent.

Yeah, Mulder told himself. Krycek was right. Since he had hated the ratbastard, it hadn’t really mattered whether he himself was gay or straight anyway. Since Krycek knew nothing would ever come of the attraction, he’d been free to fantasize anything he liked. But it still seemed pretty pathetic. Poor bastard.

“Did you kill my father?”

Krycek began shivering again. “Yeah,” he breathed, then tensed in obvious expectation of punishment.

Oddly, finally hearing the confession out loud didn’t hurt Mulder like he’d expected. Or maybe it was just the circumstances. Whatever dire retribution he’d ever fantasized for Krycek paled into insignificance next to the horrors the man had suffered. Was still suffering.

“Get some rest,” he said. “Skinner’s coming to see you tonight.”

Then he hesitated at the doorway. “If you get back in your restraints, you won’t have to have another injection. If you don’t, they’ll insist on doing it again before Skinner arrives. It’s up to you.”

Krycek looked up at him in clear bemusement. Mulder wasn’t sure whether he was stunned by Mulder’s calm acceptance of his confession or by the warning. Either way, he just rose silently to his feet, climbed back onto the examination table and let Mulder reactivate the restraints.

“I’ll tell the soldiers to release you and stay with you when they bring your lunch. As long as they strap you back in afterwards, you’ll be okay,” Mulder promised awkwardly, then stepped out of the cell.

***

“Has Krycek eaten dinner yet?” Skinner asked, as he checked in with the guard-station at 9.30.

The soldier he was questioning looked slightly sheepish. “We didn’t have anyone to spare to wait with him while he ate and Agent Mulder said he’d rather avoid 42 having to have a second injection today. Things are a little…um…. crazy here at the moment.”

“Trouble?” Skinner asked.

“16 got free when he was being put back in his restraints after today’s experiments and attacked Dr Drake. It happened so fast, no one could do anything.”

“He killed him?”

“Um….no.”

“What the hell happened, man?”

The soldier licked his lips nervously. “Well, you know…um… the problem we’ve been having with the Replicants the last couple of days? Um… well 16 had just regenerated and he was …um… frustrated and….well… it just happened so fast, Sir. We tried to break them apart, but it was too late.”

To Skinner’s horror, as the penny began to drop, he found himself struggling not to laugh.

“Where’s Drake now?”

“In the isolation wing. Dr Scully says it’ll be about seven days before he has to be put into the cells with the others.”

“How terrible,” Skinner muttered insincerely.

“Yeah,” the soldier replied, equally unmoved. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

“If you call the kitchen to get Krycek’s dinner ready, I’ll take it in to him myself.”

“I appreciate that, Sir,” the soldier replied, and made the call.

Skinner waited for the food to arrive. It took about twenty minutes, and when the chef’s assistant arrived with a tray his own neglected stomach jumped up and took immediate notice of the heavenly aromas wafting from the covered plate.

“What is that, Private?” he demanded, as he sniffed appreciatively.

The young man snapped to attention. “Medallions of port sautéed in a white wine sauce, with petit pois, new potatoes and asparagus tips.”

“For Krycek?”

The private smirked. “Well, his menu was going to be corned beef hash tonight, like the rest of the mess. But then this meal became unexpectedly available, so Chef said we may as well give it to 42.”

Skinner suppressed a smile. “Good thinking,” he said. “But isn’t Dr. Drake hungry tonight?”

“Oh, well when Bennett got infected, the Doctor insisted he should be moved immediately onto the Replicants' diet,” the private replied smoothly. “So it only seemed fair under the circ…”

“I get the picture, Private,” Skinner interrupted. “Carry on.”

“Yes, Sir,” the young soldier agreed, with a salute and a cheeky grin. “Oh,” he called back over his shoulder, just before he disappeared around a bend in the corridor, “and you can tell 42 that tomorrow night he’s having steak.”

“Why do I get the impression no one’s particularly cut up about what happened to Dr Drake?” Skinner asked the guard on the desk.

“I have no idea what you mean, Sir,” the soldier replied blandly. Then he coughed several times, like he was choking.

No longer even pretending to hide his own smile, Skinner made his way towards Krycek’s cell. A part of him was horrified by his own reaction to the tragic news. A far larger part seemed to have a more Old Testament attitude to Drake’s fate.

“An eye for an eye, Drake,” he said, as he stepped into the door mechanism. “Let’s see how you enjoy being a test subject.”

***

He stepped into the cell, closed the door, put the tray on the low platform and released Krycek from his restraints.

“Sorry your food’s late. There’s been a bit of an incident here. Eat before it gets cold.”

Krycek gave him a nervous look but still scurried over to the tray as though he was starving. “Shit,” he breathed, as he uncovered his plate and stared down in disbelief at his dinner.

Skinner’s own stomach rumbled angrily as Krycek sat cross-legged on the floor and began ravenously devouring his food with a plastic knife and fork. The pork was so tender that even the flimsy knife slipped through it as though it were butter.

“And to think that all I’ve had to eat in the last three days is half a take-out Chinese and a couple of subs,” Skinner sighed out loud.

Krycek paused his wolfish eating abruptly and looked dolefully at the remains of his dinner. “You want to share?” he asked warily.

For some reason the genuine, if reluctant, offer made Skinner’s heart ache.

He shook his head firmly. “No. I’ll get something on the way home. But thanks.”

Krycek’s lips twitched into a vague ghost of a smile, then he rapidly began eating again as if worried Skinner might change his mind.

“Before I forget,” Skinner said, as Krycek burped loudly and pushed away his empty plate, “I brought you some more chocolate.”

Krycek eagerly reached over for the proffered bars, then hesitated and drew his hand back empty. “Why are you doing this?” he whispered. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“It’s just damned chocolate,” Skinner snapped, his surly mask firmly in place, because when push came to shove he didn’t know why he was putting himself on the line for Krycek. To one extent, it was because he couldn’t bear the thought of any creature being abused the way Krycek was. But then, there were still 19 other surviving Replicants in the base and he wasn’t buying them expensive chocolate and making sure they had decent food to eat.

He placed the chocolate on Krycek’s tray and moved to sit on the edge of the examination table.

“I spoke to Mulder. He said you’re gay.”

Krycek stiffened defensively. “And that’s a fucking crime now?”

“Don’t ever swear at me, boy,” Skinner growled.

Krycek shuddered and dropped his head in clear, frightened apology.

“The reason it’s significant is that all the other Replicants are as gay as yourself now,” Skinner explained. “It’s apparently a side-effect of the transformation. That cast a doubt on your assertion that you’re currently in the driving seat.”

Krycek blinked rapidly, then his eyes flickered with understanding. “So you’re saying that if I was already gay, it’s not an issue. But if I hadn’t been, then my current orientation would be a sign I’m just the alien faking you out?”

“Exactly.”

“You haven’t thought this through, Skinner. How do you know I’m not actually the alien just saying I used to be gay before? Maybe it’s a double-blind.”

“And maybe the alien’s smart enough to say what you just said to make me even more convinced you’re Krycek?” Skinner chuckled.

Krycek just shrugged.

“I believe it’s true, because Mulder said you’re in love with him.”

“I never said that. I said I was attracted to him,” Krycek denied angrily.

Skinner ignored his denial. “Furthermore, Mulder says he can, in retrospect, see evidence of that in the way you previously dealt with him. Evidence that you’re a fucked up confused little puppy, admittedly, but he’s still convinced it’s true.”

“I never said I loved him,” Krycek repeated angrily. “Arrogant bastard.”

“That’s Mulder,” Skinner agreed, with a small affectionate smile.

“Anyway, just because I felt that way still doesn’t mean the alien isn’t fuc…um, messing with your heads.”

“You want me to think that’s true, Krycek?”

Krycek shook his head. “I’m just saying it now, because either you or Mulder are going to get around to considering it later. I don’t… shit….I mean… oh hell. I can’t afford to hope, Skinner. Don’t you understand that? What if it’s you fucking with my head?”

“I told you not to swear at me, Alex,” Skinner reminded him quietly. “All I can promise you is that, however it turns out, you’ll never be part of the Project again. Even if you are the alien tricking us, the very worst we’ll ever do is kill you once. Permanently. No more torture. No more abuse. That much I can promise you.”

Krycek’s eyes went huge with shock at Skinner’s unthinking use of his first name, and he absorbed the rest of Skinner’s comments in silent, stunned acceptance.

“Mulder’s straight, you know,” Skinner added. “He’s open-minded, but not terribly experimental where sex is concerned.”

“He’s the oldest born-again virgin in DC,” Krycek snorted. “They say after seven years every skin cell in the human body has replaced itself and Mulder hasn’t been laid in a decade.”

It occurred to Skinner to mention that a Replicant’s total body regeneration was an even more effective way of re-establishing virginity, but in view of Krycek’s recent rape he didn’t think the observation would be appreciated.

And he didn’t know why it was suddenly so important to him that Krycek accepted the truth that Mulder could never return his feelings. But maybe it was just that there were already enough people currently making a career out of hurting the poor bastard without Krycek voluntarily adding to his own pain by clinging on to an impossible fantasy.

“I just didn’t want you to keep …”

“What? Fantasizing about him?” Krycek interrupted bitterly. “Let me explain something to you, Skinner. Even before I died I had to depend on a ‘dream’ of happily-ever-after. I knew it was never going to happen. I knew I’d never find the so-called Mr. Right. I took a long hard look at myself once and realized no-one was ever going to want a shitty excuse for a human being like me in that way. So I built myself a little fantasy world around Mulder. It didn’t matter that it was never going to happen with him, because it was never going to happen anyway.

“I’ve lost my life, my liberty, my body and now I’m even sharing my goddamned head with an alien son-of-a-bitch who spends 24 hours of every day trying to take me over again. So I’m damned if I’ll lose the one thing I still do have. When you pull that final trigger on me, and I know you will, I’m at least going to die with the fucking DREAM someone could have loved me.”

Skinner felt abruptly sickened by Krycek’s words. The more time he spent with him, the harder it was to cling on to even a memory of his previous hatred of the man. No-one deserved this much physical and mental anguish. No-one.

“Krycek…”

“Just…. Just fu…just leave me alone. Please, Skinner. Just go home and leave me alone,” Krycek begged, pulling his knees to his chest, curling his arms around his lower legs and burying his head in his thighs.

Although he was silent, Skinner could tell from the desperate shaking of his shoulders that Krycek was crying.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he said, rising to his feet and heading towards the door.

His stomach was still aching with hunger but, for some unknown reason, the pain seemed to have moved right up his torso and was now situated in his heart.

***

“You wanted to see me?”

Scully gave him a grateful smile, entered his office and sat down. “I know you’re busy, Sir, so I appreciate…”

“Just cut to the chase, Dr. Scully,” Skinner snapped, though his expression was softer than his words.

“It’s about Drake. Well, about Drake’s replacement.”

Skinner sighed and rubbed his eyes. It should have occurred to him that Drake would immediately be replaced. Then again, he couldn’t imagine any new appointment to head the Penzbech Project could be anything except an improvement. Drake might have been a brilliant scientist, but he was still one fucked-up sadistic son-of-a-bitch.

“Who have they appointed?”

Scully cleared her throat, looked intensely uncomfortable and then whispered, “Me.”

“You? But you aren’t even military.”

She shrugged. “I have high-level security clearance. I’m the most experienced with the Replicants and the Project, and… well, apparently my appointment came directly from the White House.”

“Something to do with Mulder’s pet Senator, you think?”

She nodded miserably.

“Isn’t this good news?”

She shrugged again. “I find myself having a crisis of conscience, Sir. When Drake was in charge, I could blame him for the atrocities and paint myself as the voice of reason. I could justify my work with the subjects as being a necessary evil to protect them from the worst of his excesses. I’ve done unspeakable things, but I could always justify them to myself with the knowledge that Drake would have done worse.

“But now, I have to stop hiding behind those pale excuses and face reality. In many ways, I’m as culpable as Drake. Worse, perhaps, because I now believe the original hosts are alive – something that Drake never accepted. I know I’m hurting human beings. So what does that make me?”

Skinner steepled his fingers and stared at her carefully before replying.

“It makes you the best person to head the Project.”

“But….”

“Hear me out, Dana,” he said, deliberately using her first name. “You know my opinion about the experiments. I am appalled. I am ashamed. I find it increasingly difficult to sleep at night. However, I still accept the unfortunate necessity for the Penzbech Project to continue. Sometimes the ends do justify the means, even if we end up burning in Hell for our part in what’s happening there. We’re trying to save the whole human race, billions of people, and for that we are abusing and torturing a few, hapless creatures who are more deserving of our pity than our hate.

“We have no choice except to use the test subjects in an attempt to find a way to prevent the colonization. However, where you and I differ from Drake is that we do understand that what we are doing, while possibly justified, is an offense against every moral principle we hold dear. And that’s why you have to accept this position. Because I know you’ll never inflict anything except necessary suffering on those poor creatures.”

Scully released a loud, relieved exhalation of breath and nodded.

“You’re right, Sir. Thank you.”

“So, what are the first steps you’ll take when you return to Penzbech and pick up the reins today? How do you intend to change the regime there? I assume that is your intention.”

She frowned and looked down at her hands. “I can’t stop the experiments,” she sighed. “We still have a number of potential weapons that have to be tested. The data we’re collecting is crucial. And finding a long-term solution to the virus being transmitted as an STD is absolutely vital.”

Skinner looked grieved, but nodded his agreement.

“But, that aside, I want to change the way the subjects are treated when they aren’t being experimented on. The first order I intend to give is that from now on the Replicants are to be given clothes. Keeping them permanently naked was not only Drake’s way of dehumanizing them and pretending they were no more than lab rats, but was a way of demoralizing them and keeping them in a constant state of vulnerable humiliation.”

Skinner nodded his approval. “What about their diet?”

“Again, my personal opinion is that Drake used that as a deliberate tool to reinforce the fact that they were just ‘things’ that required nothing more than basic nutrition. We knew months ago that their waste products weren’t dangerous. We even stopped testing their excretions. There was no reason not to change them back to ‘proper’ food, except Drake’s insistence that they required no ‘human’ comforts and that to give them any would be perceived as weakness on our part. They're all visibly underweight. So it's a situation I intend to put right immediately.

“I also propose we make their cells a little more comfortable. There’s no logical reason why they can’t have cots to sleep on and even small comforts like books to read. Drake always said that any extraneous items in their cells could be used as weapons, but that was a ludicrous argument. The Replicants are weapons. If they want to attack their guards, they aren’t going do it by throwing a damned book at them.”

Skinner growled deep in his throat. “Call me a monster, but my only argument with what you’re proposing is that Drake won’t suffer what he put those poor bastards through.”

“Well, I don’t know, Sir. It’s only prudent, given that he’s a new kind of Replicant – one produced by the new sexually transmitted strain of the virus – to assume that he, and Bennett, might deviate from the norm we’ve observed in the other Replicants.”

“Bennett’s the soldier who raped Krycek?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“So, theoretically, the data you’ve already collected from the other Replicants might be invalid as far as they’re concerned?”

“Exactly,” she nodded. “I think, for safety’s sake, we should keep them on the original regime until we know for certain. It's the only way we can scientifically compare their data to that already collected.”

Skinner felt guilty about the amount of personal satisfaction he felt over the idea. But not so guilty that he didn’t nod at her suggestion. “A prudent course of action,” he agreed.

“My other primary concern is this sexual imperative Drake’s awakened in the subjects. The injections are proving successful in neutralizing the threat of infection, but haven’t addressed the mental desire to reproduce. There have been several incidents of Replicants attempting to seduce or even rape their guards. It seems that even the threat of being burned isn’t a deterrent if the subject is sufficiently frustrated, and I’m not sure how to handle it. There may be a chemical way to suppress the sexual desire, but our initial trials are proving unsuccessful.”

“Damn,” Skinner muttered. “Can't they just... um... relieve their own frustration?"

"Masturbation only seems to relieve their physical needs, not their psychological imperative to try to reproduce themselves. They appear more obsessed with the idea of achieving penetration than by the act of ejaculation itself."

"Then what about allowing them… um…conjugal visits?”

Scully blinked rapidly and blushed. “From whom?”

“Each other,” Skinner clarified. “I understand the security issue of letting them interact, but surely you could find a controlled way to pair them up?”

“Shared cells are out of the question,” Scully replied. “I can’t expect the soldiers to handle two Replicants in such a confined space. But I could possibly adapt one of the laboratories so it would be possible for two subjects to ‘interact’ and then be safely separated for return to their cells. It’s a good idea. I’ll get my team working on it and then come up with a schedule.” She hesitated, then said, “What about Krycek? Do you want me to include him?”

Skinner wasn’t sure why the careful question made his temper flare, but even the idea of Krycek being wheeled into one of the laboratories for his daily ‘interaction’ with one of the other Replicants infuriated him.

“I don’t want Krycek having any contact with the other Replicants,” he barked.

Scully looked askance at his tone, so he forced himself to relax and speak more calmly as he continued.

“I don’t want Krycek knowing anything has changed for the other Replicants,” he explained. “I don’t even want him to know that Drake is no longer in charge. I want him to believe that every concession he has comes from me and depends on his good behavior and his ability to keep his alien suppressed.”

“I understand,” Scully nodded. “It makes sense. If he believes he’s totally dependent on your goodwill, he’ll be more inclined to respond positively to you. I’ll instruct his guards accordingly. But…well, what about his sexual imperative?”

“The way I understand it, he’s far more in control of himself than the other Replicants are. If it does become an issue, I’ll find a way to deal with it.”

Scully pursed her lips disapprovingly. “What if it becomes an ‘issue’ when Mulder’s in his cell?”

“He told you?”

“That Krycek’s been panting after him for years?” Scully snapped, with uncharacteristic spite. “Yes, of course he told me. We both thought it was pretty funny when we spoke about it last night, but it won’t be funny if Krycek rapes him, will it?”

A flare of irrational anger spiked through Skinner and he struggled to keep his expression impassive. “I don’t think it’s funny at all,” he replied coldly. “I think it’s sad. Perhaps it would be best if Mulder works alongside you with the other Replicants. I’ll take over with Krycek. That should alloy your fears, Dr. Scully. I can’t see Krycek raping me.”

Scully had the grace to look slightly ashamed. “I’m sure Mulder wants to work with Krycek,” she said. “When I said we laughed, we weren’t deliberately being cruel. It just… well, you have to admit it is pretty ridiculous, Sir.”

“Nevertheless, your comments about Mulder possibly being in danger were valid. I’m long overdue a vacation. I’ll take some time off and work with Krycek myself.”

“But…”

“That will be all, Dr. Scully. I’m late for my next appointment.”

***

He had to pull a few strings and call in a few favors, particularly since he’d just dropped the bombshell that he was planning to take an unscheduled ‘vacation’, but Skinner managed to clear his schedule for the afternoon and leave the office by 2.

The first thing he did was stop at the shopping mall.

After a lot of thought, he decided that incremental concessions made a hell of a lot more sense than changing Krycek’s situation overnight. So he bought a couple of pairs of boxer shorts and a few tee-shirts. He’d offer the shorts first, to at least allow Krycek to cover his nakedness, and if he continued to co-operate he’d get the tee-shirts too. After that, he’d take a wait and see approach.

Next he bought chocolate. Valrhona again, naturally, but also chocolate covered cherries and a selection of Belgian truffles.

Then he went to the bookstore and purchased an eclectic collection of paperbacks and even some graphic comic books.

Finally, he popped into Walmart and bought a sleeping bag, a small portable CD player and a selection of CD’s.

Trusting he had enough bribes to last him at least a week, he drove to Penzbech.

The same soldier was at the desk when he signed in.

“He’s been good today, Sir,” the soldier announced, before he even asked. “We gave him the injection in his cell according to your new instructions, and he didn’t give us any trouble about restraining him. He’s probably bored out of his skull by now, of course.”

“He ate breakfast and lunch?”

“Yes, Sir. Rogers took it in to him and waited while he ate. He said 42 was subdued but seemed appreciative of the company. I’m sure he’s grateful as hell not to be in the tests any more, but it’s got to be a long day all alone in that cell.”

“Yes. Tell Rogers I appreciate his time,” Skinner nodded, giving the soldier a small smile of approval and giving silent thanks that at least some of the guards were prepared to treat Krycek as though he were ‘human’.

Krycek looked oddly disappointed when Skinner entered his cell and released his restraints. He climbed awkwardly off the table, stretched himself to work out the kinks in his spine after hours of being strapped to the unforgiving metal surface, then he crossed to the back of the cell and squatted down into a crouch before finally meeting Skinner’s eyes.

Skinner sat down on the edge of the table, put his bag on the floor, pulled out his weapon and placed it casually on his lap. It wasn’t a magnetite-loaded revolver this time, it was one of the new-design Replicant-subduing pistols that shot a hollow-tipped, acid-filled bullet.

From the sudden look of terror in Krycek’s eyes, it was clear he’d been unfortunate enough to have personally experienced the effectiveness of the weapon.

“Why did you look at me like that when I entered?” Skinner demanded, his face deliberately stern.

He saw Krycek swallow heavily, lick his lips nervously, glance surreptitiously at the pistol on his lap, then bow his head in frightened defeat. “I was expecting Mulder,” he admitted hesitantly.

“Mulder isn’t in charge here, I am,” Skinner snapped, feeling irrationally jealous over Krycek’s obvious disappointment over the identity of his visitor.

“Yes, Sir,” Krycek whispered, his whole posture now one of submission.

“I brought you something,” he said, and was gratified that Krycek immediately whipped his head up with interest. At least Krycek was now expecting his surprises to be a ‘good thing’.

He reached into his bag and withdrew a pair of boxer shorts.

Krycek looked at the shorts, momentarily glanced down at his naked groin, and gulped visibly. For a moment he looked completely dumbfounded, then he dropped forward onto his hands and knees and began crawling eagerly over the floor in his direction.

“Not so fast,” Skinner barked, even though he felt gut-sick at Krycek’s undeniable similarity to a much-beaten but suddenly hopeful puppy, scurrying across the floor in the hope of a treat rather than a kick.

Krycek skidded to a halt and glared at him with a mixture of hate, intense disappointment and fear.

“When, exactly, did you first manage to overcome the alien’s control over you?” he demanded.

Fury sparked in the green eyes. “How the fuck should I know? I don’t even know what fucking month it is now, you bastard.”

Skinner picked up the boxers and began to replace them in the bag. “What did I tell you about swearing at me, boy?”

“I’m sorry. Sorry. I’m sorry, Sir. Please, Sir. I’m sorry,” Krycek wailed, his eyes darting fearfully between the disappearing shorts and the pistol.

Skinner brought the shorts back onto his lap. “Want to try again, boy?”

“Yes, Sir. Please, Sir,” Krycek whimpered.

Skinner should have felt a sense of victory. Instead he felt slightly nauseous. Nevertheless, he let none of his emotions show on his face. “So when did you ‘take over’?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Krycek whispered, hunching his shoulders miserably. “I’d been here a long time. Maybe a year, I think. It felt that long. It wasn't... wasn't so bad back then. None of the tests were that painful in the beginning. Not compared to now.  Just... just minor injuries. Gunshots, minor amputations, that kind of thing. But... but then it all changed. They stopped hurting me and started killing me.   I think I took-over after I’d been killed maybe a dozen times. I’m really not sure. I’m telling the truth. I swear I am.”

“So what changed?”

Krycek shrugged helplessly. “It was like I was trapped in my own head. Like when…when the Oilien possessed me. I mean I could see and hear and I knew what was happening around me. I could feel everything that they did to me. Everything. EVERYTHING!”

Skinner nodded his understanding, and tried to quell the churning in his stomach at the picture Krycek was painting in his head.

“But…but I couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t stop me. I was just being carried along for the ride and the alien fucker who’d taken me over was so fucking scared he couldn’t think clearly any more either.”

“You were aware of his thoughts?”

Krycek nodded, then clearly reconsidered and shook his head. “Not his thoughts. But his panic. His fear. His helplessness to get himself out of the situation. He was angry. Furious. But most of all, he was pissing his pants. So I kept telling him that I could get us out of the shit. I could talk to Drake. Reason with him. Promise him co-operation. I said that I could stop the pain.”

“And he believed you?”

“No,” Krycek growled. “He wasn’t that fuc…um…stupid. I was lying through my teeth, and he knew it. But… well, he started giving in anyway. He started believing that somehow I wasn’t feeling the same level of agony as he was because he was running around in my head, shit-scared, going out of his mind …well, my mind …and I was still managing to stay lucid.”

“How?” Skinner demanded. “How did you manage to stay sane if ‘he’ couldn’t?”

“Ever had your arm amputated by a hot knife in a Russian forest?” Krycek snarled. “Pain is pain. Reaches a point where there aren’t any ‘degrees’ of pain. There’s just agony. I knew pain and I knew what it was like to be taken over by an alien. I’d survived BOTH. So I knew… I thought… I’d eventually survive this pain and this possession. I was so fuc…so sure I’d find a way to get free.”

“So what happened?”

“Like I said, we’d been killed a few times, and each time he got more and more scared of the ‘next’ time. We knew Drake was going to just keep killing us, over and over, until the day we couldn’t regenerate.”

“We,” Skinner interrupted, with a significantly raised brow.

Krycek flinched a little and his eyes darted guiltily. “Me and the alien, I mean. We both were scared. Fucking petrified….sorry. And this one time we regenerated, he slipped ‘behind’ me as we woke up. Left me in charge. Left me to deal with his shit, because he figured it was safer where I’d been. Less painful.”

“But it wasn’t?”

“It isn’t,” Krycek agreed, “but once he was there I didn’t let him get out again. I knew I was in charge because, that night, after Drake killed us again, and that time was… god I can’t even say what he did to us that day, I was the one who regenerated us.”

“How do you know?” Skinner challenged.

Krycek met his eyes and raised his left hand. “Because I gave myself my damned arm back.”

Krycek opened his mouth to speak again, but Skinner waved him silent. He needed a few minutes to digest what Krycek had just said. If Krycek was telling the truth, he’d managed to take his body back from the alien on the 10th re-gen, because Drake had said Krycek’s arm had come back during the 11th.

That had been months previously.

And, ever since then, Drake had been deliberately and systematically torturing a human to death.

Almost absently, Skinner handed over the boxer shorts as he continued to deliberate. He was peripherally aware of Krycek eagerly grabbing them and pulling them up over his over-thin legs like he’d just been given the keys to paradise, but all Skinner could think about was the fact that Drake HAD to have known. In all that time, with all the other test subjects to compare Krycek’s behavior and reactions to, there was no way the scientist hadn’t realized there was something significantly different about subject 42.

He reached into his bag again and retrieved a paperback at random. He laid it on his lap, where the shorts had been, and watched Krycek’s eyes light up with greedy hope.

“Why couldn’t the alien regenerate your arm?”

Krycek’s eyes clouded over a moment and his lower lip trembled. “I don’t know,” he whispered miserably, now looking at the book as though it was a rapidly disappearing dream.

So he’d already learned the lesson about honesty, Skinner told himself, though he now regretted asking Krycek what was an apparently impossible question. He thought for a moment, then said, “I don’t expect you to give me the scientific explanation, Krycek. You’re a thug, not a Doctor. I just want your honest opinion. You have to have a theory about it.”

A look of relief flooded Krycek’s features. “I think,” he said hesitantly. “That the aliens somehow absorb a template of how their hosts look at the time they’re infected. I don’t think it has anything to do with DNA at all. How can it? DNA only says what a person should look like. It doesn’t allow for environmental influences. It can’t indicate whether the host was fat or thin, bearded or clean-shaven. It can’t tell the alien whether the host was scarred or had an amputation. So, the way I figure it, the alien takes some kind of ‘snap-shot’, like a 3-D photograph, and that’s the template it returns to every time it regenerates.”

“And how do you think you managed to regenerate your arm?”

“Because… well because my template always had two arms.”

“Be more specific.”

“When I used to dream, I always had two arms. I had longer hair. I was always younger. In my dreams, I always slipped back ten years into my past. Probably because my subconscious didn’t like what I’d become,” Krycek said wryly. “And when I woke up, the first time I was back in control, I regenerated into the man I was in my dreams. Ironic, huh? The only ‘man of my dreams’ I ever got was myself.”

“So you’re saying that if the alien takes you over again, you’d regenerate back into an older man with one arm?”

“I think so,” Krycek whispered. “But I don’t know.”

“Fair enough,” Skinner nodded. “You’re smarter than you look, Krycek. And I guess a smart man deserves a book to read.”

He tossed the paperback, and Krycek caught it and hugged it to his chest ecstatically.

Skinner reached a final time into his bag. He already had more than enough to think about and he was eager to discuss Krycek’s theory about DNA with Scully and Mulder. He thought that Krycek was really onto something. If that was true, then there would be actual physical proof if they managed to get another host to regain control. Admittedly, not as dramatic as the difference between Krycek having one arm or two but surely, in someone’s dreams, everyone would envisage themselves a little younger, fitter, healthier or something. Scully hadn't noted any changes in the subjects who'd killed themselves but, now they knew what to look for, it might be an idea to recheck the old surveillance tapes to see whether they'd shown any physical differences. 

Krycek practically drooled as Skinner withdrew a bar of chocolate and laid it on his lap.

“When you said ‘we’ and ‘us’ earlier, I had the distinct impression you weren’t speaking in a purely grammatical sense. Tell me now, and you’d better tell me the truth, do you see yourself and the alien as one combined being now, rather than host and hitch-hiker?”

Krycek’s eyes glistened suspiciously and he moaned low in his throat, clutching his arms around himself protectively.

“Remember that ALL concessions can be removed as easily as they are given,” Skinner reminded him coldly.

Krycek shivered.

“Sometimes,” he whispered.

“Sometimes?”

“I know it’s his fault I’m here, but… but he’s the only friend I’ve got.”

Skinner threw him the chocolate bar and rose abruptly to his feet. He needed to get out of the cell, away from Krycek, away from a horrifically abused man who now saw his only ally as the alien hiding inside his head.

“I won’t be back until tomorrow morning,” he said gruffly. “So there’s no need to restrain you again. You’ve pleased me today. I’ll make sure you have something good for dinner.”

Then he strode hurriedly out of the room and decided he’d find a quiet bar for an hour or two before visiting Scully and Mulder.

But he stopped at the guard-station on the way out and made certain that the chef’s assistant had been serious the day before when he’d promised Krycek a steak.

***

“I’m supposed to be working alongside you with Krycek.”

“Not anymore,” Skinner countered, oddly pleased by the pouting expression on Mulder’s face.

“On the record, I want to say I think you’re making a big mistake, Sir.”

“There is no record, Mulder, and you admitted yourself that you lost your temper with him several times yesterday. More to the point, he was equally aggressive to you. I think the pair of you have too much shared violent past to ever reach a meaningful level of trust. Besides, he shows me a lot more respect. He’s intimidated by me. He believes, without doubt, that I wouldn’t hesitate to administer a punishment to him. That makes me far more successful in encouraging him to be truthful.”

“Well, you did kill him,” Mulder acknowledged. “So he’s in no doubt about how you feel about him.”

‘How I felt about him,’ Skinner corrected silently.

“Well, there’s no arguing you got some significant results today,” Scully interrupted. “Krycek’s theory is intriguing.”

“As long as you remember you can’t believe a word that comes out of that lying ratbastard’s mouth,” Mulder sneered.

Skinner frowned repressively. “That attitude is exactly why I’ve pulled you out of this particular project,” he snapped.

Mulder bit his lower lip and managed to look both wounded and misunderstood.

Skinner wasn’t impressed.

“Of course, the best way to prove the theory would be to let Krycek’s hitch-hiker take over again. If we saw, with our own eyes, that the alien regenerates without an arm we’d not only have physical evidence but we’d always know if it was really Krycek we were talking to,” Scully said.

“And what if Krycek couldn’t take charge again?” Skinner demanded. “What if the alien kept hold of the reins? It’s an unacceptable risk. I’m not going to ask him to try it.”

Scully shrugged. “I was only speaking theoretically. But it would be valuable proof.”

“You’ve got 19 other subjects to work with, Scully. Make one of them your lab rat. My priority is trying to free Krycek, not give him back into the alien’s control.”

“We still don’t have any reason to believe that separation is possible,” Mulder interrupted. “The vaccine that prevents the virus from gestating is useless in a fully-fledged Replicant. It’s also useless to cure people infected with the new strain. That’s why we can’t do anything about Drake and Bennett.”

“Not that there would be any point treating Drake anyway,” Scully pointed out. “If we stopped the virus transforming him, he’d die anyway.” At Skinner’s puzzled look, she sighed and continued. “Supersoldier semen is as physically aggressive as the Replicants themselves. In the two minutes 16 managed to remain inside Drake, he ejaculated enough semen to destroy Drake’s entire intestinal tract. We’re not just talking peritonitis, we’re talking complete colonic failure and a ruptured bladder and stomach. That semen is intended to not only infect, but to damage the host’s body so thoroughly that the only ‘cure’ is for the transformation into a Replicant to go ahead.”

“He must be in agony,” Skinner said, appalled despite his distaste for the man.

“And no painkillers seem to be effective. Drake’s already getting a taste of being a test subject and he isn’t even a Replicant yet.”

“While we’re on the subject of the sexual imperative, did you have any luck with the other Replicants?”

Scully smiled. “Five pairs of Replicants successfully interacted with each other today.”

“She means they fucked each other’s brains out,” Mulder smirked.

“I know what she meant, Agent Mulder,” Skinner snapped repressively. “And did you have any problem returning them to their cells?”

“No, they were surprisingly docile once they’d satisfied their imperative,” Scully replied.