"The Information" by Course of Empire, Telepathic Last Words

He doesn't expect her to be on time. In his experience, information costs time as well as money, sleepless nights spent waiting in the shadows for men who as often as not, considered themselves above promptness. Two hours ago, he put on a warm jacket in preparation, but she arrives before he does, pacing among the stone blocks by the waterfall.

He offers her a small smile. Perhaps he has been working for the wrong side all along.

"Agent Scully," he says.

"Who are you?"

He considers answering, but before he can speak, she is right in front of him, staring up into his face but still so strangely fierce, a whirlwind of red hair and angry eyes. "You said you had information. Who are you?"

"That's not important." He has to raise his voice to be heard above the rushing water. He wants to sit at the edge of the plaza, stare down into the pool instead of at the woman beside him, but he is on edge tonight. This is a last, desperate gamble. "I can help you, Agent Scully. But you have to help me."

This is his choice of location, the fourth room of the Roosevelt Memorial. A lifetime ago, he came here for the solace of the water garden. His eyes travel over the inscription in granite at the entrance: "More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all war."

There was peace here, once, but not tonight.

Slowly, he unfurls the fingers of one hand, revealing a crushed, wilted blue flower. He watches her face for the split second change from confusion to realization.

"What sort of help do you require?" she asks. Her voice is calm, even, cold, a sharp contrast to the tide of panic that threatens to engulf him at any moment.

"I think you know," he says. "I need protection. And in exchange..." He takes her hand, presses the dead petals into her palm. "Please."

"Protection from whom?" It is the wrong question to ask, and they both know it. She wants only one answer. He is only a stepping stone for the assortment of players in this game.

"I...don't know." His voice falters for the first time. "They're after me...maybe both of them. Maybe they're all after me."

"Both of them?"

"One wants to stop it. One wants to aid it along. I've worked for them both. Agent Scully, I don't know who I've betrayed..."

"Slow down. I don't understand you."

He grips the edge of a stone block for support. "I saw it in her eyes. She knows. Somehow she knows what's coming. And they're all being killed one by one. I need to know if I'm next. I'm sure I'm next."

Scully is frustrated, he can tell. He is not explaining this clearly. It is all a tangle of fragments, half-remembered conversations, names and faces and unclear allegiances. He knows parts of the whole - or he thought he did - now he is not sure if there is a whole at all.

"Something is happening," he whispers. "Something that will change everything. That's why...why she came back."

"Samantha?"

He nods eagerly, glad to have made at least one connection. "I don't know whose side I'm on. I don't know who the good guys are anymore. I just want out."

"Do you know where she is?" And the unspoken question, does he know where Mulder is?

He shakes his head. "Please...help me...and we'll find her...find him..."

"I can arrange to have you put in the Witness Protection Program--"

"Don't you think we don't have infiltrators there?" He lunges out at her, clutches fistfuls of her coat as he sinks to his knees. "I need you to protect me from them...all of them..."

Scully tries to pull him to his feet, and he staggers, suddenly broken, suddenly dependent upon her support. His nondescript face twists in an expression beyond his control, hot and flushed and feverish and mad. He is aware of how he must seem to her, beyond use, a hindrance, a liability.

He plays his last card. "I *can* help you find them, Agent Scully," he says, "We can stop this."

She stares at him for a moment, then lets out the deep breath he didn't know she was holding in. "What do I need to do?"

He feels his lips stretch into a parody of a smile. "I'm not sure yet. Go on up ahead. I'll follow. I don't want them to see us together."

She hesitates. She turns, slowly, and he watches her leave the monument.

Before he can take the first step to follow her, he feels the hand on his shoulder.

"No." He closes his eyes. "Not this...not now..." It is a moment before he realizes he has spoken out loud.

"On your knees."

Idly, he wonders how far Scully has walked. If he were to scream now, would she hear him? Would she have time to run back and save him before the first crack of the gunshot?

And if she tried, would Alex Krycek kill her as well?

He kneels, facing the waterfall. He could scream, out of principle, but he won't. It is the first noble thing he has done in his life, the last, but perhaps it will be enough.

There is no gunshot. Instead, he feels his head slammed forward into the pool, a rush of water seeping into his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Coughing, gagging, he tries to struggle but the force is too great, the water too powerful. What once brought him life is turned against him, transformed into an instrument of death and he can't breathe, can't fight anymore. Cold wings wrap around his face and he draws them in, a subtle poison flooding into his lungs.

Krycek lets go. He wipes his hands, and turns away as the limp body slides into the dark shimmer of the pool. Sightless eyes watch him from beneath the surface, but he does not look back.

In a few moments, the memorial is once again deserted. Moonlight trickles over the water, unmoved by another death in the night.

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