Genesis
Ally

Chapter 26

For a few seconds, Mulder remained rooted to the spot, his eyes drinking in the image before him. Whatever else he had been expecting when he entered the room, it wasn't this.

He scanned the monitors that lined every inch of the walls and he realised he has stumbled on the epicentre of a sophisticated and comprehensive surveillance system, that viewed the building from without and within. Four of the small screens showed the image of his partner lying in a standard hospital issue bed.

He stepped closer and scrutinised the image closely. It was difficult to make out the details, but he was pretty sure her eyes were closed. Whether she was unconscious or merely sleeping he couldn't tell, but from the medical equipment that surrounded her he was sure of one thing - that whatever had been done to her, it was bad.

He frowned as his memory transported him back to the Washington Hospital almost five years ago, when his partner had lain as if dead, a condition brought about by the very people who had been instrumental in this latest crime against them. It had been the start of a nightmare for them both, and one which seemed never ending now.

He shuddered slightly and forced his attention back to the here and now, noticing for the first time the small black numbers that adorned the left-hand corners of the screens.

At first glance they appeared to be random, but it soon became obvious that they related to specific areas of the hospital and it's grounds and Mulder was pretty sure that the last two digits were room numbers.

He tore his eyes away from Scully, and for the first time allowed himself time to look at the other images that surrounded him. He inhaled sharply as his gaze fell upon the far right screen, and the child within.

Charlie Stevens.

She had been here all along, brought to the same place as her adoptive mother and held for who knew what reasons.

Mulder's jaw set rigidly as he realised perhaps for the first time just how far John Wickham had deceived them, and at that moment Mulder would have liked nothing more than to have five minutes alone in a room with his ex-Academy buddy.

He knew however that that was unlikely ever to happen. Wickham would be long gone by now and the rational part of him pushed its way back up to the surface as he realised he had much more pressing business to attend to right now.

He took one final glance around the room and then without further ado he spun around and with a governing sense of urgency, began to hurry along the decrepit corridor, aware for the first time of where he needed to head.

The doors flashed past as Mulder hurried through the hospital. He barely gave them a second glance, sure now as to where he was going, and the direction he needed to take. He knew that behind one of those doors Charlotte Stevens was held captive, and although she was the sole reason they had even got involved with this in the first place, Mulder couldn't afford to turn his attention towards her until he had found his partner. He also knew that she may very well hold the answers to many of his questions, but those answers seemed meaningless right now.

His breathing became slightly laboured as he forced himself to keep going. His weakened state manifested itself sharply as he pushed himself onwards, but he forced himself to rise above it, promising himself that once this thing was finally over, that he was going to take some time out to recover from what he had been through.

Finally, he reached his destination, noting with some relief that the door to the room was unguarded, and at the same time he felt a small shiver of unease work its way down his spine. So far this had been almost too easy. He had been allowed to breach the building unchallenged and seemingly undetected, and for the first time since entering he began to question how that could have been. He reached forward tentatively and tried the door handle, whilst all the time, keeping his weapon trained on the door in front of him. The door was locked, and he briefly considered his options, realising at the same time that having come this far, there was only one option available to him.

Without considering the potential consequences such an action may broker should there be a third party in the room, Mulder summoned up every last ounce of energy and threw his weight against the door.

The cheap wood came apart with a splintering crack as the frame buckled inwards, and Mulder almost fell in to the room. The impact sent a shower of bright flashes across his eyes as his pounding head threatened to come apart on him. He shook his head once in an effort to clear it, but the sight that greeted him when his vision settled down was the last thing he had expected to be confronted with.

In front of him, like a vision from his worst nightmare, was his partner. Concern as to how ill she looked was soon wiped from his mind as he struggled to make sense of what he was seeing, and it took him a few seconds to correctly assimilate the information being fed in to his battered consciousness.

He opened his mouth to speak, to question why she was pointing a gun at him. But before the thought could be transformed in to words, the world suddenly became filled with light and sound and an unknown force that sent him spinning off his feet and crashing to the ground. He was only vaguely aware of the pain that accompanied the warm wetness that seeped through his shirt before, merciful nothingness took him away.

********************

Skinner almost jumped out of his skin when he heard the gunshot, and his excellent training immediately identified as it coming from a medium weight automatic weapon, much like the one he himself carried.

He remained rooted to the spot, expecting to hear more shots, or at least an accompanying shout of some kind, and a cold sweat broke out on his brow as neither were forthcoming. It could mean one of two things - either Mulder had fired his own weapon at a single perpetrator and had disabled him sufficiently for him not to retaliate, or that the shot had been intended to stop Mulder in his search for Scully.

Skinner didn't dwell on this second possibility, and instead took off down the corridor at a sprint, trying to gauge the direction in which the sound had come from. The echoes in the old building did not make his task any easier, but he was fairly confident he was heading in the right direction. He kept his own weapon in front of him, ever alert for unexpected assailants that might be lurking in wait for him in any of the rooms that lined the corridors. He saw no one though, and the only sound that followed him was that of his own footsteps bouncing off the spartan walls.

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