TITLE: Headlong
AUTHOR: Vehemently (Vehemently @ yahoo.com)
ARCHIVE: Oh, what the hell. Let me know if you're not
Gossamer.
RATING: Harmless. A few curse words.
SPOILERS: Nothing recent or significant.
DISCLAIMER: Legalese is not my forte.
EXPLANATION: Someone else's Scullyfic improv elements, a chat
room, and somehow all hell broke loose. Thank you to Jintian
for being gracious and tossing around the idea.
* * * * * * *
Headlong
By Vehemently
* * * * * * *
It was an insane day, punctuated by the copier going up
in sparks and toner lines, and a worse night. Scully was
massaging her temples with some kind of tinny classical music
playing loud in the office when the phone rang at six. Mulder
picked up, and his eyes glazed over as he listened. "Yes," he
said, turning to Scully, who stood up and fetched her
trenchcoat. When the phone dropped with a clatter into its
cradle, he started for the door, a few words falling out of
his mouth: "A rescue worker on the Blue Ridge. He saw
someone, Krycek maybe."
Scully clacked after him, trotting in her heels, and
they stood like recent prisoners in the elevator as it
labored upward. Only when they were in the car, and Mulder
driving white-knuckled down Pennsylvania Avenue, did Scully
ask him what was going on.
"He was one of the crew that searched for you on
Skyland Mountain. He remembered Krycek's face, and he still
had my card. He thinks he saw him, on a ski lift." She looked
at him, and saw his face wan in the darkness of the early
evening. The snow surged and abated and petered out slowly.
The windshield wipers smacked and squeaked against the drying
windshield. "Said he didn't think anything of it, really. But
the man had only one arm, and the rescue guy had my card."
"Wanted criminals don't return to the scene of the
crime to take ski vacations --" Scully ran out of words so
she closed her mouth. Mulder chewed on the inside of his
cheeks and drove, cursing the traffic. He opened up and hit
eighty only after they'd left the Beltway and were heading
west toward the mountains.
Owen Jessup was the sort of brunet whose beard grew in
red, complemented, in his case, with a tongue ring that
flashed secretively while he talked. He didn't seem at all to
connect the short agent in front of him with the police
reports of many years back. He was even so kind as to ask
whether Scully had ever visited the Blue Ridge Mountains
before.
It was, thankfully enough, not Skyland at which they
convened, but a complex called Grand Blue a few miles away.
Owen showed them briefly around the central rescue station,
explaining his winter job, gesturing absently out the windows
at the ant-people who fled down the illuminated alleys carved
into the hills. His Gore-tex outfit whistled as he walked.
"I remembered him, from before. I tried to say hello to
him, but he turned away like he didn't hear." The young man's
brows wrinkled and Mulder and Scully caught each other's eye.
"What was it," Mulder asked, "that made you pick up the
phone?"
Owen let his fingers stroll along a lit board, tapping
the little red bulbs. "I don't know. I guess I wondered about
that rescue. What came of it."
He didn't notice the silence that followed, busy as he
was greeting a woman with a headset who leaned over a map of
Grand Blue. Owen looked up after awhile, not sure whether to
smile or offer condolences. "We found the agent," said Mulder
in his steadiest voice. Scully bit her lips behind him and
watched as his hand made a small protective gesture near her
body. He crossed his arms and repeated himself. "We found the
agent. Alive."
"Hey, that's great," beamed Owen. His tongue ring
winked in confirmation. "So, uh, this means I've called you
up to tell you your coworker went skiing for the weekend.
Sorry to bother you."
"No, it's --" Scully began sharply, but was interrupted
by a burst of static.
A female voice yipped, "OJ6, come back." The radio at
Owen's hip had come crackling to life.
"Scuse me, agents." His eyes skittered away as he
lifted the radio to his lips. "This is OJ6, dispatch."
"I have Connie for you. Lemme patch her through."
A whine and another crackle. "CK7, this is Owen, what's
up?"
"Owen, I'm out on slope 12 here."
"We need you on 14 and 15, Connie. 12 is closed till
next week."
It could have been heavy distortion, or it could have
been an impatient snort. "I been knowin that. But I heard
some shouting, thought I'd check it out if those damn kids
were dicking around on the closed slopes again."
"I guess you found something." Mulder was beginning to
vibrate visibly. Scully laid her hand on his forearm and felt
the muscles jumping wildly. She willed him to calm.
"Some kind of commotion." The woman's voice on the
other end of the radio held confusion and guarded doubt.
Mulder suddenly spat the words: "What kind of
commotion?" He gestured to Owen, who surrendered the radio.
"What kind of commotion?"
"Well, I aint sure, Mister," Connie demurred. "But in
court I'd have sworn I saw a man sitting on a snowboard come
down slope 12 like his ass was on fire." Static. "Pardon my
French."
Owen was frowning at Mulder, who gave as good as he
got. "What made you contact base about it?"
The answer came in a laconic drawl that Scully rather
thought was dangerous. "You mean besides he don't know how to
ride a snowboard and he was on a closed slope? Mister, that
man was naked as a jaybird."
It is a predictable improbability that any of the
myriad ski patrollers off duty will be five foot two. Owen
found a sharp red Gore-tex outfit for Mulder in a twinkling,
but the overlong ski pants and Michelin Man coat he found
Scully left a little to be desired. It was some kind of
miracle that he did not require the agents to ski with him
out to slope 12; both of them glanced relief at each other as
Owen led them outdoors to a miniature snow cat.
They grumbled and rolled across the snow, all three of
them crammed into a cab meant for two. The snow cat hardly
needed headlights. The plumes of their breaths shone and
billowed under the slope lights, a glow that grew from the
stark lanes of snowpack to insinuate that the unlit pines
were hosting a Walpurgisnacht coven. Mulder was gripping the
dashboard like a drag-racing teenager.
Eerie not-dark dimness enveloped them as they left the
lit slopes behind. Over the next ridge, a vague halo
illuminated the trees. Scully gave a little gasp as a bright
pinpoint of light levitated from the shoulders of the hill
towards them.
Owen stuck his head out the window and shouted over the
grinding engine. The fairy-light caromed around the cab and
resolved itself into a human shape who skidded loose drifts
as she stopped by Owen's window. The lamp on her head strobed
playfully across her three guests.
"Connie Kazan," she drawled, watching the three of them
fall out of the cab. Owen shut off the snow cat's lights and
left them in dimness.
Mulder stumbled over his boots and then over his words.
"Mulder -- Scully -- where did he go?"
That Connie looked to Owen before she answered was hard
to miss. Her coworker's attempt to be subtle whispering
"federales," was waylaid by his visible breath.
"I told you on the radio. He came on down the hill like
a kid on a toboggan." Connie backed and maneuvered on her
skis so that she could stand close to Scully. They seemed to
realize at the same time that they were the same height, and
backed away from each other.
"Did you see whether he wore a prosthesis on his left
arm?"
A laugh, hard, outright. "Agent Mulder, I was busy
noticing his privates were swinging in the wind." Mulder's
urgency deflated into a frustrated soup.
Scully barked, "Where did he go?"
Connie showed them the wide track on the fresh snow. It
barreled directly downhill, without turn or brake. "Lucky
this slope's been closed for a week, else you'd never see
it." The four of them stood looking down the hill. The track
led to a copse of pine trees, bearing their iced-over burdens
with fortitude. Beyond them, a looming shape described only
by where it cut out the stars from the night. A building.
"That's where the mechanics have been, these last few days.
Working on the chairlift."
Mulder asked what they were all thinking: "You think he
might be hiding out in there?"
The quick reply was a snort from Owen. "Unless he's a
Yeti, he's probably hit hypothermia by now." Mulder had
opened his mouth, and begun to point downhill in support of
his argument, when a burst of hysterical chatter startled
them all from their contemplation of the lower slope.
Up above them, high-pitched laughs and whoops soon
sorted themselves out into four voices, traversing the width
of the ghost-pale snowpack back and forth across each other.
Their patter was periodically interrupted by a high-pitched
popping noise like a soda can exploding.
"Son of a bitch," growled Connie.
"That's them?" Owen groaned, and stomped back to the
snow cat.
"Ever since that Senator got his neck broke they've
been trying to outdo themselves." The snow cat's headlights
abruptly lit the slopes in a soft orange glow somehow more
appropriate to a sauna than a freezing winter night. "Last
time, it was light sabers I had to take away from them."
Mulder and Scully backed away, into the shadow of the
snow cat, as the lights found bodies for those ghostly
voices. Four figures on snowboards skittered down the hill,
turning quickly, laughing as they flailed their arms. One of
them pointed a weapon at another and fired.
Her gun was in her hand before Scully realized her
adversary was shooting plastic balls at his friends. One kid
leapt high, the long, solitary foot of his snowboard
careening sideways, and caught the fired ball.
Connie thumped around in a small circle, her skis
clacking against each other. "ALL RIGHT GENTLEMEN!" she
roared. The approaching boys all startled and blanched as
they recognized the situation. "Mark! Glad to see your
parents don't have you grounded any more. Johnny, Colin." She
paused while the boys skidded to a halt before her. Their
little snowdrifts in her direction were ignored. "Brian," she
said at last, "I'm surprised at you. Didn't you promise me
after the Play-Doh incident you were going to follow the
rules?"
A young man with pink hair grimaced, then hung his
head. Connie popped off her skis and gestured for her
audience to divest themselves similarly.
"We've got to bring them in," Owen apologized. "I don't
want to slow you all down, but --"
Scully's face, ablaze, made him step back.
"Let us follow that snowboard track," pleaded Mulder.
"Leave us, I don't know, a first aid kit and some
flashlights. And a radio."
With a nod, Owen began rummaging in his rucksack. "I'll
get rid of these kids as soon as --"
"Mr. Jessup," interrupted Scully crisply, "all of these
young men may be material witnesses. I'll need you to hold
them at the station until we can question them."
Owen closed his mouth. He shrugged and thrust his
entire sack at Mulder. Connie, who was cajoling snowboards
from off the feet of her captives, came and deposited two
boards on the snow cat's flatbed.
"They'll have to ride in the open air," she said,
chuckling.
Mulder was strapping on the rucksack, while Scully
worked a flashlight and shone it at the ground. "If you could
isolate each of the boys in a separate room; we'll need to
interrogate them when we get back."
A gawky young man threw his snowboard onto the flatbed
behind Connie. "For Christ's sake, just call our parents," he
complained.
"Not this time," said Connie. She eyed Scully
carefully, and turned to her young followers. "You've gotten
yourself into something serious here, Mark."
A shorter kid with a surly face poked Mark out of the
way. "Screw you guys," came his high-pitched whine, "I'm
going home."
Connie let him know in no uncertain terms that he was
not, while Owen started the snow cat's engine. The four piled
onto the flatbed with Connie watching them balefully.
"My call sign is OJ6," Owen told them, furrowing his
brows. "You let me know if anything happens. There's a space
blanket and emergency heat packs in the first aid kit. If you
find him," he shrugged. Scully nodded, her determination
extending surety to everyone who watched.
Mulder waved as the snow cat began to pull away, and
Connie waved back. The boys with her pulled up their noses in
pig faces until they faded into the dark.
Scully and Mulder looked at each other, ghostly and
gray, then swivelled to face the lone snowboard track that
led them forward.
"Funny," said Mulder, as he shuffled down the hill.
Scully let him coax out his thought, following his footsteps
beside the snowboard's mark. "Krycek isn't the kind to be the
first down an untested hill. And he never leaves tracks."
The desertion of the snow cat left behind a thick,
cacophonous silence, and air that bit. The agents sweated
with effort as they maneuvered in unfamiliar gear down the
mountain to the engine shed. Knocking the snow out of their
boots, they entered the shed with flashlights and service
weapons at the ready.
It was darker inside the shed, but only just. Their
flashlight beams announced their presence as surely as if
they had shouted. They trudged on anyway, clomping in their
unfamiliar boots towards the great gear box at the center of
the enclosed space. A few parts from the ski lift's engine
sat on the floor in cradles of greasy rag. Mulder, who was a
man disinclined to change his own tires, muttered at the
sight, wondering. He glanced up at the high ceiling, at the
cable as it spooled around its gear, and shuddered. He could
see in murky silhouette one of the chairs, angular like an
art deco relic, hanging from the cable as it sloped through
the window. Beyond, the line flew up, up, past the loading
spot, ascending beyond view into the dark.
Mulder's voice trembled as he muttered, "Ascending to
the stars."
A blue-white searchlight, Scully's flashlight swung
back and forth in short angry arcs. All it showed were wormy
clapboards.
Without warning the gears coughed. They grumbled and
squealed at being roused from their vacation, and then roared
into life. The air whooshed above their heads as a chair
followed its cable down, spinning around in a tight arc, and
heading back upwards towards the hill. Mulder looked at
Scully, and Scully looked at Mulder, but neither of them had
touched anything.
That look nearly got him away unscathed. Mulder turned
his flashlight in time to see only a flash of fabric as a
shape leapt from nowhere onto a chair as it swung by. It was
gone out the window before he could register the thought.
"Yes, I saw it," gasped Scully, as her partner dashed
away. He dropped his flashlight to scale the wall. It took
him hardly a moment to reach the proper height and vault
himself onto an approaching chair. She heard the thump and
grunt of his landing and then he was gone. Scully shouted to
him, but her only reply was the engine gargling beside her.
She kicked a flat piece of metal as she ran to the wall
Mulder had climbed.
"Connie!" Scully shouted into her radio, hoarse as she
examined the control box on the wall. "Owen! I need your
help!"
An annoyed voice answered her: "This is dispatch, who
am I speaking to?"
"I am a federal agent," she barked. "Put me through to
Owen Jessup." Her fingers hovered over the lit buttons of the
panel. She didn't know which was more dangerous: to stop the
chairlift and strand them, or to let it keep going.
The radio bleeped and then Owen was there. "Agent
Scully, what happened?"
"I need you to turn on the lights for slope 12. We're
chasing the fugitive on -- on the chairlift. I don't know
whether the engine's any good, though."
Owen gave a whoop and hollered, "You turned on the
fucking engine?!"
"Just tell me if I should turn it off while people are
on it."
"Hell." A disgusted sound. "I'll get out there as soon
as I can. Don't turn it off unless it starts screaming at
you. The worst that'll happen is you'll fry a few parts."
Halogen lights flared to brilliant life, all at once as
if they'd been startled. Scully felt tears flow down her face
as she squinted towards the tiny figures of the chairs,
flying up the mountain. Mulder was a pinprick of red, and
three chairs above him rode another pinprick in something
gray. "Will the engine hold?" she asked.
Connie's drawl answered her. "Owen's on his way out on
the Mini-Cat. I think the mechanics were about done." Scully
kicked the loose parts all over the shed, and began stomping
up the hill in laborous pursuit of her reckless partner.
When the lights came on, Mulder saw behind his eyelids
the orange flash that usually accompanied being hit on the
head. He wavered a little in his eyrie perch, grasping chill
fingers to the support pole, and waited for his balance to
return. His inner ear quieted, after a while, and so did the
sharp burn in his pupils; and with no small trepidation
Mulder opened his eyes.
A few hundred yards ahead of him sat a man in a
colorless coverall, marked with black grease. He did not look
behind him or turn his head at all. It seemed almost as if
the man did not know of his pursuer, though of course that
was crazy. The slope had not come alight like a signpost to
God just because Scully was in a bad mood.
The man had short brown hair and an empty sleeve on his
left. His legs swung under his chair, crossed at the ankles,
rhythmic as if born to the vertiginous sway of a moving chair
lift. The feet were bare. Mulder felt himself forcing breath
out between his clenched teeth. There was, of course, no way
to catch up with Krycek. The chase was a stylized formality
until they reached solid ground at the top.
Mulder clutched his gun uselessly in his chilled hand,
realizing that if he actually hit Krycek -- not entirely
likely -- his target would fall several hundred feet to his
death. He shifted in his seat uncomfortably as his chair
glided upwards. Krycek's chair was approaching a support
tower, and Mulder heard in his mind that curious thump-squeal
a funicular makes as it passes a tower. He shuddered,
watching as Krycek leaned forward.
A horizontal bar on Krycek's chair banged upwards --
the safety bar, Mulder reasoned, even as he noticed he wasn't
using one himself -- and then Mulder blinked and wiped his
eyes to make sure he was really seeing it. The gray-clad man-
shape in front of him flew forward and down as the chair
passed over the tower. A distant, tail-less monkey, it
snatched itself out of air and clung to the steel structure
with its three limbs. Mulder covered his mouth with his hand
as Krycek began climbing down the tower.
It was unbelievable. If Mulder stayed in his chair, he
would pass harmlessly by and Krycek could escape while each
agent was stranded at one end of the chairlift. Mulder leaned
forward, watching that silhouette find footholds on its way
down, and measured the distance as his own chair approached
the tower.
He couldn't do it. There was no way he could do it.
Krycek was almost directly below him, so he had to crane his
neck to see him. And while Mulder was convincing himself to
stay in his chilly chair, physics took advantage of his
awkward posture and he began to overbalance.
There is a moment in any fall when one might reach out
a hand and steady oneself and avoid danger entirely. Mulder's
arms spun wildly, as might a bird learning to fly, but he
caught only air in his fingers. His behind left the cold seat
that was his safety, and Mulder was involuntarily launched
into the cold, clear air.
There was white, all illuminated white, in his vision.
Despite the surprise of it all, Mulder found in himself a
clear analytical mode. Within a moment he had deduced, with a
calm, reasonable knowledge, as one might guess the punchline
to a joke, that he was falling.
He seemed to fall for a very long time, looking up at
the empty chair, waiting impatiently for it to fall loose as
well and join him in his headlong plunge. It was more like
floating, with the scenery rushing away from him, than any
real sensation of speeding towards a landing. The desperate
drive which had sustained him once, when he had held a cord
against endless gravity in an Antarctic spaceship, had
deserted him for a cool rushing in his ears.
Into his peripheral vision climbed the crisscross of
the girders on the support tower. Through the calm haze in
his head he realized he had fallen only twenty feet or so.
Mulder couldn't remember how far it was to the ground, but he
did not doubt it was plenty far. The moment he realized he
would probably die was also the moment in which a hand
grasped his own.
The sensation came first of an awkward handshake, the
interloping thumb pressing hard against Mulder's wrist, the
clutch grinding together the bones in his hand. It was a pale
hand, with white crisscrossing scars on the knuckles, a right
hand holding Mulder's left. Then came the jerk, a ripping,
thunderous flash in his shoulder which banished all the air
from his lungs and threw his vision in a million directions.
Mulder heard a doubled cry and a cracking, tearing sound, and
tunnel vision closed down into nothingness.
He knew it was only a few moments when he opened his
eyes, because the hills were still echoing his cry. A clank-
clatter-tumble below him was his gun bouncing off the tower
on its way down. He tried to look at his throbbing shoulder,
but he couldn't see around the bulk of the jacket. And beyond
his arm, looking down on him, was a face he knew, a face full
of intensity. Mulder looked at it, incurious, as the face
darkened and a vein began to pulse in the forehead, before he
gasped out: "Krycek."
Any movement of his body resonated like a plucked
bowstring in his shoulder. Mulder inhaled through his teeth
and looked again, to make sure. The hand which held his own,
which trembled at the end of a powerfully muscled arm, led to
shoulders which heaved like a bellows and finally the face he
saw. In the shadow the tower made, the only thing really
clear was the gleam of Krycek's eyes, inconstant as Mulder
swung back and forth like a pendulum.
A fish still trying to swim away, Mulder kicked his
legs. Immediately the response came down to him: "Don't do
that or I'll drop you." The voice hit the middle of its
range, sounding so reasonable that Mulder obeyed. His neck
ached but he kept his eyes on the face above him.
"God!" shouted Scully's voice, and again, "God!" from a
long way away. The mountain took up her cry and shouted it
back to her.
Slowly, Mulder felt reality coming back to him,
faithful but heedless like a puppy dog. Every muscle trembled
as the adrenaline coursed through him, and he breathed great
gasps that elicited aching responses from his left shoulder.
He focussed again on the dim face above him, and said:
"Krycek." It was the only word in his vocabulary.
He thought he saw a grimace. "I can't lift you, Mulder.
I haven't got any leverage, and if I shift my knees we'll
both fall."
"Krycek you have to get me out of here." Panic like a
hand at his throat.
"My legs are falling asleep. I'm wedged between two
girders." Krycek took a great breath and heaved on his
burden; both he and Mulder let out simultaneous noises of
pain. Suddenly Mulder saw Krycek's contorted face, outlined
in pale blue; he thought it was the last hallucination before
his death, seeing Alex Krycek as an angel. Then the blue
light wavered, swung up and down, and turned like a toppling
plank to show his own body dangling wherever he was. Mulder
didn't dare look down now because he might still fall and
because he was afraid he would see Scully with a halogen
flashlight, asking him how he got himself into these
predicaments.
Mulder realized Krycek was bent double over a
horizontal bar, his legs wrapped each around a different
diagonal support. On the whole, Krycek looked quite
uncomfortable. A drop of sweat fell from the end of his nose
and landed on Mulder's cheek.
"Rope," shouted Krycek, towards whoever was on the
ground.
Mulder began to reach for the girders with his free
hand. The metal was slick and freezing, only diagonals
available to his reach. He couldn't get a grip.
"Stop that!" Krycek hissed at him. The aborted motion
had set Mulder to swinging again, every movement eliciting a
dull scream from his shoulder. "You don't want me to lose my
hold on your wrist."
He hung in air, chairs swinging dizzyingly by above
him. His borrowed jacket bunched and chafed at his joints.
Krycek held on, unspeaking, breathing hard through his
clenched teeth. Mulder was beginning to realize he had lost
some feeling in his extremities.
A clanging noise near his waist startled him so badly
he flailed his legs, eliciting a growl from above his head.
"It's me," said a familiar voice, and the world spun as
Mulder sought out a face to connect to. Owen Jessup's flaming
red beard swung into view and then into focus. "Just hold
still, Agent Mulder, and I'll anchor you."
"Hurry the fuck up," came a grunt from above. Owen kept
his eyes on Mulder his hands gentle, his voice low and
steady.
"I'm going to thread this through your legs so we can
attach it around your hips, all right?" A pile of tangled
cords unfolded to a harness under his gentle fingers. Mulder
watched the tongue stud flash in the slope's glare as he
thought: this man should have been the one to find Scully.
Owen shifted his weight on his span of steel and attached
himself to a rope before reaching for Mulder's midriff.
A narrow moon of bare skin tickled in the cold on
Mulder's side. He felt Owen's bare fingers dance around his
back, and then snaps here and there as carabiners fell into
place. The only noises were breathing -- white plumes of
confusion round Mulder's head -- and the steady whine of the
chairlift above. Mulder closed his eyes and willed himself
onto the solid structure of the support beam.
"Okay, now I've got a safety line on you, Agent," said
Owen's calm voice. Mulder wasn't fooled and heard the fear
too. "If I lose my grip on you, you'll just swing a little
bit, but you won't fall. All right?" Mulder was about to ask
whether a negative reply would change matters at all, when
Krycek answered.
"I hope to hell you've got him. I can't feel my
fingertips any more." After a pause, like the indrawn breath
before a tirade, he added, "I think he tore his shoulder out
when I caught him."
A firm grip took up Mulder's right hand. "All right,"
Owen answered grimly, "then we'll be careful." The joined
hands traveled to Owen's right shoulder, and Mulder felt hard
muscle under his grip. "You just hold on to me. We're both
anchored. I'm going to hoist you over, and you should feel
for a foothold."
Mulder was trying to phrase a protest but Owen counted
down from three while Mulder's mouth hung open. He felt the
man's arms hugging tight to his ribs, his awkward boots
kicking for something solid to stand on. One foot hit a steel
beam, and he grasped with his toes; as jerkily and awkward as
a bear cub learning to run, he leaned, wavered, and found a
sort of balance. Owen groaned a little under his weight, but
spoke only calming platitudes about getting down.
The only reason he noticed his left hand being let go
was that his arm fell, dead weight and a grinding shriek from
his shoulder. The hand flopped at the end of its forearm, a
nerveless burden like the snow on the pine boughs everywhere.
Mulder squeezed his eyes shut against the pain and allowed
Owen to direct his good hand towards a rung in the tower's
ladder. Down they climbed, a seven-limbed spider, still roped
to each other.
When his feet hit the snowpack Scully hit his
midsection. She cursed as he had not heard her curse before
and grasped him so tightly he struggled to breathe.
"His shoulder's probably dislocated," warned Owen as he
stepped off the ladder. Scully tugged her partner down till
he sat on the snow. Mulder let the aftershudders of
adrenaline course through him while she rummaged in the
first-aid kit.
"We'll immobilize the arm here, and treat you back at
the station," she gasped, binding his forearm tightly to his
chest.
On the wet snow, Mulder's butt was going numb. He felt
drained and on the whole a sorry excuse for a federal agent.
Scully shoved his chin out of the way so she could tie him
further up in knots. He looked up into the night sky.
There, like a jet trail across the glittering stars,
hung the chairlift cable. The small squeal and thump of the
chairs passing the support tower swam into his consciousness
the way one suddenly notices one's own heartbeat. And up
above him, swinging away up the hill on a cold metal seat,
the broad shoulders and gray coverall of Alex Krycek.
The man sat sideways in his chair, his arm across its
back. Later Mulder swore he saw Krycek wink at him before
turning away. "Scully, look!" he said, pointing with his free
hand.
She was not up for any more surprises tonight. Scully
spun in her crouch and pulled her weapon. She pointed it at
the sky, breathing heavily. Mulder saw her follow Krycek with
the point of her gun. But he was so far away already, and
getting farther. She lowered her weapon after a minute and
asked, without looking away, "Can we shut down the lift from
here?"
"Not before he reaches the top," said Owen. He shrugged
and turned away, muttering to himself.
"Shit." Scully put away her gun and looked Mulder in
the eye. "Well, at least we can go take care of your
shoulder." She attempted a wry smile and failed at it
utterly.
Together they stumbled towards the bulky shape of the
snow cat. Owen packed them into the cab again and turned the
key. This time they did not need headlights to guide them,
and Mulder noticed the great wide chopping tracks they were
leaving. The pristine snow, marred on all sides, yielded no
clue of the snowboard that had creased it only an hour
before.
Mulder's shoulder was set by virtue of Owen restraining
his body while Scully heaved on his arm. Mulder felt the
click of the joint falling into place, but he couldn't hear
it over his own screech of agony. Owen pulled an elaborate
sling out of the surprisingly well-stocked first aid unit --
"You know how many people break bones out here?" he had
snorted -- and Mulder walked around the rest of the night
woozy and with his left side bound up like a mummy.
At first there wasn't much luck interrogating their
young captives. Most of them insisted it was just horseplay,
and asked for their Nerf guns back. Scully pointed out that
the ammunition was lost on the slope, but the boys rolled
their eyes at her and promised a trip to Kay-Bee Toys real
soon now. One kid sat singing some song about mammals and the
Discovery Channel that didn't seem to make any sense. Every
time anyone asked him a question, he started in again. It
took about half an hour for Scully to realize that the song
was mildly pornographic and that the boy really wasn't going
to talk.
When the first three proved fruitless, Scully and
Mulder went looking for the last kid, neither remarking on
their ability to capture everyone but the one that counted.
They found him in the locker room, still shockingly pink-
haired, crying and holding hands with Connie. He looked up
through streaks of tears, and Scully realized he was about
fifteen. "I don't sell that stuff, man! I just like to ski,
y'know?"
Mulder stiffened. "What stuff?" Connie grimaced and let
the boy rest his head on her shoulder, but nodded at Owen.
He held out his meaty hand with a few small glassine
bags in it. "I'm not sure, but this crowd has been caught
with crystal meth before, haven't you, Brian?"
"Krycek was buying?" Scully practically shouted it.
"That was his name? I don't know. I asked them, what
were they doing, but they told me I should keep my ears shut
and I wouldn't get caught. I don't sell that stuff," he
protested to Connie, who soothed him down.
"What did you see, then?" she asked.
Scully ground her teeth, listening to the boy's braying
confession. "They argued. The gimp got mad, I don't know.
They jumped him."
"And?" growled Mulder, crossing his arms.
"And they stripped him naked and tied him to the
snowboard. That was my best board, man!" Brian wiped snot
onto his forearm.
"And they sent him down the hill?" asked Connie.
"No, man. He got away." The boy began to regain his
calm, and with it perhaps his sense of the absurd. "He
smacked his head into Mark's face -- just like that! -- and
before anybody could do anything he was off down the hill
like a shot." He shivered with restrained laughter.
"I see." Mulder and Scully looked at each other,
simmering.
"Y'know, it was pretty cool, how he did that." Connie
clamped her hand down on the boy's shoulder, but he didn't
seem to notice the mood of the room. "I'm gonna have to try
that. I mean, with my clothes on, but."
Scully incised the air with her question. "Where did
you leave Krycek's clothes?"
"At the top of the hill," he answered, flinching away
from her. The boy turned to Connie and asked, "Look, can I go
now?"
Mulder stood aside to let Scully fume ahead of him into
the hallway. She her chest heaved, her nostrils flaring in
rhythm like heart valves. "When can we head out to the top of
slope 12?" she asked Owen, who hung back in the doorway with
his hands in his pockets.
"With your partner's injury? And what do you think
you'll find?"
"Those teenagers left his clothes at the top of the
hill," snapped Scully. "That's evidence we'll need if we have
any chance of finding him."
Owen Jessup played with the zipper on his jacket and
looked at the floor. "We shut down the chairlift as soon as
we got back here," he explained, "but he probably made it to
the top, or near enough."
Mulder protested, "But there's still a chance."
"I'm telling you I think he and his clothes and
whatever else he brought are long gone," sighed Owen. "But if
you want to, I'll drive you on up to the top."
They walked past the main office, where the dispatcher
was picking at her nails and eyeing the three kids as if they
were resting pythons. All three boys pulled up their noses
into pig faces and grinned at the agents as they passed.
"Screw you guys. I'm going home," Scully mimicked, in a high-
pitched nasal whine. Her bitterness was palpable as she led
the way to the door.
Neither of them arrived home until early the next
morning, and when they did, it was frostbitten, bedraggled
and empty handed.
* * * * * * *
END (7/00)
Improv elements:
Nerf guns
Krycek naked on a snowboard
The playing of a harpsichord
The "Discovery Channel Song"
Scully saying "Screw you guys; I'm going home." like
Cartman
She-who-has-not-been-skiing-since-age-twelve is making up
most of the details about the nitty gritty of ski rescue
operation. With any luck, the Connie Kazans and Owen Jessups
amongst you are a forgiving lot.
http://www.gypsymuse.com/vehemently