From: Amatia Date: Sat, 6 Mar 1999 17:47:44 -0600 (CST) Subject: "Avatar" Series, Part Two: "The Avatar of Deliverance" (1/1) by (disclaimers/notes/ all that stuff in first story) "Avatar" Series by Amatia ******** "The trembling finger of a woman Goes down the list of casualties On the evening of the first snow. The house is cold and the list is long. All our names are included." - Charles Simic, "War" "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed on the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned, The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand...." - W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming" ******** "Avatar" Series, Part Two: "The Avatar of Deliverance" Southwestern Canada August, 2008 An underground compound, home of Dr. Dana Scully. I have lost count of the days I've been here, underground, trying to adjust to artificial light instead of the sunlight I used to be so used to. Jarod says that we've been here for three weeks, but it feels like three years to me we've spent below the earth, underground. Underground. I hate the word, but I know that in the aftermath of Colonization it's come to mean safety. But what is safety when your life is ticking away, slow second by slow second, in a compound where the main concerns are the rescue missions that you aren't allowed to go on? I'm told that it would be too dangerous for me to go on one of the missions, that I would be too prominent among the group of nondescript escapees. They won't even let me try to save some of the people who I helped to enslave. Yes, I helped to enslave them. In our meeting with the Director for the Institutional Science System, Mulder and I were informed that our work on the X-Files had helped to bring Colonization about a full five years sooner than originally planned. Five years in which we could have developed a stronger vaccine, one that could have been distributed among more people. Five years that I instead spent in the Institute for Anatomy and Pathology, researching projects that the Colonists deemed important. Projects that won me acclaim among those that served the Colonists, projects I was forced into and grew to accept. Jarod and several of the other people who live here have left on a rescue mission, and I have stayed behind with the sick like I usually do. I'm the only doctor in the compound, and I usually have my hands full with wounded escapees. I had to kill a man two weeks ago, he'd escaped after being injected with the virus, and I didn't have the time to synthesize the vaccine before the virus passed the stage where it could not be stopped. One the man had realized that he was going to be eaten alive by an alien organism and there was no way to stop it, he got the compound's leader to okay an assisted suicide. I assisted, wanting to call it murder, but I'd rather have a dead human body on my hands than a very much alive E.B.E. I haven't seen anyone I knew before Colonization in seven years, since the turn of the century, and the division of human labor into camps and Institutes. I hear things every now and then, about Mulder and Skinner, and the Outpost they run in New Mexico. I heard about Diana Fowley's death a month ago, and what I was told chilled me to the bone. Her sponsor in the Syndicate, the Cigarette-Smoking Man, was put on trial for what the aliens called "crimes against Colonization", essentially war crimes, but he was found murdered before the final verdict was reached. So the Colonists sent out patrols to hunt down those he'd trained, men like Alex Krycek, and women like Marita Covarrubias and Diana Fowley. From what I know, only Diana was captured. The Colonists put her on trial for the crimes of her predecessor, and the verdict came down guilty, They crucified her on a cross that she hadn't built, and I'd heard that when the sentance was announced, Fowley had fainted from the shock, and had been unconscious for two days. The Colonists had voted to hang her. No one had been hung in the United States for years, it was an almost antiquated form of terminal punishment. They called it terminal punishment now, instead of the death penalty, but no matter what it was called, Diana Fowley would die. I'd heard that they'd hung her from the bridge in Pensylvannia where Cassandra Spender had been abducted nine years ago. Made her stand on a plank balanced across the bridge, and when the weight dropped from the opposite end, she fell, and the rope snapped her neck. I don't want to say that she deserved what happened to her, I know that Fowley was tried for another man's crimes. But she should have been tried by us, by the people she hurt, and not by the Colonists. The Cigarette-Smoking Man's crimes were not hers, her crimes were ones against humanity - not against Colonization. But I've heard that you can't argue with an alien. I set the pen down next to the notebook I've been writing in. Thinking about Fowley has moved my mind from the medical notes I'd been writing, and I looked around the medbay in silence. My two patients were asleep, their monitors giving off a steady beep that let me know they were still alive. I reached a hand up to tuck a loose strand of hair back into the complicated twist I've worn for two days while attempting to stabilize one of the patients. I could go take a quick shower while the rescue party is gone, but I'd prefer to wait until my assistant gets back in case something happens to A and B over there in the generic cots. They have no names yet, they haven't regained consciousness long enough to tell me who they are. Both came out of their comas today, but slipped into sleep before I could say more than "You're safe here, we'll take care of you," and give each the reassuring smile that I've perfected in the time I've been working with the escapees. A loud buzz sounded, once, twice, and I rose from my chair. The team was back, but without any wounded escapees. Three buzzes would have indicated patients for me to care for. I jogged to the entrance, and depressed the intercom. "Password?" "Elizabeth Barret Browning," came Jarod's voice though the intercom. I undid the locks that hold the door solidly shut, and pulled it open. Jarod, Jim, Lucy and Ray all smiled at me as I stepped back so they could enter. A young man was leaning heavily on Ray, and I reached out to help him, but he flinched away. I understood immediately, often people from the camps were terrified of the fact that I wore a white lab coat. "It's okay," I said to him. "I'm Dana, and I'm here to help you." The young man swallowed his terror, and smiled slightly at me. "I'm sorry, ma'm, it's just..." "I know," I replied, "the coat." He nodded, accepting my arm. "Why don't you come with me to the medbay and we'll make sure you're all right?" "Okay," he said. "Thank you, Doctor." "Call me Dana," I said in response, nodding to Ray to let go of the young man. Ray did, and stepped back. "Dana will take care of you, Paul," he said to him. "Your name is Paul?" I asked him as we started down the corridor to medbay. "Yeah, Paul Hendrickson." "Where from?" "British Columbia originally." "How long were you in the camp?" "Two months. They were going to start me on the hosting process next week." "You're lucky to have gotten out," I said truthfully. "Forty-eight hours after you're injected with the virus, it's fatal." "Is there a cure?" "Only if it's administered within the first thirty-six hours." "What's with the twelve-hour difference?" Paul asked as I unlocked the door to medbay. "Since the virus first mutated into the form where it kills it's host, the window has closed as a precautionary measure for the lifeform. It's the virus adapting to the human immune system. The embryo can be removed after thirty-six hours, but not after forty-eight. No one survives past forty-eight hours." He sat down on the examining table. "You sound as if you know more about the virus than They do." "I was infected myself, two years before Colonization, but my partner administered the vaccine in time." I helped him out of his torn and dirty clothing, then tossed it down the incinerator chute. "Have any medical problems I should know about?" "None, except for fatigue from running two miles." He grinned at me as I pressed a stethescope to his chest. I smiled in return, glad to see a healthy, good-natured escapee rather than a sick, mentally shattered one. "Breath deeply....good. How old are you, Paul?" "Twenty-one. How old are you?" "I'm old enough to be your mother." "Well, my mom would be 50." "Close enough, I'm forty-four. But sometimes I feel as though I'm ninety-four." I helped him off the table, and he covered his nakedness, blushing. "Don't be modest," I chuckled, "I've seen it all. Think you can shower by yourself?" "I'd say yes even if I couldn't," Paul replied, blushing deeper. I handed him a towel. "Shower's through there," I said, pointing at the swinging door. "Soap and shampoo are in there, too, and I'll have some clothes for you wheen you get out." "Thanks, Dana," he said as he hurried through the door as fast as his tired body could take him. I chuckled to myself as I found a empty chart among the papers on my desk, and began to fill it out. There was a knock on the door, and I got up to unlock it. Jarod stood on the other side, smiling broadly at me as I twisted the lock. "Our boy okay?" he asked as he stepped into the room. "He's fine, just tired and dirty," I replied, stepping into the circle of his arms. "Miss me?" "You know I did," Jarod said, pressing a kiss to my forehead. "Any close calls out there?" He shook his head. "No, not really. The security they have is really lax." I looked up at him. "It'll get tighter once the Colonists realize how many people are escaping." "Are you saying that the security is meant to be loose?" He looked into my eyes. He could read me almost as well as Mulder used to be able to. I nodded. "It was one of the ways that the Elders could rebel against the Colonists. Of course, now that the new Elders have been purged of the revolutionary factor that existed in the Cigarette-Smoking Man and his followers, things are going to be different." Jarod let go of me as a loud alarm sounded throughout the compund, and I ran for the door. The alarm meant that a wounded escapee had been spotted from the lookout, and someone had gone out to assist them. It was a dangerous situation, as the escapee could be a patrolman setting a trap. I skidded to a stop just outside the main entrance, waiting for the softer buzzes that signalled a safe entrance to the compound. They came a moment later, one, two, three. I slammed my hand on the intercom. "Password Two?" "Through the Medina to Abd-El Kadr," came Jim's voice, hurried, and my finger shook as I snapped the locks. Jim stood in the doorway, holding a person covered in blood. "He's unconscious, collapsed just after I spotted him." The sound of Jarod's feet pounding on the floor echoed down the hallway, and seconds later the screech of the portable stretcher sounded behind me, and Jim laid the body down on it. I automatically felt for the pulse on the man's blood covered neck. "He's alive, but his pulse is weak. Let's get him to medbay." I ran ahead to push back the curtain on the trauma table, and Jim and Jarod lifted the man onto it. "Someone get me a saline IV," I ordered, picking up the scissors and cutting off his bloody shirt. "Right forearm, both radius and ulna broken, looks like he's got two crushed carpels. Pretty clean break for the forearm, but there's tissue damage." The white bone glinted where it jutted out of the man's arm just below his elbow. "Looks like he passed out from the shock." Jarod hung the IV, and I inserted the needle into the man's unbroken arm. "Get me the morphine," I said, and waited, unable to set the man's arm until I'd administered the pain killer. Jim lifted the bottle and a syringe from the cabinet, and placed them in my outstretched palm. I carefully filled the syringe, then injected it. Jarod took the spent syringe, and handed me a wet sponge, and I gently cleaned the blood from the man's arm so that I could set the bones. "Get some gauze squares from the upper locker, and clean up his face the best you can," I instructed Jarod. "I'll stitch up what you can't bandage once I'm done with his arm. Jim, I need a roll of gauze, a can of hard foam, and an air cast from the lower locker." They moved quickly, and I turned back to the man on the table. Picking up his limp arm, I carefully set the radial and ulna bones. The carpels were mangled beyond repair, there was nothing that I could do about them. There was a fifty-fifty chance that he wouldn't be able to flex his wrist after the healing process had ended no matter what I did to the carpels, so I used a tiny needle to repair the muscle damage around the broken bones, then sewed up the jagged cut where the ulna had broken the skin. Jim handed me the roll of gauze, and I wrapped the hand and lower arm up past the elbow. Then I shook the can of hard foam, and sprayed it onto the gauze, making sure it was evenly applied over the entire gauze-wrapped part of the arm. "How's his face?" I asked Jarod, not looking up from the arm. "There's no cuts that require stitches, just some band-aids," he replied. "Good." I washed off the rest of the man's body while I waited for the foam to harden into a light cast. He really needed a heavy cast, but we didn't have the supplies. I sewed up two deep, but not life-threatening cuts on his torso, and one on his right leg just below the knee. There were bruises over 75 percent of his upper body and legs. "It looks to me like this man was given a heavy beating, and he took it mainly on the right side." I cut the thread, and placed a bandage on the cut on his leg. "Whomever it was, they must have been using a club." Jim nodded. "It doesn't look like the work of the patrols." "You can never be sure about the patrols," Jarod replied. "Some are worse than others." "We'll just have to wait until he wakes up to ask him," I said, going back up to his arm, and gently securing the air cast around the hard foam. The air cast would act kind of as a buffer zone between the sling he'd be wearing and the foam cast. For the first time, I looked closely at the patient's face, and gasped. There had been too much blood and dirt on him before for me to realize who it was. Jarod touched my shoulder. "Do you know who it is?" "It can't be..." But the dark curly hair, and bitter set of the jaw were a dead giveaway. "Dana?" I looked up into Jarod's eyes. "It's impossible. Jeffrey Spender, by all accounts, is dead!" His raised his eyebrows. "You know him?" "He was shot...by his father, in the FBI building. Eight years ago, if my memory serves me correctly. But we never found the body, just the blood, and a bullet in the wall. There was too much blood loss, and we thought that he hadn't survived, and that his father had disposed of the body." I pushed aside Spender's tattered shirt. Just above his heart was a circle of puckered scar tissue. I slid my hand under his body, and found the exit wound, slightly larger. "It must have been a small bullet, the exit wound doesn't correspond to a .38." I looked down at him, frowning, unconsciously reaching to wipe away a smudge of dirt on his forehead. "I can't believe this. By all accounts, he should be dead." violinst@pitnet.net Site X - http://personal.pitnet.net/london