From: "Alloway" Subject: l'homme Fox Mulder: "Mission" (1/1) Date sent: Sun, 24 Aug 1997 10:55:36 -0500 Title: l'homme Fox Mulder: "Mission" Author: Alloway (email: steiner@acadiacom.net ; webpage: http://www.acadiacom.net/steiner ) Description: Mulder is recruited by another agency. Keywords: "la femme Nikita" crossover. Ratings: V, PG. Fourth-season spoilers. Disclaimer: I have shamelessly stolen not one, but *two* sets of characters and made them do bad things. Notes: A tardy response to the post-Geth Nikita crossover challenge, meant as an intro to USA's wonderful series. See author's notes below story. Distribution: No ATXC. OK to archive. I WAS ACCUSED OF A HORRIBLE CRIME //They gave me this cancer to make you believe// AND RECRUITED FROM PRISON BY SECTION ONE, //Actually they just barged into my apartment while I was watching a Carl Sagan video// THE MOST COVERT ANTI-TERRORIST GROUP ON THE PLANET. //They've been here for a very long time, Agent Mulder// THEIR ENDS ARE JUST, BUT THEIR METHODS ARE RUTHLESS. //Did Dad give you a choice? Did he?// IF I DON'T OBEY THEIR RULES, I DIE. //If I don't obey their rules everyone dies. Dad. Melissa. Sam. Scully. Even Scully's dog, for God's sake.// Nikita's story. My story. Shit. ************** //Shit,// I think, //I'm late for briefing.// I drop into my chair, shivering in the cold air of the mission center. We are thirty feet underground, in a pitch-black room in a sprawling fortress, performing the everyday tasks of an organization that does not exist. This is where bad men go when they die. The blue and green bars of the holo flicker into life, resolve into a three-dimensional map. As the display rotates the glow briefly teases other profiles out of the shadows: Michael, Birkoff, Pendrell, Ops. Ops is in control here, as always; the gray eyes catch each of us in turn as he rattles off players, entrances, objectives. Tonight there is nothing of the usual mind-games; no crawling into the psyche of a terrorist, no seduction of a drug lord's girlfriend. No, tonight is a straightforward termination. The beams dance left to right, scanning us a picture of the target, and I draw in my breath. "Is there a problem, Fox?" Ops rasps. "Not at all," I answer. Training with Nikita, I found out pretty quickly that Ops is a master problem-solver. I make it a point to never have any problems around him. Not that the mission is going to be a problem. The holo captures the old bastard perfectly, down to the cigarette smoke. //Alien-derived technology,// I think. Section is full of it. I used to hunt aliens once, but that was before the white room. ************** The grainy video image of Carl Sagan fades before the reality of a round white room. My sweats have been replaced with loose-fitting white cotton; I am barefoot. A photograph comes to rest beside me on the floor; a funeral, I see, and I gather that it is my own. Odd that Scully is missing. A flat, oddly-accented voice addresses me. "Plot 37, row 17." Above me is a lithe man dressed in black; face of an angel, eyes of a dead man. The beautiful killer Michael. For the next half hour Michael alternates between explaining the situation and beating the crap out of me. "You will train here for two years..." Knee in the gut. I reach for him. "You will learn to use an enemy's weaknesses against him." Casual toss; I hit the wall and bounce. "A man with your looks, who can kill in cold blood..." "I'm not a killer," I reply. "I won't work for you." He shrugs. Michael's heard this one before, has his answer down pat. "Then you will be canceled." "Canceled?" "Plot 37, row 17. Your training begins in an hour." When the training ends two years later I know how to break into buildings, how to kill people in unique and interesting ways, and how to keep my gun on me through an entire mission. Thanks to the torture twins and their little yellow suitcases I no longer have any desire to find my sister. "We saw great potential in you," Madeline explains. The well-dressed black widow with the terminal case of Texas Big Hair is as ruthless a profiler as I've ever seen. "Great potential, and great weakness. We--removed--the weakness." "You're free," Nikita tells me, her voice a cross between bitter and wistful. Nikita's been gone a long time, of course, but I still think about her words. In an odd sort of way I am indeed free. ************** "Get your free guns here, limited time offer," Walter grunts. The old Indian scatters death across a counter like so many gumballs. This is traditionally the second part of the mission: gizmos from Walter the Bomb Guy and computers from Birkoff the Tech Guy. These are men defined strictly by their functions; if they have a backstory I've yet to find it. Two-thirds of the Lone Gunmen, twice the paranoia, none of the passion. Ops scowls down at us from his usual office perch; this too is a traditional part of a mission. Looking for signs of rebellion, of weakness. Nikita told me once that more operatives are canceled during a mission than at any other time. Two birds with one stone. Or maybe Ops just likes to cancel people. When I was new to Section I had a recurring nightmare of Ops in his underwear, dancing around his glass office and singing "Cancel Cancel Cancel." But I've learned that Section always has a reason. Always. ************** "No reason," Nikita says. "Just a celebration that you've finished training. Your birthday, if you like." And so we sit on the blanket and eat our picnic dinner and sip wine while the sun goes down. The stars are out tonight; they are dancing silently, a pattern I've seen before. One of them begins to rumble as it resolves into the searchlight of a helicopter. Nikita's speech rhythm shifts; unconsciously she takes on the pattern of Michael who has been her trainer in so many things. "We're on the outskirts of a secret government research center," she informs me, flipping open the picnic basket to reveal an assortment of weapons and explosives. "You will penetrate the building, destroy the computer systems in room 115, and make your way to the roof, where a ride will be waiting." She disappears as the first shots ring through the air. I panic for about ten seconds. Then I enter the building, blow up the requested area, and make my way to the roof where I discover that the ride out does not exist. //A final test.// Chaos ensues. I blow up some more stuff, hijack one of those UFO-Stealth plane hybrids, and order the terrified pilot to zip me the hell out of there. The van is waiting a few miles out. Nikita smiles radiantly. "Welcome to Section, Fox." Michael scans the horizon, staring with disapproval at the columns of flame reaching skyward. "Too much exposure," he growls. ************** "No exposure," Michael assures me. As we walk through the train-loading tunnel, overhead mission status LEDs guide our way. "Mission Train Loading 3 minutes..." Three minutes later the lap bars come down and the Disneyland Ride From Hell shoots us into the darkness. Michael is still assuring, which is not assuring at all. A.D. Skinner, sick at home. Agent Scully, out of town. Just a pure coincidence you're along for the ride. Time to get moving, Fox. But when we kick the door open I hear a woman's voice, one I still know well. And in my head I hear Nikita's words, right before she gained her freedom, telling me the final thing she wanted me to learn. Two words from between bloodied lips. Michael lies, Nikita warns. The Truth is out there, Scully argues. I enter the room, and choose. ************** Author's notes: The intro to this story is a paraphrase of the opening voiceover of USA's "la femme Nikita", and most of the contents are reworkings of the show's favorite traditions. I'm still hoping to find out what's really in those little yellow suitcases... I've used the quick pace and disorientation characteristic to the series, one of the reasons it's so fun to watch. "Nikita" is a stylish, violent and thought-provoking show--go see!