From: Erynn Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 22:45:28 -0700 Subject: Things Undone 1/5, LGM story Things Undone by Erynn [inisglas@seanet.com] Category: S, A Rating: R for strong language, violence, and adult situations Summary: Problems from the past haunt the Gunmen. Spoilers: Mostly Unusual Suspects and Three of a Kind, but I assume you've seen the series. Timeline: Early 7th season, sometime before First Person Shooter. Disclaimers: John Fitzgerald Byers, Melvin Frohike, Ringo Langly, Susanne Modeski, and anyone else you might recognize all belong to Chris Carter, Morgan & Wong, 1013 and Fox. Other incidental characters are mine. The Gunmen just stopped by the bunker to play for a while. I'm doing this for love, not money-- silly me. Archive: Yes for Gossamer, Ephemeral, and the FLO and LGM list fic archives. All others please ask first, so I'll know where I am in the vast universe that is XF archive-dom. Author's comments: Can I help it if the Guys said "write this"? How could anybody say no to such a charming request? Fro can be very persuasive, particularly while holding a Stinger gerbil launcher on you. My deepest thanks to Martha and Thes, Betas extraordinaire, and Sally the Gunmen Soccer Mom and Getaway Driver, who provided special inspiration. Without you guys, this story would not be nearly as interesting. Special thanks to Thes, for yapping with me for hours on end about life, the universe, and fic. You're inspiring, darling. The phone bills are worth it. No actual human beings were harmed in the production of this story. Their sanity, however, is another question. Don't mind the gerbils. They'll head back to the armory when they're tired. Things Undone Part One *** JANUARY 8, 2000 WAY TOO EARLY, EVEN FOR BIRDS GUNMEN HQ: SOMEWHERE IN THE DC AREA It was nearly 2:30 a.m. when Frohike snapped alert at the sound of a terrified yelp behind him. Swiveling in his chair to look, he relaxed when he realized it was Byers, who had parked himself on the long red couch for "a quick catnap" some three hours ago. Frohike hurried over to his distressed, still sleeping friend. "Byers," he said. The slender, bearded man continued muttering between gasps for breath, struggling with some invisible enemy, and not responding at all to his friend's voice. His loosened tie had managed to wrap itself over his shoulder, ending in a tight, crumpled ball under his neck. Frohike raised his volume and shook the arm of the couch. "Hey, Byers, wake up buddy!" He had no intention of touching the other man while he was in this state, having learned years ago that Byers was stronger than he looked, and that when he was having these nightmares, it really wasn't safe to wake him like that. The man had a rather surprising tendency to come up swinging. Byers came around with a start, a shout, and a panicked look in his eyes. It took him a moment to focus. He was sweaty and panting, hair cowlicked and disarrayed. He grabbed the edges of the couch with both hands, as if the room was spinning around him. "The warehouse again?" Frohike asked. Byers shook his head. "Susanne. Vegas." He sat up with a groan, straightening his suit jacket and wrinkled shirt, and then rested his face in his hands, rubbing his eyes. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. "Timmy killed her, then started shooting us. The injector didn't work." He shuddered. It was all part of the lexicon of their mutual terrors. The shorter man put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Let me get you some tea or something. Peppermint?" It was Byers' usual choice when he woke from a particularly violent nightmare, soothing and awakening, but without the jittery oh-dark-thirty caffeine rush he disliked so intensely. Without looking up, Byers shook his head and spoke quietly into his hands. "No. Coffee, please. I don't think I'm going to be getting back to sleep tonight, so I might as well wake up." "Are you sure?" Byers nodded silently. "Sounds bad," Frohike said, moving toward the kitchen to start the coffee. "I think I could use some joe myself. Just remember Byers, it didn't happen that way. Susanne's safe. We're all safe. Nobody got hurt, except for that shiner of yours. Hold onto that. We're all safe." Byers started to get up and join him, but Frohike returned and waved him back to the couch. "I'll be right back. You still look pretty shaky. Just sit for a while." He patted Byers gently on the back and then gave his arm a squeeze. With a sigh, Byers settled back into the obnoxious whorehouse-red velvet and cradled his face in his hands again. He shook his head. "Didn't happen. Didn't happen. I'm not there now. Didn't happen that way," he muttered, trying to force himself into the present as he woke. A moment later, Frohike returned as the sound of heating water quietly made its way into the room. He sat next to his rumpled companion. "Talk to me," he requested gently. "He shot her," Byers said, a quaver in his voice. He spoke slowly, carefully. "She was dying there on the floor next to me. I reached out for her hand, and Timmy laughed and started shooting again. There was blood everywhere. You and Langly, me. He shot all of us. God, it hurt." He winced and caught a shuddering breath. "He laughed, and left us to die." He rubbed his chest where the dream bullet had struck, vague but frightening remnants of the pain still in his body. "I couldn't breathe. There was too much blood in my lungs. I tried to talk to her, tell her that I love her, but I couldn't... couldn't make the words come out. There was just blood. My words were just blood." He shuddered again, closed his eyes against the image and wrapped his arms around himself, rocking slightly, back and forth. "I was dying," he whispered, "we were all dying." Frohike put an arm around his shoulders, bringing the younger man closer, offering his friend what comfort he could. Nights like this were always rough on all of them, bringing up hard, painful memories common to each; darkness, fear and sweat, and the haunting nearness of death. He took one of Byers' hands in his own, and they both gripped tightly. "It didn't happen that way. I know right now it feels like it did, but it was just another nightmare. Just like the rest of them. It can't hurt you. You're safe here. Susanne is safe where we hid her. We checked on her yesterday, remember?" He repressed a shiver of his own. "You're not alone here, buddy. Langly and I know how these things are. We have nightmares of our own, and you're always there to help talk us down. Remember what you keep telling us." "Get yourself back into the here and now. Take deep breaths. You're not there and then anymore. Focus on the present." Byers began to loosen up slightly, and opened his eyes. He looked at Frohike's hand on his own. "I'm not there now. None of that happened. You're right. I know Susanne is as safe as she can be, I just worry about her so much. The government may be convinced she's dead, but how can we ever be sure that They don't know the truth?" He closed his eyes again. Frohike thought a moment and said, "We can't. Hell, we can't even know for sure if we're safe. Even with all our moving around to shake Them, just being us is a risk. They know who we are, and I don't know how many more of Them are out there among our contacts. We dug around for weeks after Vegas, trying to sort everyone out." Byers looked down at the floor and snorted. "'No matter how paranoid you are, you're not paranoid enough.' Susanne was right, you know. More than I ever knew, or even suspected." He shook his head. "No matter how much I wish I could have a normal life, it'll never happen. If I could walk away from all of it right now, this instant -- marry her, have two point five kids, the dog, the white picket fence, the whole thing -- there would still be these damned nightmares and flashbacks." He let go of Frohike's hand, unwrapped himself, and fiddled idly with the ring he wore. It was a promise, a gift of a shared dream, but he knew it had to be an empty one if they were both going to survive the lives they led. "Sometimes it just gets to be too much," Byers continued. Frohike nodded. He'd heard those words often enough, spoken them himself from time to time. "Maybe you just need a few days break," he suggested. Byers looked up into his eyes. "Maybe you're right. I just don't know what I'd do, where I'd go. I don't think I'm really up to making a decision like that right now. Vegas is definitely out, though." "Reno?" Byers just stared, unreadable. "You'll feel better in a little while, after you have some of that java in you." The scent of the roasted beans was filling the air, and Frohike knew it was nearly time to pour the dark, bitter drink. He stood, urging Byers up with him. "C'mon. Let's go into the kitchen. There's probably still a couple of donuts left from breakfast," he said with a grin. Byers offered a weak smile and rose to join Frohike. "I don't believe it. Something Langly didn't eat. That man must have an astronomical singularity in his stomach, the way he eats and stays so skinny." "And here I thought it was the heroin," Frohike said, laughing. He knew that when Byers could snipe about something, he had begun feeling a bit better. He was sure the coffee would help bring him back to normal, and then they could get back to the hack he'd left running when Byers' nightmare had interrupted the job. "Guys!" Langly's breathless, frantic voice came over the front door surveillance system, accompanied by frenzied pounding. "Guys! Open up! Hurry!" The two ran for the door, Frohike clicking off the electronic locks and Byers attending to the eight manual ones. Langly burst into the room almost before Byers had the door open, slammed the door behind him and relocked everything as fast as his trembling hands would move. "Langly, what's wrong?" Byers was taken aback by the lanky blonde's panic. "Yeah, you're home way too early from that D & D game, man," Frohike added. "Bad shit just went down, guys. Real bad news." Langly fought to regain his breath. He looked like he'd just run a marathon. "Were you followed?" Frohike asked. Langly shook his head. "Don't think so." He huffed hard and leaned over, bracing his hands on his knees for a moment then slumping his back into the door. "Calm down a little," Byers said, taking Langly by the shoulders and looking into his face. "It'll be easier to talk when you can breathe again." Langly gasped again and attempted a dry swallow, then coughed. "Need some water," he choked. The three men rushed into the kitchen, Byers getting water for Langly while Frohike poured three cups of coffee. Langly took the proffered glass from Byers and sat down at the table with a thump. He gulped down several swallows, then concentrated for a moment, catching his breath. "What happened?" the other two asked in unison. "Bad juju, guys. Scotty the Rat said Timmy's gone missing." "What?" Frohike asked, not wanting to believe what he'd just heard. Byers went sheet white and slid limply into a chair. "Oh God, no," he whispered. *** SAME MORNING, ABOUT 5:00 AM "So why did it take us three days to hear about this?" Frohike demanded. Langly sighed, picking up his now cold fourth cup of coffee with still-shaking hands. "Government cover up, I'd guess. Timmy's buds in the Company probably wanted to keep us in the dark so he'd have time to find us again. Scotty-Rat only found out about it when he was hacking into the prison's file system looking to change something on his brother Harvey's record. Stumbled onto some badly erased stuff about Landau. The files were only fragmentary, he couldn't recover everything. He says he got hold of me as soon as he could. You know I gave you everything he said. I don't want to be feeding the alley cats in the dump any more than you do." Frohike frowned, glaring at Langly. "Asshole was probably drunk in a gutter for two days before he decided to get off his butt and tell you." "Yeah, maybe. Not my fault, man. I got the info here as soon as I heard. Lord Manhammer had to abandon ship just as the Dragon-riding Pirates of Shor-jollah attacked. It was gonna rock." "We have to warn Susanne," Byers said. Langly and Frohike looked at him. He hadn't spoken for over two hours, not since he'd dropped into his seat at the table. The others had barely noticed, engaged in their emergency planning. "He doesn't know where she is," Frohike said. "If we go to her, he might follow us there. He may already know where we are. He could be watching our place right now. " "He knows she's not dead," Byers countered, "and he may have already found her. She was the one he was sent to kill. I think he's looking for her, not us." "I thought we just checked on her yesterday?" Langly said. "She was fine then." "How many hours ago was that?" Byers snapped. Langly looked over at Frohike. "It was about 8 a.m.," Frohike replied. "Nearly 24 hours," Byers said. "Time enough to find her, to kill her. Time enough to..." He stumbled to a stop, not wanting to even consider what Timmy might do if he was looking for revenge. "If we don't get to her first, we can't protect her." "You know the kind of precautions we've taken in order to hide her," Frohike said. "If we break silence now, who knows what will happen?" "If we don't, how do we know the worst won't happen anyway?" Byers stood, a frighteningly familiar wide-eyed, set-jawed look on his face. "I have to call her." "Her phone might be tapped, man," Langly said. "So we use the counter-intel equipment, like we do most of the time anyway. What the hell is wrong with you two? Why don't you want to help Susanne?" He reached out and grabbed Langly's Ramones shirt at the collar. "Hey!" "C'mon Byers, calm down!" Frohike rose, attempting to put himself between the two men. "I know you've had a bad night, and this is just pushing all those buttons over again, but we have to remember that our least-favorite CIA operative just might be gunning for our asses too. Of course we want to help Susanne. We just don't want to get all of us killed in the process." "Yeah dude, get the knot out of your shorts. We want to help, even if every time your molar-pullin' girlfriend shows up, we almost end up as collateral damage," Langly snapped unhelpfully. "Fuck you, Langly," Byers growled, yanking him forward until they were nose to nose, Langly's glasses askew. "Fuck you with a chain saw." The three scuffled for a moment, shouting, then Byers let go, sinking back into the chair, a bit out of breath. His eyes filled with tears. He looked up at the two men. "What else can we do? Are there any real alternatives? She has to know about this. We have to tell her somehow, so that we can get her out of danger." "I may have an idea," Langly offered. *** JANUARY 8, 11:43 P.M. HAWLEY, MASSACHUSETTS Despite the necessary diversions, Byers hadn't realized the trip would be so long. The distance on the map had in fact looked quite insignificant, but the drive from the airport in Hartford, Connecticut had been nearly four hours, and he'd been traveling down badly marked, impossibly narrow, nearly unplowed dirt roads for almost an hour of that. Roads? They hardly qualified as ruts, really. He was nearing the end of his endurance, and even the large dose of No Doze he'd taken an hour ago wasn't helping much anymore. All it was doing was making his hands shake. If he didn't find the place soon, he was sure he'd pass out from sheer exhaustion and end up in some snowbank freezing to death. He'd never been to Hawley before, and although he'd chosen the town for its dust-speck size and its isolation in the Berkshire hills, he hadn't understood just how small it really was. The "town center" consisted of a traditionally whitewashed and steepled New England church, the combined town hall, post office, general store and library (probably all tended by the same individual), and a boy scout camp, all sitting grimly across the snowy unpaved road from one another. There were no good road maps of the area anywhere. Even the local Franklin County map he'd bought at a 7-11 in Greenfield was nearly useless here, and he was relying on a USGS survey map to show him the way. There had been little traffic in the rural county so late at night, and he hadn't seen another vehicle since he'd left Route 2 in Charlemont, where he'd taken the stimulants. Everything was concealed by a thick, dark forest comprised largely of deciduous hardwoods. He slowed from a crawl to a creep as he spotted a mailbox at the head of yet another unmarked one-lane dirt road. Rolling down the steamy window of his nondescript, somewhat rusty four-wheel drive rental car, he read to be sure. H. Fitzgerald. This was the place. With a relieved sigh, he turned off the headlights and drove slowly down the long, icy driveway. The stars on the snow were enough to cast shadows in the breaks between the bare maples, birch and oaks. A small stand of white pines concealed the house from the driveway and the road. There were no lights on in the tiny clapboard house, although smoke rose from the chimney. One car, a grey Geo with Massachusetts plates, sat nearby, partly covered in a snowdrift. It probably hadn't been used in a day or two, at least. Byers felt his chest tighten, wondering if Timmy had been and gone already, but he saw no tire tracks here. Still, it never hurt to be cautious. He shut down the engine, grabbed his bag of clothes and equipment, got out, and walked quietly toward the door, snow crunching softly under his feet. "Stay where you are," a woman's voice commanded. "I have a gun on you." Byers stopped, set down the bag, and held his spread open gloved hands away from his body. "Susanne?" A dim light flicked on above the slightly open door. Susanne peered cautiously from inside, pistol in hand. "Oh my God. John? Come inside!" He hurried into the house, his ears and nose already red and freezing from the sub-zero air and the night wind. Byers hardly had time to get inside before the door was shut behind him, and she was in his arms. "John, I thought we were never supposed to even contact each other until it was safe. What's happened?" She kissed him before he could answer, and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight. "Have you noticed anything unusual recently," he asked, "anything at all? "No," Susanne said. "I don't think so." "No unusual air traffic, nobody driving or walking in the area that you don't recognize?" She shook her head. "Have you been away from the house at all during the last week?" "No. John, what's this about?" Byers sighed with relief and pressed her closer for a moment, giving silent thanks to whatever might pass for God. "I love you, Susanne. Never forget that." He reluctantly let her go and took off his gloves, the O.D. green scarf that Frohike had thrust into his hand before he left the office, and his coat. She took his things, hanging them on a wooden peg near the door, next to her own. "I love you too, John. I'm so very happy to see you, but..." she paused for a moment, fearing the answer, "why have you come?" "I have bad news, Susanne." She looked back at him, still as beautiful as he remembered, and pale as a New England winter. She pulled her thick robe closer around her. "How bad?" "Timothy Landau found a way out of prison. We're not sure how it happened, but we think he's got his memory back and that he may be looking for you. For all of us." The couple embraced again, Susanne's face buried in Byers' shoulder. She was shaking. "When? Do you know where he is now? I hoped that was over when he confessed to Grant's murder." "We found out very early this morning. It happened about three days ago, probably four by now. And no, we don't know where he is but we're working on that. Mulder is helping on the search. For right now, I came to make sure you were safe, and to get you out of here before he finds you." Byers slowly opened his arms as she moved back a step. "How long do I have to pack?" She looked down at her feet, clad in lamb-fleece suede slippers. Byers took her chin in his hand and raised her clear blue eyes to his. He shook his head. "I haven't had any decent sleep since yesterday around six in the morning. I doubt I could put one foot in front of the other for more than another five minutes before I collapse. I'm buzzing pretty badly on No Doze, and I can hardly see straight. I think tomorrow should be sufficient, since you haven't noted anything out of the ordinary in the past couple of days. We may well be safer here for the night than the Guys are right now." Susanne reset the perimeter alarm from the pad beside the door, took the bag from near his feet and smiled at him. "Then come to bed, John." She took his hand. Byers looked at her for a moment in the warm, dim firelight of the living room's woodstove. He ran a still chilly hand through her hair. "I have waited so long to hear you say that," he whispered to her. He kissed her, then followed silently into the dark. End part 1 Things Undone Part Two The usual header stuff in part 1 *** JANUARY 9, 2000 9:15 A.M. SOMEWHERE IN MARYLAND "Are you sure, Mulder? I mean, are you really, really sure?" Langly asked. He listened for a moment, then nodded. "Ok, I'll get in touch with the others and let them know. Thanks for your help. We owe you big time." The call, combined with the information he had been able to garner in the past few hours, was a significant step in the right direction. Setting the phone back in its cradle, he turned to the computer in the far corner of the small, dingy room. "They're just going to love this," he muttered to himself. Sitting down, he began to compose an email to Frohike and Byers, knowing that they'd check in from their locations at 10 a.m. as scheduled, if at all possible. He wasn't too sure about Byers, though. Wherever the hell Hawley was, he was certain that they were still on analog lines. Probably had those old fashioned switchboards with patch cords and human operators too. Maybe even party lines. He cringed at the sheer technophobia of it all. Hicks. Object located 0830. Mobile. PA bearing south, heat seeking. Memory backup confirmed. Probable target beta. Clear. :Loki: Even the email was risky, but they all had years of experience bouncing their communications through everything but Mulder's suspected alien base on the dark side of the moon. If the mail was by some chance intercepted, a trace forward or back would be next to impossible. Besides, risk was what they did. Langly kept trying to remind himself that this was really no more dangerous than anything else they did on any other day. He quickly encrypted the message and sent it, consigning the information to the great bit bucket in the sky. *** JANUARY 9, 2000 10:00 A.M. SOMEWHERE IN DELAWARE Frohike made his scheduled morning check-in and picked up Langly's message. Timmy had been located in Pennsylvania, memory somehow restored, and heading south, probably for their HQ. Heat seeking: Landau had been asking about them. A lot of good that would do him. They'd spread his photo and his Judas story from here to Timbuktu. There wasn't a hacker on the planet who'd touch him with a ten meter cattle prod. Langly was still safe. So -- they were the likely targets, not Susanne, despite Byers' fears. Frohike didn't find the thought particularly comfortable, but the fact that their basement office was shut down and secured with no one there to be found did ease his mind somewhat. He didn't see a message from Byers or Susanne. This concerned him, but there was at least a ten minute window to account for unsynchronized clocks or other minor problems. He'd add his own "ok" to the loop and check back a bit later to make sure they were alright. Confirm. Clear. :Baldur: He had to chuckle as he signed his code name for this escapade. They'd pulled names from Norse mythology out of a coffee can. Baldur the Beautiful. A delicious irony. But there was that unfortunate death thing associated with the name. Frohike didn't think of himself as a particularly superstitious man, but it still made him nervous. Langly's code fit him to a tee, though; god of chaos and mischief. Byers had been saddled with the improbable handle Fenris, the bound wolf who would bring about Ragnarok. He would have made a much better Tyr, Frohike thought, the god of justice who was willing to sacrifice his hand to bind the wolf and save the world. The boy was too fucking noble to live, and it got them all into trouble much too frequently for his taste, but you had to love him. Of course, Byers had chosen the code for Susanne: Freya. And how could his poor, smitten comrade have possibly chosen anything except the name of the goddess of love and war for his amorous obsession? Fenris and Freya. All hell was certain to break loose. Maybe even Ragnarok. Encrypted and sent. He poured himself another coffee and waited. *** JANUARY 9, 2000 10:13 A.M. "HOLLY FITZGERALD" RESIDENCE Snow had been falling since long before Byers had been very pleasantly awakened an hour ago. He had been unable to enjoy any time with his seductive alarm system, however, as he'd been working frantically from the moment he got out of bed. The power and phone had gone down during the storm. Susanne had assured him that this was nothing out of the ordinary, and in fact it happened with annoying regularity. Two feet of snow had fallen so far, and there was no real sign of it letting up soon. The conditions were near-whiteout. They wouldn't be moving at all until "Holly's" neighbor Frank came by with his snow plow to clear out the driveway and help dig out the cars. She doubted it would be anytime before two that afternoon. It might even be tomorrow, if the snow kept falling and Frank didn't finish with the few others he plowed for that lived out this far. Without electricity, there would be no shower, but at least Byers was able to get cleaned up with gloriously hot water from the wood stove, and breakfast was a definite possibility. "I've gotten pretty good at camp cooking in the last few months," Susanne told him. She insisted that he dress warmly, with a thick, dark green wool sweater over jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt and his usual button-down work shirt. Byers had tried the cell phone, hooking it up to his laptop modem, but due to the geography this was simply not an option. He might as well have been calling from the North Pole. The good news was, the satellite transmitter the Gunmen had arranged to have installed here to monitor Susanne's safety was concealed in a fake boulder close to the house. On the down side, without power, it would be impossible to send out a signal. She had no generator. People around here mostly didn't have them, she'd explained. They had woodstoves and fireplaces, and lots of kerosene lamps, just like their parents and their grandparents, and all those farmer ancestors before them. When things like this happened, they either got out their snow plows and set about clearing things up, or they settled in for a good read. It was just the way of things here. Whatever happened, there would still be cows to milk, chickens to feed, or a job in Pittsfield, North Adams or Greenfield to get to. The hard land and dire winters had bred a particularly tough, patient, and taciturn sort of people. "If we survive this mess, we're getting you that damned generator," Byers stated flatly. He had hooked up their car batteries so that he could power her satellite dish and the much smaller transmitter in order to check in. It took longer than he expected, as he'd had to dig out both dishes from the drifts. It was well below freezing, and as he worked, his hands had become almost too stiff to complete the job. All that shoveling, then fiddling barehanded with small bits in the windy arctic weather had worn him out. Now he needed to build a breadboard as well, to make sure that his laptop would be able to connect successfully with the ludicrously rigged transceiver he'd constructed. Chewing gum and string, he thought. Thank God he was good at that sort of thing. He sat glumly at Susanne's kitchen table with kerosene light supplementing the dim daylight through the windows, surrounded by a chaotic scattering of small tools and electronics detritus while his hands slowly thawed. They hurt like hell. "Where the hell's the sonic screwdriver when you need it?" he pondered in a mumble. Susanne set a steaming mug of tea on the table next to him, brushing a few components to one side to clear a space. He wrapped his hands around the mug, then thought better of it. The mug was too hot. Or maybe his hands were still far too cold. He rubbed them together briskly, trying to ignore the burning sensation. "The what?" she asked, puzzled. He looked up at her and laughed dryly. "Sorry. Geek joke." He held up his soldering iron. "Without electricity, this normally indispensable piece of equipment is utterly useless." He dropped it back onto the table in mild disgust. "Generator. We're getting you a generator. I don't care if I have to carry the bloody thing here myself." "I don't know about that," Susanne said. "It seems to me that there's a pretty simple solution to your immediate dilemma." She set a trivet on the wooden table, took a lidded cast iron frying pan to the woodstove, and filled it with coals. With a smile, she returned and set it down near her startled lover. "Here," she said, wrapping the cord tightly out of the way and putting the metal and ceramic end into the coals. She covered the pan, lodging the iron into place so that it would heat quickly. Then she set a potholder over the lid handle. Byers looked up at her with astonishment. "You are a genius," he said. A huge smile opened his face and he held his cold hands over the pan, soaking up the gentle heat. "This solves a lot of problems. Low tech. I never would have thought of it." He shook his head. "Are you sure you're not related to MacGyver?" She laughed, then rubbed his shoulders and buried her lips in his soft brown hair. It was a wonderful sound, her laughter. He found her presence and her touch incredibly comforting. It would be so easy to get used to this. *** SAME DAY 10:46 PM SOMEWHERE IN MARYLAND Byers had missed the morning check-in and the evening one as well, but Langly had scanned the weather in western Massachusetts and southern Vermont on a NOAA site. The entire area was socked in with a blizzard, and power was down in patches throughout the region. The prediction was that the snow wouldn't let up until at least midnight or perhaps even mid-day tomorrow. He was getting very worried, and hoped that the downed systems were the only reason there had been no check-in so far. Apparently, pretty much everything from Albany east to Springfield was at a standstill. Fortunately, Frohike was still safe. There had been no further word from Mulder on Timmy's whereabouts, although Langly was convinced that he was casing their office in DC by now, hoping to catch them unawares. His inquiries to their sources hadn't yielded any further information either, effectively dropping Landau from the radar. Langly had spent the last twenty minutes drinking coffee and picking idly at some left over fried chicken while giving wavering attention to something exceedingly dull on tv. Now he was pacing restlessly, considering checking in again on the off chance that Byers had somehow managed to get online. Distracted by his worries and the quiet drone of the tv, he did not notice the doorknob slowly turning. Landau's entrance, however pulled him into taut and immediate focus. "CIA. Freeze." "Fuck," Langly said. "Fuck yourself," Timmy replied, a vile grin spreading across his face. "I... I thought you were heading for..." Timmy snorted. "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition." Langly eyed the pistol in Timmy's hand. "I don't suppose you'd have a Soft Cushion on you?" he asked, purely from reflex. The sheer normalcy of the banter froze his blood. Perhaps Timmy could be talked out of his revenge. Sure, he thought, and the passenger pigeon is on the verge of a comeback. "God, you're still annoying." Timmy closed the door behind him and advanced. Langly backed away until he bumped into the desk, his eyes riveted to his enemy. He groped around blindly behind him, hoping to find something even vaguely useful, but not expecting such a miracle. "Um, Timmy, ah... can't we talk about this a little?" "No." Landau closed the distance between them and struck Langly sharply across the face with the butt of the pistol, knocking him to his knees next to the desk. Langly yelped, startled, a wide purple welt blossoming along his left cheekbone. He raised a hand to his face, checking for blood. "Get up." Timmy grabbed Langly's hair with his empty hand, dragging the taller man to his feet. "Hey! Take it easy, I'm cooperating!" Langly struggled to retain his balance, dizzied by the blow and wobbling from the hard pull on his hair and his sudden verticality. He remembered how Byers had reacted after similar treatment, recovering quickly after his collapse at Timmy's pistol whipping and managing to save all their lives with a surreptitious shot of the AH chemical. Langly decided that his friend had a much clearer head on his shoulders than he had given him credit for at the time. If he ever saw him again, he'd have to congratulate Byers on his capacity for cheerfully resourceful mayhem. "You really ought to get this cut," Timmy said, casually slamming Langly against the wall to the left of the desk. Langly felt his lower lip split against a tooth, tasting blood, and heard the sharp, decisive snap of the left lens of his glasses as it broke. He didn't dare open his eyes. "Long hair is always a liability in a fight," Landau continued. He holstered the pistol and took Langly's shirt in both hands. "God, Timmy, don't..." Landau jerked Langly forward, kneed him hard in the gut, spun him out and slammed him into the wall again, jamming the lanky blonde's right shoulder joint painfully with the impact. "Oh, I don't intend to kill you Langly." He chortled, enjoying himself immensely. "Not yet, anyway." Through the pain, Langly's stomach clenched and he felt himself go cold all over. He wasn't sure if it was shock or fear, but at this point he really didn't think it mattered that much. He felt a warm trickle of blood down his face, from a cut over his eye where his glasses had opened him during the previous slam. He tried to reach out and grab Landau, but his right arm wouldn't respond and he flailed blindly with his left. "Stop stop stop!" was all that came out of his mouth. "You're going to give me a little information," Timmy said, his voice like arctic ice. Langly opened an eye; the one without blood from the cut seeping into it. Timmy's face was all bared teeth and squinty eyes. Langly nodded, trying to postpone another slam. "Whu... what d'ya want?" "Byers. Where is that rat bastard?" Langly shook his head. "Dunno," he gasped. "Liar." Landau slammed Langly's hip against the edge of the desk, doubling him over and driving him down to his hands and knees when he bounced from the force of the blow. "Where is he?" Through the searing pain, Langly denied knowledge again. "Don't play dumb, Ringo. I know all three of you far too well to believe this 'don't know' bullshit of yours." Langly was dragged to his feet again. "You know where both of them are, and probably Modeski too, unless I miss my guess." "Nuh-nuh-nothing," Langly stuttered. "Stupid fucker. Do you want to die right now?" Langly shook his head in violent denial, making himself nauseous and even more dizzy in the process. His knees wobbled. Landau held him up by the t-shirt, gripped by two tight fists. "Spill, girly-man." Langly gritted his teeth. Landau slammed him against the wall again, smacking the back of his skull hard on the crumbly, painted wallboard. Timmy was pleased to note that Langly's head had left a lovely, bloody dent in the wall. "I won't shoot you," he promised. "I have a knife. If you don't tell me where that tight-assed, anal-retentive narc pal of yours is, you're going to die a slow, ugly death." He reached one hand into a pocket, brought out a razor-sharp stiletto and flipped it open. Despite himself, Langly drew a sharp, terrified breath. "Toronto," he gasped, "Byers is headed for Toronto." Landau drew the knife slowly along Langly's limp right arm, opening a long, shallow cut. It was oozing blood and would be quite painful, but cause very little actual damage. He licked his lips. Langly wailed. "I know you're still lying to me, blondie. You'd tell me anything right now just to make it stop, wouldn't you?" "Godstoppleasestopstopdon't!" Timmy threw Langly face down onto the floor. The impact smacked his nose on the hard wood, bloodying it and knocking the breath from him, and he struggled frantically for air. Landau appreciatively contemplated Langly's quivering form at his feet. He smiled broadly and kicked the gasping, bloodied hacker, neatly snapping a rib. All Langly could manage was a whimper. "We'll continue this later," Landau assured him. Wiping the blood from the blade onto Langly's shirt, he closed it and put it back in his pocket. He shook open a curled plastic riot cuff and roughly secured it around Langly's wrists. He made sure it was tight enough to be painful, but not so tight as to cut off circulation. "Right now, we're taking a drive. Get up." "Nopleaseno..." It was barely a whisper. Landau grabbed Langly's bound arms and dragged him to his knees, wrenching his already injured shoulder. Langly moaned. "I said, get up." Langly nodded and struggled but couldn't find his feet through the dizzy grey blur that occupied most of his conscious mind. It took all the steel he could muster not to scream. "Can't... please, don't." Timmy grabbed Langly by his hair and yanked him to his feet. "This way." He shoved the nearly blinded man toward the door. Langly staggered forward, eyes filled with involuntary tears from the punishment his face had just received, trying simply to stay conscious and upright. He was vaguely aware of the crunch of his glasses under his feet as he moved. With a quiet thunk, he bumped into the wall next to the door of the room. Landau opened the door and steered his captive into the dark, graffiti'd space. "Watch those stairs." Langly cautiously slid one foot in front of the other, hoping not to fall down the two flights of stairs in the condemned warehouse that had unsuccessfully concealed his safehouse. Landau's hand was tugging one of his arms, and he leaned as lightly as he could manage against the unstable railing as he started downward. It hurt to breathe. His nose was bleeding, his nausea was barely under control, every single inch of his body was screaming for him to collapse, and he knew for a fact that this late at night, there was no chance he'd be seen being dragged away. Shouting for help would be useless. The only creatures likely to notice were the rats. He had no coat on, and the air was near freezing in the open areas inside the deserted building. He briefly considered the pleasures of death by hypothermia. Once the warehouse doors were reached, Timmy opened them and shoved Langly outside. He stumbled but regained his precarious balance before he fell. He had managed to blink away some of the blood and tears from his eyes during his stagger down the stairs, and he saw the blurred form of a VW beetle parked a few feet away. It was that ubiquitous orange that all beetles seemed to come in, patched and primered here and there, much like the Gunmen's van. Without his glasses, he couldn't even see the license plate, much less read it. Landau shoved him and he staggered up to the tiny, rounded car, leaning heavily against it, not wanting to fall into the slushy puddles on the gravel of the parking area. Langly shivered violently. Timmy opened the trunk and shuffled a few things around. "Get in." "In there?" He wheezed and squinted at Landau. "I'll freeze to death before you get ten miles." "Oh, I have no intention of letting you die on me. Not until I kill you." He felt a swell of pleasure rising in his chest at the naked terror in Langly's bloody face. So far, his plan was moving along nicely. The temporary memory loss hadn't damaged his skills or effectiveness at all. He dragged Langly to the front of the bug and shoved him down into the cramped space. Langly landed hard on a cushion of blankets, barely missing a nasty knock on the head from the edge of the trunk. Landau opened and squeezed several instant heat packs and tucked them around Langly's tangled body, then spread a couple more blankets over him. "That should keep you until we get where we're going." Langly could already feel warm spots forming where the packs had been placed, and figured that Timmy was probably right. He wouldn't freeze. At least he was off his feet and could rest for a little while. And the longer he stayed alive, the more likely it was that Frohike would figure out what had happened and come looking for him. He didn't know if he had a concussion, but thought that staying awake was probably a really good idea. He ducked his head as the lid of the trunk slammed, plunging him into darkness. *** end part 2 Things Undone Part 3 The usual stuff in part 1 *** JANUARY 9, 2000 11:21 PM "HOLLY FITZGERALD" RESIDENCE The process of getting his makeshift transceiver up and running in concert with his laptop had been much more of a trial than Byers had expected. The snowfall kept burying the fake boulder, and he'd had to mess with things far too often for his taste before he could get even a patchy net connect. Susanne hadn't let him work more than five minutes at a time barehanded outside the house; not after the morning's near-frostbite incident. Truthfully, he hadn't been keen on the idea of gangrene or losing any fingers himself, and so he had not argued with her about it. Besides, he still felt the exhaustion of too little sleep and too much stress over the previous days. Between the limited time he could spend working out in the snow without gloves, and the effort of having to keep shoveling snow each time he went outside because of drifting and continued accumulation, he was frustrated and ached badly. He thought he might be developing some blisters, as well. By four that afternoon, he was too tired to stand any longer. He had given in to his body's demands and curled himself up on Susanne's couch in front of the woodstove, wrapped in the blanket she'd tucked around him. He slept fitfully in her arms for nearly two hours before she woke him and made dinner. Over the chicken and dumplings, she'd sat nearly silent, glancing up at him occasionally, but fearful of meeting his eyes. "What's wrong?" he'd asked. She gazed at him with a worried look. "It's... I..." She sighed. "You were so restless. You would mutter in your sleep, both last night and this afternoon, and I understood some of it. Sometimes you cried. It was awful. I tried to wake you, but you would flail around and I was afraid that you'd hurt yourself. How long have you been having these nightmares, John?" She left unspoken her fear that he might also accidentally hurt her in his sleeping terrors, and the fact that she had held him close and tried to ease his panic and his tears during the worst of it. He'd looked down into his bowl, unseeing. "Ten years," he whispered, "almost eleven. Ever since..." "Ever since I met you," she finished quietly. He nodded. "I'm so sorry, John. I'm so sorry for all of it. For bringing you into this and putting your life at risk. For forcing you into hiding from those men. Sorry for causing you so much pain, for so long. I'm..." He had cut her off with gentle fingers over her lips and looked into her eyes, an anguished expression on his face. "No. Don't be sorry, Susanne. Never be sorry. Meeting you changed my life, and not all of those changes were bad. You opened my eyes and I realized things I would never have believed possible. "The guys and I, we're not hapless pawns anymore. We have a fighting chance to save ourselves and other people from the things these men do. You gave me a purpose in life, and... and someone to love. I never had that before I met you." A tear slipped down her cheek and she reached out to caress his face. "You are so brave, John. I only wish..." her voice faded, hopeless. She took his hand gently, and ran a thumb over the ring she'd given him the previous year. "Me too." He stood and carefully pulled her from her seat to stand with him, taking her into his arms. They'd held each other with equal measures of tenderness and despair, both of them silently weeping over what they knew they could never have. "I'm not brave," he said, his voice wavering. "I never have been. You're the brave one. Me, I'm terrified. All the time. I look over my shoulder every time I leave the office. Hell, I *live* in my office so that I don't have to leave it much, I'm so damned scared. And I've hidden you here, so far away from me that I can never even talk to you, just to try and keep you safe from the dangers in my life." He drew a shaky breath. "I'm a coward, Susanne, and a hopeless one at that. If I really was a brave man, I'd marry you and live with you and take care of you like you deserve. I would protect you no matter what dangers we faced, and make a life with you somewhere -- anywhere -- and screw this whole goddamn conspiracy..." His resolve had crumbled completely at that point, along with his voice, and he sobbed quietly into her shoulder, holding Susanne tightly and rocking her back and forth, their bodies swaying together in his trembling dance of sorrow. She had held him fiercely then, whispering comforting words to him and kissing him softly, over and over, letting him cry, unwilling to show this kind and gentle man she loved her own terrifying weakness and fear. "Your fear doesn't make you a coward, John. It's what you do despite your fear that makes you a brave man." A few minutes later, she'd led him back to her bedroom, where they made love with a desperation known only to the dying. Byers had taken to his work after that with renewed determination. The snow finally stopped falling at about eight that evening, and about twenty minutes ago he had finally gotten his makeshift rig to function properly, at least for tests. The break in the snow had cleared most of the satellite link problems, and the twin twelve volt power source was working like a charm. Much of his previous frustration and annoyance cleared, and despite the fact that he was still wiped out, he felt elated. He knew that his friends were probably half-crazy with worry by now, and was intent on finally letting them know that he and Susanne were safe and well. Susanne walked up her driveway and out to the road. Returning, she said "It looks like Frank got the road cleared a few hours ago. Your rental's a four-wheel, isn't it?" Byers nodded as he booted his email program. "That means that if we can get out of the driveway, we can get out of here. It shouldn't be too hard." He looked up at her, faint but noticeable dark owl crescents under his eyes. "It would be a good idea to clear out as soon as possible, true, but I have no idea how to drive in these conditions, and I'm not going to last a whole lot longer tonight." "John, why do you think I can't drive?" He blinked. He hadn't considered the implication in his statement. "What do we need to do to get the car to the road?" "A little shoveling, a big bag of clay cat litter, and reinstalling the battery. Tire chains, if you have them." He nodded. He was not at all enthusiastic about yet another bout with snow shovels at ten paces, but if they could leave here and get back on something even vaguely resembling the planned schedule, he would feel much better. Besides, if Susanne was driving, he could sleep. "Ok. As soon as I get my check-in done, we'll pack and blow this pop stand." She smiled. "I'll dig out the clay litter. There's some in the trunk of my car." She kissed him, rebuttoned her coat and put her gloves back on, then went out to begin the initial excavations. Byers sighed and turned his attention to the essential work at hand. Freya clear. Mobile apx 2400. Next phase. ETA? Clear. :Fenris: He coded and sent the message and read those waiting for him. Langly and Frohike were both safe and snug in their hidey-holes as of the last check-in. He got an immediate message back from Frohike as he examined the brief notes. You never write. Confirm. :Baldur: Byers laughed. Half the time Frohike sounded like their den mother at the office -- 'eat! eat! you look starving!' -- and this just added to his stack of smotherly symptoms. Byers' relief at knowing that Landau was apparently not yet seeking Susanne was balanced by the uneasiness he felt, recognizing that he and his friends were the primary targets. The fact that Timmy had dropped out of sight after Langly's first check-in was worrisome. As long as Susanne was safe, though, he could cope with the situation. He was considerably more concerned with the idea that by taking her from this place, he would be bringing her closer to peril. Then again, if Landau found him, Frohike or Langly, he would certainly attempt to get her location from them before he killed them. John was prepared to die before he betrayed her, but wasn't so certain of his comrades. Better that she was with him now, where he would know for certain if she was safe. If worse came to worst, he could always send her out a door or a window while he stalled Timmy. He'd also legitimately be able to deny that he knew where she was, so there would be no chance that the information could be drugged or tortured out of him. He shut down the laptop and went to help Susanne prepare the area for their departure. *** JANUARY 10, 2000 4:42 PM SOMEWHERE IN VIRGINIA "It's about time you showed up!" Frohike's frustration and anxiety was plain on his face and in his voice as Byers and Susanne entered the ramshackle cabin that was their meeting place. Byers looked around. "Where's Langly? He should already be here." "No shit. He missed the morning check-in, and since I couldn't get in touch with you two while you were traveling, I've had to sit here on my ass unable to look for him!" Frohike picked up an empty beer can -- one of a rather significant pile -- and threw it into the wall with a snarl. It made a satisfying metallic clatter as it hit the wall and bounced onto the floor. "Have you checked with Mulder? Any of our other contacts?" Byers asked. The tension in his voice was unmistakable, but he wanted to cling to logic until action or panic were the only available options. Frohike glared at him. "Ok, bad question. Of course you have." "Mulder found Langly's glasses mangled on the floor and blood splattered around at the safehouse," Frohike said quietly. Byers and Susanne stiffened, and joined hands nervously. "Is he..." Byers started. "Not enough blood to think he'd been shot, and the patterns don't match a gunshot wound either, thank god. Mulder says it looks like Timmy roughed him up pretty badly though. Most likely, the little creep intends to use him as bait to suck us in." "Well, that's something, I suppose. I just hope it means Landau won't kill him right away." Byers shook his head. "We need to start looking for him. Did Mulder get any idea of a vehicle? Was there any evidence suggesting where Landau might have taken him?" Frohike sighed. "Before we can do anything, we need to make some plans, so you might as well put your stuff down, take your coats off and have some coffee." Byers nodded and relieved Susanne of her things, putting everything on or next to the tattered brown couch. Susanne sat down at the small dining table while Frohike poured for them all, and Byers joined them quickly. "They could be anywhere by now," Byers began solemnly. "Maybe, but I don't think they're too far from where Langly was, to be honest." Frohike said. "Why do you think that?" asked Susanne. "If he wants us to find him," Byers said to her, "and I believe he does, then Frohike's conjecture is probably accurate. I'm sure he wants us to work for it, but it won't be too difficult to find if we look with the right mindset." Frohike nodded. "That's what I'm thinking." He set a disk on the table. "This is what I've been able to get from our contacts. It's a few files with information about places Timmy's been sighted in the last few years, places where he might have a safehouse or some kind of resources." Byers looked hopeful. "Have you looked at it yet?" Frohike shook his head. "Didn't have time before you got here. Spent most of it on the phone and the net." "That's easy enough," Byers said, getting his laptop and opening it on the table. Frohike handed him the disk and they all watched as Byers opened the files. "Best thing to do is to limit the search parameters to places within 100 miles of Langly's safehouse. If that doesn't yield any results, we widen it by another 100 and go from there." Frohike and Susanne nodded. "Here's the printer jack," Frohike said, offering the wire to Byers. It was plugged in, and several dozen pages printed in short order. The stacks were divided, Langly's safehouse location given to Susanne, and maps called up for the region. They all read silently for some time, sipping coffee, checking maps and flipping pages. Byers and Susanne occasionally exchanged brief but caring glances as they sat close together on the couch, legs touching. Frohike observed them from his perch at the table, silently considering the two of them together. Every time she'd ever been around them, admittedly only twice in the past ten years, they'd been dragged into the midst of some sort of horror and nearly killed. He didn't really think of it as her fault, particularly. Byers had been right, that night they'd spent in lockup. They really had been helping her, not just to aid a lady in distress, but to find the truth for themselves. Though Byers' heart had been a casualty of war only hours later, he didn't seem to regret it, nor did he seem unwilling to allow himself to be wounded again if things turned for the worst. Despite Frohike's characterization of Susanne Modeski as Mata Hari, he couldn't quite bring himself to believe that she deliberately wanted to harm Byers. Not with the way she looked at him when he wasn't watching. Her face was sad, but filled with a certain tenderness, a caress of the eyes. He wished briefly that someone would look at him with eyes like that. Maybe Langly's unfortunate "collateral damage" comment had struck too close to home for all of them. He hoped that this situation would not turn out to be yet another in their string of agonies, that Byers would finally be able to come through intact for once, that Langly would be safe and not beyond recovery when they found him. Although Byers and Susanne had parted willingly in Vegas, he knew how hard it had been on the younger man, how difficult it continued to be as they kept watch over Susanne, unable to contact her. Despite Byers' usual silence on the subject, Frohike knew that the longer the situation continued, the worse things got for him. Something was going to have to break this time, one way or another. He actually found himself hoping that the two would come to their senses and simply agree to stay together, where each knew the other was safe, and where he and Langly could keep an eye out for both of them. It would demand a considerable change in their lifestyles, certainly, but he thought it could only help their collective sanity. Yes, it would make things more dangerous for all of them, but ultimately, it seemed that life in general would be much more controllable. It might not be Byers' ideal of the suburban picket fence, but at least they would finally have each other. Besides, he grumbled to himself, we all die eventually. Frohike paled a bit at his own morbidity and turned his musings to Langly as he once again began reading his stack of pages. If there is a god anywhere, let Langly still be alive, he prayed. About twenty minutes later, Susanne spoke. "I think I've got something here." Byers leaned over to look. Frohike joined them. She pointed at the map. "Langly's safehouse was in Melrose, Maryland. Landau's been repeatedly sighted in York, Pennsylvania over the last five years." Byers nodded. "That's a lot closer than the hundred miles we started with." "Closer than anything I've found," Frohike added. "Likewise," Byers concurred. "Let's start checking out likely buildings in the vicinity," Frohike said, a certain enthusiasm in his voice. At last, he could do something other than read and fret. Byers nodded eagerly. "Susanne, that was an excellent call." The two shared a warm, but not overly showy hug. Byers had never been big on public displays of affection, Frohike knew. The man was too guarded for it, even around his best friends. He knew that Byers rarely discussed his inner life with Langly, and usually only spoke to Frohike about it when they were alone, unless it concerned their common nightmares. And, Frohike had to admit, his own tendency to voyeurism was well known, which would undoubtedly make his friend even less likely to give in to display. "All I did was find it on a list, John." She turned a tiny smiled at him. "I'm hungry. Is there anything here I can use to make us some dinner?" Frohike pointed to the tiny kitchen. "There's a little stuff in there. Not much, but maybe it'll be useful." "It isn't all beer, is it?" Byers asked. "Nope. Drank that already." Byers eyed the pile of beer cans. "It figures you wouldn't leave one for me." Susanne left them to their banter, knowing that they'd soon be hard at work looking for likely sites. It chilled her, knowing that they were going to be walking directly into the hands of the man who wanted to kill them all, but she knew it had to be done, and that it would take all of them to accomplish the feat if they wanted to emerge alive. Langly had to be brought home safe, and Landau had to be stopped, permanently. She worried as she went through the cabinets and the refrigerator. She thought there were enough basic ingredients to pull together a tuna casserole, but for the most part all that existed here was bachelor chow. Bags of ramen noodles, a dollar a dozen, boxes of almost as cheap macaroni and cheese. Canned vegetables and soups. A bread loaf biology project. Chips that looked like they'd been opened sometime during pre-dynastic Egypt. An equally dead, half-empty jar of rancid peanut butter. She gingerly deposited them in a trash bag. If the peanut butter had only been fresh, she could have whipped up something closely akin to Thai peanut sauce and poured it over unseasoned ramen noodles. With a couple of eggs scrambled in, and some tuna, it would have been at least passable. Unfortunately, tuna casserole, and a bland one at that, was seeming more and more likely as the early evening's repast. This was all her fault, she thought, collecting likely ingredients. If she hadn't latched onto John in Baltimore all those years ago, none of this would have been possible. None of these men would have ended up risking their lives on a daily basis to expose the truth under all the layers of lies and conspiracy. Ringo wouldn't have been kidnapped or hurt; was he even still alive? And she would not have had to contend with John's pain and the knowledge that she could have prevented it. Yet he had aided her twice now, going as far as saving her life from Landau and her entirely false fiancee, at great risk to his own, and all without thought for himself. She knew beyond question that if something went wrong here, he would willingly die for her. She'd seen it in his eyes when he'd charged Landau in that Vegas hotel room. She knew too, though, that she could not let him, no matter what happened. He had been loyal to her beyond any bounds of sanity. She didn't believe for an instant that she could ever repay him for what he'd risked for her. When she first saw him, she knew only that he looked like a man who wouldn't be able to resist a good sob story. The look of bewildered innocence, and the touch of puppydog adoration when he hesitantly offered her a button only confirmed that she would be able to play him without difficulty. Working for the FCC, he very likely had the skills she needed to acquire the information. And he could be conveniently abandoned when her work was done. But something about him had drawn her to him emotionally as he'd done his best to help her out. Maybe it had been that look on his face when he'd finally given over his principles and said "wait..." His expressive blue eyes perhaps, or the deep concern he'd obviously had for her, although she was a complete stranger, and a liar at that. He had been far too innocent, too eager, too ready to play the knight in shining armor, and all because he had no concept of the danger he was placing himself in. Perhaps if he had, it still would not have mattered to him. He'd kept looking for something in her to believe in, even as her lies were revealed to him, one by one, in his crowded hotel room. She was sure the gun that had fallen from her purse had terrified him, but even then, he kept looking, wanting to believe her. By the time they were all standing in the warehouse and John had stepped in front of her to shield her from Mulder, she had unexpectedly lost her own heart, and she was afraid for him. His words the next day, on the sidewalk outside the Guardian -- "we still want to help" -- simply confirmed what she already knew; someday, somehow, they would meet again. And that she had fallen in love with a man she knew nothing about. Her hands moved as she worked, but she was only minimally conscious of her actions. The task of cooking was too simple to occupy her mind and keep her from her anxieties. She envied John and Melvin, now silently attached to their computers, aiding each other in the complex dance of information gathering and decryption. At least, she thought, they were too deep in concentration to be mired in fear and regret, as she was. John was no longer an innocent, she knew. He was still a white knight, if somewhat tarnished and battered, and had displayed it fully at Def-Con. But this had been different in a way she could not quite put her finger on. It might just have been that he'd spent too many years of living with pain and uncertainty, of existing in that shadow realm of the hacker's underground. He had learned to see clearly in the ten years they'd been apart, and to look into the malevolent eyes of dragons without backing down. It had not broken him, as she feared it might when he faced her at the door of her hotel room, wild eyed and spouting about mind control. To find that he had, in a way, been correct all along was painful but freeing for her. She had been gravely serious when she asked him to come away with her the night of her alleged death. In fact, she wished right now that he had done exactly that. At least they would have had a few months together before Landau had come looking for them. The knot in her stomach tightened as she slid the casserole into the oven to bake. She set the timer and returned to the main room. Byers and Frohike looked up as she entered. "Tuna casserole," she said, unenthusiastically. "There wasn't much to work with. It'll be about 45 minutes." "Lots better than ramen," Frohike offered. "I'm sure it will be fine," Byers said, taking her hand. "Better than nothing," she replied. She sat in a chair next to Byers. "Anything yet?" she asked him. "Too soon to tell, really. We have some leads though. I think we'll be able to move before mid-day tomorrow." "Yeah," Frohike added, "I think one or more of these places has some kind of CIA or other intelligence connection. Gotta get with Mulder to see what he can dig up in his Fibbie stuff." "Are you sure that will be worth anything?" Susanne asked. "Maybe," Byers said. "We could do it ourselves, but it'll be one less thing we have to worry about while we check other possible sources. It'll conserve some time." Frohike nodded as Byers continued. "And if Mulder has somewhere to begin looking, he can be very good at finding things." "Right," Frohike said. "He found Scully in Antarctica, for god's sake." Susanne tilted her head. "That's a story I haven't heard." "I'll tell you about it later," Byers promised. "Mulder has an uncanny ability to find himself in the most... unusual places." "Your boyfriend here is a master of understatement, in case you hadn't noticed," Frohike offered with a grin. Byers blushed. "Why don't you um.. contact Mulder or something?" he suggested, hoping to distract Frohike. "You should loosen up a little, John," Susanne suggested. "There's certainly no reason for you to blush about that comment." She put her hands on his shoulders and started working at the knots in them. "After all, it's true. Antarctica is more than just 'unusual.' More in the category of 'ends of the earth.'" "I don't suppose you'd do mine next?" Frohike asked with a hopeful expression. He could feel the knots and bunches in his own shoulders as her delicate hands moved over Byers' upper back. "Maybe," Susanne said, "if you refrain from teasing John when I'm in the room, and you get in touch with Mulder, like he asked." Byers blushed brighter, but said nothing. "I think I can do that," Frohike said, turning back to his computer to email Mulder with their information and request. *** SAME DAY 9:18 PM AN ABANDONED FOUNDRY IN YORK, PENNSYLVANIA Langly came around with a moan. He wasn't sure where he was, and he had been blindfolded as soon as they'd arrived. It wasn't like he could have seen much even if he hadn't been, he knew, what with his glasses missing. It was just Landau playing with his head some more. And speaking of his head, it ached, pounding unremittingly to a bossa nova tempo. He attempted to move, but realized that he'd been strapped down to some flat surface. "Ah, danger boy's awake." The words came from above Langly's head and to the left. Langly gave an involuntary shudder at Timmy's voice. "Better than I expected," he said quietly. "I told you I wasn't going to kill you until I was ready." Landau patted Langly's stomach. "I'm guessing that will be in a couple of days, when your incompetent wuss pals figure out where we are." "So where are we?" "Oh, now that wouldn't be any fun whatsoever, telling you. It's not like I haven't read that list of advice for evil overlords and their minions, you know." He chuckled. "Never tell the enemy your plans, never leave your foe in an allegedly 'inescapable' death trap, you know the one." Timmy paced the length of the gurney Langly was bound to near one wall of a large open area. Above were catwalks and equipment, suspended from chains. There were piles of rusting metal here and there, and crates partially filled with debris everywhere. "So what are you going to do with the guys when they find me, assuming they do, mister smarty pants?" He decided he could really use some water, right now. Landau smiled and gazed off into the distance, imagining his success. "I have some lovely things planned for them. I'm really going to make Byers suffer. He's such a prick, and I want to make him watch all of y... wait a minute." He pulled a little notepad from his back pocket, flipped a few pages in, and examined it closely for a few seconds. "I knew you were going to ask that!" he shouted. "And I'm not going to tell you shit, you stupid fucking geek!" It almost worked, too, Langly thought. It made him feel good enough to chuckle for a moment, but his ribs reminded him that he'd been pretty badly abused recently. He wondered how long it had been since he'd been snagged from his safehouse, and whether the guys and Susanne had made their Virginia rendezvous. Landau landed a solid blow to his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him and bringing the rib pain from a dull ache to a sharp, solid roar that nearly matched the pounding in his head. He leaned in close to Langly's ear and hissed "you may think this is funny now, blondie, but you won't soon enough." The man stalked off, leaving Langly alone with his pain. He hoped the guys would get there soon. end part 3 Things Undone Part 4 The usual stuff in part 1 *** JANUARY 11, 2000 9:20 AM SOMEWHERE IN VIRGINIA "I'm going, John, and that's final." Susanne and Byers had been shouting at each other about this for the last half hour, and Frohike was getting sick of the noise level. Byers was, of course, insisting that it wasn't safe for her to go with them. She had retorted that it wasn't exactly going to be a walk in the park for them either, and besides, Landau had grabbed Langly, not her. They had made precisely zero progress in convincing each other. It seemed to be a textbook case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. "I won't let you!" Byers was giving her the clenched teeth, hairy eyeball treatment. Frohike was about to step in, if only to preserve his sanity, when Susanne slapped her gun down on the table. "John, do you know how to use this?" He looked at it uneasily. "No," he admitted quietly. The thought of handling a loaded pistol tended to give him butterflies under the best of circumstances. "Well, I do, and we just might need it." "What about Frohike? He can shoot," Byers offered. Frohike shook his head. "I'm not sticking my foot into that right now. Besides, she's right. She should come with us." "What?" Byers looked at Frohike as though he'd been utterly betrayed. "How can you say that?" "Because it's true. Another set of eyes and hands may help keep us all alive, which is the ultimate objective here. We know she can shoot. And this is about her life, too. She should have a hand in helping herself." Frohike put a hand on Byers' arm. "She's not some wilting wallflower, you know. Susanne can take care of herself. You can't make that choice for her." Byers sighed and turned his eyes to the floor, defeated. "You're right." He looked up at his lover. "I'm sorry, Susanne. I just worry about you, and I don't want you to get hurt." He reached out to her. She put her arms around him and they held one another tightly. "I know, John. But I worry about you, too, and the only way I'm going to worry less is to be there with you, where I can do something to help." "Not that I want to interrupt you two love birds here," Frohike said, "but we do have things to do before we head out." They looked over at the older man, then started moving to gather the necessary equipment. Susanne stepped over to him and kissed his cheek. "Thank you, Mel. I'm glad you understand." He nodded. "Byers has this stubborn streak, and sometimes he just doesn't see the logic of things very well. Where you're concerned, he thinks with his heart." Or his dick, Frohike thought. She smiled and went to help collect things. *** SAME DAY 8:32 PM OUTSIDE AN ABANDONED FOUNDRY IN YORK, PA "Test," Frohike whispered into his headset, "Fenris, you out there?" "Yeah, yeah," Byers replied, closely examining the blueprint of the foundry. "We're fine, we read you five by five." Beside him, Susanne pointed to the access point shown on the print of the foundry's roof; the entry to the ventilation shaft they were supposed to climb through. Byers looked up through the night vision goggles to see if the stack was still there. The roof was awfully high up, he thought. The climb would be risky, but he and his friends had done far more difficult jobs in the past. "Are you in position?" he asked in return. "Check," Frohike answered. "All quiet on the western front. Do you see your access point?" After a moment, Byers spotted the rusted out stack. They wouldn't need to remove the top to get in. Actually, it looked like some of the metal might be fairly sharp. He was glad for the protection of the leather gloves that were a normal part of their funky poaching attire. "Got it. Looks in bad shape. You?" "I'm on approach." "We're up and moving." Byers motioned Susanne toward the wall with his head as he pulled a grapnel launcher from his pack. Together they moved stealthily across the overgrown gravel yard around the darkened building, making their way among rusting train cars and piles of ancient scrap. At least there's some cover, Byers thought. Better than some approaches they'd had to make. And no guards either. He hoped they had the right building. Once near the wall, the pair stopped, silent black pools in the shadows. Byers eyed the roof, looking for the most likely angle for a good weight-bearing grapnel purchase. There were several possible options and Byers picked one at random, taking careful aim. He pulled the trigger and the grapnel flew skyward, trailing cable with a quiet shirr. He heard the grapnel hit the roof, and pulled, securing the metal hook to the edge of the roof and assuring himself that it would hold him. Detaching the remaining few feet of cable from the reel, he put the launcher back in his pack and checked his climbing harness. He'd instructed Susanne in its use before they left for this mission, and she checked hers as he'd taught her. "Are you secure?" he asked her. "Yes. A little nervous though. I've never done this before." She looked at him anxiously. He encircled her with his arms and held her close for a moment before returning to the task at hand. "This is actually the easy part of the entry," he said. With a quick, practiced motion he linked himself to the cord and began walking silently up the wall. "Follow close but not too close. I'll help you over the edge at the top." She nodded as he looked down at her, and attached herself to the line. Then she began her own, less assured ascent. Frohike could hear both of them beginning to breathe heavily from the effort of the climb up the wall. At least, he thought, Susanne's presence hadn't distracted Byers into frantic anxiety. He was feeling a little bit proud of the boy. They all knew that the main issue here was extracting Langly and rendering Timmy incapable of endangering them again, and Byers was really too sensible to let his anxiety over Susanne keep him from helping their younger comrade, particularly since they were together and he knew that, for the moment at least, she was as safe as he was. "I'm at my point," Frohike whispered. "Okay," Byers huffed, continuing to climb. Reaching into his trusty lockpick set, Frohike pulled out a can of WD-40 and began the task of cracking the stiff, ancient lock. Never leave home without it, he thought. Susanne followed John up the long vertical wall, breathing hard. She could feel her fear increasing the further she climbed, and she watched as he reached the top and hauled himself quickly and smoothly up over the edge. It looked dangerous, but revealed that John had rather more physical strength than a cursory assessment might suggest; even though she knew he had done this many times before, she worried that he might fall -- it appeared to be a somewhat awkward maneuver. For that matter, would she fall? She shook the thought from her head. John would never let her if he could possibly prevent it. The leather gloves provided a good grip, and the harness held her securely. "Here," he said, reaching down to her, "let me help you up." Gingerly, she reached a hand up to him, and they both grasped firmly, then joined both hands. "Take a deep breath, then let it out slow and bend toward me," he instructed her. She did as he said, and he lifted her smoothly up onto the roof to her waist. He put an arm around her and helped her get her legs and feet over the edge. She stood shakily. "Are you alright?" he asked quietly. Susanne nodded silently, taking deep, steadying breaths. The roof was sloped and rather uneven. "Do you want to hold my arm up here?" Byers asked. She was determined not to let him treat her like a fragile, incapable creature. "No," she replied, "you have enough to pay attention to already. You don't need me to distract you." He looked her in the eyes and nodded, then spent a moment reeling in the cable and sliding the slender coil over his shoulder. "Let's go." They moved stealthily to their chosen ventilation shaft, and stopped to assess the situation. "Baldur, progress?" Susanne asked as Byers carefully examined the stack. "Almost in, Freya." "Let me see the blueprint," Byers asked. Susanne handed it over and they compared the original specs to the actual condition of the ventilation stack. "This is good," Byers said, "the stack's a good ten feet shorter than it was before. It should only be about. . ." he eyeballed it and made a quick calculation "eight feet to the first horizontal joint. It may not be in good shape, though." He pressed against the rusted shaft, and some of the upper three inches crumbled under his fingers. "This part may be dangerous." Looking around, he spotted a nearby lead pipe rising from the roof and anchored the grapnel to it, dropping the coil of cable into the wide opening of the stack. "I'm going in first. If it's safe, I'll call you down." "Be careful Joh -- Fenris." "Believe me, I will." He snapped his harness to the cable again and rappelled down the short drop, landing as lightly as he could. One foot went partly through the rust-eaten galvanized shaft floor, but off to the side, just out from under the open hole, he found a stable area to stand. Exploring for a moment or two, he found a safe path into the vertical crawlspace. "Alright Freya, I've found a way down. Come carefully. The metal under the stack won't bear your weight. I'll pull you toward the safe spot when you're a couple of feet over the floor." Susanne's throat tightened. So far so good, but things could start going bad at any moment. The fear began solidifying into sour, pulsing knots in her intestines. She wondered how John stayed so calm in the midst of all of this. Byers watched as Susanne lowered herself, pulling on the cable to direct her descending frame toward the stable metal. His heart was beating fast, fear mounting. He prayed silently that they would all survive this operation. Landau was extremely dangerous, and Byers felt it was quite apparent that the man was capable of some very sadistic behavior. He always went into these missions in a state of near terror, only adrenaline buoying him, keeping him from drowning in his own panic. Watching Susanne, he could see her determination, and he wondered how she managed to stay so calm and collected in the middle of such dangerous and difficult circumstances, wishing he was able to maintain such an impassive state. Reaching out over the fatigued metal, he put an arm around Susanne's waist and drew her onto the stable metal where he stood. As her feet touched the floor, he continued to hold her for a moment, trying to derive some calm and focus from the nearness of her body. She held his hand at her waist, breathing in relief at John's touch. "I'm in," Frohike said, his voice raspy on the link. "So are we," Byers answered quietly. "Proceed to phase two." *** SAME DAY 9:03 PM INSIDE AN ABANDONED FOUNDRY IN YORK, PA Frohike entered through a door leading into a storage area. A few boxes partially filled with miscellaneous office supplies in various states of dust and decay lay here and there. He stopped briefly to examine his blueprint. If his calculations were correct, the next door should lead into a corridor through a series of offices. He thought it likely that Landau was living in one of them, and perhaps another was being used to imprison Langly. Moving cautiously to the interior door, he listened for a few moments. No sound could be heard from the other side of the door. He wasn't sure if this was due to the distraction of the quiet sound of Byers and Susanne moving through the ventilation system that came over the headset, so he muted it momentarily and listened again. Still nothing. Time to move out. The door into the corridor squeaked quietly as Frohike opened it, and he cringed. After a moment of stillness and silence, he peeked out into the hall and looked both ways. No lights, no movement, and no sign of life or inhabitation were to be seen. With a soft sigh of relief, he moved with mouse silence into the hallway, walking to the left, to examine the greatest number of offices and storage areas as he made his way toward the main foundry workshops and production spaces. "Quiet so far," he whispered to his unseen companions. Susanne moved gingerly through the ventilation shafts on her hands and padded knees. Several times, they had come to dangerously unstable sections of metal, forcing them to stretch themselves out on their stomachs to distribute their weight enough so that the panels would not crumble beneath them and drop them to the floor far below. Each time they came to a vent screen, John would look through, searching for signs of motion or inhabitation, finding nothing. He would shake his head, consult their blueprint to determine their position, and then move on. Byers moved with increasing frustration. Their goal was the catwalks above a foundry workshop area that led into the main smelting and pouring floor. They would enter the expansive rooms above the main level and continue their search for Langly and Landau. The encounters with unstable metal panels had unnerved him, and his body was starting to dampen with sweat from the stress and tension. If he made it out of this, he was going to be exhausted, he realized. Then again, he was usually completely drained, both physically and emotionally, after most of their missions that included infiltrating buildings. It had never been his strong suit, although he had, after a fashion, gotten used to the whole thing. He remembered his brief adventure into the Lombard facility with Mulder and shuddered. Please, no goons with guns this time, he thought. Landau would undoubtedly be packing, and that was more than enough for him. He idly wished he was in Hawai'i, lying on a Molokai beach, contemplating the rising backs of whales. Maybe after this, he and Susanne could take that break that Frohike had suggested, and relax under the sun and island breezes. Eventually they reached the right vent screen. He peered through and saw the catwalks below. "Got it," he whispered. "Good," Frohike replied. "Nothing yet on my end." "Keep looking. Meet you at the checkpoint." "Right." Byers began the work of opening the vent screen as quietly as possible. First, of course, an application of WD-40 was necessary. Never leave home without it, Byers thought, the ghost of a smile touching his lips. Silently, he motioned Susanne to join him in his efforts to ease the screen out of its frame. With the aid of massive quantities of lubrication, they managed to extract the screen quietly, then set it aside inside the shaft with them. Byers poked his head out cautiously, examining the situation. Seeing nothing of immediate importance, he lowered himself from the vent to the catwalk, feet first. When he touched down, he motioned for Susanne to join him, holding his hands up to ease her descent. When she had her footing, he motioned them along to the left, towards the main work area of the foundry. Susanne edged along uneasily. She had never cared much for heights, and what passed for the floor of the catwalk was metal grid. In her opinion, it had far too many gaping holes with spectacular views of the ground floor, some fourty feet below. She clung tightly to the handrail as they walked quietly toward the door. John seemed totally assured as he moved, listening carefully and watching for movement below. "Are you doing all right?" he asked her. She nodded, not wanting him to know how nervous she was, moving along with such a thin support system holding them above the ground. She knew from the blueprint that the catwalk was only fourty feet in the air, but it felt like one hundred and fourty. Or maybe fourty thousand. She looked up quickly, concentrating on John's back to avoid the swelling vertigo that had begun to creep up on her. It was not long before the two reached the door. Byers opened it carefully, listening before he entered the space. Something was going on in there. He heard voices below. *** SAME DAY 9:37 PM TIMOTHY LANDAU'S DEN OF INIQUITY Timmy had been ranting endlessly for the last hour about how he would finally get his position back in the Company, once he had taken his revenge. Revenge, it seemed, included slow ugly deaths for Langly, Frohike, Susanne, and finally Byers, against whom most of his obsessional rage seemed to be focused. Langly had originally attempted to make comments, to redirect Timmy toward less dangerous alternatives, but after repeated beatings, he decided that discretion, in this case, was definitely the better part of valor. Besides, he was too exhausted to say much else. "And when your stupid, annoying friends show up in a couple of days," Landau continued, "I'll have a lovely series of traps awaiting them." He chuckled and poked Langly with a pencil. "I'll need to build up my coalition of allies in the Company when I get back, though. You can never have enough dirt on anyone. Don't you agree?" Langly did not reply. "Don't you agree?" Landau asked again, his voice taking on a slightly shrill edge. "Um, yeah, sure." Langly assumed that agreeing with everything Timmy said at this point was probably the best idea for avoiding further physical damage. So far, he had occasionally been fed, given water, or dragged to the toilet and allowed to relieve himself. He was feeling dehydrated though, and his stomach was protesting at the meager rations he'd been given. He wasn't sure whether it was protesting from simple lack of sustenance, or if the food was just so bad that even the rats were avoiding it. He lived primarily on junk food, but it was often interspersed with Frohike's amazing world cuisine, which was usually both nourishing and quite delicious. This was definitely not his standard fare. He wished he was home at the office again, indulging in a Chef Fro cheesecake. Hell, even creamed spinach would be better than this. He wished his head would stop pounding. On the catwalk above, Byers and Susanne moved quietly forward, watching Landau. Frohike opened a door into the smelting floor, pausing to listen and look. Landau's voice carried, unmistakable, nasal and whining, through the echoing open space. "I think I found them," he whispered to his accomplices. "We're very close to them," Byers responded. "I can see you from here." Frohike looked up and saw the pair crouching on the catwalk behind a tall coil of rusting chain. He motioned with his hand. Byers pointed toward Langly's position. "Landau seems pretty preoccupied. You may be able to get close enough to surprise him before he can draw his gun," Byers offered. "Freya can offer some covering fire if it becomes necessary." Frohike nodded and began the slow journey across the vast open space, taking advantage of his diminutive height and the shelter afforded by abandoned equipment, huge smelting crucibles, and stacks of metal molds. Byers and Susanne watched from their perch, giving an occasional warning when Landau would turn his head in Frohike's direction as he rambled on about a variety of disjointed subjects. "He obviously seems to be suffering some severe mental and personality disorders," Susanne observed. "We weren't sure about any long-term effects of the AH drug. Those it was administered to were meant to act as assassins and then be eliminated, so long-term effects on people to whom the antidote was not administered were of no concern to the men that I worked for. Bastards." Byers nodded, extracting a pair of binoculars from his pack to see if he could determine Langly's condition. His friend had been lying silently, strapped to a gurney, but they were too far away for him to see if he was injured. The first thing he saw was Timmy, looking agitated as he continued to talk with great animation. At the moment he was listing some of the items from the "If I Were An Evil Overlord" list of things not to do. "Obviously, he forgot the one about not making your hideout's ventilation shafts large enough to crawl through," Byers commented dryly, moving his view to Langly's still form. "Loki doesn't look good," he said. "Definitely several cuts and quite a bit of bruising that I can see. He's breathing, though, and moving just a little now and then." Frohike's reply was quiet over the link. "I'm worried about what we can't see." "Me too," Byers muttered. Susanne reached uneasily for her pistol. Frohike was getting closer, now only about twenty feet from Landau's position. He moved cautiously, constantly watching the space ahead of him for evidence of any change in Landau's attention. Even though he had Byers to depend on for forward observation, he always felt it was prudent to keep his own eyes open as well. "Shit, watch that..." Byers whispered sharply into his headset, but it was too late. Frohike tripped over a loose chunk of ore and caught himself on a stack of metal molds, but the damage was done. "... loose lump of ore," Byers finished lamely. Landau's head snapped up and swiveled in Frohike's direction, pistol instantly in hand. "Come out of there, you weasel!" he shouted. "You're early!" Frohike threw himself around to the other side of the metal molds as Timmy opened fire at him. Overhead, Susanne took aim from her cover behind the coil of chain. "I'll cover you," she said. "John, take cover. If he starts firing at me, I don't want him to hit you." Timmy moved swiftly toward Frohike's position, and Susanne fired her first shot. Landau cursed, turning to try to find the shooter's location. Frohike made a shoulder roll behind another pile of debris, and began moving as fast as he could toward Langly, wanting to get his companion out of the line of fire. "Blonde bitch!" Timmy screamed, spotting Susanne on the catwalk above. "I'll kill you!" He fired off a shot in her direction and shouted again. "Byers, I know you're up there somewhere too. After your friends and your chickie are dead, I'm going to mess you over but good!" Susanne fired at Landau again, and he ducked behind the molds that Frohike had been using as cover only a moment before. He stood, fired toward her, and ducked again. The bullet zinged by Byers' head as he was moving, and he threw himself into the only shelter nearby, the control booth for the overhead crane that had once controlled the immense crucibles for pouring molten steel. As Susanne and Landau exchanged fire, he landed hard against the operator's chair and fell awkwardly to one side. Frohike dashed to Langly's side and began to wheel him toward cover. As Byers struggled to right himself in the cramped space, his arm landed heavily on the control console. Byers heard switches clicking. The catwalk and control booth shuddered, and the air was filled with the sound of screaming metal. Byers and Susanne looked on aghast as the huge superstructure of the crane's arm began to fall toward the ground. It was falling directly over the space currently occupied by Landau, Frohike and Langly. Byers screamed in horror, knowing what was about to happen to the two men that he loved like brothers. Frohike, not bothering to look, continued to push Langly's gurney, running like the devil himself was on his heels. Timmy looked up at the falling crane and cables, too stunned to move. When the superstructure struck, the entire building shook. Byers and Susanne were both knocked flat by the force of the impact. Susanne gripped the grating floor for dear life. Byers lay on the floor of the control booth curled into a ball, sobbing uncontrollably. As the dust began to clear, Frohike could be heard coughing. Susanne spotted him, only about twelve feet from where the crane had fallen, his frame sheltering Langly's from the last bits of flying debris. "We're okay!" he shouted, "we're okay!" "I'm okay here," Susanne shouted back, her voice quaking with fear. "Do you see Landau?" The dust cloud hadn't cleared sufficiently for her to spot him yet. "Can't see shit," Frohike replied. All of them heard Byers' continued sobbing. "Is John hurt, Susanne? Check on him, fast!" She staggered to her feet, and found that her knees were not quite ready to cooperate with her. The shaking she'd taken had only intensified her fear of falling from this height, but her concern for John's safety drove her forward toward the booth. The sound of his agonized wails ripped through her, and she wanted nothing more than to stop whatever was hurting him. She found him curled up lying on the floor of the booth, oblivious to her entry. "John, can you hear me? Are you hurt?" He didn't react to the sound of her voice, so she knelt beside him and took his shoulders. "John, what's wrong?" Her touch seemed to bring him around a little. He opened his eyes, and upon seeing her, he grabbed hold of her and held her in a vise grip. "They're dead, I killed them!" he shouted. "They're not dead," Susanne assured him immediately. "Damn straight, Byers, you missed," Frohike snapped, "although you did a fine job of turning Timmy into road pizza." Byers gaped like a fish, not quite able to accept what he was hearing. "The crane was going to hit them," he insisted. "I'm fine," Frohike repeated. "But I think we need to get Langly to a hospital ASAP." "Oh God, I killed him!" Byers said, distant and dissociated. "No way, buddy. Landau did this to him. You killed Landau." Byers buried himself in Susanne's arms, muttering "no, no, no..." Susanne rocked him gently. She was still terrified, but John was obviously in terrible shock over the falling crane. "It's all right, John. Everything will be fine." She kissed the top of his head as she knelt next to him. "Everyone will be alright, but right now we have to get out of here." "With all that noise," Frohike said, "I wouldn't be surprised if somebody heard it quite a ways away. It would be good to be out of here before the cops come along." "Come on, John, you have to get up. We have to get out of here," Susanne insisted. Still shaking, Byers attempted to push through his shock and terror and bring things into focus. Frohike had said that Ringo was alive. He'd heard Frohike's voice over the headset. It must be true. They must be alive. "Are you sure you're alright?" he asked. "Langly says to get your wussy ass together and let's get the fuck out of Dodge," Frohike snapped. Byers was unable to formulate a suitable reply. "C'mon," Susanne said. "How do we get down from here? I'm not going up onto the roof again, not for love nor money." "Down," Byers said, "down... um, the catwalk ends on the far side of the room, beyond the control booth here. There's a ladder down from there." He struggled to his feet, Susanne steadying him. "A ladder?" she asked, doubt evident in her voice. "Yes, why?" "I don't suppose there are stairs anywhere?" "Not that I remember," he said. She took a deep breath and muttered "oh, great." "Get a move on, you two," Frohike grated. "I'll meet you at the door down here. We've gotta help Langly move. He's hurting pretty bad." Byers, his focus and composure improving with the passing moments, hurried toward the end of the catwalk. Susanne followed at a slower, rather unsteady pace. At the end of the catwalk loomed the ladder. It was thin and very, very tall. Susanne looked down and slid to her knees. "I can't do this," she panted. "It's too high. I'll fall." "You won't fall," Byers insisted. "This is easy. All you have to do is hold the outside of the ladder with your hands and feet and slide. It's fast and foolproof." "What? I'll kill myself!" With a frustrated sigh, he grabbed the ladder and stood on the rung at his feet. "Come on, Susanne. Put your arms around me and I'll piggyback you down." "You've got to be kidding." "Quit stalling," Frohike roared. "Do what he says or I'll leave you here." Byers and Susanne looked at each other. She put her arms around him, closed her eyes, and held on with the tenacity of a terrier. Byers shifted his grip and slid, regulating his descent with pressure from hands and feet. They both landed with a solid thump on the floor. Susanne gasped a few deep breaths. "Where the hell did you learn that?" "I umm... well... I learned it from old 1940's Navy movies." He blushed brightly. "The sailors always did it when they were running for their battle stations on lower levels. It seemed like a logical way to save time and energy." "Shut up, you two. The longer you yatter, the longer Langly waits for his ER visit." They turned and ran for the door. end part 4 Things Undone Part 5 The usual stuff in part 1 *** JANUARY 11, 2000 9:14 PM OUTSIDE AN ABANDONED FOUNDRY, YORK, PA Frohike wheeled the gurney carrying Langly's unconscious form across the gravelly ground, rushing toward the rented late 70s Chevy van and hoping that no emergency vehicles arrived before their frightened and disorderly group could make its getaway. Explaining Landau and their badly injured friend to the authorities would only engender questions that he, Byers and Susanne would not want to answer. It could put their lives at further risk. And it would expose Susanne's survival to the shadowy men behind the ever present government conspiracies they tried so hard to expose. Her exposure could not happen. They would all certainly be killed. He could hear Byers and Susanne running behind him, gaining ground. They caught up with him as they arrived at the unfamiliar vehicle. "Come on," he said to Byers, "you've got to help me move him into the back seat." Byers looked at his unconscious friend. "Is he alright? God, did you two get hurt when the crane fell?" With deep concern engraved on his face, he held Frohike tightly for a moment, receiving a reassuring thump on the back in return, then touched Langly's pale, bloodied arm. "The thing landed way too damn close, and something hit me in the back as I was leaning over Langly, but we can deal with that later. Right now, we have to get out of here. Help me." Byers leaned over and looked at Frohike's back. "Mel, you're bleeding." "I don't have time for that right now. Langly's our first concern. Move it." Susanne climbed into the van, followed by Byers, holding Langly's upper body in his arms, while Frohike held him around the knees, gently lifting him over the floor of the van. John could feel Langly's labored breathing, and heard a faint whisper of a moan. His stomach lurched and knotted. He kept moving. Susanne helped John settle Langly on the bench seat in the back, his head and shoulders cradled on Byers' lap. Frohike slammed the door behind them and rushed to the driver's seat. With a few well-placed curses at the reluctant starter, the van finally gasped its way to life and they sped out of the vicinity as quickly as they could. I'll never rent from those cheap bastards again, he thought. Frohike tried to remember to 'drive casual.' As they turned down a side alley toward the next road over, they could hear sirens in the distance, growing closer. "Blankets?" Susanne asked. Byers looked up from his examination of Langly and pointed over his shoulder. "I put them in the cabinet under the drawer with the binoculars and night vision goggles. Second one on the left." He was not pleased by the cuts and bruises on Langly's visible flesh. He was even more concerned about what he could not yet see. He raised Langly's torn and bloody t-shirt gently to examine his torso. More slashes and bruising, some of it extremely severe and swollen. There were a few places that looked like there might be broken bones beneath the surface, which might explain the difficulty Langly was having with his breathing. He touched the worst spots cautiously, and Langly twitched and moaned. "Oh, great," he muttered to himself. Susanne brought two blankets up to Byers. "Here, John. Let's get these wrapped around him." "He doesn't look good," Byers said, taking one of the blankets and sliding it very carefully under Langly. "I think he's got several broken ribs, and I think he's probably lost some blood from these cuts all over him, too. I don't know how he made it this long." God, this is all my fault, he told himself. "Let me take a look," Susanne replied. She finished wrapping her blanket around Langly's long, gangly legs. She suspected they were damaged as well, but could not take the time to remove his jeans and find out. Gently, she shifted the blanket Byers had wrapped around the blonde man. Seeing the wounds and the bruising, she grimaced. "It does look bad, doesn't it?" she asked quietly. Byers just nodded. Susanne continued her examination, touching the bruises and injuries softly, hearing Langly's pained responses. "I think this arm is broken," she said, "and it appears there's some damage to his shoulder as well. Bruising around the wrists, and I'd guess it was caused by riot cuffs put on too tightly." "How is he?" Frohike shouted back to them, over the noise of the van's ancient engine and rattling body. "Not good," Byers shouted back. "Do you know where the nearest hospital is?" "I looked it up while you two were packing for this. Got it right here." He waved a slip of paper over his shoulder at them. "How long will it take us to get there?" "Not too long, but I have to drop you two off at a motel first so you can check us in for the night." "What?" Byers bellowed. "That's ridiculous! It's a waste of time, and you know I have to be there for him, just like you." "Sorry buddy, but this isn't about you. It's about your little chickadee there. We can't risk Susanne being seen in public. It could get back to the people who wanted her dead in the first place." "But what about Landau? He knew she's alive. What if he told someone?" "From what Langly told me before he passed out, Timmy was so far gone into his psychosis that I don't think he's talked about it to anyone in the Company, or anyone else at all, for that matter. Apparently, he wasn't in their good graces, and thought that finishing a mission only he knew was incomplete would land him back in the catbird seat." He didn't mention Langly's confused explanation of Landau's fixation on his revenge against Byers. "It doesn't matter," Susanne said. "We have to get him to the emergency room as soon as possible. I suspect that Ringo's bleeding internally, but I can't tell here. We can't waste time over concerns about my exposure." "I have to be there!" Byers insisted. "Yes it does, and no you don't!" Frohike shouted back. "I'm not about to make this any worse than it already is. And I'm driving." He glared out the windshield, ignoring the protests of his two conscious passengers. "Just try to get him warm while you're with him." Byers knew that at this point, there was nothing he could do to change Frohike's mind. The tone in the older man's voice had warned John that he was not joking, and not open to further discussion. He turned his attention back to their seriously injured partner. Tenderly, he brushed Langly's hair from his face and looked at the cuts and swollen, discolored bruises on those familiar, sharp features. "Come on, Ringo. Stay with us. We're going to get you to a doctor soon. Just stay with us." Susanne knelt, cramped on the floor between the two front seats and the bench seat that held John and his friend. She took one of Byers' hands, and wrapped her other arm carefully around Langly's waist. Looking up into her lover's face, she saw the pain and fear etched there. It stopped her breath and tore at her heart. She squeezed John's hand gently. "Everything will be alright," she said, not knowing whether or not to believe her own words. "He'll be alright." She leaned close to Langly's head, and whispered in his ear. "Please, Ringo. Be alright. You have to be alright." Langly's silence and the sound of his pained breathing were her only answer. *** SAME DAY 11:49 PM MOTEL SIX, ROOM 214, YORK, PA Byers and Susanne lay together in the bed, limbs entwined, each lost in their own thoughts. Frohike had taken Langly to a local emergency room, and they had been left with the task of getting two rooms for the night. They had received a call not more than five minutes ago, assuring them that Langly was being cared for and would recover, and that Frohike was also being examined and treated for a rather nasty gash in his back. Both John and Susanne had needed the reassurance of flesh against flesh, wasting no time after checking in before they showered the rank smell of fear from each other and made love. There had been a feeling of uncertainty about it, both of them intensely shaken by the experience they'd just had, but in the end, they had found some measure of comfort together. The lovers had been very gentle with one another, careful of their mutual frailties, losing themselves for at least a little while in the focused peace of erotic sensation and shared desire. He looked over at her head on his shoulder and caressed her honey blonde hair. She looked up at him, their eyes locking. "We need to talk, you know," she said to him quietly. He nodded. There were things he needed to say as well, things he finally felt brave enough to express to her. "I love you, Susanne." He kissed her lips softly, and she returned his gentleness. She sighed and held him tight. "I love you too, John." She hesitated, and Byers began to speak. "I know what I have to do now," he said. "We can't keep living like this." "No, we can't," she agreed. He rolled over onto his side, bringing them face to face. He ran his fingers over her cheek, across her lips and down her chin, trailing them down her neck to the hollow of her throat. "I can't live without you anymore, Susanne. I need you near me, to know that you're safe, to know where you are. I need you in my arms at night." His throat caught his words and Susanne started to speak, but he put his fingers over her lips and continued, closing his eyes against the intensity of his feelings. "Oh, God, I love you. Please Susanne, marry me." She held her breath, silent. Hesitantly, he looked at her, his need and desire written in his face. Susanne felt her heart crack, like melting ice, and tears came to her eyes. "John, I love you more than I have ever loved anyone else. Please believe me. But..." She took a deep breath and steeled herself for what she had to say next. John looked terrified. "I can't marry you John. God, I want to, but I can't." "But why?" John leaned into her, wrapping both arms around her body, his tears flowing freely. "Why not? After all these years, why can't we be together?" He forced himself not to cry out. "While we're together, we will always be a danger to each other, John." "But if we're together, the guys and I can protect you," he whispered to her, pleading. "No matter what happens, I'd always protect you." "You can't, John. No one can. If I leave, and no one knows where I am, then at least you and Mel and Ringo will be safe from the dangers my presence would inevitably bring. After what happened here, with Ringo being so badly hurt, I can't bear to cause any of you any further harm. If you died...." she choked back a sob, "If you died, I could never forgive myself. And I can't live with the knowledge that you are in danger every moment of your life because of what you've done for me. I can't stay with you, wondering every day if you'll come home to me again, or if I'll have to identify your body if something goes wrong." John listened to her reasons, dying more inside with every word she said. "I don't care what danger I'm in. If we're together, we can make our way through it. The guys and I have had arrangements for 'retirement' for years now, in case our work became too dangerous to continue. We can quit this if you want, if you'll feel safer that way. I'll do anything you want if you'll stay with me. Anything. Just say the word." His voice was tight, pleading. "No, John. Your work is too much a part of you now. I doubt that you or the guys could turn your backs on your dedication, on the people you help, or on your friends Mulder and Scully for very long. You would find out that someone needs you, and you'd be back at it again in weeks. It's part of what I love about you. I can't live like that, and I can't make you live without your work. I can't make you sacrifice something that's such a deep part of your soul. Not for me, not for anything." She held him as he wrapped himself around her, now openly weeping. His pain shattered her, but she knew that eventually he would come to understand her reasons. It was impossible for them to be together without destroying him one way or another. Without her, he would at least have a chance to carry on, to move forward with a life that had been on hold for years now because of her. She kissed him through his tears, and her own. "I will always love you, John," she whispered in his ear, "please believe me. But we both know that being together can't work." She kissed him again, deeper and more passionately. "I... we..." He choked back the sob that was trying to enter his mouth. For a few moments, he held his breath, trying to regain control of himself. It was harder than that moment he'd charged Landau in Vegas, knowing he was likely to die trying to stop the armed man. Byers drew a deep, shaky breath. "You're right, Susanne," he finally admitted. "I can't even pretend to understand why you want to do this, but you're right. I can't keep you here against your will." He sniffed back more tears. "Are...are you leaving tonight?" he asked, clinging to her. "No. Not tonight. We still have this moment." She kissed him again, and ran her hands along his body, memorizing the feel of him, the scent of his skin, knowing this would be the last time they would ever have together. "Please John, make love to me again. I want to feel you that close again before I go." He looked into her eyes, and whispered "anything." With his arms still tightly around her, he rolled onto his back, moving her on top of him. He felt the heat of her thighs embracing his hips, the weight of her body pressed against him. John kissed her, their tongues brushing gently together. He felt the warm dampness of her tears falling on his face, mingling with his own. "Anything," he whispered again. *** JANUARY 12, 2000 6:18 AM MOTEL SIX, ROOM 214, YORK, PA Byers woke, conscious only of an unnatural silence surrounding him. Susanne was gone. FIN.