Dominion Over My Soul-Ursula R 4 P 2

The air parted like warm water. Alex felt the currents caress his skin. He felt so alive and free. He was happy. He turned his face to smile at the Icarus and saw that the face had turned to stone again. The noble features reminded him of Mulder. The statue's wings were marble but they pinioned through the air like an eagle's wings. Colored light, soft, breaking like the iridescence of an opal, surrounded them.

Alex felt the pull of his body...he resisted. It sang to him. He felt dizzy and abruptly, Icarus turned to flames. Alex screamed and let go of the fiery hands. He tumbled, tumbled, screaming silently until he abruptly opened heavy sleep-bound eyes and stared into a gentle face that reminded him of Dana Scully. Alex looked around until he found the gunmen. He said, "Frohike's consciousness is in the computer at your headquarters. You need to download him.

Byers' usually intelligent expression dissolved into gaping idiocy. He asked, "What?"

Langly said, "Weird, man."

Annoying wires and tubes festooned Alex's body. He pulled them out ignoring the small bursts of pain. Alex snapped, "Where did they go? Where's Walter and Scully? Did they really find Mulder?"

The weakness in his body infuriated Alex. He had things to do. He'd never felt so hopeful. He knew he didn't have all the answers, but they were in his grasp. He glared at the Lone Gunmen and said, "Come on. Move! Open up Frohike's computer and hit the net. There should be an attachment there. Download it and Frohike will do the rest. Now, where is Walter?"

Langly said, "Skinner, Mulder, and Scully just left for Fargo Phlebotomology Laboratories. Mulder said that the answer was there. Something to fight the aliens..."

Multitudes of images floated in Alex's head. He tried to sort through them and finally decided that he was on the correct track. He said, "Yes, but I have to be there. My brother and I are the catalyst!"

It felt good to say that...my brother. For a long time, Alex had thought that the feelings, which stirred in him whenever he was with Mulder, were love or at least lust. Now he knew that it was some soul deep recognition. It wasn't love. It was purpose. Alex looked at the waiting men and said, "Well?"

Langly said, "Byers can go and try to help Frohike. I'll go with you and Mrs. Scully can stay and watch Frohike."

Alex said, "I need something to wear."

The woman, Dana's mother, said, "You aren't in any shape to be going anywhere."

The white clad people who had crowded the room agreed. A woman darted forward and put her hand on Alex's arm. A quick twist and a moment's effort left the woman sprawled across Alex's abandoned bed. Alex said, "I am going."

Langly found a small suitcase that held two changes of clothing. Alex dressed in jeans and a sweater. Someone brought forward a leather coat. It was Mulder's not his, but Alex put it on anyway.

In the parking area, Alex ignored Langly's attempt to guide him to the Gunmen's car. He swiftly evaluated and chose a Bugatti, which proudly sat in a covered parking spot. Alex said, "Yeah, I can catch up to them with that.

Langly hunched his shoulders, polished his glasses on his shirt and said, "Uh, Alex, that's stealing."

Ignoring the inane comment, Alex asked, "Tool kit?"

Langly handed him one and said, "I was a Boy Scout until they kicked my troop leader out. The Scouts didn't think his innovations were acceptable...hot wiring, hacking, and hand to hand combat weren't the modern day equivalents of survival skills in their books."

The car alarm yielded easily to Alex's deft touch. He slid into the driver's seat and asked, "Langly, do you have a GPS tracker on them?"

"Yep." Answered the self satisfied Gunman. "Let me get the kit from the Gun-Mobile"

Alex finished his sophisticated version of a hot wire and drummed his fingers on the steering well. The Bugatti smelled of mellow leather. The seat cupped him like Walter's hands. He wiggled a little and adjusted the seat. "Got to get one of these." Alex remarked as Langly returned, puffing and bearing a suitcase sized device. Langly fussed with the dials and said, "They just hit the exit. Hit the gas, Alex."

A black "Limp Bizkit" tee shirt, a pair of jeans so old that they were nearly white, and battered running shoes clothed the pale and lank haired Gunmen. Langly didn't seem very nervous...which surprised Alex. He would have thought that the man would have heard nothing but monster stories about him from Mulder. Dimly, Alex remembered Langly talking to him, amusing him as he lay in bed.

"I've been really out of it." Alex said as a host of memories assailed him.

His companion nodded to him. Langly said, "Take the turnpike."

The Bugatti was like an extension of his own body. Alex imagined Walter behind the wheel. He bet Walter could appreciate a car like this...taking a trip to some holiday retreat, Alex's hand caressing the powerful thigh in promise of pleasures to come...

Some things from his illness were foggy, but he remembered Walter making love to him. He clung to the sweetness of large, gentle hands coaxing him to passion. Alex hoped it would be the same after this was all done. Alex worried that Walter wouldn't like him as an equal partner. What if it was only the dazed child like creature he remembered himself being that the man could love?

Langly said, "Hurry up. We're losing them."

The traffic was heavy and it took some skillfully reckless maneuvers to thread through the obstacles. Langly announced, "Take the next exit."

Fargo Phlebotomology Laboratories loomed ahead. Alex nervously waited while Langly tried to raise the raiders. The Gunmen said, "No one's responding. You want to go in there?"

The featureless building glowered over the nearly deserted parking lots. Alex shuddered with the recollection of what he had been made to suffer in that place. He knew it was a dream, but the memory of pain and fear was all the same. The only good thing was that somehow in the nightmare, he and Mulder had found peace with each other. Alex knew that his destiny lay in that building with his lover, his brother, and Scully. *****

'Damn it all', John thought. 'I simply don't care about the speed limit. Frohike is depending on me.' Recklessly he lead footed the pedal and brought the Volvo up to sixty-eight miles per hour.

Straightening his suit jacket, John thought with weary longing about his neat wardrobe, his tidy bathroom, and his lovely bed. Instead, he made his way to Frohike's computer, a bright red cased monster. Frohike's chair had been salvaged from a curbside. Slabs of Velcro decorated the worn brown seat and armrests. It moaned like a lost soul when he twisted it around to sit in it.

Frohike's personal code always contained some allusion to Dana Scully. This time it was her measurements, hacked from an online lingerie company file. Tons of E-mail burdened Frohike's primary screen name. John looked in dismay as he thought about having to look at cattle mutilations, reports of UFOs, missing people, and strange phenomena, liberally mixed with pornography.

'Aha! What was this?' John thought. Frohike's own screen name with a whale of an attachment. He opened the blank E-mail and downloaded. A flash of blue light blinded him. When John could see again, Frohike's face grinned from the monitor. His friend's voice said from the speaker, "Hey, Byers! This is primo! I'm one with the net! Listen, man, just go to the hospital and bring a decent computer into the room. Lay my hands on it and open the attachment again. I'll download into my body. Meanwhile, I'm going to go help my buddies break into the creep-house!"

The face bore an expression of concentration and vanished. John stroked his beard in wonder. He very much wished he could study this aberration ...

*** Free now to roam the net, Frohike knew what he needed to do. He was anchored to the familiar circuits of his home computer and had no fear that his consciousness would be scattered in a million points around the net. He could remember the path back to the circuits of megalithic monster computer network that ran the laboratory. Frohike knew he was going to need power. He needed help. He tapped semiconscious cyber-organisms. Pure white light from a computer that helped doctors seek a cure for childhood cancer. Brilliance of the cybernetic prayer wheel of a neo-Buddhist monastery. The vast power of a crime fighting database network, nicknamed Holmes by the techs that used it to fight serial killers.

Frohike felt these allies on his side and he was a squire about to don white samite. He aimed this immense power at the evil dragon of the blood sucking Consortium Cybernet. He felt the alarm as his probe hacked a hole in the security lockouts. He was many and he had the force of right behind him. He penetrated the first layer, ruthlessly burning circuits as he went. Frohike felt the mild questioning of Holmes, the cyber-detective. 'Trespass is a crime, the reasoned voice whispered.' Frohike used a small part of his consciousness to show the law abiding computer the crimes committed by the consortium, altered bodies crowding railcars like Holocaust victims, kidnapped children, murdered innocents...Holmes was persuaded and rejoined the fray.

First step was to quell an alarm that the raiding party had violated as soon as they entered the parking lot. Layer after layer of sensors had to be turned off without triggering a cascade of other alarms. He felt weary, not used to using so much of his brain. Kildare, the medical computer, soothed, 'It's psychosomatic. Biofeedback is effective in combating such symptoms."

Frohike gratefully ran the program, which cleansed his systems. All the while, Om, the prayer wheel computer sang a mantra that gradually soothed the defenses to sleep. Frohike finished dismantling most of the defenses. He extruded part of his consciousness into a still-fighting part of the net. He peered out of the monitor at an agitated man.

'Human monitoring! Fuck!' Frohike cursed. He arranged the bits to form his image, adding a surreal white light that created a three d effect.

A man cried, "This system is really whacked! Who the hell added this ugly screensaver to my monitor?"

A female tech peered at the screen and said, "Jeez, not me. Most of the system is down. We better go get some help."

The door had an electric lock that linked to the network. Frohike exuded a command program and the lock sealed. Frohike grinned at the female tech, that was rather hot in her mostly unbuttoned white lab coat and said, "Clean my systems, baby. How about you, me, and some random memory bits?"

****

Hell of a raiding party...Dana and Mulder were overly confident, joking and laughing. Mulder especially seemed to be riding on a blissful high; he was out of touch with reality. Mulder said, "I'll try to get in. Hey, Skinner, give me a leg up?"

Just as Mulder reached the vent cover, Walter heard a car approach, some smooth and powerful vehicle.

"Shit! Hide." Walter urgently whispered. All three of them scurried for cover.

A car door quietly opened and shut. Walter had his gun at ready as he tried to look around the corner of the dumpster. His eyes widened as he saw that the supposed enemy was Alex and Langly.

Alex looked directly at the dumpster and said, "Come out, Mulder. I know you're there."

Mulder wiggled from behind Walter and said somewhat loudly, "Alex?"

"Yeah, me. I found my way back to my body right after you left." Alex replied.

This was not the man whom Walter had cared for and loved over the past few days. He moved differently; he was lithe and confident. His eyes were unclouded, intelligent, and challenging. Alex spared a glance at Walter and said, "I grew up. Take it or leave it."

A softening of the gaze told Walter that this was not the Krycek he loathed just as it was not the simple sweet innocent that he had grown to love. Walter nodded. Hopefully there would be time later to find out later whether there was anything real between them.

"The vaccine? I thought you needed the vaccine to wake up?" Mulder muttered.

Seeming to search his memory, Alex said, "We need to get something for both of us. Something to give us a weapon..."

The door to the laboratory clicked. Langly had been edging near it and he grunted in alarm then reached out and tried the handle. It opened.

"Come into my parlor said the spider to the fly." Alex recited. He reached out a hand to Mulder and said, "One for all?"

Mulder accepted the hand and used it to pull Alex into a sudden embrace. "And all for one. Next time I won't leave you...they won't make me leave you." Mulder terminated the hug with a soft pat on Alex's cheek. "Forgive me."

The expression on Alex's face was radiance. He said, "Nothing to forgive. Mulder, the same?"

"We're Spender's mistakes, brothers, but we might be able to turn his error into an unbeatable weapon." Mulder replied. Mulder turned to Walter and said, "Let's go."

The corridor was deserted...except by recumbent guards. Scully bent to examine one. She said, "He's asleep...drugged."

"What the hell?" asked Mulder.

"Frohike. Frohike has the system. Come on. We're wasting time." Alex said, urgently tugging on Mulder's sleeve.

The place was a maze. They were following the united instincts of Mulder and Krycek. The two men held hands. If one faltered, the other led. The path seemed always deeper. As they wound down the stairs and opened a fire door, Langly slipped and almost fell. "What the hell?"

The party froze. The walls of this corridor dripped with oil...some of it oozed toward them. They all rapidly scrambled behind the door. Walter took out a wad of plastic explosive and added a detonator. At the concerned look, Walter said, "The stealthy approach seemed to have failed. Don't worry. I used to be pretty good with explosives. I think the fire door will protect us."

Opening the door, Walter cast the small bomb. He herded them all under the stairway, trying to protect them all with his massive body. Alex kissed him in the closeness. Walter smiled at him and said, "I still love you."

The explosion caved in the door. Alex and Mulder pushed ahead of him. They knew the black oil best so the protective part of Walter reluctantly yielded to the strategist and let them. They moved on. It might have been minutes. It might have been hours in these passages. Walter heard scurrying noises, liquid movement as if some large decomposing body was dragging in inexorable pursuit of them. From behind one door, screams sounded...the screams of the damned in hell.

Scully moaned and said, "Melissa? I hear Melissa and Emily. I have to help them."

Mulder alerted to a voice... "Son? Son, come and help me..."

Mulder said, "Dad? Dad?"

Alex said, "It's not real. Ignore it. Just for one time, make a clean decision. Don't lose. Don't let them use you."

Weeping, Mulder dragged Scully away from the door from which the plaintive cries still emerged. In this darkness, they followed Alex....

***

John knew that everyone thought that he was nuts, but he plugged in the extension cord and booted up the machine. He piggybacked on the net until he found Frohike's ISP and opened his friend's screen name. He found the attachment in the old mail folder and opened it. Frohike's face filled the screen. The computer-generated voice said, "No, too soon! They're still in there. I have to..."

Frohike's body seized on the bed, arching until his head nearly met his feet. When he settled back limply, his eyes rolled over. He said, "Help them."

Frohike scrabbled to get up. He said, "John, we have to hack as we have never done in our lives. That place is full of things even we can't imagine. Experiments, hybrids of humans, aliens, animals, insects..."

****