Chapter One

The moon had disappeared behind the clouds that rolled across the sky
overhead and he could barely see the glimmer of light off the lake,
couldn't quite make out the features of the body that lay against his.
He knew it was important to stand up, to move on, to roll away from this
warmth and sweetness, this mouth that licked at his neck, this hand that
traveled caressingly across his stomach, but the sensations they filled
him with kept him there, weakened his limbs, turned his protests to soft
groans. The hand slid into his bathing trunks and took hold of his
already hardening cock, pulling it to full stiffness with strokes that
were urgent and swift. It felt strangely powerful and new, as if he had
never experienced such a thing before, and pleasure coursed through him,
through his whole body. He thrust his hips forward, knowing they had to
hurry, to get away, but not wanting the feeling to stop. The mouth moved
to his nipple, tugging at it gently, and he moved faster, thrusting
harder, his cock driving through the hand that held it, slick with his
own fluids. He felt the heat and tension build in him, his balls pull
tight. An electric tingling filled his body and his breath came panting
and gasping from him but he was frightened now, he knew this pleasure
would bring punishment. His body started to vibrate, to shake, and the
hand pulled at him even faster, his skin sliding smooth and oiled with
sweat against his partner as he pulled their bodies closer, chest
against chest. As the heat inside him exploded and he started to come,
hips bucking, there came from the darkness a deeper shadow that fell
across him, blocking out the silver shimmer of the lake and ripping the
warmth of the other body from him. He felt cold, devastating cold and
loss sweep across him even over the last echoes of pleasure.  .  .

Agent Mulder jerked awake, sheets tangled around him, body wet with
sweat and semen, his face damp with tears. The dream again, this dream
he knew he had dreamt before . . .  as usual the images were already
disappearing from his mind. He let them go, also as usual. He felt safer
not pursuing it, trying to push away the residue of melancholy and
loneliness that the dream always left him with. He glanced at the clock
beside the fold-out couch that, once again, he had neglected to fold
out. 5:30 am. No point in trying to get back to sleep now. Disentangling
his legs from the sodden sheets he decided to shower and try his partner
Scully's cell-phone again. He had tried to call her last night to find
out if she had been summoned to this unexpected early morning meeting
with the Director as well. Her cell-phone had been switched off. It was
unlike her. He was beginning to feel uneasy.

Headquarters seemed darker today, more filled with echoes, shadows lying
like pools of still black water in the doorways and corners. Men in dark
suits moved quietly along the drab hallways, faces all wearing the same
careful expression of wary neutrality. Now and then one of them would
glance at Mulder, then look quickly away. No one met his eyes.

Mulder fought the urge to loosen his collar, keeping his hands casually
at his sides. He wouldn't let them see his unease, though it was clear
that everyone knew there was something in the air.

For that matter he had known himself. He should have expected this. Some
months ago he had stumbled onto a couple of scraps of information, two
or three strange connections, a few coincidences that seemed
suspiciously convenient, and nothing had been quite the same since.

It had started with an accidental discovery. An unrelated case had taken
him to the city of his birth, and he had made a trip to the children's
hospital there to check something in his own medical records, a vaguely
remembered childhood hospital stay he had never found an explanation
for. He had not been able to answer his own question - his records
showed nothing unusual - but he had discovered a thick file on a certain
Doctor Joseph Himmelman.

It was a name he had run across before. One of his first cases had taken
him to charity hospital where renovations had uncovered a grisly find.
Beneath an old parking lot they had found, lying in shallow trenches, a
number of infant skeletons. The sight still appeared in his dreams
sometimes; the raw heaps of earth and debris, the great machines poised,
frozen, and in the ground the tiny bones, a jumble of stained ivory
splinters, small things to have brought such massive activity to a halt.
He had been called in to interview the older staff. A few of them
remembered a prominent doctor, a Joseph Himmelman, who had left the
staff years ago, surrounded by rumours of near-scandal - discoveries
suppressed, court cases mysteriously dropped, desperate young couples
leaving the hospital with no baby but with large cash settlements. They
had all been so surprised, one nurse remarked. He had been a great
doctor, could have practiced anywhere, but still kept consulting at the
under-equipped county facility, dealing with the most unfortunate,
babies blighted from the moment their genetic codes were spun together.
The case had never been solved, and the doctor seemed to have dropped
out of sight years ago, mysteriously and absolutely gone, any evidence
gone with him.

He seemed to have ceased his work in Mulder's hometown at about the same
time. Hired to advise on a genetic screening program, he had left before
it ever really got underway. Compulsively thorough as usual, Mulder had
checked with other institutions, and found some half-dozen other studies
and programs the doctor had been involved in. He had disappeared before
they were completed as well.

Together these pieces had caught Mulder's attention, hinting at some
larger and more sinister picture. So he had asked a few questions,
talked to some sources, looked back at some old cases. And gradually his
world, his niche at the agency that he had come to take dangerously for
granted, began to shift around him.

Contacts disappeared. Once reliable sources dried up or reported such
implausibilities that he had to believe they'd been tampered with. His
network - those carefully cultivated allies he had built up within the
agency and its relatives - had been slowly dismantled, people
transferred, markers called in, new procedures instituted. Over the last
week he had come to see how truly isolated he had become, only Scully
and the Director of his own sub-section still standing by him.

Now he doubted even those loyalties. He had been summoned, not invited
to this meeting. And Scully's cell-phone was still switched off.

This time he couldn't stop himself from running a finger nervously
around inside of his collar. The door to the Director's suite stood open
and he could see Ms. Josephson, his secretary, at her desk. A plump,
dowdy, and supremely efficient woman, she was usually friendly to
Mulder. Today she ignored him as she scrolled information down her
computer screen. He waited. He could hear nothing from the Director's
office. You never could. You weren't meant to.

Finally she looked up at him. "Oh, there you are Mr. Mulder" she said,
as though she was the one who had been kept waiting. He simply nodded,
and she buzzed him in.

The Director sat behind his desk, three files open before him. He was a
huge graven image of a man, handsome in a monumental way. His shoulders
were massive and his legs fit only with difficulty beneath a standard
desk, but he was always elegantly dressed, suits tailored to sit
smoothly on his outsized frame. The lines on his face were deeply
carved, furrowing his forehead and running harshly from his nose to the
corners of his well-shaped but sternly set lips. No one, it was said,
had ever seen him smile. His name was lost in the early mists of his
long authority; the sign on his office door simply read  "Director".

The three wooden chairs before his desk were dwarfed by his bulk. Scully
sat in one, eyes hard with frustration and suspicion. Next to her sat a
young man Mulder didn't recognize. He was striking, his face unusually
pale, with high, wide cheekbones and deep-set eyes, set off by black
hair cropped close to the skull. He was wearing the inevitable dark
suit, the agency uniform, and he sat upright in his chair, face politely
attentive. Mulder disliked him on sight.

The Director inclined his head a fraction of an inch towards the
remaining chair. Mulder sat, mouth suddenly dry, and waited for him to
begin.

"Mulder, Scully, I'm afraid we're going to have to split you up for a
bit." Mulder tensed. He hadn't foreseen this possibility. "Scully, you
know this outbreak of strange fungal infection along the east coast - we
need your particular medical skills there. We're worried it's being
released from some of the foreign fishing vessels off-shore." Scully
nodded, but when the Director looked down at the files again she rolled
her eyes at Mulder in a message he couldn't interpret.

"Mulder, while Scully is on this special job, I need you to go to
Quebec. We've got a case up there that plays right into your own-" the
big man paused "- unusual expertise. There's a family of alleged
psychics doing a show at a tourist lodge up there. It's an evening of
parlour magic, reading messages in sealed envelopes and so forth,
typical nonsense." The distaste was palpable in his voice.

"However, it's also a location used by a couple of American electronics
firms for group retreats and conferences. Both have reported some
unusual cases of industrial espionage. There's been information leakage
of a radical kind, and they're blaming the psychics, demanding we
investigate.  We're being forced to take this one seriously."

Mulder simply stared at him. His interest in the paranormal had made him
something of a joke at the agency, and he usually had to fight to get
his "spooky" cases taken on at all. Now the Director was simply handing
him a case this weak? It set off all his warning signals, and he
struggled not to let his incredulity show.

"This" continued the Director "is Agent Krycek, your new partner for the
duration of Scully's reassignment." The Director paused for a moment,
and Mulder could have sworn he saw a flash of caution in his eyes.  "You
should work well together. Here are the case files." He slid the files
across his desk to them, Scully's thick with medical charts and
diagnostic imagery, the ones for Mulder and the dark-haired man almost
insultingly thin. Mulder watched in irritation as Krycek scanned it
briefly and stowed it tidily in his briefcase, no questions asked.
"You'll be leaving tomorrow afternoon, and taking the train. Mrs.
Josephson has your tickets." The Director rose, effectively dismissing
them, and Mulder moved to his new partner's side.

The other man looked older close-up, fine lines in the pale skin around
his eyes, a certain hardness to his mouth. He looked at Mulder closely,
and Mulder felt a vague unrest. The younger man's eyes were heavily
lashed, their irises an unusually dark blue, almost black. They had a
slightly mocking intensity to them, a quality both compelling and
impersonal. His hand was dry and cool to the touch, and Mulder shivered
slightly as they shook, the other man's fingers sparking a charge of
static electricity from his own that made them both draw back sharply.
Krycek's face registered a brief flash of expression, surprise maybe, or
amusement, but it passed in an instant and Mulder forgot it as the
Director called him back to sign some forms.  By the time he was done
Krycek had disappeared and Scully was waiting for him in the hallway. He
would have to talk to his new partner tomorrow.

"What's going on?" Scully asked him in a low, fierce murmur. "Both of
these cases feel like make-work to me. I think they want us out of the
way for a while." Mulder nodded silently in agreement.
"And this Krycek - I've heard things about him, Mulder. He's a new
recruit, very bright, very promising - I don't know why they would put
him on a case like this unless they had a hidden agenda. I'll tell you
something else - I don't think the Director wanted him on this case. He
all but told me so when I first got to the meeting. So keep your eye on
him - he's an unknown quantity."
Mulder nodded again, an image of those intense dark eyes flashing
through his mind. Definitely an unknown quantity.

*                                  *                                 *

The Director watched the door through which Mulder had disappeared for a
long moment, his face thoughtful, eyes uncertain. As he stood thinking,
the other door to his office opened silently and a man walked softly
through it. With noiseless, careful strides he moved to where the
Director stood and placed his hand on the small of his back. The
Director jumped and made as if to speak but the visitor spoke first "Not
having second thoughts, are you?"

He was younger than the Director, Mulder's age maybe, but his thick
shock of hair was quite gray and his fine-featured face was marked with
lines of habitual tension. He moved quietly and surely but his hands
shook with a slight constant tremor.

"Agent Degan" said the Director. His voice was not welcoming.

"Well, are you?" the younger man repeated.

"You know I am" the Director snapped. "I objected to this from the
first"

He moved away from the other man's touch, sat back in his chair and
pulled Mulder's file from a stack on his desk. Degan moved in again,
perched on the edge of his desk, facing him as he continued to speak.

"He's a good operative and I don't like lying to him. Plus I suspect
you're not telling me everything. You seem to have some kind of personal
stake in this".

The younger man's hands danced nervously on his knees, twisting around
each other, knuckles white, but his smile was sharp and whip-like.

"Of course I'm not telling you everything. This is a matter of internal
agency security. And you don't really have much choice, do you? My
patron tells me that word has been sent from on high about Mulder."

He reached forward and attempted to pluck Mulder's file from the
Director's fingers, but his shaky grip jarred it, sending an avalanche
of papers to the floor. Both men lunged for them and collided, brought
up short with their faces only inches from one another. Seconds passed.
Neither one moved away. Degan's eyes looked into the Director's and he
raised his hand slowly until it brushed against the other man's face,
gently touching the vein in his temple. His breathing was suddenly rapid
and shallow. The older man gave a defeated groan and seized Degan's face
in his massive hands, pulling it closer and covering his mouth hungrily
with his own. He had sworn he wouldn't do this again.

Degan had appeared at the agency about a year before in a
vaguely-defined intelligence capacity, the protegee of one Alan Carter,
a full section-head and long-standing rival of the Director's. Degan had
not gone through the usual training and he appeared only occasionally at
headquarters. No one knew where Carter had found him, but the
section-head's power was such that no one questioned it. Bright but
unstable, the young man had proven to be an innovative thinker but a
liability in the field. Somehow he had come to serve as liaison between
the two men in their ongoing battle, and the Director had learned to
feel dread at his appearance in the office, knowing it signalled another
bout of wrangling for his own program.

Dread, and something else as well, something that tightened his stomach
and made his fingertips tingle when the odd young man was near. There
was something about him, something about the contradictions the Director
sensed in him, the vulnerability beneath the spiky, driven surface, the
last vestiges of an old sweetness nearly obscured by his fiercely
focussed fury. The Director found him beautiful too, the liquid brown
eyes and pale grey hair, the face pared to refinement by the singularity
of his focus. He knew he was being used, knew it from the moment that
Degan's long fingers had lingered those extra seconds on his shoulder,
from the first time he had dared to pull the smaller body into his arms,
to touch the long sweet groove of the spine, the narrow hips. But he
couldn't help himself.

Degan slid his thin body off the desk and knelt between the Director's
thighs, pulling the buttons of his shirt open. The older man caught his
hand in his own and flipped it over, tracing the band of scar tissue
that circled the wrist like a bracelet, a manacle. He had no idea what
had caused these scars, any more than he knew where Degan had come from,
or what precisely he wanted from all of this.  "I just hope" he said,
voice suddenly gentle, "that you know what you're getting yourself into,
Degan."

The kneeling man pulled his hands away and made as if to rise but the
Director pulled him in close against his body, cradling the pale head
against his chest for a moment before kissing him again, the other man's
breath hot and eager in his mouth, a taste like city rain and old
sadness on his tongue. Yes, he knew he was being used, but Degan's body
responded to his in a way he didn't think was false. The younger man's
nervous, tightly-wound energy exhausted itself against his own solid
flesh until the Director's own rhythm took over, moved the other man
helplessly until he lay spent and still at last, curled into the large
man's frame as if into a cradle, a shelter.

His face was pressed against the Director's chest now, tongue hot
against the continents of muscle, fingers grasping, digging, clutching
at his body. The older man ran a hand down his thin back, soothing him,
feeling heat rise through his own body. He groaned as Degans's fingers
found the hardness of his cock inside his pants and traced its outline
with fingers that were suddenly sure. His own hands unsteady now he hit
the light on the intercom that told his secretary he was not to be
disturbed. This was risky, he knew, and getting riskier all the time,
but he didn't protest as Degan's fingers undid his pants and released
his aching cock, as large in scale as the rest of him. Degan let it rub
against his lower lip, then with a delicate cat-like tongue began
licking the head, the ridge, running his tongue against the thick vein
on the underside. The Director's chair creaked as he leaned back hard
against it. He knew his office was soundproof but still he winced and
tried to bite back the moan that was rising in him. This sign of his
excitement seemed to spur Degan on, and he moved faster, raggedly,
muttering something that was muffled by the Director's cock in his
mouth. His fingers were again clutching the big man's body hard and the
Director tried to quiet him, slow him down, murmuring in a voice gone
husky and deep in his chest "Hey now, take it easy"

But Degan was not to be stopped today. He seemed more driven than ever,
gripped by some emotion the Director didn't comprehend. He felt the
other man's need, though, and held his shoulders tightly, thrust hard
into his throat, the vibrations of the younger man's moan electric
against his cock. Degan was hardly able to handle the whole length, but
still he swallowed greedily, choking slightly and then recovering as his
fingers caressed the sensitive juncture between thigh and groin. His
hands were cool on the Director's warm flesh, and his heart shook his
ribcage against the other man's legs. A few more deep wet swallows and
the Director's back arched, he groaned aloud again, spilling wordlessly
into Degan's throat.

The younger man shuddered convulsively and sighed. He rested his head on
the Director's thigh, only slowly releasing the gradually softening cock
from his mouth, his breath coming heavily. The older man let his fingers
twine through his hair, savouring the line of his neck, the clean curve
of his skull. He wondered what thoughts circled beneath his fingers . .
. then smiled ruefully to himself. He was probably better off not
knowing.  He reached for Degan's body again but the agent shied and
moved suddenly away, rising to his feet and turning his back.

"Degan- " he struggled for something to say but the other man didn't
turn, didn't respond, gave no sign of hearing. In a fit of sudden anger the
Director asked "And does your "patron" know how you've encouraged my
cooperation?" Degan's shoulders twitched and his voice was brittle and
colourless when he answered "Yes. I would imagine he does". The older
man mentally kicked himself for asking, and the familiar jagged
atmosphere settled between them again.

Degan finally turned, face and clothes rearranged, and said "keep me
updated if you hear from Mulder", as if nothing had happened, as if
moments ago he hadn't clutched desperately at the Director's half-naked
body as if someone were trying to take it from him. He left without
looking back, and the Director moved to the bathroom to restore his
clothes and his thoughts. He had a sick feeling in the pit of his
stomach about Mulder.

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