Rebuilt 2.0
by KG
There’s a knock on the front door. I hurry down a flight of stairs, yank it open and find myself face to face with a killer. It’s Krycek -- Alex Krycek. They sent the best. I suppose I should be flattered.
A minute of uncomfortable silence passes. Krycek seems to be waiting for me to do or say something, but frankly I have no idea what.
“I’m here to see the room,” he finally says.
“Oh, right,” I reply automatically. My voice cracks, and I clear my throat. Krycek smiles benignly. His slightly bored expression betrays nothing at all. Of course I wouldn’t expect it to…he’s that good.
“I forgot you called,” I say to cover for my confusion. Actually I had forgotten that someone was coming by to look at the room I have for rent. But now I realize it was a setup…to make sure I’d be home I suppose. Of course ‘They’ wouldn’t have expected me to recognize their hired killer. I can’t let him realize that I know who he is. “Come in. The room’s upstairs.” I point the way. I don’t want to turn my back on him, but he politely refuses.
“Lead the way.”
At the top of the stairs I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind, “I have to get an application,” and dash into my room. There’s no phone, and no way out, so I go to my night table and take out the lock box. My hands are trembling so badly that I drop the tiny key and then can’t find it on the flowery bedspread for what seems like ages. Finally the box is open and I draw out the contents. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten how to load it, but the clip slides in smoothly. I tuck the gun into the back of my jeans and conceal it under my sweatshirt.
“Where’s the application?” asks Krycek when I come back.
“What?” Oh. There are no applications. “I couldn’t find one.”
“Oh well,” he shrugs.
“Yeah…oh well.” I shrug too, and the gun caresses the small of my back.
I unlock the vacant room and wave him inside. This time he goes first. I pull out the gun.
Krycek looks over the room. It’s not much -- just a bed and a desk with a rickety chair. There’s a shared bathroom down the hall. It doesn’t take long for him to see everything there is to see, but my arms are already aching. Finally he notices me, still standing in the doorway, with the gun aimed at his chest.
He looks instantly alert and maybe a little surprised.
“What’s this?” he asks.
“I know why you’re here,” I say. It’s just a whisper even though I’m the one holding the gun.
“I’m just here to see the room,” Krycek assures me. His voice is calm and steady as if he’s talking to a crazy person, and he holds his hands out, trying to appear non-threatening.
But I know different. I’ve seen his file. I wasn’t supposed to, but I had access, and I used to be a very curious young man.
“I know who you are,” I say.
As soon as I say this, Krycek transforms himself. Gone is the smiling, harmless man who’s looking for a place to stay. Here is the professional. The cool killer. Even his voice changes.
“The safety’s on,” he murmurs. And it’s persuasive...
I look.
And Krycek is moving, reaching for something inside his jacket. There’s a flash and an explosion. I land on my ass in the hallway. The room is filled with the hazy smoke and odor of a gunshot.
It takes some time, but finally I realize that I’m not wounded.
I get up and cautiously walk back into the room. Krycek is on his back on the floor. I can only see his feet; the bed hides the rest of his body. I move closer and realize … there’s blood everywhere. Soaking his shirt. Pooling on the linoleum floor.
“Chris?”
I look up and see that a few tenants have gathered in the hallway and are peering in through the open door.
“He had a gun,” I say as I bend down. I gingerly search Krycek’s body, find his gun in a shoulder holster and pull it out.
“Stupid fuck,” Krycek whispers, his eyes flying open. “I was only here to see the room.” He makes a little coughing sound. Blood fills his mouth, and his expression turns panicked. After a few desperate minutes (or was it only seconds?) of trying to breathe, the body is still once again.
I hold out the two guns like an offering. Mine and Alex Krycek’s. My trembling hands are covered with his blood. A droplet slowly slides from my fingers. I watch its liquid freefall, transfixed.
Oh my God.
What have I done?
The blood splatters on Krycek’s dirty leather boot and glistens unnaturally.
Part 2
My chest burns. No, that’s not right. That doesn’t even begin to describe the sensation. It’s everywhere, all at once. Internal and external. A million microscopic surgeons repairing damage, cell-by-cell, that shouldn’t be repairable.
When I came to after having my arm cut off, my very first thought – after I stopped screaming -- was how am I going to get it back. I know about a lot of experiments, a lot of alien tech. There had to be something that would work for me. So when I found out about the nanobots, I thought, this is it. Of course there was some risk involved. If anyone found out, I could be controlled like that poor bastard Skinner. But take it from someone who knows, nothing could be as bad as being taken over by that oil, and any risk was worth it to avoid the daily terror of trying to survive as a one-armed assassin. So I helped myself to a syringe-ful of the tiny medical miracles. A few months went by, and nothing happened. No growth. No sensation. Nothing. Well fuck me. Take a chance like that and it didn’t even work.
Then the Tunisians were tipped that something was up. A couple of months in the bridal suite of their deluxe desert accommodations were all I got for my troubles. Fortunately it didn’t occur to anyone that I had infected myself, otherwise my stay would have been even more unpleasant.
I wrote the nanobots off. I figured all they were capable of was destruction, not repair. Until today -- the day I died. I’ve been in enough morgues to know one when I smell it. So unless this is some kind of weird fucked up version of hell, I was definitely dead. But not anymore. That doesn’t mean it’s stopped hurting.
I’d scream, but I can’t seem to suck in enough air. They must not be done with my lungs yet.
…
Florescent light hits my face and I roll, instinctively seeking cover. I land in a naked heap on the floor of the morgue. When I look up, one white-coated lab assistant has passed out and the other one is turning an unhealthy shade of green.
“Where are my clothes?” I demand. I want to get dressed and get out of here before she either starts puking or pulls herself together enough to call somebody.
She points to an evidence bag on the table. My clothes are wrecked. Everything is soaked with blood. And it all comes back. The gun. The pain. The fear of knowing I was about to die. And then more pain. The pain of being reborn. I can handle the pain. But the fear…I’m grinning…never again.
I pull on some surgical scrubs and grab my arm. Looks like I’m still gonna need it. I can only speculate, but I’m guessing the nanobots must think this is the natural state of my body.
“If a hot red-head from the FBI comes by to ask questions about the body that got up and walked away…” I say to the nauseous lab assistant, “…tell her Krycek says hi.”
She nods, then loses the battle for her lunch, and I take that as my cue to leave.
My good mood doesn’t last long. Maybe this is hell, and I’ve damned myself with these nanobots. I can’t imagine anything worse than living on this planet after colonization and not being able to put myself out of my misery with a quick bullet to the brain.
No…it is what it is, and it can’t be undone…and if this is hell, then I’m the devil.
And those alien bastards better stay the fuck out of my way.
Part 3
Damn, that hurts. Skinner’s gonna pay for that bullet.
I know he’s always had a soft spot for Mulder, but does he think he can arrest me? He’s gotta know that even if he gets the PDA, I have enough dirt to take him down with me. I reach for my gun and give Skinner my best ‘don’t fuck with me’ expression and…
Ahhh!
The fucker shoots me again. Something breaks that time. I can’t move my arm. My only arm. Skinner, that sadistic bastard.
A prison sentence is going to be damned inconvenient. Unless…maybe I won’t have to go to prison after all. Maybe I can arrange to disappear for a while. Run things from behind the scenes.
I push the gun away with the fake hand, and make Skinner a proposition, “One bullet for a thousand lives.” He doesn’t understand what I’m asking. It hasn’t occurred to him yet that his concussion healed faster than normal; that the nanobots in his bloodstream are good for something other than killing him.
“Shoot Mulder,” I whisper. Or shoot me. Either way, I get what I want. I can already feel my own nanobots knitting the broken bones in my arm back together.
Skinner fires for the third time.
All brain function ceases, instantaneously. Everything is black.
…
My head throbs. I open my eyes, close them again. It makes no difference. Everything is black. I feel for something and the walls are too close. Above, below…on every side.
Oh, no.
I’m not good with enclosed spaces.
I’m gonna lose it.
…
I feel a pop, and something gives. I think it might have been my ankle.
My throat feels raw. I’ve been screaming and kicking and clawing at the walls long enough to bloody all of my fingers. But I’ve stopped, and it’s because light is shining in near my foot. I haven’t broken my ankle. I’ve kicked out a taillight. I’m not in a coffin, I’m in the trunk of a car.
I start kicking again, with more purpose, and within minutes I’m able to crawl into the backseat. A glint of metal in the trunk catches my eye and I reach for it. It’s a gun. I think it’s mine.
Something’s not right.
I climb out of the car into a parking garage. I think it’s the parking garage of the Hoover building. I look at the gun and try to remember what I’m doing here.
I remember a man. I was going to shoot him because he couldn’t mind his own fucking business and let things play out on their own. Or was I? There was another man, the one who shot me. I knew he was going to do it; I think I even encouraged him. I can see it all, like some movie running in my head. What I can’t figure out is why? Who am I, that I should be involved in a shootout?
Oh shit. Who am I?
Whoever I am, I’m not comfortable spending too much time in the FBI’s parking garage. Too many things have happened here. Most recently I remember holding a good looking red-head’s hand. I pulled her down flight after flight of stairs, until we reached the relative safety of the parking garage. I delivered her, unharmed, into the hands of trusted FBI agents. She was pregnant and something about that scares the shit out of me.
Out on the street I blend into the mid-day pedestrian crowd. As I walk I pull out my wallet and take a look inside. It doesn’t offer many clues. I have about a thousand dollars in cash. A New York driver’s license that says my name is Michael Graham. And a tattered newspaper ad for a room for rent.
The name and New York address mean nothing to me, so I think I’ll check out the boarding house.
…
The man who opens the door is older than me. His sandy blonde hair is streaked with gray. As soon as he sees me he passes out cold. Looks like I came to the right place.
I grab him under the arm, pull him upright and then over my shoulder. I carry his dead weight up the stairs and try the first door on the right. It’s unlocked. I dump his body on the flowery bedspread.
As long as he’s out cold, I figure I might as well take a look around. There’s not much to search. Just some clothes and paperbacks. He must have gotten rid of the gun.
Gun? Oh yeah, now I remember him.
I sit down on the bed and slap his face until he comes around. When he sees me, he looks as if he’d like to pass out again. I grab him by the throat and shake him a little, just to get his attention.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Chris,” he answers.
“How do you know me?”
“You…you were here to look at the room and I…I…”
“No. I mean, when I came to look at the room, how did you know who I was?”
“I used to work for … Them,” he whispers
Them. Old men in gray suits sitting around planning the future of the planet. I used to work for them too. Spy, assassin, chauffer…whatever. The Brit – he was blown up in a car bomb. Most everyone else was incinerated by aliens at El Rico. Everyone except Spender. I remember him and his wheelchair lying at the bottom of a stairwell – a stairwell that I had pushed him down. I remember how I thought with him out of the way I can run things the way I like. I wonder what Marita is up to; she’s been quiet for too long.
“What did you do for Them?” I ask him.
“A scientist.” That could mean anything…cloning, vaccines, even nano-technology.
“What was your area of research?” I ask.
“Biological weapons,” he replies.
Hmm. Something like that could really come in handy when the aliens come down.
“The old men are dead,” I tell him. “You work for me now.”
Part 4
I switch off the monitor showing surveillance angles of Scully’s apartment and sigh. Do they think they can just walk away from this? Kiss and live happily ever after? Have they forgotten about Scully’s abduction, the chip that controls her, the tests that were performed on her? Are they in denial about the parentage of her baby? What about Mulder’s dangerous reaction to the alien artifact and the brain surgery, courtesy of Cancerman, that ‘cured’ him. The replicants may have mysteriously decided to leave them alone, but what about the oil, the clones, the hybrids and the bounty hunters? Have they forgotten about the imminent colonization of the planet?
I remember everything now -- everything that’s important.
My name is Alex Krycek. I’m a soldier in an unconventional war. I’ve done the things that needed to be done. Killed the people that needed to be killed. Infected myself with nanobots…and now I can’t die.
I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure the survival of my species. And who are my allies in this war for the human race? There aren’t many. Mulder and Scully are done interfering. Doggett and Reyes wouldn’t recognize an alien if it beamed them up to the mother ship. But Skinner…Skinner is mine. More then ever. It’s better this way. Like a new beginning. And others will rally to me once they realize what’s at stake.
My goal is clear and my plan is straightforward.
Rule the world.
But first make sure the world is a place worth ruling.