Disconnected III

Book III

Silence was not golden, at least, not as far as Fox Mulder could tell. If it had a color, then it was probably the same one as pins and needles. Though he wasn't quite sure what color that was.

He had suspicions, thought that perhaps it would look like the off-station broadcast image of a TV set, a random mess of black and white squiggles in a tangle of dancing dots.

The silence in his head wasn't even silence. The sounds rolled around, hissing and drumming and whistling. Sometimes, if he listened hard, he could almost catch hold of the rhythm for just long enough to tempt him to try to make out the tune. Then it would sink, suddenly dip away and vanish before he could pin it down.

There were other things. Disconnected did not mean unaware. Having no actual sense of what was happening to his body, not knowing its movements or its position, didn't stop his brain from making inferences.

Consciously, his brain could assert that it had no reason to offer news of burning fingers or cramped toes or itching underneath the skin. But that didn't stop his subconscious mind from busily feeding him lies and misdiagnoses based on the absence of valid sensory data. Logical analysis made no impact on the incessant chatter.

This pain, if pain was the word, didn't sear like a gunshot wound. It didn't pound like a dehydration migraine in the middle of a viral fever. It didn't make him bite his lip as a distraction from coughing up maggot-ridden lung material. His thoughts drifted back to where he'd started. Pins and needles then.

Yeah, he concluded. Something like pins and needles - vague, low level, but all the time, and all over his body.

His captors had been disappointed that the disconnection process hadn't met with his approval.

Their logic was impeccable. Without the disconnection, the reaction to the new blood streaming in from carefully upgraded bone marrow would be too severe. He'd be in too much pain to remain usefully conscious, certainly in too much distress to hear a word that was being said.

The disconnection was essential. Surely he didn't want to prolong the proceedings unnecessarily by failing to run the physical and the psychological tasks in parallel?

Mulder had replayed that statement over and over again without ever getting past the response that his views on the project's duration were irrelevant, because he hadn't consented to any of the "tasks."

Which was not an answer to their question. A fact that they reminded him of before returning to their own impeccably- scheduled, optimally-managed, carefully-recorded, fully parallel program of work.

What the brief flash of debate had done was raise another question in Mulder's mind. Why hadn't he asked Krycek how much time had passed? He was guessing at weeks probably, months maybe, but even those assumptions were just based on what scraps he knew about Scully's life.

She was at work, she'd been assigned a new partner, she'd rearranged the office, and she'd done some sort of deal with Krycek. Then she'd what? What had happened next?

His mind flashed on that nightmare conversation with "a friend, an ally." Who the fuck was that?

Scully wouldn't have given up the link, whatever the link was, without a fight. Krycek, then? Had Krycek double-crossed her? But then why hadn't the mystery man asked Krycek to act as a go-between or, at least, to handle the introductions?

Mulder's thoughts strayed back into the danger zone. Had he put Scully in more danger by asking for her? He'd cursed himself for making the mistake at the time - horrified by his stupidity in mentioning Scully's name when he didn't even know who he was talking to.

He squelched the morbid suggestion. Surely, anyone who knew about him would know about Scully, too. All he'd done was - he stumbled for the word - reminded, yeah, that was it, he'd reminded them about her.

He sighed at the sudden lethargy that overtook his thoughts, recognizing the sense of calm as chemically induced. The monitoring system was impressive, their response times spectacular. The first hint of unhealthy emotion and the drugs successfully slammed it out of him before any lasting damage occurred.

Oddly, he couldn't bring himself to be offended or hurt by that. Almost smiled at that idea, knowing that such tolerance was itself part of the rosy chemical haze. Even so, he was genuinely grateful that he wouldn't be accidentally killing anyone or anything for a while. He let the haze carry him back into unconsciousness.

The link intrigued him, despite his experience of it being way too up-close and personal. Its ability to transmit and receive, between wherever it was transmitting and receiving, was presumably a technological masterpiece.

The voice had at first sounded almost mechanical, possibly cybernetic, certainly synthetic, not really human at all. Yet, it was the only human thing he'd heard in how long? Since they'd disconnected his ears so he couldn't hear the groans and the babies crying?

When Krycek had activated it for the first time, Mulder had actually tried to search for the source of the new voice. The fact that he was only able to move his eyes had rendered the search pretty much useless. Even if the speaker had been in the same room, he probably wouldn't have been able to see them.

It hadn't taken him long to conclude that a physical search would have been useless anyway.

The words arrived in his head accompanied by some sort of low, itchy warning tone that rumbled beneath his ear. In fact it was probably that unscratchable itch that had made him take the robotic voice as something real.

Real? It was real, wasn't it? Not just some fabrication his brain was generating to keep him amused? That his captors were generating to keep him amused?

He knew they couldn't generate the words themselves, not the actual detail and color of the conversations. But, perhaps they could trigger them? Maybe they had needed to inspire him to fantasize about human contact as another stage in his psychological softening-up?

Yet, if those conversations were just invented monologues, fantasies of his own creation, why imagine Krycek as the initiator? Why finally imagine talking to Scully, only to lose her an instant later?

Scully had challenged him on something like that before, told him that in seeing a monster, he'd seen only what he wanted to see. He recalled asking her why she thought he might want to see a thing like that.

The idea tingled. Maybe now he was only hearing monsters in the dark. Monsters in the light, actually, because it was never dark in here.

When he first arrived, he'd been so naive that he'd actually tried to answer some of their questions. There was one time, when he was asked if there was anything they could do to make his stay more comfortable, that he'd answered with a request. Maybe they could turn down the lights a little so he could sleep?

They'd, helpfully, turned up the current in one of the electrodes spiking into his skull, and an instant later his eyes had gone gray. He hadn't repeated the mistake.

Anyway, finding monsters in the dark, or in the light, was his business. Had been his business. Would be again? He heard the pitter-patter turn to a thud, felt his heart rate rising and closed his eyes, counted to ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty.

He waited for his body to calm, determined to suppress his reactions for long enough to follow his thoughts through to a logical conclusion, without the monitoring systems panicking and the IV lines blasting him full of instant relaxation.

The doubt was there and would have to remain, because there really was a fundamental problem. If the conversations were real, why did the aliens let him keep talking?

Even if the conversations were fabricated, then he was still going to find it hard to kill them off. Just thinking sane thoughts about reality didn't banish insanity and delusions so easily.

Perhaps he should ask them? But every question that he'd asked so far had been greeted either by a non-answer or by the kind of response that only a tired and cynical three- wishes-granting genie would consider fair.

Anyway, he wasn't really sure if he wanted to know the answer. A bit like finding out today's date, then? Maybe there were some things he wasn't ready to handle.

If weakness was inevitable, then at least complete hopelessness remained a choice. Mulder reminded himself of that and tried to feel grateful for the gift of awareness and the ability to use his brain.

Disappointed by his failure to do so, he looked for something positive and turned his attention to his visitor, noting irritably that he had no idea just how long the technician had been at work. He wondered how he could justify paying so little attention to this tiny world of his. Decided that he couldn't.

The thin gray figure was apparently busy. It was hard for Mulder to judge as the shadow flitted around the edge of his field of view, but it did look like he was doing something purposeful. Sometimes, Mulder suspected it was something involving his body in some way. Though the distinction, between being touched by long gray fingers and being handled via electrodes, needles and drugs, was logically redundant, it somehow still mattered.

Sometimes it was less frustrating to close his eyes and ignore that anything was happening at all. And sometimes, he needed to know. "What are you doing?"

The technician hesitated before replying and Mulder tried not to close his eyes. That impatience had been one of the changes he'd felt, even the smallest of delays waiting for a telepathic response seemed like forever.

The technician finally replied. "I'm maintaining your cardio-vascular system."

Well that was nice to know. "Why?"

"So you won't die."

Mulder tried not to react, tried to edge the conversation back in the intended direction. "What do you hope to achieve by my survival?"

"The plan."

"What plan?"

"You'll understand after you've completed the program."

"Help me to understand now."

"Not possible. Your emotions will interfere."

"I'm listening."

"Your progress charts say that you aren't ready."

"Try me."

"You killed three of my colleagues for trying."

It was hard to argue. Oh, he wanted to, would have loved to ignore the righteous indignation that was already building in his brain, the quickening of his pulse and the sense of his blood pulsing harder through his veins. Would have loved to argue, or at least to try and explain or even apologize. Didn't get the chance.

The technician moved along the bed to peer down into his captive's eyes, he made sure that Mulder was listening before he spoke. "You see what happens?"

Consciousness faded fast and Mulder never did get the chance to reply.

There was something close to pleasure in the sensation of closing the link. So gratifying to visualize it as slamming down the phone on the unknown contact. His new-found friend.

It was something he could control. Just about the only thing he could control.

He felt the buzz at his ear again, tried to move a hand to scratch at the location. Felt a few seconds of frustration threaten to tumble him back into dark despair as he remembered that not only were some itches unscratchable, but some hands didn't move.

He'd tried to be rational about that, forced himself to think about people back in the real world living their lives despite paralysis, despite terrible injuries and illness. Experiencing far worse pain and with even less hope of escape.

Somehow, he couldn't quite summon up the unbiased analysis needed to consider himself fortunate.

"Fox."

He hated them calling him that, but then he'd hated every other name they'd tried to address him with. Thoroughly scientific, they'd shown him their analysis of his brainwaves. They had proved conclusively that he preferred to be called Fox.

His assertion that he preferred to be lying on his couch in his apartment watching his TV was dutifully recorded even as it was discarded as redundant information.

Annoyingly, they were probably right about the Fox. "Mulder" brought too many memories of Scully and real life. "Mr." made him think of the men who played this game, those who had the presumption to use terms like friend and ally. Identifying himself as "Agent" relied on him assuming an air of authority that he couldn't feel right now.

Besides, they'd probably called him Fox last time he was here.

"You should answer us. We have to log it when you don't."

Mulder swallowed down the tiny gurgle of laughter that tickled the back of his throat. Was that a threat?

"It suggests that you aren't making as much progress as we'd anticipated."

Anticipation was both wonderful and dangerous, Mulder knew both faces well. He knew that he ought to reply. Couldn't think of anything to say.

"Fox. You have to keep your eyes open."

That caught Mulder's attention. Was he being given a direct order? It was hard to tell. The lack of inflection or pressure in the words as they arrived silently in his brain gave no clue beyond the words themselves.

He ought to make sure. There was no point in playing the silence game if the stakes were going to rise. "Why?"

"Today's work requires that you watch some images as we speak. We could go directly to the visual cortex, but I believe that after last time, you indicated that you preferred to retain your eyesight."

It was scarcely a choice. It was certainly not something on which he had ever wanted to express a preference. His eyes rebelled against him for an instant, closing up even more tightly than before. He forced them to open.

The screen directly over the bed played its familiar pattern of swirls, a soft gentle spiral intended to lead him towards the learning trance that his teachers preferred. He told himself to stop fighting, just tried to let it go and listen to the words.

"Procedures for the reactivation of DNA. We will now examine those critical DNA strands that were disabled during human development due to the damaging side-effects of their use in under-evolved species."

The screen switched from aimless swirls into a slow flyover across chemical bonds gliding ever closer, before finally narrowing in on a tiny block of the elegantly unraveling double helix. The voice guided him into the picture.

"Ideally, re-enabling of these structures would be done slowly, perhaps returning only one feature to the genetic makeup in a generation, allowing the changes to be consolidated and absorbed. This work is ongoing."

Mulder watched the oddly familiar image of the deoxyribose molecules lining up to greet their pyrimidine or purine bases. Had he seen this before? As a kid perhaps? Before the name on his file had become Sam's name?

"Re-activation of a feature within a select group of individuals followed by their re-integration into normal human society would permit the necessary changes in political and social infrastructures to take place without conflict or unnecessary loss of life. Fear of the unknown and of the unique should not be underestimated. Human culture remains primitive."

Mulder recognized the DNA strand before the screen had the chance to flash to a model human brain and show exactly which changes in electrolyte potentials would follow from its activation. The animation was jazzily effective, replete with the sort of aggressive graphics and flutter of pulsating color that would have been the envy of The Learning Channel.

Visual reinforcement, they'd told him, seemed very significant to humans. The style was familiar to them, and therefore easier for them to relax and learn. Mulder felt no comfort in the familiarity, just the same dread that he was being told something that might be important. Or maybe worse still, something that wasn't.

"Fox. Your attention."

The teacher didn't have to make the threat more explicit. Mulder blinked to force his eyes back into focus.

"The present situation is far from ideal. We are compelled to massively accelerate the change. Unless they are handled with vision, the processes that are being perfected here could create massive economic and sociological dislocation. Damaging to an extent that might, itself, be a factor in the destruction of the species. Or, in its easy assimilation."

As the images dissolved into walk-throughs on a sequence of chemical reactions, Mulder knew he ought to keep his vision fixed firmly on the screen and the commentary in his head.

He knew he should be listening and learning, that his feelings and opinions were irrelevant to this. It was important that he act like a sponge and just stick to mopping it all up. The analysis and response could come later, if there was a later.

He understood that it was his duty not to jump directly over the gathering information stage to go straight to the imaginary scene where he shared it with Scully.

It was just so hard to concentrate. How did that friend and ally steal the link from Scully and Krycek? Perhaps he should be mopping up whatever came down that line, too?

"Fox. I have to log this failure. You have to learn not to waste time. I'll restart the session immediately."

Mulder kept his eyes on the swirls on the screen, bit at the inside of his cheek to try and maintain his concentration. He tried to let it all go, tried to let the spirals draw him in.

Part 2/2

Drifting slowly up into consciousness, Mulder tried to focus on the sensation of breathing. What he tried to ignore was the feeling of helplessness that was making even breathing feel like an immensely complex and barely remembered procedure.

The first thing Mulder recalled with any clarity was that he'd been de-facto responsible for slamming the link down on that man, whoever he was, and he hadn't even had the pleasure of slamming it down himself.

The connection had been dropped by default as a veinful of drugs had swept him down the rabbit hole. What if that act, an act that wasn't even an act of rebellion, just of helplessness - what if that hurt someone? Hurt Scully?

Scully, who was already seeing doctors. Or was that just some psychological song and dance routine designed by Carver to show that he was in charge? After all, it couldn't be true. Scully, pregnant - how? And if it were true - why?

Even as the thought hit at full force and breathing became impossible again, he could sense the white heat of his reactions cooling, the sharp edge of his anger becoming blunted. He knew what was happening.

They weren't going to even give him time to take a shot at trying to get himself back under control. Sickened by it, resigned to the nothingness, he fell back into the cotton wool of dreamless sleep.

As usual, he had no way of knowing how long he had been out for the second time. Even as he woke up, he was aware that he wasn't truly awake. He hunted for what it might mean, waded through cotton candy and molasses looking for an explanation before concluding that they were trying to avoid another bounce of the Mulder mood-swing yo-yo.

This time they must have put him on a trickle dose of some sedative to try and stop him from instantly boiling over. It seemed to be working. He had to hand it to them. Their grasp of human biochemistry looked pretty hot from where he was lying.

"Agent Mulder."

Who the fuck was that? Mulder rolled the words around in his head and might have managed to sob out a laugh if he wasn't being held quite so firmly in the twilight zone. Who the fuck was Agent Mulder - he didn't seem to be at home right now. And who the fuck would ask for him? Wasn't his pet name here "Fox"?

He tried blinking a few times to clear sleep gum and moisture from his eyes. Failed. He frowned harder, squeezing down his eyebrows to assist his attempt to blink more effectively. He was careful to ignore the pang of reaction that tickled at the edge of his thoughts as he tried and failed to lift a hand to wipe his eyes.

The Alien Bounty Hunter stood tall and self-assured at Mulder's bedside. Not too close, clearly mindful that if he stood much nearer, then Mulder would see only a jacket button or a pocket flap.

"Agent Mulder."

"Hmph." The dryness in his throat didn't assist his ability to form words. Though actually, since they'd cut off his hearing, he'd found himself not saying much, knowing that it would probably be too quiet, too loud, too ill-formed. It had been more pragmatic to talk mind-to-mind.

That was when he realized that he'd heard the Hunter speak. Really heard him. They'd reconnected his ears. Uncertain what an appropriate response would be if he were someone not drugged to the point of near-complete indifference, he tried speech. "I can hear."

The croaky voice encouraged one of the technicians to come to his side and quickly supply a few aerosol droplets of something that tasted like sticky water. Saliva, Mulder noted, hating the thought but still grudgingly grateful for the instant soothing the liquid supplied.

The tall figure resumed the conversation. "Then hear this."

This time Mulder was able to swallow the reaction more easily.

"Your personal problems are of no interest to us. But we will not allow them to interfere with the project."

Really! Mulder closed his eyes, felt hysterical laughter bubble under and fade out without ever reaching his mouth. Mused over the amount of interference he could possibly be offering by lying disconnected on a bed constructed from some sort of easy wipe metal and plastic.

He was interfering with their project? His heart bled for their plight.

The Bounty Hunter's features softened into something that might have been a smile or, more likely, a sneer. "You doubt it?"

"I find it hard to care."

"You should. The offspring will be geniuses, their telekinetic skills will be extraordinary, they will read minds. They will change the world."

"I think I've read a book like that."

"You doubt it? You've felt those skills within yourself."

Oh, to be able to run and hide. Or at least to turn away. Or even to just shake his head in disbelief. He did the only thing he could; he closed his eyes again. "And my role?"

"Has never changed. Your father prepared you; we are only completing the work. The children will still be children, they'll need authority. Role models, if you prefer."

This time the humorless half beat of laughter broke through and Mulder almost choked on the unfamiliarity of the sound and the dryness in his throat. The technician drizzled in extra drops of saliva from the spray bottle. "I'm not the man you imagine."

"Don't disappoint your friends."

Mulder said nothing, didn't even bother to reopen his eyes, just listened to the Bounty Hunter's footsteps as he left the room.

The technician checked instrumentation and connections before dispatching Mulder's body on the stationary equivalent of a ten-mile run.

Offspring that would change the world?

Mulder tried not to care, focused on the magic of disconnection; tried hard not to think about friends, and role models, and babies, and fathers, and preparation.

He was especially careful not to wonder about how or why Scully might be pregnant. Carver could be lying. But if Carver was telling the truth, what then? He pushed the idea away.

The technician wiped a tissue over Mulder's eyes before leaving the room. Its silent human occupant abandoned to his own carefully restrained and medicated thoughts and the entertainment provided by the low whine of distant machinery.

Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, round the top and start again. Mulder kept his mind fixed on the business of not allowing an emotional response to the actions he'd just performed.

Some poker players are born, others are made. Mulder had concluded a long time ago that he fell into neither category. His abilities to play the game, such as they were, stemmed from something more deep-seated. He was, after all, a natural born survivor.

Survival skills were something he possessed in abundance. He'd probably inherited them, which seemed somehow appropriate.

He had them all, the full set ready for any eventuality. Mental, physical, emotional - he'd never even really tried to dodge the hits, he'd always just taken them and learned to roll.

It was only when he'd had to try and make the same judgments for someone else that he'd seen that his skills were seriously flawed. Apparently, not everyone enjoyed the same kind of luck.

People seemed to get hurt if they got too close to him. A lot of ghosts had pointed accusing fingers in his direction. The idea of adding Scully to the list was too frightening to contemplate. And a baby?

Playing poker was not something that he would ever have considered doing for pleasure and the game he'd just played had been no fun at all. The stakes were too high; the bluffs too strained for comfort, the opponents were too much of an unknown quantity and the cards were just too unpredictable.

He looked back over the chances he'd chosen to take with Carver, replayed the moves and tried to feed them into his personal scorecard.

If he got out of here, Scully was going to kill him. That was a given.

What Mulder wasn't too clear about was why he'd asked for Krycek as link man, rather than Skinner. Maybe it was just that he liked to imagine Skinner as one of the good guys? And he was scared that good guys might come last?

Maybe it was some kind of optimism about the future, maybe he wanted to imagine Skinner defending him from Scully. He allowed himself a secret optimist's smile at the idea. He could only hope that they wouldn't combine forces.

Krycek then?

Right up until the moment he'd told Carver his terms, Mulder had been unsure about the plan. But as soon as he said it, he knew that it was the least worst solution. The idea of a best solution really hadn't ever come into it.

It would be easy to lie to Krycek. There would be no qualms or misgivings about leading him astray or into danger. If the time came, then it would be easier to use Krycek and his ambitions than to use Skinner and his guilty conscience.

Only self-interest would interfere with Krycek's reliability. Misplaced compassion wouldn't block any information. It sounded easier to sift the words of someone, like a Krycek, clearly acting for himself than to try and second guess someone, like Skinner, who might think he was acting on Mulder's behalf.

Krycek's experience as an assassin might be vital. Whether for use against Carver and similar friends or for use against the results of an unwilling genetic experiment.

Mulder pushed the darker thoughts away, mindful of how much louder the drumbeat in his ears was already sounding and still anxious to remain conscious. Whatever became of their plans for him to become a role model, there was always a way out. It was just a matter of using it before it was too late. Krycek might be a necessity.

Mulder waited for what seemed like a very long time before he tried to connect again. A painfully long time.

He tried the link. When he felt nothing coming back, he tried not to panic.

He tried to focus better, perhaps he was missing something just by running a little too emotionally hot. After all, the voices were very quiet, hard to distinguish against the mass of noise in his brain. Plus, hearing through his ears again was still a novelty, maybe that had made it tougher.

Perhaps they'd pumped some more drugs in? He could tell that if they were drugging him, then the chemicals were feeding in at a very low level. But, maybe that was possible, and perhaps even at some very low dosage, they'd left him a little insensitive to the signal?

In his head, it sounded like he was shouting, almost screaming. That was probably a bad idea. He forced himself back to silence and tried again. But there was still no sense of contact or even any assurance of a transmission sent. Certainly, he was fairly sure that there was no anesthetically calm, synthesized voice responding to his words.

Worse still, he couldn't even pick out any sensation of his words travelling and echoing back. No sign of that odd echo, the thing that had convinced him that he was talking via a machine. The ill-defined whisper that had reassured him that an answering service was in place when he left messages for Krycek.

Had his captors taken the ability away? Had Carver been the wrong man to bargain with? Was this how Carver bargained?

Sweet oblivion oozed into his brain and the questions he was asking stopped abruptly without any sign of answers.

It could have been hours later. Days? Minutes? Mulder really had no way to tell.

Time didn't seem to matter here.

The light level never changed. The background noise never varied, though sometimes other sounds cut in as punctuation marks.

A bump, or a scrape, a scream or a wail, but Mulder had never discerned a pattern to them. Time appeared to be on continuous loop.

In Mulder's case, unconscious wasn't even different enough to conscious to be reflected in any physical message, no needs to speak of, no gurgling of intestines to respond to, nothing.

He was never hungry. His body didn't change. They were keeping him clean and exercised. Sometimes, when he curled back his top lip he could feel just the first glimmers of stubble emerging, but they vanished as soon as the next technician visited.

He guessed that time had passed. Took measured breaths. Tried again.

Continue to Disconnected Book IV