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Full text of "The X-Files Novels
"
See other formats
DON'T MISS THE X-FILES MOVIE
COMING SOON TO THEATERS!
Ff =
Å r
$ Ae
<
TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
BEN MEZRICH
a: OD
CREATED BY CHRIS CARTER
THECD-FILES
Skin
Ben Mezrich
Based on the characters created by Chris Carter
HarperCollins e-books
Contents
1
Two hours after midnight, sirens tore through the cinder-block
walls,...
2
Fox Mulder pressed a soggy hotel towel against the side...
3
Two hours later, Dana Scully watched her own reflection
shimmer...
4
Forty minutes later, Mulder shivered against a sudden blast
of...
5
The broken glass glittered like an emerald carpet in the...
6
The sky had turned a dull gray by the time...
7
Four hours later, a triangle of harsh orange light ripped...
8
The ambulance seemed to float through the three lanes of...
9
Susan Doppler closed her eyes, the scream of metal against...
10
Scully watched in clinical disgust as a rat the size...
11
The digitized view screen flickered, then changed to a dull...
12
The huge crimson atrium spilled out in front of the...
13
Left alone in his windowless office, Julian Kyle placed both...
14
Scully watched the creases appear above Assistant Director
Skinner’s eyeglasses...
15
Twelve hours later, the rain was coming down in wide...
16
Mulder’s face caught fire from the inside, followed by a...
17
Quo Tien watched from across the street until the two...
18
“Hello? Is anyone home?”
19
Scully squared her shoulders as she and Mulder worked their...
20
Mulder’s shoulders ached as he strained against the heavy
steel...
21
Scully watched from fifteen feet away as the small green...
22
Mulder tried to scream, but the beast was too fast.
23
Scully sat on the wet front steps of the clinic.,...
24
Mulder’s throat constricted, and he lurched forward, gasping
for air.
25
Scully sprawled next to Mulder against the fallen evergreen
trunk,...
26
Quo Tien’s face suddenly drained of color as he watched...
27
Scully saw the sudden flash of movement and jerked her...
28
Mulder crashed through the twin doors shoulder first, bursting
into...
29
Scully leaned back against the chain-link fence and shut her...
About the Author
Praise
Other Books in the X-Files Series
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Two hours after midnight, sirens tore through the cinder-block
walls, shattering the momentary calm. There was the screech of
rubber tires against pavement—the ambulances careening to a stop
in the receiving circle—and the steady wail was joined by the
shouts of paramedics as they unloaded their cargo. A second later,
the double doors crashed open, and the vast room seemed to buckle
inward, as a torrent of stretchers streamed across the tiled floor.
“Here we go!” someone shouted, and suddenly the emergency
room came alive. Bleary-eyed doctors in white coats and pale-blue
scrubs leapt forward, shouting for chem trays and surgical consults.
Triage nurses in pink uniforms swirled between the stretchers,
trailing IV wires and portable crash carts. At first glance, the room
seemed gripped by chaos, but in reality, it was a highly controlled,
intricate performance. The nurses and doctors played off one
another like professional athletes, acting out their roles in kinetic
bursts of harmony.
Huddled in a corner near the back of the ER, Brad Alger
watched the unfolding spectacle with wide eyes. Although he had
been on duty for less than twenty minutes, his scrubs were already
thick with sweat. Red splotches covered the sleeves of his white
doctor’s coat, and his high-top Nikes had turned a strange, nearly
violet color. His platinum-blond hair rose from his head in unruly
locks, like a miniature sunburst. There were heavy bags under his
glassy blue eyes, and he looked as though he hadn’t slept in months.
He rubbed a damp sleeve across his forehead, then quickly
stepped aside as a disheveled nurse pushed a crash cart up against
the wall next to him.
“Christ,” Alger coughed, his voice pitching upward, “it’s knee-
deep in here. I thought the first salvo was bad—but this is crazy.
How many ambulances did they say were coming?”
“Twenty-two,” the nurse answered, tossing a pair of blood-
spattered gloves toward the floor. “Maybe more. At first, they
thought there were only nine cars involved in the accident. Now
they say it was more like thirteen.”
Alger whistled. “Thirteen cars. At two in the morning.”
“This your first Friday night?”
She had spiky dark hair and kind eyes. Alger guessed she was
thirty, maybe thirty-five. He felt like a kid next to her, and he tried
to take the fearful edge out of his voice. “My internship started on
Sunday.”
The nurse offered a sympathetic smile. “Welcome to New York.”
She grabbed a clean pair of gloves from the crash cart and
moved back into the fray. For the thousandth time in less than a
week, Alger wondered what the hell he was doing there. A month
ago, he had been a fourth-year medical student in Cincinnati, Ohio.
His biggest worries had been his school loan payments and Kelly
Pierce, his most recent ex. He had done a rotation in emergency
back in Cincinnati—but he had never imagined anything like this.
The evening had started innocently enough. A few cardios, a
handful of recent entrants into the knife-and-gun club, a half dozen
respiratory gomers sneaking cigarettes under their oxygen masks.
And then the call had come over the emergency room’s intercom
system. There had been a multicar accident on the FDR Drive; at
least ten critical, another two dozen in bad shape. All available
doctors had been summoned down from the hospital’s other
departments, and the emergency room had been put on full trauma-
alert.
Alger had made the mistake of asking Duke Baker—the
gargantuan, short-tempered chief resident—what that meant in
English. The Duke had nearly busted a capillary berating him; the
only English spoken in the Duke’s emergency room took the form of
four-letter words. Trauma-alert meant you tried not to kill anyone
before dawn—and in the process, kept the fuck out of Duke Baker’s
way.
“Brad! Over here!”
Alger felt his pulse rocket as he caught sight of Dennis Crow.
Tall, thin, with a shock of dark hair and freckles covering every
inch of exposed skin. Crow was one of the four interns who had
started with Alger, and the only one who seemed even more out of
place. Born on a farm, trained at the University of Wisconsin—and
completely in over his head at the big-city ER. In other words, he
had the Duke’s footprints all over his freckled ass.
At the moment, Crow was standing between two paramedics, at
the head of a stretcher on the other side of the ER. The two
paramedics were struggling with a convulsing patient as Crow
worked an endo tube down the man’s throat. Although both
paramedics were big and burly, they were having a hell of a time
keeping the patient still. One was fighting to get a Velcro restraint
around the man’s shoulders, while the other was using his weight
against the patient’s wrists.
Alger grabbed a pair of sterile latex gloves from the cart next to
him and rushed forward. As he navigated across the room, he
signaled for a crash cart, a portable EKG machine, and a chem tray.
He reached Crow and the stretcher seconds ahead of the equipment
and a nurse. He watched as Maria Gomez began pasting the circular
electrodes from the EKG monitor across the patient’s chest. She was
a big woman, with thick folds of fat hanging from around her arms
and neck—but her motions were fluid and practiced. Still, her
brown eyes showed a spark of concern. Crow and Alger were both
interns with less than a week of experience. No nurse in her right
mind wanted to stand around and watch two kids playing doctor.
Alger pushed the thought away. He wasn’t playing doctor—he
was a doctor. He focused his attention on the patient in front of
him.
Caucasian, maybe twenty-four, twenty-five years old. Tall,
muscular, with chiseled, boxy features and glazed, bright blue eyes.
A blond crew cut, military style. His shirt had already been cut
away by the paramedics, and there was a tattoo on his upper right
shoulder, some sort of dragon with red flames coming out of its
mouth. No visible signs of trauma, none of the marks of injury that
Alger would have expected from a car-crash victim.
He watched as Crow finally got the intubation tube past the
man’s epiglottis and into his throat. The man’s chest swelled
beneath the EKG electrodes, and Crow quickly attached an air tube
to the top of the endo tube. As the patient’s breathing resumed, he
settled back against the stretcher, his eyelids rolling shut. Alger
turned toward the paramedics. “What have we got?”
The larger of the two answered as he finished fastening the
Velcro restraint around the patient’s chest. “Found him collapsed,
unconscious, in the breakdown lane, maybe twenty feet from the
site of the crash. No contusions, no visible signs of trauma. He
convulsed twice in the ambulance—and just a few minutes ago he
went into respiratory distress.”
“Any history?”
The paramedic stepped back from the stretcher. “No ID, no
wallet. Doesn’t respond to any stimulus at all. He was conscious for
a few minutes in the wagon—but we couldn’t get him to answer
any questions.”
“Start him on any meds?”
The paramedic shook his head. “His pulse and BP seemed fine.
Like I said, his breathing didn’t go down until a few minutes ago.”
“What about the EKG?”
“You'll be the first to see it. It was a real grab and dash at the
scene. We had another in the same ambulance, in much worse
shape. We’re not even sure this one was involved in the accident—
he might have been a bystander. Certainly doesn’t look like he was
thrown through a car windshield, or anything like that.” He paused.
“Okay, you guys got it from here?”
There was obvious hesitation in the paramedic’s eyes. Alger felt
his face flush red. He couldn’t help how young he looked. He
nodded, his expression bold. The paramedic turned and headed
back toward the double doors. His partner gave Alger a tiny nod,
then followed. It was up to the two interns now. Alger tossed a
glance toward the Duke, huddled over a patient on the other side of
the ER, then gritted his teeth. He was fresh—but he could handle
this.
“All right, let’s start with the basics. Airway, Breathing, Cardio.”
He knew he sounded like an idiot to the experienced nurse, but
he had to begin with what he knew—and that meant the ABCs of
medicine. He watched the man’s chest rise and fall, and knew that
Crow had done a good job with the intubation. Then he turned
toward the EKG—the cardiac monitor—and focused his eyes on the
small screen on top of the waist-high steel cart.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.
Crow followed his gaze, his eyes widening. The screen was
covered with frantic green lines. “He’s all over the place! It looks
like his heart’s doing cartwheels! Is that V-fib?”
Alger stared at the screen, then shook his head. The man wasn’t
in arrest yet—but he was certainly close. Alger had never seen
anything like it before. One second, the monitor showed an
elevated cadence—and the next second a prolonged skip. One
second he seemed to be in normal, sinus rhythm—and the next
second he was bouncing through a combination of arrhythmias.
Alger had no doubt that if the paramedics had seen such a bizarre
EKG reading in the ambulance, they would never have handed this
patient over to two interns. They would have brought him straight
to the chief resident.
Alger turned back to the patient. The man looked calm, still
unconscious, but there were visible spasms beneath his skin. His
muscles seemed to vibrate in concert with the readings on the
screen. No doubt about it, something weird was going on. “Jesus,
this isn’t good. What’s his BP?”
Maria Gomez looked up from the blood-pressure gauge strapped
around the man’s right arm. “Two-twenty over one-twenty.”
“What?”
The nurse looked at the gauge again. She shrugged, her face
slightly pale. “Two-twenty over one-twenty.”
Alger coughed, his stomach churning. Two-twenty over one-
twenty was extremely high. Along with the erratic heartbeat, it was
a dangerous sign. The man’s circulatory system was completely out
of whack, and his heart was enormously overstimulated.
“An acute MI?” Crow tried. “Maybe a pulmonary embolism?”
Alger shook his head. The EKG didn’t look like an MI or an
embolism. Alger rubbed sweat out of his eyes. Stay calm. Stay
focused. It was a mystery—but that was the thrill of the ER, wasn’t
it? Solving the mysteries? “Okay, we need a blood workup, a Chem
7—”
“His BP’s rising!” Gomez blurted. “Two-fifty over one-fifty!”
Shit. How could his BP be rising? It was already off the map!
Alger cursed. Thrill or no thrill—he knew it was time to bring the
Duke over. Any second, this patient was going to arrest. Alger was
about to call out across the ER when Crow shouted at him. “Now
that’s V-fib! That’s definitely V-fib!”
Alger whirled back toward the EKG screen. The bright green
lines had become completely disjointed and frantic, indicating that
the man had gone into ventricular fibrillation. His heart was
responding to random electrical impulses, and was no longer
capable of pumping blood to the rest of his body. In other words,
this patient was failing. Fast.
“BP dropping!” Gomez chimed in. “He’s crashing!”
Alger leapt for the crash cart, while Crow called the Code.
Normally, doctors and nurses would have rushed toward the
crashing patient—but tonight there were so many tragedies filling
the ER, the Code barely registered. Alger knew that the Duke would
make his way over when he realized his two interns were in charge
of the dying man—but Alger didn’t have time to wait for the chief
resident to take over.
He grabbed the defibrillator paddles off the crash cart and
slipped them over his hands. He rubbed the conductive fluid over
the pads, then scraped them together in a circular motion. He had
no choice but to shock the man and pray that his heart resumed a
workable rhythm. He had never used the paddles before—but he
had watched the procedure a dozen times during medical school.
“Three hundred joules,” he declared, trying to keep the emotion
out of his voice. He knew three hundred was a high place to start—
but this was a big, muscular guy. Probably worked out every day of
his life. “Clear!”
Everyone stepped back from the stretcher. Alger pressed the
paddles against the man’s bare chest and hit the triggers with his
thumbs. The man’s body spasmed upward, then crashed back down
onto the stretcher. Alger turned to the EKG machine.
Still nothing. He turned back toward Gomez, who was now
standing by the defibrillator. “Three-sixty. Stat!”
“Jesus,” Crow mumbled. “Where the hell is Duke?”
Alger ignored him. There wasn’t anything the Duke could do at
this point—either they got this guy’s heart started again, or he was
finished. Gomez upped the voltage, and Alger readied the paddles.
“Clear!”
This time, the man arched a full four inches off the stretcher. His
neck twisted back and his arms convulsed beneath the Velcro
straps.
“Flat line!” Crow yelled. “He’s down! Brad—”
“Again!” Alger shouted back. “Clear!”
He shocked the man a third time. The smell of burned flesh
filled Alger’s nostrils, and he frantically turned back to the EKG
machine. Still nothing. He tossed the defibrillator paddles aside and
leapt halfway up the stretcher, placing his palms roughly near the
center of the man’s chest. The muscles of his forearms contracted as
he started the most vigorous CPR of his life. The man’s chest felt
strangely stiff beneath his fingers, his skin rough, almost leathery.
He worked in near silence, the minutes ticking by as he tried to
coax the man’s heart back to life. He ignored the sweat running
down his back, the ache in his arms and shoulders. His mind raced
through everything that had just happened, searching for some
reason why things had gone so drastically wrong. Was there
anything he had missed? Was there anything else he could have
done? Did he make the right choice when he went for the
defibrillator paddles?
“Well?” he asked, desperate, already knowing the answer.
“Still nothing,” Crow responded. “He’s gone, Brad. You’re just
pumping beef.”
Alger looked at the EKG screen, then back at Crow. He glanced
at Gomez, who nodded. He felt his shoulders deflate, his arms going
limp. Damn it. It had all happened so fast. He glanced toward the
Duke, who was still working on a patient near the front of the
room. Either he hadn’t heard the Code, or he was handling an
emergency of his own.
Alger swallowed, telling himself that he had done everything by
the book. The Duke wouldn’t have handled the situation any
differently. The guy had gone into arrest less than two minutes after
he had been wheeled into the ER. The paddles could have saved
him—and they certainly didn’t kill him. Still, Alger felt awful. A
man had just died in front of him. He lifted his hands off the man’s
bare chest and took a step back from the stretcher. Why the hell had
he chosen emergency? He glanced up at the clock over the double
doors. “Time of death—three-fifteen.”
He peeled off his gloves as Gomez rolled the stretcher toward
the elevator at the back of the room. The elevator was a straight
shot downstairs to pathology, then onward to the hospital morgue.
There would probably be an autopsy, because of the mysterious
circumstances behind the man’s death, and maybe the pathologist
would be able to tell him what had really happened. But it wouldn’t
make any difference to the man on the stretcher.
Alger’s face went slack as he watched Gomez push the corpse
away. His eyelids suddenly seemed as if they were filled with lead.
He felt Dennis Crow’s hand on his shoulder. “We did everything we
could. People die, and despite what the Duke might think—
sometimes it’s not our fault.”
Alger looked at him, then toward the double doors at the front
of the room. He sighed as he watched another stretcher skid into
the ER.
Twelve hours later, Mike Lifton fought back nausea as Josh Kemper
yanked open the heavy steel drawer. The thick scent of dead flesh
mixed with the antiseptic chill of the refrigerated storage room, and
Mike grimaced, wishing he had never agreed to accompany his
classmate on the harvest.
“You get used to it,” Josh said, as he pulled the cadaver drawer
forward with both hands. Josh was tall, gangly, with oversize ears
sticking out from beneath long, stringy brown hair. “It helps to
remind yourself how much money you’re making. Twenty bucks an
hour beats the hell out of pouring coffee at Starbucks.”
Mike tried to laugh, but the sound caught somewhere in his
throat. He nervously pulled at the sleeves of his green scrubs,
rubbing the soft material between his gloved fingers. He could feel
the sweat cooling against his back, and he shivered, staring down
over Josh’s right shoulder.
The body in the drawer was wrapped in opaque plastic with a
zipper up the front. Mike took a tiny step back as Josh drew the
zipper downward. “Here we go. One stiff, medium rare.”
Mike blinked hard, his mouth going dry. Then he ran a gloved
hand through his short, auburn hair. He had worked with cadavers
before; as a first-year medical student, he had poked and prodded
enough dead bodies to fill a zombie movie. But he had never seen a
body so fresh.
The man inside the plastic bag was unnaturally pale, almost a
blue-gray color, with fuzzy blond hair covering his muscular chest.
His eyes were closed, and his face was drawn, the skin tight against
his cheekbones. Early rigor mortis had begun to set in, and his
square jaw jutted stiffly forward, his neck arched back against the
steel storage drawer. There were no obvious signs of injury, no
gaping wounds or visible bruises. The only distinguishing mark was
a colorful tattoo high up on the man’s right arm.
“Nice dragon,” Josh continued, pointing. “That’s about three
hundred dollars of wasted skin.”
Mike shivered at the macabre thought. He knew that the part-
time job with the skin bank was a good way to make money—and
great practice if he decided to go into surgery after med school—
but he couldn’t help feeling ghoulish. His classmate’s attitude didn’t
help matters. It was more than just cynicism bred by experience;
Josh Kemper had been born without a deferential bone in his body.
During his first year at Columbia Medical School, he had nearly
gotten himself suspended for playing catch with a pancreas during
anatomy section. No doubt, he was heading straight for a career in
pathology.
Mike had always been more sensitive than his classmate. His
first day of anatomy, he had nearly fainted when his professor had
made the first “Y” incision. And although he had grown stronger
over the past three years, he still had a long way to go before he
was ready to hold a surgeon’s scalpel.
“Aside from the tattoo,” Josh continued, unzipping the bag the
rest of the way, “he looks pretty good. Both arms, both legs. And
the eye bank hasn’t gotten here yet. He’s still got both peepers.”
Mike turned away from the corpse as he steadied his nerves. It’s
necessary and important work, he reminded himself. The human
body was recyclable. And that meant someone had to do the
recycling. Heart, liver, kidneys, eyes, skin—someone had to harvest
the raw material.
Still, the thought didn’t make it any easier. He bit down against
his lower lip, trying not to count the steel drawers that lined three
walls of the deserted storage room.
“If you’re going to puke,” Josh interrupted, “do it now. Once
we’re in the OR, we’ve got to keep things sterile.”
“Pm not going to puke.”
“Well, you look worse than our buddy here. Mike, you’ve got to
get used to this sort of thing. It’s just a hunk of meat. And we’re the
guys behind the deli counter.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“That’s why you love me. Check the toe tag.” Josh started across
the storage room, toward a filing cabinet by the far wall. “I'll get
the chart.”
Mike breathed through his mouth as he circled around the open
drawer. Don’t overthink. Do your job. He reached the back end of the
drawer and pulled the plastic bag down on either side. The dead
man’s legs were long and muscular, covered with more downy
blond hair. His feet were heavily callused, his toenails yellowed like
an old man’s. Mike wondered if he had suffered from some sort of
fungus.
Now you're thinking like a doctor. He smiled inwardly, then
searched the big toes for the tag. The skin above his eyes wrinkled
as he realized it was missing. He searched the drawer beneath the
man’s callused heels, but there was no sign of the plastic ID. “Hey,
Josh. I don’t see the tag.”
Josh returned from the other side of the room. He had a manila
folder open in his gloved hands. “Sometimes it falls down below
their feet.”
“Pm looking everywhere. There's no tag.”
Josh stopped at his side, cursing. He held the manila folder
under his arm and lifted the corpse’s feet with both hands. Working
together, the two students searched the drawer, but came up empty.
“Fuck,” Josh said. “This is just great. Eckleman is such a
moron.”
“Who’s Eckleman?”
“The ME’s assistant. He runs the storage room. Tags the bodies,
makes sure the files are coded correctly. He’s a big fat piece of shit,
and he drinks.” Josh retrieved the folder from under his arm and
leafed through it with gloved fingers. “Derrik Kaplan. Caucasian,
mid-thirties. Blond hair, blue eyes. Acute aortic dissection, died in
the ICU.”
Mike glanced down at the body in the drawer. “Well, he’s blond,
and he’s got blue eyes. But he doesn’t look like he’s in his mid-
thirties. Does it say anything about the tattoo?”
Josh shook his head. “No, but like I said, Eckleman is a moron.
Look, this is locker fifty-two. Eckleman blows the tags all the time.
Especially when the ER is jumping, and after the accident last night
“Josh, are you sure we shouldn’t ask somebody? What if it’s the
wrong cadaver?”
Josh paused, rubbing a gloved finger under his jaw. He glanced
toward the elevator in the corner of the room, where a stretcher
waited to take the body up to the OR for the harvesting. Then he
shrugged. “We’ve got consent, we’ve got a body. More importantly,
we’ve got an OR reserved for the next hour. So let’s go slice up
some skin.”
He turned, and headed for the stretcher. Mike glanced back at
the dragon tattoo. He hoped his classmate knew what he was doing.
“Watch carefully. I promise, you’re going to like this.”
Mike bit his lips behind a papery surgical mask, as Josh played
with one of the saline bags that hung from the IV rack above the
operating table. There was a sudden hiss as the infusion pump came
alive. Mike watched, shocked, as the skin covering the dead man’s
chest inflated like an enormous water balloon.
“The saline empties into the subcutaneous base,” Josh explained,
pointing to the three other saline bags that stood at the corners of
the operating table. “The pressure lifts the dermis up from the layer
of fat underneath. Makes it easier to get a smooth cut.”
Mike nodded, repulsed but fascinated. The cadaver’s chest—
shaved, prepped with Betadine, and inflated with saline—no longer
looked human. The inflated skin was slick, smooth, rounded, a sort
of beige color Mike had never seen outside of a J. Crew catalog. “Is
this going to be bloody?”
“Not very,” Josh answered, reaching into the surgical tray by the
operating table. “Until we turn him over. Most of the blood has
pooled along his back.”
He pulled a shiny steel instrument out of the surgical tray,
showing it to Mike. It looked like an oversize cheese slicer, with a
numbered knob near the razor-sharp blade. “I’m going to set the
dermatome for point-oh-nine millimeters. The goal is to get a piece
that you can just barely see through.”
He leaned forward, placing the dermatome right below the
cadaver’s collarbone. Mike considered looking away, then dug his
fingers into his palms. In a few months he would be doing rotations
in the ER, and he’d see things just as bad—or worse.
He watched as Josh drew the dermatome down across the man’s
chest. A trickle of dark, deoxygenated blood ran down into the
chrome table gutters. The thin layer of skin curled behind the blade,
and Josh deftly twisted his wrist as he reached the bottom of the
cadaver’s rib cage, slicing the strip of skin free. He lifted it gently
by an edge and held it in front of Mike. It was nearly transparent, a
little more than a foot in length.
“Open the cooler,” Josh said, and Mike quickly found the plastic
case by his feet. The cooler was a white-and-red rectangle, with the
New York Fire Department seal emblazoned across two sides. Mike
opened the cooler and retrieved a small tray filled with bluish
liquid.
Josh put the slice of skin into the liquid, and Mike sealed it shut.
The cooler would keep the skin fresh until it could be transported to
the skin bank. There, it would be soaked in antibiotic liquid and
stored indefinitely at minus seventy degrees Fahrenheit.
Josh went back to work on the man’s chest. His strokes were
deft and sure, and in a few minutes he had skinned most of the
man’s chest and abdomen, both arms, and both legs. He left a small
circle around the dragon tattoo, which stood out like a colorful
island against the whitish pink background of subcutaneous fat.
“Help me turn him over,” Josh said, sliding his hands under the
man’s back. Mike moved to assist him, and together they heaved
the body onto its side. Mike noticed a small, circular rash on the
back of the corpse’s neck.
“Josh, look at that.”
Josh glanced at the rash. It was no more than three inches in
diameter and consisted of thousands of tiny red dots. “What about
it?”
“Was it in the chart?”
Josh finished turning the body over, then went back for the
dermatome. “It’s nothing. An insect bite. A random abrasion. Maybe
we scratched him when we transferred him to the operating table.”
“It looks kind of strange—”
“Mike, the guy’s already dead. Someone else is out there with a
really bad burn, and this guy’s been generous enough to sign away
his skin. So let’s just do our job and get out of here.”
Mike nodded, realizing that Josh was right. The man on the
operating table had already gone through the ER. The doctors had
tried to save his life, and there was nothing anyone could do for
him anymore. But because of Josh, Mike, and the New York Fire
Department, someone else was going to benefit from his death.
Derrik Kaplan was finished—but someone else needed his skin.
Mike gritted his teeth, then gestured toward the dermatome in
his classmate’s hand. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to give it a try.”
Josh Kemper raised his eyebrows, then smiled behind his mask.
One week later, in the private-care ward at Jamaica Hospital in
Queens, Perry Stanton jerked twice beneath his thin hospital smock,
then suddenly came awake. Dr. Alec Bernstein beamed down at
him.
“Professor Stanton,” Bernstein said, his voice affable, “good
afternoon. You’ll be happy to hear, the procedure was a complete
success.”
Stanton blinked rapidly, trying to chase the fog from his vision.
Bernstein watched the little man with almost fatherly pride. He
always felt this way with his burn patients. Unlike the face-lifts,
breast augmentations, and other elective procedures that made up
the bulk of his caseload, the burn patients filled him with pride.
Dr. Bernstein felt that pride as he gazed down at Stanton. A
forty-nine-year-old associate professor of history at nearby Jamaica
University, Stanton had been wheeled into the emergency room
eight hours ago, a full-thickness burn covering most of his left
thigh. A boiler had exploded in the basement of the university
library, and huge drafts of superheated steam had literally flayed
the skin from Stanton’s leg.
Bernstein remembered getting the emergency summons; he had
been right in the middle of a liposuction and had scrubbed out
immediately. He had surveyed the damage and made a quick call to
the skin bank. An hour later he had gone to work on Stanton’s
thigh.
Bernstein glanced up as a nurse brushed past him and attached a
new bag of fluids to the IV rack above Stanton’s bed. Teri Nestor
smiled at the surgeon, then looked down at the slowly awakening
professor. “You’re going to be as good as new, Professor Stanton.
Dr. Bernstein is the best the hospital has to offer.”
Bernstein blushed. The nurse finished with the IV rack, then
moved to the pair of large picture windows that looked out on the
hospital parking lot, two floors below. She fiddled with the blinds,
and orange sunlight glinted off the twenty-inch television screen on
the other side of the small private-care room.
Perry Stanton coughed as the light reached his pale, puggish
face, and Bernstein turned his attention back to his patient. The
cough bothered him; steam could easily damage lung capacity, and
Stanton had shown some signs of respiratory distress when he first
came into the ER. Stanton was a small man—barely five-four, no
more than 120 pounds, with stubby limbs and diminutive features.
It wouldn’t take much steam to diminish his breathing ability to
dangerous levels.
Bernstein had already put Stanton on IV Solumedol, a strong
steroid that had helped ease his respiratory distress. Now he
wondered if he should up the dosage, at least for the next few days.
“Professor, how does your chest feel? Any problems breathing?”
Stanton coughed again, then shook his head. He cleared his
throat, speaking in a slightly slurred voice. “I’m just a little dizzy.”
Bernstein nodded, relieved. “That’s because of the morphine.
How about your thigh? Are you experiencing any pain?”
“A little. And it itches. A lot.”
Bernstein nodded again. The morphine would keep the pain to a
minimum, as the temporary transplant helped the burned area heal
enough to allow a matched graft. The itching was a little
uncommon, but certainly not rare.
“Tl up the morphine a bit, to take care of the pain. The itchiness
should go away on its own. Now let me take a look at the dressing.”
Bernstein leaned forward and gently pulled Stanton’s smock up,
revealing the man’s left thigh. The area of the transplant was
covered by rectangular strips of white gauze. The gauze started just
above his kneecap and ran all the way to the inguinal line, where
the thigh met the groin.
Bernstein gently lifted a corner of the gauze with a gloved
finger. He could just make out one of the small steel staples that
held the transplanted skin in place. The skin was whitish yellow,
and clung tightly to the nerveless subdermal layer underneath.
“Everything looks fine, Professor. Just fine.”
Bernstein pulled the hospital smock back down over the gauze.
He decided he could ignore the itchiness, unless it got worse.
Bernstein was slightly more concerned about something he had
noticed a few hours ago, when he had checked on his sleeping
patient for the first time since the transplant procedure.
“Professor Stanton, would you mind turning your head to the
side for amoment?” Bernstein walked to the top of the hospital bed
and leaned forward, staring at the skin on the back of Stanton’s
neck.
The small, circular rash was still there, just above Stanton’s
spine. Thousands of tiny dots, a blemish no more than a few inches
in diameter. Some sort of local allergic reaction, Bernstein
supposed. Nothing dire, but something he would have to keep his
eye on.
Bernstein stepped back from the hospital bed. “You try and get
some more sleep, and IIl have Teri up your morphine. PIH be back
to check on you in a few hours.”
Bernstein gave Teri the morphine order, then headed out of the
private-care room, closing the heavy wooden door behind him. He
turned an abrupt corner and entered a long hallway with white
walls and gray carpeting. At the end of the hallway stood a coffee
machine beneath a large scheduling chart.
He paused at the coffee machine, taking a foam cup from a tall
pile by the half-filled pot. He poured himself a cup, noticing with a
sideways glance that the hospital seemed quieter than usual, even
for a Sunday afternoon. He knew there were three other doctors
wandering the private-care hallways, and at least a dozen nurses.
But at the moment, he was alone with his coffee, his patient, and
his thoughts.
He took a deep sip, feeling the hot liquid against his tongue. Not
hot enough to burn, to sear skin and cauterize vessels, but hot
enough to spark his synapses, to send warning messages to his
brain. A little hotter, and his brain would send messages back:
Escape the heat before it has a chance to damage and destroy. A
little hotter still, and there would be no time for messages. Perry
Stanton probably never felt the steam— even now, his pain had
nothing to do with the burned area, which had no surviving nerves.
It had to do with the steel staples that held the temporary graft in
place. But in a few weeks, the staples and the pain would disappear.
The professor would leave Jamaica Hospital with little more than a
scar and the memory of a wonderful plastic surgeon.
Bernstein smiled, looking up at the scheduling chart above the
coffee machine. Then his smile disappeared as he ticked off the rest
of his afternoon. A lift at four, a breast consult at five, a liposuction
at five-thirty. All elective procedures. Bernstein sighed, taking
another deep sip of coffee.
He was about to refill when a sudden scream ripped through the
hallway. Bernstein’s eyes widened as he realized that the scream
had come from Perry Stanton’s room.
He whirled away from the coffee machine. As he rushed down
the hallway, the scream still echoed in his ears. A female scream,
filled with terror. Bernstein had never heard anything like it before.
He reached the end of the hall and turned toward Perry
Stanton’s room. The heavy wooden door was still shut, and there
were sounds coming from the other side: the splintering of wood,
the crash of breaking glass, the thud of heavy objects slamming to
the floor. Bernstein swallowed, glancing back down the hall. He
could hear voices from around the next bend, and he knew that a
dozen nurses, techs, and doctors would be there within the next few
seconds. But from the sound of things, Perry Stanton and his nurse
might not survive that long.
Bernstein was about to step forward when something hit the
door hard, near the center, and the wood buckled outward.
Bernstein jumped back, terror rushing through him. The door was
made of heavy oak; what could have hit it hard enough to buckle
the wood? He stared, waiting for the door to crash open.
It never happened. Seconds passed in silence; then there was the
sound of running feet, followed by a loud crash. Bernstein overcame
his fear and dived forward, his hand reaching for the knob.
The door came open, and Bernstein stopped. He had never seen
such devastation before. The metal-framed hospital bed had been
bent completely in half, and there was a huge tear down the center
of the mattress. The television set lay on the floor, its screen
cracked and smoking. Both picture windows had been shattered,
and shards of glass littered the floor. My God, Bernstein thought,
what could have done this? Some sort of explosion? And where was
Perry Stanton? Then Bernstein saw the IV rack embedded halfway
into the plaster wall to his left. His head swam, and he took a slight
step forward.
His foot landed in something wet. He looked down, and a gasp
filled his throat. There was a kidney-shaped pool of blood beneath
his shoes. It took him less than a second to follow the blood back to
its source.
Teri Nestor was lying halfway beneath the warped hospital bed,
her legs twisted unnaturally behind her body. Both of her arms
looked broken in numerous places, and her uniform was drenched
in blood. Bernstein was about to check her vitals when his gaze slid
up past her contorted shoulders.
His knees weakened, and he slumped against the nearest wall,
covering his mouth. Still, he could not tear his eyes away from the
sight.
It was as if two enormously strong hands had grabbed Teri
Nestor’s skull on either side—and squeezed.
Fox Mulder pressed a soggy hotel towel against the side of his jaw
as he lowered himself onto the edge of the imitation Colonial-style
bed. Most of the ice had already melted through the cheap cloth,
and he could feel the cold teardrops crawling down the skin of his
forearm. He lay back against the mattress, listening to the bray of
the television in the background, letting the monotonous voices of
the CNN anchormen mingle with the dull throbbing in his head. A
wonderful end to a wonderful afternoon. He ran his tongue around the
inside of his mouth and grimaced at the salty taste. Dried blood,
mixed with the distinct, gritty flavor of processed cow manure.
Well, he thought to himself, it could be worse. The bastard could
have had good aim.
Mulder closed his eyes, massaging the ice-filled towel harder
against the knot of muscle just below his lower gum line. He could
still see the shovel flashing toward him, and the crazy glint in the
Colombian’s eyes. A few inches higher, and the shovel would
certainly have cracked his skull open. Mulder only wished his
partner, Dana Scully, hadn’t cuffed the man so quickly after he had
wrested the weapon away. A good, long scuffle would have given
Mulder a chance to pay the Colombian back for the blow. And for
the wild-goose chase that had led them to the deserted barn in the
first place.
Still, Mulder had to admit, it wasn’t entirely the Colombian’s
fault that he and Scully had spent the last two weeks wandering
through upstate New York on what should have been a DEA
assignment. Carlos Sanchez couldn’t have known about the reports
of mutilated livestock that had trickled in to the FBI over the past
few months, or about the resulting case file that had been dropped
on Mulder’s cluttered desk in the basement of the Hoover Building
—partly because the case’s bizarre focus seemed to fit with Mulder’s
obsession with the unexplained, and partly because no other agent
wanted to investigate a bunch of dead cows.
Sanchez couldn’t have known about these things—because in
truth, the case had had nothing to do with mutilated livestock.
Mulder should have known from the beginning that the case had
not been a bona fide X-File. Thirty-two cows with scalpel wounds
across their abdomens was a cliché, not a paranormal mystery.
Mulder had not seen the clues until too late. When Scully had
discovered evidence of old stitches beneath the wounds of the most
recently mutilated cows, he should have begun to suspect
something. Then, when he and Scully had determined that all the
mutilated cattle had originated in the same breeding ranch just
outside of Bogota, he should have made the final connection.
But it wasn’t until he had stumbled into the abandoned barn on
the back lot of Sanchez’s farm that he had realized the truth. He
had stared at the eviscerated carcasses piled high in the center of
the barn, and the bloody, sealed bags of white powder drying in the
hay—and the lightbulb had finally gone on. Bandez had been using
the cows to transport cocaine into the U.S. The abandoned barn was
a drug depository, with distribution routes leading straight down
I-95 into Manhattan.
Before Mulder had finished digesting his discovery, Sanchez had
come at him with the shovel. A minute later he had been lying on
top of the Colombian in a pile of dried manure, while Scully made
the arrest. He had nursed his aching jaw in silence during the
winding ride back to the hotel, avoiding Scully’s eyes. He hadn’t
needed to see her expression—he knew what she was thinking. Yet
another debunked mystery, a mirage with reason at its core. Of
course, it was her job to think that way. That’s why she was there in
the first place—to expose the scientific, rational truth behind
Mulder’s supposed enigmas. Sometimes even her silence was as
subtle as a shovel to his jaw.
He heard the shower go on in the adjacent room and groaned,
lifting himself back to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. His
athletic, six-foot frame ached from a combination of exhaustion and
frustration. He ran his free hand through his dark hair and tried to
chase the fog out of his tired hazel eyes. It was almost time to leave.
He and Scully had a long drive back to the airfield in Westchester,
and if they were going to catch the last commercial flight back to
Washington, they would have to break more than a few speed limits
along the way. Of course, that was one of the perks of having
federal plates and FBI badges. Somebody else handled the speeding
tickets.
Mulder removed the soggy towel from his jaw and let it drop to
the ugly beige carpet. The cramped hotel room stared at him, four
white plaster walls glowing in the light of the twenty-inch television
set. Aside from the television, the room contained a redwood
dresser that was supposed to look like an antique, a desk with a fax
machine and a telephone, and a closet Mulder had filled with blue
and gray suits. Mulder’s travel bag was under the desk, and his gun
and badge were next to the phone, the straps of his shoulder holster
trailing down behind the fax machine, swinging in the refrigerated
breeze from the baseboard vents. Home on the road, another
variation on a theme. Mulder and Scully had been there a thousand
times before.
Mulder was about to get up and start packing his suits when
something on the television screen caught his eye. He paused,
momentarily forgetting the throb in his jaw. A reporter with frosted
blond hair was speaking into a microphone as she wandered
through what looked to be a hospital hallway. Behind her was a
spiderweb of yellow police tape. Even through the tape, Mulder
could make out the disaster scene in the room on the other side of
the hallway; the torn, blood-spattered mattress, the IV rack sticking
straight out of the wall, the destroyed, overturned television set, the
shattered picture windows—and most disturbing of all, the strange
indentation in the center of the half-open wooden door. It was the
indentation that had caught his attention in the first place—because
it seemed somehow familiar. Something he could almost place.
“The sheer violence of yesterday’s tragedy has shocked local
authorities,” the CNN reporter droned into her microphone, “and a
boroughwide search for Professor Stanton is presently in full swing.
Still, this is little comfort to the family of nurse Teri Nestor...”
The picture on the screen changed as the reporter continued on,
and Mulder found himself staring into a pair of intelligent blue
eyes. The man in the enlarged photograph looked to be about fifty
years old, with thinning brown hair and slightly oversized ears.
Even from the cropped photo, Mulder could tell he was a small
man; the angled tips of his shoulders barely made an impression
through his professorial tweed jacket, and his neck was thin and
roosterlike, devoid of muscle.
As the CNN reporter dribbled out sketchy details about the
diminutive professor and the horrible murder of the young nurse,
Mulder’s thoughts swept back to the moment in the barn when the
Colombian swung at him with the shovel. He remembered the
violent glint in the Colombian’s eyes. Then he looked again at
Professor Stanton’s photo. He was still staring at Stanton’s kind blue
eyes when the picture on the television changed again.
This time he was looking at a close-up of the destroyed hospital
room. The mattress, the IV rack, the broken television set, the
shattered windows—and the marred, half-open door. He took a step
closer to the screen, hunching forward, his eyes focused on the
strangely shaped indentation in the wood. Suddenly, he realized
what he was looking at.
An imprint of a human hand, set a few inches deep into the
heavy oak. Palm wide-open, fingers splayed outward. Mulder’s eyes
widened, as a question struck him. What kind of force would it take
to make an imprint of a hand in a heavy oak door?
He turned and looked at the open door to his hotel-room closet.
As the CNN report ended and the frosted blond reporter was
replaced by an overweight sportscaster, Mulder crossed to the closet
and placed his hand flat against the cold wood. He gently slapped
the door, keeping his fingers stiff. Then he slapped it again, this
time hard enough to send shivers back into his elbow. He lifted his
hand and looked at the wood. Nothing, of course.
His mind felt suddenly alive; this was the feeling he hadn’t
gotten with the mutilated cows, the driving sensation that had
earned him the nickname “Spooky” in the basement hallways of the
Hoover Building. To anyone else, the scene held nothing more than
a pair of kind blue eyes, a demolished hospital room, and a mark on
a wooden door. But to Fox Mulder, it was like cocaine in his veins.
These unexplainable details carried the scent of an X-File.
He quickly moved to the small desk in the other corner of the
hotel room and reached for the phone. He dialed the number for the
New York FBI office from memory, and spoke quietly to the
operator, detailing the request he wanted forwarded to the NYPD
homicide division in charge of the Stanton investigation. Then he
replaced the receiver and made sure his fax machine was in the
autoreceiving mode.
He crossed back to the closet door, pausing along the way to
retrieve the soggy towel he had dropped on the floor by the bed. He
wrapped the towel around his open right hand and stood facing the
unmarked wood.
He shut his eyes, drew back—and slammed his right hand into
the center of the door. There was a sharp crack, and Mulder
grimaced, the muscles in his forearm contracting. He pulled back
and saw fractures in the surface of the wood, expanding outward
from the point of impact. The cracks were noticeable—but nothing
like the deep indentations he had seen in the CNN report. And even
with the towel, his entire arm ached from the collision with the
wood. He tried to imagine each finger in his right hand hitting with
enough force to leave a dent.
A sudden knock interrupted his thoughts, followed by a muffled
female voice. “Mulder? Is everything okay?”
Mulder quickly crossed to the hotel-room door and undid the
latch. Dana Scully was standing in the narrow hallway, her rust-
colored hair dripping wet. She was wearing a dark suit jacket open
over an untucked white button-down shirt, and it was obvious she
had dressed quickly. Her usually precise and formal appearance
seemed momentarily frayed—from the drops of water that glistened
against the porcelain skin above her collarbone, to the concerned
look in her blue eyes. Although her hands were empty, Mulder
could see the bulge of her holstered Smith & Wesson service
revolver under the left side of her jacket; no doubt, had he delayed
answering the door, she would have entered the room barrel first.
“What’s going on in here? It sounded like someone was brawling
with the furniture.”
Mulder smiled. “Not the furniture. Just the closet door. Sorry if I
interrupted your shower.”
Scully stepped past him into the room. She smelled vaguely of
honeysuckle, and there were still flecks of shampoo caught in the
lilting arcs of her hair. She stopped in front of the closet door and
took in the cracked dent in the center of the wood. Then she
glanced at the wet towel still wrapped around Mulder’s right hand.
“That’s an interesting way to ice a swollen jaw.”
Mulder had almost forgotten about his injury. The swelling and
the pain no longer seemed to matter. “Scully, how often do patients
try to kill their doctors?”
Scully raised her eyebrows. Her body had relaxed, and she was
working on the top two buttons of her white shirt. She stopped in
front of the television set, the glow reflecting off her high
cheekbones. “Mulder, we need to get packed and on the road if
we're going to make it back to Washington tonight.”
Mulder shrugged, then returned to his line of thought. “A
patient wakes up from an operation, vulnerable, drugged up,
exhausted—and the first thing he does is erupt in a violent rage.
How often, Scully? Rarely? Almost never?”
Scully was looking at him intently. She recognized the familiar
gleam in his eyes. But Mulder could tell—she didn’t know where it
was coming from, or why it had to happen here, in the middle of
nowhere. It was late, she was tired, and perhaps a little frustrated
from the long days they had spent on a case that had turned out as
mundanely as she had expected. Certainly, she was ready to get
back home to her apartment and what little life she had beyond the
enveloping reach of her job. “What are you getting at, Mulder?”
Before Mulder could answer, a high-pitched warble reverberated
through the room. The fax machine coughed to life, and Scully
turned, startled. She watched as the pages began to slip quietly into
the receiving bin. “Did someone kill a doctor?”
Mulder followed a few paces behind as she crossed to the fax
machine. “Not exactly. A nurse named Teri Nestor. But he did more
than kill her. He destroyed his recovery room. He shoved an IV rack
through the wall. Then he put his right hand two inches into a
heavy oak door.”
Scully lifted up the first three pages and began to leaf through
them. Mulder could see her analytical mind going to work as she
read the preliminary forensic evaluation he had requested from the
homicide investigation. As for himself, he didn’t need the details to
get himself inspired; his obsessive curiosity was already aroused.
“They had the man’s picture on CNN, Scully. A small, gentle-
looking professor. The kind of guy who gave me better grades than
I deserved in college because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.”
Scully continued to read the pages coming out of the fax
machine as she spoke from a corner of her pursed lips. It was
obvious she had little interest in a case that had seemingly
materialized out of nowhere. “People kill for many reasons.
Sometimes they kill without reasons. And we both know that size
doesn’t matter. The human body can perform miracles of violence—
when properly provoked. Drugs, fear, pain, adrenaline; all of these
things can incite impressive acts of violence. And all of these things
are closely associated with hospital stays. This looks like a local
homicide investigation, not a federal case—”
Scully paused midsentence. Mulder noticed the sudden creases
that appeared on her forehead. He looked at the page at the top of
the pile in her hands and saw what appeared to be some sort of
medical chart. The page was split into a dozen categories, with lists
of numbers and long paragraphs of medical terminology. Mulder
had only a rudimentary knowledge of medicine, and the numbers
and paragraphs made little sense to him; but Dana Scully was an
experienced physician. Before joining the FBI she had completed a
residency in forensic pathology and had an expert’s grounding in
biology, physics, and chemistry. It was the initial reason she had
been chosen to act as a foil to Mulder’s fantastic quests. It was also
part of the reason she had grown into much more than a foil; her
rational, systematic approach often functioned as the perfect
complement to Mulder’s brash and impulsive investigative style.
“What is it?” Mulder asked, trying to read her unreadable eyes.
He had requested the entire NYPD case file, and he had no way of
knowing what Scully had stumbled upon.
“It's the preliminary autopsy report on the murdered nurse,”
Scully responded. “There’s obviously been some sort of error.”
Mulder waited in silence, as Scully continued reading the report.
Finally, she looked up from the pages in her hands. “According to
this autopsy report, Teri Nestor’s skull was crushed with the
approximate force of two vehicles moving at more than thirty miles
per hour.”
Mulder felt a chill move down his back. His instincts had been
correct. Despite Scully’s reservations, he had a feeling they weren’t
heading back to Washington just yet.
Two hours later, Dana Scully watched her own reflection shimmer
against the steel double doors of a carpeted elevator, as glowing
circular numbers ticked upward above her head. Mulder was
standing a few feet to her left, testing his jaw with his right hand as
his left foot tapped an incomprehensible rhythm against the
elevator floor. Behind him, a medical student in blue-green surgical
scrubs leaned heavily against the back wall, his eyes half-closed
from exhaustion. Scully knew exactly how he felt. The whole world
dancing on your shoulders, and all you want to do is sleep.
She threw a glance at Mulder, noticing the energy behind his
features, the bright glint in his hazel eyes. Scully was amazed at her
partner’s stamina; it was already close to ten, and they had both
been on their feet since 6:00 A.M. Scully felt ready to collapse—and
she wasn’t the one who had been hit in the face with a shovel less
than eight hours ago.
Then again, she knew how Mulder’s mind worked. The minute
he had turned his focus toward the potential X-File, everything else
had vanished. He had barely spoken about anything else during the
long drive into Manhattan, and Scully had been forced to shelve the
follow-up paperwork on the Bandez drug-distribution ring—at least
for the time being. Inside, she doubted that she and Mulder would
be sojourning in Manhattan for more than a few days. The findings
reported in Teri Nestor’s autopsy file were alarming—but Scully had
no doubt there would be a simple, scientific explanation.
“Miracles of violence,” Mulder intoned, continuing the
suspended line of conversation they had begun in upstate New
York. “Interesting choice of words, Scully. You think Perry Stanton
is a miracle worker?”
“It was a figure of speech,” Scully responded, keeping her voice
low to prevent the med student in the back of the elevator from
overhearing. “I merely meant that the human body is capable of
amazing feats of strength. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories of
mothers lifting cars to save their babies, or karate experts breaking
bricks with their bare hands. There’s no real magic involved; it’s
actually a matter of pure physics. Angles of impact, leverage,
velocity. At the right speed, even a drop of water can shatter a
brick.”
“Or a skull?” Mulder asked, as the elevator slowed to a stop.
Scully shrugged. She had been mulling this over for the past few
hours. Her initial shock at the details of the Stanton case had
subsided, and she had already begun to analyze the situation as a
scientist. “Perry Stanton is significantly bigger than a drop of water.
The autopsy report, on its own, is inconclusive. I don’t know how
her head was crushed with such force—but I do know that it’s
within the realm of physics.”
Before Mulder had a chance to respond, the double doors
whiffed open, and Scully stepped out into a long hallway with shiny
white walls. Mulder followed a few feet behind, his hands clasped
behind his back. “Physics didn’t kill Teri Nestor. Neither did a
karate expert or a woman protecting a baby.”
They turned an abrupt corner and continued down a similar
hallway, moving deeper into the recovery ward. The air carried a
familiar, antiseptic smell, and the sounds of hospital machinery
trickled into Scully’s ears: the steady thumping of respirators, the
metallic beeps of EKG monitors, the vibrating whir of adjustable
hospital beds. The sounds sparked a mixture of emotions in her; she
had spent much of her adult life inside hospitals—first during the
years of her medical training, then more recently during her near-
fatal battle with cancer. As a scientist, she found comfort in a
setting guided by the rigid laws of cause and effect. At the same
time, she couldn’t help but associate her surroundings with her past
illness; as she passed the closed doors of a half dozen private rooms,
she wondered how many patients were struggling in silence a few
feet away, praying for the light of just one more morning.
“Here we are,” Mulder interrupted, pointing. “The scene of the
miracle.”
Scully squared her shoulders as they approached the group of
uniformed officers standing in front of yellow police tape. She
counted at least three men and two women, all wearing NYPD
insignia. One of the officers was interviewing a nurse in a pink
uniform, while two others spoke to a young woman in jeans and a
white, paint-stained T-shirt. The officers looked up as Scully and
Mulder advanced the last few steps. Scully quickly slipped her ID
out of her jacket pocket. “FBI. I’m Special Agent Dana Scully, this is
my partner, Agent Mulder. We’re looking for the detective in charge
of the Stanton case.”
The nearest officer looked Scully over with dark eyes. He was a
large man, perhaps six-five, with scruffy black hair and a puggish
nose. He gestured with his head toward the yellow tape. The door
behind the tape was half-open, and Scully could just make out the
hand-shaped indentation in the center of the wood. She kept her
eyes on the indentation as she stepped gingerly through a break in
the police tape. As she held the tape up for Mulder, he whispered
his own evaluation into her ear. “Pd like to see the physics behind
that, Scully.”
Scully shrugged. “Give me a computer, a forensics lab, and a
week—and I’m sure I could show you, Mulder.”
They paused in the room’s entrance. Scully’s gaze was drawn
first to the huge sheets of yellow paper taped over the shattered
picture windows. To the right of the windows was a contorted steel
shelving unit, in front of which sat the upended, demolished
television set. The warped hospital bed sat in the center of the
room, the torn mattress sticking straight out of the deformed steel
frame. Two men in white jumpsuits were leaning over the mattress
with handheld vacuums, collecting hair and fiber evidence. Behind
the hospital bed, another man focused an oversize camera on the IV
rack still embedded in the wall. His flash went off like a strobe
light, making the scene even more gritty and at the same time
surreal, like a Quentin Tarantino movie. Scully was surprised to see
the forensics people still collecting evidence so long after the
incident, another testament to the bizarre nature of the crime. The
degree of damage was exactly as Mulder had described it from the
CNN report. It certainly didn’t look like the work of one man.
Scully felt Mulder’s hand on her shoulder and followed his eyes
to the floor just in front of where they stood. The chalk outline
started somewhere beneath a corner of the bed frame, twisting
violently through a circular patch of dried blood. Teri Nestor’s blood.
“Judging from the suits, I presume you’re the two FBI agents
your Manhattan office warned us about,” a gravelly voice erupted
from behind the contorted shelving unit. Scully watched as a
heavyset woman in a dark gray suit stepped into view. She was
quite tall—perhaps six feet—with wide, muscular shoulders and
frizzy dark hair. She had a clipboard in her gloved hands, and there
were dark bags under her dull blue eyes. “Detective Jennifer
Barrett, NYPD.”
Scully made the introductions, noting the strength of the
detective’s handshake: Those were paws, not hands. Barrett towered
over her concise, five-foot-three frame, and though the detective
looked to be in her late forties, she had obviously spent a lot of time
in the gym. Her intimidating size was aggravated by her unkempt
hair and the largeness of her facial features. Scully wondered if
Barrett suffered from some sort of genetic pituitary problem; she
could tell from the look on Mulder’s face that he was thinking along
similar lines.
Scully broke the silence before it became awkward, and after a
few pleasantries, turned the focus toward the case at hand. “It’s our
understanding that Perry Stanton is the only suspect in the murder.
Is that based on the forensic evidence?”
Barrett nodded, gesturing toward the two jumpsuited men still
huddled over the mattress. “From what we’ve gathered so far,
Stanton was alone with the nurse when the murder took place.
According to the plastic surgeon—Dr. Alec Bernstein—they were in
the room for less than five minutes, with the door shut, when the
violence started. Hair, fiber, and fingerprint surveys concur with
Bernstein’s story. Nobody entered the room through the door—and
the windows are more than twenty feet above the parking lot.”
“A long way up,” Mulder commented from a crouch in front of
the door. “And an equally long way down.”
Scully glanced at him. He had his hand out in front of the
indentation in the wood, his fingers mimicking the deep marks from
a few inches away. Scully turned away from him and watched as
Barrett crossed to the shattered windows. The detective pulled up a
corner of the yellow paper. “The way down’s a lot easier than the
way up. The trick is in the landing. Stanton got lucky and hit some
shrubs at the edge of the parking lot. We found torn pieces of his
hospital smock in the branches, along with more of Teri Nestor’s
blood. Our manhunt is progressing rapidly through the borough—
but so far, we’ve been unable to pick up his trail.”
“So the professor woke up from an operation,” Mulder said out
of the corner of his mouth. “Tore up a hospital room. Crushed his
nurse’s skull. Then fell out of a second-story window into a shrub.
And he’s still managing to evade a police search?”
Mulder had aimed the question at Scully, but it was obvious
from the red blotches spreading across Barrett’s face that she had
misinterpreted Mulder’s tone. She turned away from the window,
crossed her thick arms against her chest, and set her mouth in an
angry grimace. A heavy Brooklyn accent suddenly dribbled down
the edges of her consonants. “Hey, you want to bring in your own
forensics people? I'd be happy to hear an alternative story. Because
the media’s already crawling up my ass on this one. We’ve got the
pathologist redoing the autopsy, we’ve had the fingerprint team in
here a dozen times—and it's still coming up the same. One perp,
one dead nurse, one manhunt. And I don’t care how fancy you
fibbies think you are—you’re not going to find anything different.”
Scully stared at the woman, stunned by her altered tone.
Frustration was one thing—but this was outright hostility. Barrett
obviously had issues with control and a temper to match her size.
Not a pretty combination. Scully decided to intervene before Mulder
could aggravate her further. “We’re not here to get in the way of
your manhunt, Detective Barrett—just to assist in catching the perp.
As for Professor Stanton—is there anything in his history that could
explain the sudden outbreak of violence?”
Barrett grunted, her anger slowly diffusing. “Model citizen up
until the transplant procedure. No priors, not even a speeding
ticket. Married sixteen years until his wife died last February.
Teaches European history at Jamaica University, volunteers two
days a week at the public library in midtown—an adult-literacy
program.”
“No history of alcohol or drugs?” Scully asked.
“An occasional glass of wine on weekends, according to his
daughter, Emily Kysdale, a twenty-six-year-old kindergarten teacher
who lives in Brooklyn. According to Mrs. Kysdale, her father is a
shy but happy man. He is most content in the basement library of
the university—which is where he got burned in the boiler
accident.”
“Certainly doesn’t fit the psychotic profile,” Mulder commented.
He was standing by the horizontal IV rack, trying to gauge how
deeply it was embedded in the wall. “According to the police
report, he is five-four, weighs one hundred and eighteen pounds.
Scully, how much do you think this IV rack weighs? Or that
mattress?”
Scully ignored Mulder’s questions for the moment. She couldn’t
tell whether he was baiting the detective—or merely curious. She
nodded toward the clipboard in Barrett’s hands. She recognized the
hospital-style pages under the heavy metal clip. “Is that Stanton’s
medical chart?”
Barrett nodded, her eyes on Mulder as she handed over the
chart. “The plastic surgeon—Dr. Bernstein—has gone through this
with me a few times already. He says there was nothing medically
abnormal about Stanton—and nothing that he thought would have
provoked a psychotic episode. But something I’ve learned working
homicide in New York for the past twenty years—people crack for
no good reason.”
The chart was six pages long, full of scrawled medical
descriptions and evaluations. Stanton had arrived at Jamaica’s
emergency room with a full-thickness third-degree steam burn on
his right thigh. He had also been complaining of difficulty
breathing, and had been given IV Solumedol, a strong steroid. After
his breathing had stabilized, he had been prepped and wheeled into
an operating room. Dr. Bernstein had performed an escharotomy—
cutting away the damaged skin around the burn to prepare it for
transplant—and had then attached a section of donor skin over the
burn site.
The procedure had gone off without a snag; Stanton had
awakened in the recovery room, complaining only of mild
discomfort. If all had gone well, the temporary graft would have
remained over the area of the burn for two weeks, at which time
Stanton would have received a permanent matched graft from
another part of his body, most likely his lower back.
Although Scully wasn’t a plastic surgeon, there didn’t seem to be
anything about the transplant procedure itself that would have
caused Stanton’s violent reaction. But there was something in the
chart that struck Scully as a possible explanation.
She moved next to Mulder and showed him the indication on
the chart. “Stanton was given a fairly large dose of Solumedol,
Mulder. It’s an extremely potent steroid. There have been numerous
documented cases of patients reacting violently to steroids—sort of
an allergic neurological response. Rare, but definitely not unique.”
Mulder looked at the IV rack bisecting the air between them.
“Steroidal rage? Scully, he was given the Solumedol before the
transplant procedure—but didn’t explode until hours later.”
Scully shrugged. “It doesn’t have to be an immediate reaction.
The neurotransmitters build up in the nervous system. The
procedure itself could have aggravated his body’s reaction—and
when the anesthesia from the operation wore off, his psychosis
detonated.”
Mulder looked skeptical. “Wouldn’t Dr. Bernstein have
mentioned the possibility to Detective Barrett?”
Barrett was watching them from the window, her arms still
crossed against her chest. She coughed, letting Scully and Mulder
know she was still in the room. “I’m sure I would have remembered
if he had. He’s performing a laser surgery at the moment—but you
can interview him again when he’s finished.”
Scully nodded. Mulder seemed dissatisfied with Scully’s quick
answer to Stanton’s psychosis. As Scully watched, he pulled a pair
of latex gloves out of his jacket pocket and slipped them over his
fingers. Then he placed both hands gingerly against the IV rack.
Barrett watched him with a smirk on her oversized lips.
“It’s in pretty good. I tried for twenty minutes. I doubt you'll be
able to do any better.”
Mulder smiled at the challenge, then leaned back, using his
weight against the rack. The muscles of his arms worked beneath
his dark suit, and his face grew taut, sweat beading above his
eyebrows. He tried for a full minute, then gasped, giving up. “I
guess neither of us gets to be king.”
There was a brief pause, then Barrett laughed. The sound was
somewhere between a diesel engine and a death rattle. Scully was
glad that Mulder’s charm had broken through some of Barrett’s
hostility. As long as they were going to have to work together, it
would help if they could interact in a civil manner. Scully cleared
her throat. “As long as we’re waiting for Dr. Bernstein—you
mentioned Stanton’s daughter? Perhaps she can bring us up to
speed on Professor Stanton.”
Barrett nodded. “Out in the hallway. The pretty thing with the
finger paint all over her shirt. She’s been here since her father was
brought into the ER yesterday morning. She won’t go home until
Stanton is safely apprehended. Be careful with her; she breaks
easily.”
Scully inadvertently glanced at Barrett’s huge hands. She
wondered if Mulder was thinking the same thing. In hands like those
—who didn’t break easily?
“This is all too much to take. You have to believe me, he could
never have done this. Never.” Emily Kysdale stared into her cup of
coffee as the cafeteria traffic buzzed behind her bowed shoulders.
Mulder and Scully had chosen the relative anonymity of the
cafeteria over the recovery ward, to give the young woman a
chance to speak without the obvious presence of the uniformed
police officers.
Emily was shaking horribly, and Scully could see the goose
bumps rising on the bare skin of her arms. Scully felt the immediate
urge to reach across the steel cafeteria table and touch her, to let
her know that it would be all right—but she resisted. The truth was,
it wasn’t going to be all right. Emily’s father had murdered a
woman about the same age as she, a woman with a child and a
husband. Even if the violence was caused by an allergic reaction, or
a mental illness, or an uncontrollable fit—it was murder.
“Mrs. Kysdale,” Mulder said, his voice quiet as he lowered
himself into the seat next to Scully, “we need to ask you a few
questions. I know this is hard for you, but we’re trying to help your
father.”
Scully could feel the emotion behind Mulder’s near monotone.
She knew her partner better than anyone in the world, and she
could guess at the thoughts running through his head. Emily was an
attractive, fragile woman, with long, brownish-blond hair, a lanky
figure, and watery green eyes. Her jeans and paint-splotched T-shirt
were rumpled, and it was obvious she had not slept since the
incident. Her agony was no doubt triggering something deep inside
Mulder—perhaps memories of his own sister. He carried Samantha
Mulder like an internal scar, always just below the surface of his
skin. The unique circumstances of Samantha’s disappearance—and
Mulder’s belief that she had actually been abducted by aliens—did
not disrupt the prosaic and sincere nature of his pain. It was what
drove his obsession with the unexplained, and Emily’s distress
would only solidify his resolve to find the truth—however fantastic
that truth turned out to be.
“My father is a gentle man,” Emily finally responded, looking
directly into Mulder’s sympathetic eyes. “He lived for his work, his
quiet research. He has never been in trouble before. And he has
never complained, never gets angry. Even when my mother passed
away.”
“Mrs. Kysdale,” Scully said, “did your father ever suffer any
symptoms that may not have been in his medical chart? Any viral
diseases—either recently, or in the past?”
Emily shrugged. “Nothing abnormal. He’s had the flu a few
times this year. And a bout of pneumonia two years ago. He had his
appendix out when I was younger—”
“What about allergies?” Scully was searching, but it was worth a
shot. Anaphylactic shock involved the entire neurological system —
very similar to a steroid reaction. If Stanton had a history of strong
allergies, it might be more evidence for her Solumedol theory.
“Not that I know of,” Emily answered. “Dr. Bernstein asked me
the same question when they first brought my father into the ER. I
had arrived just as they were administering something to help him
breathe.”
Scully perked up, glancing at Mulder. “The IV steroids.”
Emily nodded. “I remembered he had been put on steroids
during the bout with pneumonia. He hadn’t had a problem with it
then, so Dr. Bernstein said it wouldn’t be a problem this time
either.”
Scully leaned back in her chair. She could hear Mulder’s shoes
bouncing against the tiled floor beneath the table. The new
information didn’t completely rule out the Solumedol—but it
certainly made it less likely. Bernstein probably hadn’t mentioned
the Solumedol to Detective Barrett because Stanton had been put on
it before, without adverse reaction. Still, Scully knew that people
could develop sensitivities at any stage in life. Insect bites, shellfish,
peanuts—and steroids—had been known to kill people who had
never had any problem with these things before. The Solumedol,
though more improbable, was still a possibility.
“When you saw your father in the ER,” Mulder asked, changing
tack, “did anything strike you as abnormal—either in his behavior,
or his appearance?”
Emily shrugged. “He had that awful burn on his leg. And he was
slipping in and out of consciousness. But when he was awake, he
seemed normal.”
“And after the transplant procedure—”
“I never got a chance to see him after the procedure. I was in the
waiting room when I heard what happened. I couldn’t believe it. I
still don’t believe it.”
“Mrs. Kysdale,” Scully asked, “is there any history of mental
disease in your father’s family?”
Emily was momentarily taken aback by the question. When she
finally answered, she sounded cautious, as if she realized for the
first time that she was talking to two FBI agents. “Not that Pm
aware.”
Scully paused; as helpful as the young woman was trying to be,
Emily Kysdale wasn’t going to help them understand the cause of
her father’s violence. It was obvious from Emily’s sudden change of
tone: in Emily’s mind, Perry Stanton was a victim, not a murderer.
Scully could tell from the way Mulder was looking at her that he
agreed.
Whatever the reason for his explosion, Perry Stanton was a
criminal. The cause of Stanton’s act was only important insofar as it
established culpability. Even if the cause remained a mystery, it
would not change the facts of the case, or Scully and Mulder’s
mission. Their job was to catch the perp who had killed Teri Nestor
—and at the moment, the blame still lay solely on Perry Stanton.
“Mrs. Kysdale, do you have any idea where your father might be
hiding? Anywhere the police may not know to look?”
Emily’s entire body trembled, and she clenched her hands
around the foam cup of coffee in front of her. She lowered her head,
then took a deep breath and seemed to regain some level of control.
“They’ve been to his apartment, his office, all of his friends’ houses.
They’ve scoured the university. They’ve looked everywhere he used
to go—even the cemetery where my mother is buried. But I can’t
help them find him—because the man who killed that nurse isn’t
the man I know. My father isn’t the man they’re looking for.”
Scully felt a weight inside her chest, as Emily’s grief finally
broke through her veil of reserve. Mulder had his reasons for
empathizing with the woman’s pain—and Scully had her own. Her
sister’s murder, her own father’s death. She knew what it was like to
lose a family member—and that was exactly what had happened to
Emily Kysdale. The Perry Stanton she knew was gone.
Scully reached across the table and touched the young woman’s
hand. Then she rose, thanking her for her help. Mulder paused for a
moment, watching the woman cry over her coffee. Then he
followed Scully toward the elevator at the back of the cafeteria,
which would take them up to the surgical ward—and Dr. Alec
Bernstein. After the double doors slid shut, Mulder spoke softly. “I
believe her, Scully. Her father isn’t the man we’re looking for.”
“What do you mean?”
“You heard what she said—he was normal when he was
wheeled into the ER. He was normal even after he was given the
Solumedol. But he wasn’t normal when he woke up after the
operation. He should have been vulnerable, groggy, in pain;
instead, he was capable of unbelievable violence, of a physical act
we can hardly describe, let alone understand.”
Scully tried to see the expression on his face, but all she got was
his profile. He finished his thought as the elevator slowed to a stop
on the fourth floor—the surgical ward. “Scully, something
happened during that transplant procedure to change Perry
Stanton.”
Scully wasn’t sure what he meant. “Mulder, the temporary
grafting procedure is nearly as common—and certainly as safe—as
an appendectomy. And it’s mainly localized to the area of the injury
—Stanton’s right thigh.”
But even as she said the words, a thought hit her. The transplant
procedure involved Stanton’s thigh—but certainly, there was
interaction with his bloodstream and his immune system. Perhaps
Mulder had a point: It wasn’t impossible that Stanton had
contracted something from the graft itself. She would have to
review the literature—but she was certain she had heard about
certain viral diseases being transferred in just such a manner. She
believed there had even been cases of cancer being transmitted
through grafts—specifically, lymphoma and Kaposi’s sarcoma. It
was rare, but possible. The question was, what kind of disease could
cause a psychotic episode?
“Something like meningitis,” Scully murmured, as the elevator
doors opened. “Or even syphilis. Something that causes the brain to
swell and affects the neurological system.”
“Sorry?” Mulder said.
“If the temporary graft had been infected with a blood-borne
virus,” Scully explained, “Stanton could have contracted the disease
through the transplant. There are many diseases that could lead to
an explosion of violence.”
“Scully, that’s not what I meant. The violence was beyond the
scale of any psychotic episode. Stanton didn’t just catch a disease—
he transformed. Into something his own daughter wouldn’t
recognize.”
Scully knew that the words were more than hyperbole; Mulder’s
ideas were never limited by the laws of science. But Scully didn’t
intend to let him lead her toward another of his wild fantasies. At
the moment, this was a medical mystery—not a fantasy. This
investigation was on her turf.
She stepped out into the surgical ward. “Sometimes, Mulder,
transformation is the nature of disease.”
Scully peered through the glass window with genuine interest as Dr.
Bernstein carefully navigated the laser scalpel across the surface of
the patient’s exposed lower back. The tool was pen-shaped,
attached to a long, articulated steel arm containing a series of
specially made mirrors. The arm jutted out of a four-foot-tall
cylindrical pedestal next to Bernstein. A pedal by his heel allowed
him to control the strength and depth of the beam.
“Interesting juxtaposition,” Mulder said, his face also close to
the window as he surveyed the small operating room. “A five-
thousand-year-old art transcended by a five-year-old technology.”
Scully watched as the red guiding light traced the edges of the
enormous tattoo in the center of the patient’s bared back. The red
light shivered in the thin white smoke rising from the patient’s skin
as the outer cells vaporized under the intense, pinpoint heat. The
patient was awake, but felt no pain; a local anesthetic was enough
to deaden the area of skin beneath the tattoo. In fact, the procedure
could hardly be considered surgical. Aside from Bernstein and the
patient, there was only one nurse in the small operating room,
monitoring the patient’s blood pressure.
“I guess nothing is truly permanent anymore,” Mulder
continued. “Anything can be erased.”
“It's a tattoo, Mulder. Hardly the raw material for a
philosophical analogy.” Scully controlled a wince as the laser seared
away a beautifully drawn lion’s head, then moved backward
through a flowing brown mane. She thought about the image on her
own lower back: a snake eating its own tail, the result of a moment
of whimsy in a Philadelphia tattoo parlor during a solo field trip a
little over a year ago. Sometimes, she hardly even remembered the
tattoo was there; other times, she found comfort in the idea that she
had found the courage to do something so unlike her perceived
exterior. She was a skeptic—but never a conformist. That was
another part of what made her and Mulder work so well together.
The procedure went on for another ten minutes; when Bernstein
was finally finished, he looked up from behind his surgical mask
and noticed Mulder and Scully on the other side of the viewing
windows. He said something to the nurse, then shut off the laser
scalpel and stepped away from the patient. As the nurse moved to
wrap the sensitive area of skin in antiseptic gauze, Bernstein yanked
his gloves off and crossed to the OR door. He pulled his mask down
as he moved into the outer scrub room where Scully and Mulder
waited.
“Tm guessing you're not here for a tattoo removal,” Bernstein
said, tossing his gloves into a nearby trash can as he crossed toward
the double sinks at the other end of the rectangular room. He was a
tall man, slightly overweight and balding, but with handsome
features and remarkably sculpted hands. He was wearing surgical
scrubs and matching green sneakers. “So how can I help you?”
“Sorry to interrupt, Dr. Bernstein. I’m Agent Scully, this is Agent
Mulder. We’re here about Perry Stanton.”
Bernstein nodded as he ran water over his hands, carefully
massaging his long fingers. Scully could see the troubled look in his
eyes and the slight tremble in his round shoulders. “I’m not sure
what I can tell you—beyond what I’ve already told Detective
Barrett. Mr. Stanton was fine when I left him in the recovery room
—and when I returned, he had already gone through the window. It
was a horrid sight—something I don’t think Pll ever forget. Or
understand.”
Scully could sense the disbelief in his words. He reminded her of
the many physicians she had known during her medical training; he
didn’t quite know what to do with an experience beyond his
expertise. Scully tried to make her voice as sympathetic as possible.
“It's certainly a mystery, one we're working to understand. Along
that line, I noticed that you ordered IV Solumedol to help Mr.
Stanton’s breathing—”
“Yes,” Bernstein interrupted with a wave of his hand. “Detective
Barrett called to ask me about the Solumedol after you spoke to her
downstairs in the recovery room, and you’re right, I should have
made it clear to her in the first place. Personally, I don’t believe the
steroid had anything to do with his violent outbreak. He’d been put
on similar steroids fairly recently—a bout with pneumonia, I
believe it was three years ago. It’s extremely unlikely that he would
have developed such a fierce allergy in such a short time.”
Scully nodded; she had asked the necessary question and had
gotten the expected answer. The Solumedol still wasn’t ruled out,
but as Bernstein had said, it was an extremely doubtful cause. They
needed to search for other answers.
Mulder took the cue as Bernstein turned away from the sink and
grabbed a towel from a rack attached to the wall.
“Dr. Bernstein, what about the grafting procedure itself? Do you
remember anything abnormal about the operation? Anything out of
the ordinary?”
Bernstein vigorously dried his hands. “I’ve performed hundreds
of similar transplants. There were no hitches at all. The procedure
took less than three hours. I cleaned up the burn, flattened out the
donor skin, and stapled it onto Stanton’s thigh—”
“Stapled?” Mulder asked, his eyebrows raised. Scully could have
answered, but she deferred to the plastic surgeon.
“That’s right. The device is very similar to an office stapler—
except the staples are heat sterilized and made out of a specially
tempered steel. Anyway, I stapled the skin over Stanton’s burn and
wrapped the area in sterile gauze. I would have changed the
dressing in three days—then removed the graft in about two weeks,
when he was ready to accept a permanent transplant.”
Scully had explained the procedure to Mulder after reading
about it in Stanton’s chart, but it was good for both of them to hear
it again from the expert. After all, it had been a long time since
Scully’s surgical rotation, and she had spent only a few months
studying transplant techniques.
“So the donor skin is only temporarily attached?” Mulder asked.
“That’s right. The temporary graft isn’t matched to the patient—
because it’s intended to be rejected after a period of a couple of
weeks. Then we graft a piece of the patient’s own skin over the
wound. In the meantime, the donor skin decreases the risk of
infection, and it helps indicate when the burned area is ready to
accept a permanent transplant.”
“If the temporary graft isn’t matched to the patient,” Scully
interrupted, “what precautions are taken to make sure the graft isn’t
carrying something that could infect the patient with a
communicable disease?”
Bernstein glanced at her. She could tell from his eyes that he
had already given this some thought. Stanton had been his patient
—and as unfair and illogical as it seemed, he was partially blaming
himself for what had happened. “Truthfully, very few—on my end.
The skin is transported to us from the New York Fire Department
Skin Bank; the bank is responsible for growing bacteriological
cultures, and for checking the skin for viral threats. But they
themselves are guided by the medical histories provided by the
donor hospital. There are a million things to look for, and it’s
impossible to cover every possibility. If a donor dies from
something infectious, they don’t accept his skin. But if he dies from
an unrelated cause—and happens to be carrying something, there is
a chance that it will be passed on through a transplant.”
“A slim chance?” Mulder asked. “Or a serious risk? And could
any of these transferred diseases affect a patient’s brain? Enough to
send him into a violent rage?”
“I would call it extremely rare,” Bernstein replied, leaning back
against the sinks. “But possible. For instance, undetected
melanomas have been known to spread through transplant
procedures. They grow downward through the dermis and into the
blood vessels, then ride the bloodstream up into the brain. And
certain viruses could jump through the lower layers of the
epidermis into the capillaries; herpes zoster, AIDS, meningitis,
encephalitis—the list is endless. But most of these diseases would
have shown up in the donor patient. Such microbe-laden skin would
never have been harvested in the first place.”
Not on purpose, Scully thought to herself. But people made
mistakes. And microbes were often tricky to spot, even by trained
professionals. A million viruses could live on the head of a pin—and
viruses were extremely hard to trace, or predict. “After the
procedure, did Stanton exhibit any symptoms at all? Anything that
might hint at a viral or bacteriological exposure?”
Bernstein started to shake his head, then paused. “Well, now
that I think about it, there was one thing. But I can’t imagine how it
could be connected to such an outbreak of violence.”
He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “A small circular
rash. Right here, on the nape of his neck. It looked like thousands of
tiny red dots. I assumed it was some sort of local allergic reaction—
like an insect bite, only a bit larger. I’m not a specialist, but I can’t
think of any serious disease that presents like that.”
Scully wasn’t sure if the strange rash was connected—but she
filed it in her memory. She was trying to think if there was anything
else they needed from the plastic surgeon when Bernstein glanced
at his watch, then let out a ponderous sigh. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got
an emergency surgery scheduled to start in a few minutes. If you
have any more questions, I’ll be in OR Four down the hall. And if
there are any breakthroughs in the case, please let me know. Teri
Nestor was a personal friend—but Mr. Stanton was my patient. I
know it’s foolish, but I feel like I failed him somehow.”
He excused himself and exited the scrub room. When he was
gone, Scully turned toward her partner. Though it was now well
past one in the morning, she felt a new burst of energy. Based on
what they had learned in the past few hours, she felt sure they were
moving closer to solving the case. It was an intriguing difference in
personality: Mulder grew electric when faced with a mystery—
while Scully was excited by the prospect of a solution. “I think it’s
pretty clear what we need to do next. While Barrett continues her
manhunt, we have to track down the donor skin and find out if it
was infected with anything that could have caused Stanton’s
violence. And we have to act quickly—we don’t want any more of
that harvested skin ending up on other patients.”
Mulder didn’t respond right away. Instead, he moved to the
sink. Bernstein had left the faucet loose, and a stream of drops
spattered quietly against the basin. Mulder reached forward and
held his palm under the stream. “Scully, do you really think a virus
can explain what happened in that recovery room?”
Scully paused, staring at the back of his head. They had both
seen the same evidence, participated in the same interviews—but it
was obvious their thoughts were moving in two different directions.
As always. “Absolutely. Dr. Bernstein corroborated my theory. It’s
possible that Stanton caught something from the graft—something
that could have affected his brain, and his personality. Once we
track down the graft, we’ll be able to find out for sure. And then
we'll know how to deal with Stanton when we find him—and what
precautions Barrett’s officers need to take in bringing him in.”
Mulder shut off the sink and dried his hand against a towel from
the rack. “A microbe, Scully? That’s how you want to explain this?”
“You have a better explanation?”
Mulder shrugged. “Whenever doctors run into a mystery they
can’t explain, they blame a microbe. Some sort of virus or bacteria,
something you can see only through a microscope—or sometimes
not at all. If you ask me, it’s a convenient way of thinking. It’s a
scientist’s way of pretending to understand something completely
beyond his grasp.”
“Mulder,” Scully interrupted, frustrated, “if you have a better
plan of action, I’m listening.”
“Actually, I agree with you, Scully. We need to track down that
graft. We need to find out what changed Perry Stanton into a
violent killer. But I’m not so sure we’re going to need a microscope
to find what we’re looking for.”
Scully watched as he moved toward the door. “What do you
mean?”
He glanced back at her. “It would take a pretty big microbe to
crush a nurse’s skull.”
As Scully followed Mulder out into the hallway, she failed to
notice the tall, angled man watching from the now-deserted
operating room on the other side of the viewing windows. The man
was dressed in a blue orderly uniform, most of his young face
obscured by a sterile white surgical mask. His skin was dark and
vaguely Asiatic, his black hair cropped tight beneath a pink
antiseptic cap.
His narrow eyes followed the two agents until they disappeared
from view. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny
cellular phone. He dialed quickly, his long fingers flickering over
the numbered keys. A few seconds later, he began to speak in a low,
nasal voice. The words were foreign, the tone rising and falling as
the syllables chased one another through the thin material of the
young man’s surgical mask. There was a brief pause, then a deep
voice responded from somewhere far away. The young man
nodded, slipping the phone back into his pocket.
An anticipatory tremor moved through his shoulders. Then he
grinned, his high, brown cheeks pulling at his mask. For him, the
task ahead was more than an act of loyalty, or of duty—it was an
act of nearly erotic pleasure.
His fingers curled together as he followed the two FBI agents out
into the hospital hallway.
Forty minutes later, Mulder shivered against a sudden blast of
refrigerated air as he pursued the ample ME’s assistant into the
cold-storage room lodged deep in the basement of New York
Hospital. It had been a relatively easy task to trace the skin graft
back across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, but in the process he and
Scully had run into the first sign that their investigation was not
going to take a simple route—and at the same time, the first strike
against Scully’s growing belief that the case would soon be
explained by a conventional medical query. As Mulder had
predicted, Stanton’s transformation would not be solved through a
quick trip to the New York Fire Department Skin Bank.
“Missing,” Scully had said, hanging up the phone as she and
Mulder had exited through the Jamaica Hospital ER. “They’re
unable to locate the six trays of harvested skin from which Stanton’s
transplant was taken.”
The administrator of the skin bank had assured Scully that the
FBI would be notified the minute the missing trays had been
located. He had also insisted that this was not a matter for alarm;
the grossly understaffed and underfunded skin bank dealt with
hundreds of pounds of skin on a weekly basis, and mistakes like this
were not uncommon. And although he hadn’t been able to find the
harvested skin, the administrator had been able to give Scully the
name and location of the donor corpse: Derrick Kaplan, a current
inhabitant of the New York Hospital morgue.
While Scully had accepted the administrator’s comments at face
value, Mulder had felt his own suspicions rising. He didn’t believe
Stanton’s behavior could be explained by any known microbe—and
the missing skin seemed like too much of a coincidence. Still, he
and Scully had been left with a lead to follow. While the NYPD
continued their search for Perry Stanton, he and Scully would
follow the skin graft back to its source.
After Scully had hung up on the skin bank, she and Mulder
headed directly to New York Hospital. After a short stop at the front
desk, they had located the ME’s assistant half-asleep in his office
two elevator stops below the ER. Short, unkempt, with curly blond
hair and thick lips, Leif Eckleman was exactly the type of man
Mulder had expected to find working the basement warren of a
hospital morgue. Likewise, Mulder hadn’t been surprised to see the
neck of a half-empty fifth of Jack Daniel’s sticking out of the open
top drawer of the man’s cluttered desk; alcohol went with the
territory. Mulder tried not to pass any judgments.
“The two kids from the med school got here late Friday night,”
Eckleman mumbled, as he crossed the rectangular room to a set of
filing cabinets standing flush against a cinder-block wall. His words
were slightly slurred, but Mulder couldn’t tell whether it was the
alcohol or the fact that he had just been awakened from a deep
sleep. “Josh Kemper, and a buddy of his—Mike, I think his name
was. Used OR Six, upstairs in the surgical ward. Cleaned it up pretty
good afterward. No complaints from the surgeons.”
Eckleman pulled open one of the cabinets and began to search
through the manila folders inside. Mulder watched Scully amble
across the center of the room, her low heels clicking against the
tiled floor. Her gaze was pinned to the wall of body drawers that
stretched the entire length of the room. Mulder counted at least
sixty—and he knew that this was only one of eight similar cold-
storage rooms that made up the hospital’s morgue. Even so, New
York was a big city; hard to find an apartment, and probably
equally hard to find a drawer.
“Here it is,” Eckleman finally said, lifting a folder out of the
cabinet. “Mike Lifton, that was the other kid’s name. Both were in
their third year at Columbia Med. They signed for your donor at
three-fifteen A.M. Derrick Kaplan—Caucasian, mid-thirties, blond
hair, blue eyes. Locker fifty-two.”
Mulder was already moving toward the wall of drawers. Scully
turned to Eckleman as Mulder scanned the numbered labels. “May I
take a look at the file?”
Eckleman shrugged, handing her the folder. “Not much to see.
Kaplan came into the ER complaining of chest pains, then died in
the ICU of an aortic dissection. Had a donor card in his wallet. The
skin boys got to him first, because the van from the eye bank got
stuck in the mess on the FDR Drive. The big accident, you know.
Collected seven bodies that same night, but only Kaplan had the
vulture card.”
“The vulture card?” Mulder heard Scully ask, as he finally
located the steel drawer with the number fifty-two written in black
Magic Marker across its cardboard label. “Is that what you call it?”
“You work down here, you get to be fairly morbid. In my
opinion, there’s nothing wrong with vultures. Damned efficient
birds—they don’t let anything go to waste. Not so different from the
harvest teams, when you think about it.”
Mulder wasn’t sure he wanted to think about it. He grasped the
handle beneath the numbered label and gave it a gentle yank. The
drawer rolled outward with a mild, metallic groan. Mulder paused
for a brief moment, then glanced at Scully. She was engrossed in
Kaplan’s folder. Mulder cleared his throat.
Scully looked up. Mulder pointed, and Scully’s face momentarily
blanched. The locker was empty. She quickly turned toward the
ME’s assistant. “Mr. Eckleman?”
Eckleman rubbed the back of his hand against his thick lips.
Then he laughed, nervously. “Whoops. That’s not good. You sure
that’s number fifty-two?”
Mulder rechecked the label. “Is there any chance the body was
moved?”
Eckleman quickly crossed back to the file cabinet. “Shouldn't
have been. But sometimes they get switched around. Especially on
the busy nights. And Friday was a busy night. Seven bodies, like I
said. And there’s always a chance the kids put the body back in the
wrong drawer.”
He paused as he pulled a handful of files out of the cabinet. He
began reading to himself, and Mulder crossed back to Scully, who
was still looking through Kaplan’s chart. “Anything significant,
Scully?”
Scully shook her head. “Nothing noticeably viral. But we need
the body to know for sure. Or, at the very least, a sample of his
skin.”
Mulder felt his adrenaline rising. First the missing trays at the
skin bank—now the missing body. Then again, he didn’t want to get
ahead of himself. He glanced at the flustered, semidrunk ME’s
assistant; certainly, the man could have gotten the drawers mixed
up.
“PIL check the other six that came in that night, and all of the
empties. Odds are, well find our boy.” Eckleman tucked the files
under his right arm and hurried back to the storage wall. He began
pulling open the drawers, humming nervously to himself as he
worked. Mulder could tell the man was embarrassed. Perhaps this
sort of thing had happened before. “Locker fifty-three is all right.
Angela Dotter, one of the victims from the accident. Got a steering
wheel right through her rib cage. Fifty-four and fifty-five look good,
too. And here’s another from the accident. Kid can’t be more than
twenty...”
Eckleman paused midsentence as the next drawer slid to a stop
by his knees. He began mumbling, half to himself. The stack of files
slipped out from under his arm, the pages fanning out as they hit
the floor. “What the hell? This can’t be right.”
He reached forward, and the sound of a zipper reverberated
through the room. Mulder moved forward as Eckleman hovered
over the toe tag. “Derrick Kaplan. It’s him. But this doesn’t make
any sense.”
Mulder looked over the man’s shoulder. The corpse was staring
straight up, blue eyes wide-open. Mulder heard Scully exhale as she
joined him next to the drawer. It was immediately obvious what
was wrong with the body.
Derrick Kaplan wasn’t missing any skin.
“Damn it,” Eckleman said, again rubbing at his watery lips. “The
little vultures must have skinned the wrong body.”
“The wrong body?” Mulder asked.
Eckleman didn’t respond. Instead, he bent down and began
pulling open the bottom row of steel drawers: the empties. Each
time he stared into another blank box, he cursed, each profanity
more colorful and obscene than the last. “Can’t blame this on me.
No way can they blame this one on me. I didn’t skin anybody. I
wasn’t even in here—”
Eckleman stopped, as he suddenly realized that he had reached
the last drawer. “Well, son of a bitch. Unless they double-stacked it
in one of the other drawers, it’s not here.”
Mulder looked at the row of open, empty drawers. He didn’t
know whether to be frustrated or intrigued. “Can we at least figure
out which body is missing?”
“Probably the one that was originally slated for this drawer,”
Scully answered, pointing at Derrick Kaplan’s corpse. “Didn’t you
say this was supposed to contain one of the seven brought in that
same Friday night?”
Eckleman nodded, returning to the stack of folders he had
dropped on the floor. His stubby fingers were trembling by the time
he found the correct file. “A John Doe. Brought into the ER from
the scene of the big car accident I told you about. Also blond, blue
eyes—but mid-to early twenties. With a dragon tattoo on his right
shoulder.”
“Was the John Doe a trauma victim?” Scully asked. “Did he die
from injuries sustained in the accident?”
There was a pause as Eckleman read through the file. Then he
shook his head. “Actually, no. There were no signs of external
injuries. The two interns who worked on him didn’t know what
killed him. He was scheduled for an autopsy at eight tomorrow
morning.”
Mulder and Scully exchanged looks. A missing body, an autopsy
less than five hours away. The trail was getting more circuitous—
and, despite their efforts, they still hadn’t found an ounce of the
original skin.
“I better go report this,” Eckleman grumbled, heading toward
the door. “Administrator Cavanaugh is going to have my ass for
dinner. But I tell you, it isn’t my fault. I didn’t skin the wrong damn
body.”
Mulder watched him trudge out of the cold-storage room. Then
he turned back toward Scully. She was looking through the John
Doe’s file. “These are big institutions we’re dealing with—and it’s
very late at night. At two in the morning, things get lost. At eight in
the morning, they tend to turn up. In the meantime, we have to
speak to those med students. If something was transmitted from this
John Doe to Perry Stanton—they’re the obvious link.”
With the John Doe’s body missing and Perry Stanton still at
large, the two med students were the only link. Mulder felt his pulse
quicken as he glanced back at the empty storage drawer. Somehow,
he found the steel rectangle more foreboding without a corpse
inside. It was like digging in a graveyard and finding an empty
coffin.
Despite Scully’s words, Mulder did not believe the missing
corpse was a coincidence. He was certain the John Doe’s skin held
the key to the tragedy in the recovery room. And he would not
accept any explanation that did not expose what had really
happened to Perry Stanton—no matter how rational it seemed.
The broken glass glittered like an emerald carpet in the triangle of
light, jagged green shards spread out across the black asphalt in the
shape of a bloated July moon. Perry Stanton stood beneath a
streetlamp at the edge of the curb, his thin shoulders heaving under
his torn hospital smock. He could see bottle necks sticking out of
the glass like phallic icebergs, the trace of an alcoholic’s rage or a
fraternity party that had overflowed into the dark Brooklyn streets.
Stanton’s mind whirled as the shards grew in his eyes, huge green
thorns taunting him, daring him, begging him forward.
Suddenly, his mouth opened and a dull moan escaped into the
night air. His bare feet curled inward against the sidewalk, and his
spine arched back. The muscles in his thighs contracted, and he
threw himself forward, diving headlong into the street. His body
crashed down into the glass, and he rolled back and forth against
the shards, his arms flailing wildly at his sides.
He could hear the hospital smock tearing, the glass crunching
under his weight. But he felt no relief. The glass did nothing to stop
the horrible itching. The shards should have ripped through his skin
as easily as it ripped his thin smock—but the terrible crawling
continued unabated. It felt as though every inch of his body was
infested with tiny, hungry maggots. It was so bad he couldn’t keep a
single thought in his head, so bad that every command from his
brain seemed to echo a thousand times before it found his muscles.
Lying flat on his back in the broken glass, he slammed his palms
over his eyes and an anguished wail bellowed through his lungs.
What the hell was going on? What the hell was wrong with him?
He felt something warm and wet against his closed eyelids, and
he quickly pulled his hands away. His eyes opened, and he stared at
his blooded palms. He quickly crawled to his knees, more tears
burning at his eyes.
Even through the intense itching, he could still remember the
woman’s head between his palms. He could still hear the bones in
her skull crunching as he had squeezed. He could still see her eyes
bulging forward, the blood spouting out of her ears, her cheeks
collapsing into her mouth—he could still feel her die between his
palms. Between his palms.
And worst of all—he could still feel the rage emanating through
his body. The rage that had overwhelmed his thoughts and his brain
and made him leap up out of the hospital bed. The fierce anger that
had started somewhere in the itching: an unbelievable heat, burning
downward through his flesh. It had felt as if his veins and arteries
had caught fire, his insides boiling under the intense flame.
Then the fiery rage had entered his skull and everything had
gone white. He had seen the nurse leaning over him, and it was like
looking through someone else’s eyes. The rage had taken over, and
he had grabbed her head in his hands.
After that, it had all happened so fast. The itching, burning rage
had made him destroy everything within reach. And then a single
thought had twisted through the agony—escape.
His head jerked back and forth as new tremors spiraled through
his body. He shook the broken glass out of his smock as he
staggered to his feet. Escape. Somewhere in what was left of his
mind, he knew the command was not his own. It also came from
somewhere in the horrible itching. Somewhere in his skin.
He had no choice but to obey. When he resisted, the itching only
grew worse. He stumbled forward, his bare feet crunching against
the glass. He wasn’t sure where he was—but he knew he wasn’t far
ahead of the sirens or the shouts. He couldn’t let them catch him.
He knew what the itching and the rage would make him do if they
caught him. More skulls between his palms—
A sudden screech tore into his ears, and he looked up through
blurry eyes. He saw the yellow hood of a taxicab careening around
the corner ahead of him, the startled driver leaning heavily on his
horn. There was a brief, frozen second—then the front fender
glanced against Stanton’s left thigh.
The cab skidded to a sudden stop. Stanton looked down and saw
the mangled hood still partially wrapped around his leg. He stepped
back, his entire body beginning to shake. The itchiness swept up
through his hips, across his chest, to his face. No, no, no!
The driver-side door came open, and a tall, dark-skinned man
leapt out. He saw Stanton, and shouted something. Then he noticed
his ruined cab. His eyes widened. “Mister, are you okay?”
Stanton’s skin caught fire, and his mind turned white. He tried
to fight back, tried to stop the commands before they reached his
muscles. He tried to picture himself as he was before—gentle, kind,
weak. He tried to focus on the image of his daughter, beautiful
Emily, and his life before the transplant.
But the thoughts vanished as the maggots crawled through his
skin. He lurched forward, his face contorted. The taxi driver
stepped back, fear evident on his face. Somehow, Stanton managed
to coax a single word through his constricted throat.
“Run.”
The taxi driver stared at him. Stanton held out his hands as he
staggered forward. The driver saw the blood on his palms, and
realization hit him. He turned and ran screaming down the dark
street.
Stanton stumbled after him, the single word still echoing
through his brain.
Run. Run. Run!
The sky had turned a dull gray by the time Mulder trudged up the
stone steps that led to the arched entrance of the J. P. Friedler
Medical Arts Building on the Columbia Medical School campus. He
didn’t need to look at his watch to know it was close to five in the
morning; his muscles had that strange, wiry feeling that meant he
was nearing twenty-four hours without sleep. He realized that he
and Scully couldn’t keep going like this for much longer. But until
Perry Stanton was taken into custody, they were in a fierce race
with the mysteries of the case.
Just minutes ago, Scully had phoned him with the latest news
from Detective Barrett’s manhunt. Stanton had wrecked a taxicab
somewhere in northern Brooklyn, and the driver had narrowly
escaped with his life. The search was now focused on a five-block
area, and Barrett was certain they would find Stanton within the
next few hours.
Which meant it was all the more important for Mulder and
Scully to keep barreling ahead. They had split up to reach the two
med students as quickly as possible. Even so, Mulder prayed they
would be quick enough. If Scully’s theory was right, there was a
dangerous, diseased man still raging through the streets of New
York. And if Mulder was right—a disease didn’t begin to explain the
phenomenon they were chasing: something that could transform a
quiet, gentle professor into a vicious killer, with inhuman strength.
It took Mulder a few minutes to reach the anatomy lab on the
third floor of the vast stone building. He was out of breath as he
exited the marble stairwell, and he paused for a moment by the
double doors that led into the lab, leaning against the wall. He
could see the cavernous room through a small circular window in
the center of one of the doors. The room was close to fifty yards
deep, rectangular, and contained two parallel rows of waist-high
steel tables. Mulder could vaguely make out the bulky shapes on the
tables; the bodies were wrapped in opaque plastic bags, and there
were bright red plastic organ trays on carts attached to the stainless
steel blood and fluid gutters that ran the length of each table.
Mulder swallowed back a gust of nausea as he pressed his palm
against one of the double doors. It was more physiological than
mental; he had seen many dead bodies in his career, and he was not
squeamish by nature. But the clinical nature of the anatomy lab
triggered something primitive inside of him. Here, the human body
was nothing more than meat. There was no room for philosophies
of life, soul, or even God. Here, humanity was defined by bright red
plastic organ trays and stainless steel fluid gutters.
He pushed the door inward and stepped inside the long
laboratory. The strong scent of formaldehyde filled his nostrils, and
he fought the urge to gag. His gaze roamed over the cadaver tables,
jumping from bag to bag. Then he caught sight of his quarry,
standing alone near the back of the room, bent over an open body
bag. From that distance, Michael Lifton appeared to be tall, gangly,
with short reddish hair and youthful features. He was wearing
crimson sweatpants and a gray athletic T-shirt beneath a white lab
coat. There was a thick book open on the cart at the head of the
dissecting table, and Lifton seemed completely entranced by the
open body in front of him. He didn’t look up until Mulder was a few
feet away, and when he did his eyes seemed glazed, far away. His
eyelids drooped unnaturally low, and there was a slight tremble in
his upper lip. Was he ill? Or simply tired? Lifton coughed, as the
color returned to his cheeks. “Excuse me, I didn’t hear you come in.
Can I help you?”
Mulder shifted his gaze from Lifton’s face to his bloodied gloves
and the scalpel balanced between his thumb and forefinger. “Hope
I’m not interrupting. I’m Agent Fox Mulder from the FBI. I tried
your dorm room, but there was no one home. Your next-door
neighbor told me I could find you here.”
Lifton didn’t move for a full second. Then he carefully set the
scalpel down next to the open book. Mulder read the large-print
heading that stretched across the two open pages: PARTIAL BOWEL
RESECTION. His gaze slid to the open lower abdomen on the
dissecting table. It looked like a bag overflowing with black snakes.
Mulder quickly moved his eyes back to the young man’s face.
“The FBI?” Lifton asked, his eyes wide. “Am I in some sort of
trouble?”
Lifton coughed again, and the sound was coarse, vaguely
pneumatic. Mulder saw beads of sweat running down the sides of
the kid’s face. It looked like he was running a fever. “Are you
feeling all right, Mr. Lifton?”
“Call me Mike. Pve got a bit of a cold. And I’ve been working in
here most of the night; the formaldehyde screws with my allergies.
What is this about?”
Lifton’s hands were trembling, and Mulder could not tell if it
was nervousness, or another sign of fever. He thought about Scully’s
microbe theory. Any minute, she would be arriving at Josh
Kemper’s apartment; would he be suffering from the same flulike
symptoms as the kid in front of Mulder? Were the symptoms just
the beginning of something worse? “I need to speak to you about a
skin harvest you and Josh Kemper performed last Friday night.”
Lifton took a tiny step back from the dissecting table, his hands
falling to his sides. “Did we do something wrong?”
Mulder could tell from Lifton’s tone that he was not as surprised
by the idea as Mulder would have suspected. “Well, we think you
and Josh might have harvested skin from the wrong body.”
Lifton closed his eyes, his cheeks pale. “I knew it. I thought
something was wrong. But Josh insisted. He said Eckleman
probably blew the tags. He said the body was close enough to the
chart. Blond hair, blue eyes, no outward trauma.”
“So what made you suspect it was the wrong body?”
Lifton sighed, using his forearm to wipe the sweat off of his
forehead. “First, there was the tattoo. A dragon, on his right arm.
And then there was the strange rash.”
Mulder’s instincts perked up. He remembered what Bernstein
had told him about the rash on Stanton’s neck. “What sort of rash?”
Lifton turned his head to the side. He pointed to a clear area of
skin, right below his hairline. “Here, on the nape of his neck. A
circular eruption, thousands of tiny red dots. Josh told me it was
nothing—and it probably was. But if the guy had been in the ICU, it
would have been in the chart. A straight shot from the ER, maybe it
would have been missed. But not in the ICU.”
Mulder nodded. The John Doe had gone straight from the ER to
the morgue. Derrick Kaplan had spent time in the ICU before he
died. Mike Lifton was a smart kid—but he had allowed himself to
be bullied into performing the harvest, even though he had
suspected it was the wrong body.
“After you finished the harvest,” Mulder continued, “what did
you do with the body?”
Lifton looked at him. “What do you mean? We returned it to the
morgue, of course.”
“To the same locker?”
“Yes. Fifty something. Fifty-two, or fifty-four. I’ve usually got a
good head for numbers, but I’ve been practicing in here nearly
every night this week. Lack of sleep, you know. Screws with
everything.”
Mulder nodded. He hoped it was just lack of sleep that was
affecting Mike Lifton. But he had to cover the bases—to prove or
disprove Scully’s theory. “We need to get you checked up by a
doctor right away. There might be a chance that you caught
something from the John Doe.”
Lifton’s face turned even paler. “What do you mean? Did he die
from some sort of infectious disease?”
“We’re not sure. That’s why we need you to get checked out.”
Lifton’s entire body seemed to sag as he thought about what
Mulder was saying. Then Mulder noticed another tremor move
through Lifton’s upper lip, followed by a heavy cough. “I think we
should get you to an ER right away. Just to be sure.”
He didn’t know whether or not it was evidence of Scully’s theory
—but suddenly, he didn’t like the way Mike Lifton looked. It
seemed as though Lifton’s condition was deteriorating as he
watched. As the student hastily repacked the open cadaver with
trembling hands, Mulder hoped that Scully had gotten to the other
med student in time.
“Mr. Kemper! Mr. Josh Kemper!” Scully’s voice reverberated off the
heavy apartment door. “This is Agent Dana Scully of the FBI! The
building superintendent is here with me, and if you don’t answer
the door, I’m coming inside!”
Scully could feel her heart pounding as she waited for a
response. She glanced at the short, stocky man in the untucked gray
T-shirt standing next to her, and nodded. Mitch Butler began
fumbling through his oversize ring of apartment keys. Scully cursed
to herself as she watched the super’s stubby fingers struggling to
find the correct one. This was taking too long.
Scully had called for an ambulance when she had first arrived at
the Columbia-owned apartment building and found Kemper
unresponsive to her attempts to get inside his room, but she knew it
would be another few minutes before the paramedics would arrive.
She had already lost valuable time rousing the grubby
superintendent out of his apartment on the first floor; the trip
upstairs to the fourth floor had been insufferably long.
“Here it is,” Butler finally exclaimed, holding up a copper-
colored key. “Apartment four-twelve.”
Scully took the key from him and went to work on the lock. The
door came open, and she rushed inside. “Mr. Kemper? Josh?”
The living room was small and almost devoid of furniture. There
was a gray couch in one corner, facing a small television sitting on
top of a cardboard box. A picture of two dogs wearing tuxedos took
up most of the far wall, and dirty laundry invaded every inch of
bare floor. Scully was reminded of her own med-school days—when
even an hour for laundry would have been a gift from heaven. She
had been a kid, like Josh Kemper—just trying to survive.
“How many rooms?” she shouted back toward the super, who
was still standing in the entrance, breathing hard from the four
flights of stairs.
“Just this one, the kitchen, and the bedroom. Through that
door.”
Scully headed for the open doorway on the other side of the
living room. She passed through a small hallway and found herself
in a tiny kitchen: porcelain-tiled floor, chipped plaster hanging from
the walls, a light fixture that looked like it was older than the
electricity that powered it. There was an open container of orange
juice on a small wooden table in front of the refrigerator. Otherwise,
no signs of life. Scully rushed across the kitchen and through another
open doorway.
She nearly tripped on a pile of bedding, catching her balance
against a large wooden dresser. There was a bare mattress in the
middle of the room, covered with medical texts and science
magazines. But still no sign of Kemper.
“The bathroom,” she shouted back over her shoulder. “Where is
the bathroom?”
“Off the bedroom.”
Scully cursed, her eyes wildly searching the cramped space—
then she saw the closed door, directly on the other side of the
dresser, partially obscured by a sea of hanging colored beads. She
shoved the beads aside and yanked the door open.
There he was. Shirtless, lying facedown on the floor, one arm
crooked around the base of the toilet, the other twisted strangely
behind his back. Scully dropped to her knees and put her hand
against the side of his neck. No pulse. His skin felt warm to the
touch, but it had a waxy appearance and had turned a blue-gray
color. No doubt about it—Josh Kemper was dead. She gently
unhooked his right arm from around the base of the toilet, noting
the lack of rigor mortis in his joints. She used her weight to roll him
over.
His eyes and mouth were open, an anguished expression frozen
on his boyish face. His face and bare chest were slightly purple
where the blood had pooled beneath his skin. Scully reached
forward and pushed an errant lock of blond hair out of the way,
then pressed her index finger against Kemper’s cheek. The pressure
caused a slight blanching of the area beneath her fingertip. When
she moved her hand away, the discoloration returned. Early
nonfixed lividity. That meant he had been dead less than four hours
—perhaps three, but no less than two. From the anguished look on
his face and the awkward positioning of his body, Scully guessed he
had convulsed or stroked out. But there were no obvious wounds to
his head or face, so it wasn’t the fall that had killed him. It had
been something else—something inside his body.
Scully had a sudden thought and tilted Kemper’s head to the
side. But the back of his neck looked clear. No red dots, no circular
rash. Still, that didn’t mean it wasn’t the same disease that had sent
Stanton into a violent fit.
She sighed, rising to her feet. She turned to the sink and turned
the water faucet as hot as it would go. Then she grabbed a bar of
soap and began working on her hands. She knew she had taken a
risk by coming into the room at all—but she doubted it was
anything airborne or even contagious to the touch. Airborne viruses
deadly enough to kill a man Kemper’s age were extremely rare—
and if the John Doe had been an airborne carrier, there would have
been many more victims by now. That meant it was probably
something blood-borne. Those at risk included the interns who
worked on him, the two med students, perhaps the paramedics who
had brought him in, and Bernstein’s surgical team at Jamaica
Hospital.
“Ms. Scully?” The super’s hack crept at her from somewhere in
the bedroom. “Is everything all right in there?”
“Mr. Butler,” Scully responded, “I need you to go downstairs and
wait for the ambulance. I'll join you in a moment.”
Scully listened as Butler’s plodding footsteps trickled away. Then
she finished washing her hands and pulled her cellular phone out of
her breast pocket. Her shoulders sagged as she dialed Mulder’s
number. He answered on the second ring.
“Mulder, where are you?”
His voice sounded tinny through the phone’s earpiece. “The ER
at Columbia Medical School.”
Scully glanced at the body on the bathroom floor. She could
hear sirens in the distance, but she wasn’t sure if it was through the
phone or through the thin apartment walls. “I take it you found
Mike Lifton?”
“Scully, he’s not doing so well. When I brought him in, he was
complaining of flulike symptoms. Now the doctors tell me he’s
fallen into some sort of coma.”
Scully nodded to herself. The symptoms fit with her earlier
hypothesis. A viral threat, something that could cause cerebral
swelling. The sort of disease that could also cause a psychotic fit
and deadly convulsions. “We’re going to have to notify the CDC
immediately. They’re going to want to track down anyone who’s
had serious contact with the John Doe. And they’ll need to act fast
—obviously, the infected subjects’ conditions deteriorate rapidly.”
Mulder went silent on the other end of the line. Scully wondered
if he was still resisting the idea that a microbe was behind the case.
Or had the med student’s illness finally convinced him that a
disease linked all of the elements of the case together? Then again,
she doubted he would give in to reason that easily.
Finally, Mulder’s voice drifted back into Scully’s ear. “So Josh
Kemper’s pretty sick, t00?”
Scully took a deep breath. “He’s dead, Mulder. Whatever the
John Doe was carrying—it progresses quickly.”
“And you think it’s the same disease that made Stanton kill Teri
Nestor?”
“Yes. Like I said before, it’s some sort of microbe that causes a
swelling of the brain. And Mulder, whatever Stanton was capable of
in that recovery room or out in Brooklyn this morning—I don't
think he’ll be putting up much of a struggle in a few more hours.
This is a fast-acting disease.”
Scully heard voices out in the apartment. The paramedics had
arrived. “I’m heading back to the hospital with Kemper’s corpse. Pl
find out what this microbe is, Mulder. And after I do—we’re both
going to get some sleep.”
For once, there was no argument from the other end of the line.
Less than ten minutes later, the EMS team had secured Josh
Kemper’s body in the back of the ambulance. As the double doors
clicked shut and the heavy vehicle pulled away from the curb, a
solitary figure stepped out from the narrow garbage alley that ran
next to the apartment complex. His glossy, sable hair was hidden
beneath a baseball cap, and his lithe body swam beneath a long, tan
overcoat. His hands were buried in his deep pockets, with just a
hint of white latex showing at the wrists.
He watched the ambulance roll quietly down the deserted street.
He could just make out the red-haired FBI agent sitting in the front
passenger seat. Her pale cheek was pressed up against the side
window, a look of sheer exhaustion in her blue eyes.
The young, caramel-skinned man thought about the discovery
Agent Scully was about to make. Certainly, it would chase the
fatigue out of her pretty features. The young man smiled, carefully
removing his right hand from his pocket. He twirled a tiny plastic
object between his gloved fingers. The object was thin and
cylindrical, the shape of a miniature ballpoint pen. The young man
touched a plastic button on the edge of the object, and there was an
almost imperceptible click.
A shiver of excitement ran through the young man’s skin as he
carefully examined the three-inch-long needle that had appeared
out of one end of the object. The needle was thinner than a single
hair, its point significantly smaller than a single human pore. At
certain angles it seemed invisible—too small, even, to displace
particles of the early-morning air.
So much more subtle than a gun or a razor blade—and at the
same time, so much more effective. The young man closed his eyes,
reliving the moment just five hours ago—the tiny flick of his wrist,
the unnoticed brush of a stranger in a crowded late-night subway
car. Then the second moment ten minutes later, in passing on the
stairwell of the Columbia Medical School anatomy lab. A thrill
pulsed through his body, and he sighed, wishing he could have
watched the results himself.
But despite his love for his work—he had to adhere to at least a
semblance of professionalism. His gloved finger again found the
plastic button, and the tiny needle retracted. He carefully slid the
pen-shaped object back into his pocket and strolled toward a blue
Chevrolet parked a few feet down the curb.
The two FBI agents would be returning to New York Hospital. If
he hurried, he could arrive just a few minutes behind Josh Kemper’s
ambulance. He had to stay close to the two agents—on the off
chance that they were smarter than expected. If they started to get
too close again—the young man smiled, fondling the pen-shaped
object inside his pocket. Professionalism, he reminded himself. Still,
he could feel the warm, almost sexual anticipation rising through
his body.
In his heart, he hoped agents Scully and Mulder were absolutely
brilliant.
Four hours later, a triangle of harsh orange light ripped Mulder out
of a deep sleep. He sat straight up on the borrowed hospital cot in
the cozy third-floor intern room, blinking rapidly. Scully came into
focus, her red hair highlighted by the high fluorescent beams from
the hospital hallway. She was wearing a white lab coat and gloves,
and there was a plastic contact sheet in her right hand. The look on
her face was somewhere between disbelief and dismay.
“We’ve found our microbe,” she said, crossing into the room and
dropping heavily onto the edge of Mulder’s cot. She tossed the
contact sheet onto his lap. “These are shots of the isolated virus
taken by an electron microscope. The sample came from
cerebrospinal fluid tapped from a postmortem lumbar puncture on
Josh Kemper.”
Mulder looked at the contact sheet. He could see a tiny pill-
shaped object multiplied a half dozen times in the different-angled
shots. It looked so small, so innocuous.
“They woke me with the results from the lab twenty minutes
ago,” Scully continued. “But I went down there myself to check
what they were saying. Because it’s pretty hard to believe.”
“What do you mean? Scully, what am I looking at?”
Scully took a deep breath. “Encephalitis lethargica. We’ve
matched it up through the CDC’s computer link. They’re sending a
specialist here this afternoon to confirm the diagnosis. But the EEGs
and CT scans coincide. There isn’t any doubt.”
Mulder wasn’t sure if he had heard of the disease before. “So it’s
a form of encephalitis? Isn’t that similar to what you predicted—a
disease that could cause brain swelling?”
“It is a strain of encephalitis—but Mulder, it’s not at all what I
expected.”
Mulder waited for her to continue. She was staring at the
contact sheet in his hands as if the pill-shaped virus might crawl
right out into the intern room.
“Mulder,” she finally stated, “there hasn’t been an outbreak of
encephalitis lethargica since 1922. The virus you’re looking at has
rarely been seen outside a laboratory in over seventy-five years.”
Mulder raised his eyebrows. No wonder he hadn’t recognized
the disease. “How does this virus manifest? Does it fit the symptoms
we’ve seen?”
Scully shrugged. “The disease starts similarly to the more
common strains of encephalitis; causing fever, confusion, sometimes
paralysis of one side of the body—and in some cases, convulsions,
psychosis, coma, and death. But lethargica also induces incredible
> 99
fatigue, which is why it’s sometimes called the ‘sleeping sickness’.
Mulder nodded. He remembered Mike Lifton’s drooping eyelids
and glazed eyes. But Scully still hadn’t told him anything that could
explain how Stanton could have reacted with such inhuman
strength. And there were still other inconsistencies that were not
yet explained. “Scully, what about the circular rash on both the
John Doe and Perry Stanton? Could that have been caused by
encephalitis lethargica? And why wasn’t it present on either of the
med students?”
“The rash might be unrelated—perhaps a separate infection, one
that’s more difficult to catch. Remember, the med students did not
have the same level of contact with the John Doe as Perry Stanton.
Stanton got a slab of his skin stapled onto an open burn.”
“That still doesn’t explain Stanton’s violent explosion. Neither of
the med students reacted violently—”
Scully waved her hand. “Viruses can affect different people
differently—and especially a virus like this. Lethargica attacks areas
of the brain, as well as the meninges, the brain’s covering. There’s
no way to predict how a specific individual might react. During the
1922 outbreak, forty percent of those infected died. This time, we’re
looking at amuch worse percentage—but at least the disease has
been confined to two people who had close contact with the carrier.
That means the virus hasn’t changed its mode of transmission.”
Mulder pushed his feet off the side of the cot, stretching his
calves. He was becoming more alert by the second. He hoped Scully
was as refreshed as he was— because in his mind, the case was
nowhere near over. “You mean it’s blood-borne. Like HIV.”
Scully nodded. “That’s right. It’s transmitted only by blood-to-
blood contact. The 1922 version was also sometimes carried by
mosquitoes, or biting flies—but that’s extremely rare.”
Mulder reached out and touched one of Scully’s gloved hands.
“Scully, both the med students were wearing gloves. How do you
explain the blood-to-blood contact? A swarm of mosquitoes in the
ER?”
“Latex gloves aren’t a hundred percent protection. And a skin
harvest is a messy procedure.”
Mulder still thought it was remarkable that both students had
become so sick—so quickly—while the plastic surgery team, which
had worked invasively with the harvested skin, had remained
healthy. “It doesn’t seem right, Scully. Even if the virus links the
med students to the John Doe—we don’t have any proof of a link to
Perry Stanton. If Dr. Bernstein was sick, maybe—but he’s not. The
only thing that connects the John Doe to Perry Stanton is the
circular red rash.”
Scully rose slowly from the cot and took the contact sheet out of
Mulder’s hands. “We won’t know for sure until we’ve got Stanton in
custody. I’ve explained the precautions to Barrett—gloves, surgical
masks, limited contact—and she assures me they’ll have him within
the next hour. By then, the investigator from the CDC will be here
to confirm the lethargica, and this tragedy will come to a close.”
Mulder ran his hands through his hair. He didn’t say what he
was thinking—that this tragedy was nowhere near the final act.
Likewise, he doubted even Barrett would have such an easy time
bringing in a man who had shoved an IV rack a few feet into a
hospital wall. Instead, he pressed his fingers against the side of his
jaw, testing the stiffness. Then he rose from the cot. “Personally,
Scully, I don’t think the CDC is going to make this case any clearer.
You can follow the lethargica angle as far as it’s going to go; in the
meantime, I’m going to find out more about our John Doe.”
Scully raised her eyebrows. “Mulder, we’ve already gone
through his chart a half dozen times. The interns didn’t know what
was wrong with him—and until we’ve got a body and an autopsy,
there isn’t much more we can discover about his death.”
Mulder headed toward the door. “I’m not interested in how he
died, Scully. I want to know how he ended up in a medical chart in
the first place.”
Mulder arrived in the ER just as the trauma team crashed through
the double doors. He counted at least six people crowded around
the stretcher: the burly chief resident, a surgical consult in green
scrubs, two nurses—and at the tail end of the stretcher, two thickset
men in dark blue paramedic uniforms. The smaller of the two was
holding a bottle of blood above his shoulder as he raced to keep up
with an IV tube attached to the patient’s right thigh. The larger
paramedic had an object delicately braced in both arms; the object
was oddly shaped and wrapped in white gauze.
Mulder remained a few feet away as the stretcher passed
through the center of the ER, toward the elevators that led up to the
surgical ward. He caught a glimpse of the patient between the
shoulders of the two nurses: thin, tall, writhing in obvious pain,
tubes running out of every inch of bare skin. At first, Mulder
couldn’t tell what was wrong—then his gaze moved to the
tourniquet wrapped tightly around the man’s left forearm. He
watched as the surgical consult took the gauze-covered object out of
the paramedic’s arms and lifted a corner of the white cloth.
“It’s in pretty good shape,” he overheard the paramedic say.
“Landed under the track, which protected it from the train. Think
you can reattach?”
The consult nodded, then continued on with the stretcher. The
two paramedics stood watching as the rest of the group raced
toward the elevator. Mulder shivered, then took his cue and stepped
forward.
“Luke Canton?” he asked. He had gotten the name from the ER
dispatcher. Canton and his partner had brought the John Doe into
the hospital on the night of the thirteen-car accident. The
dispatcher had described him as one of the best in the city.
Canton turned toward Mulder, looking him over. The paramedic
was six feet tall, with wide shoulders, and reddish scruff covering
most of his square jaw. He yanked off his bloody gloves and tossed
them to the floor. “That’s right. This is my partner, Emory Ross.”
“Tm Agent Mulder from the FBI. That was a hell of a scene. Is he
going to be all right?”
Canton shrugged. His face was grim, but there was something
bright, deep in his blue eyes. This was his high—the adrenaline
pump of medicine at its most raw. “Lost a fight with a subway car.
But if the surgeon’s any good, he’ll keep his hand.”
Mulder noticed splotches of fresh blood all over Canton’s
uniform. “Covered you pretty good. Was it like this with the John
Doe you brought in last Friday night?”
Canton shook his head. “I figured that’s what this is about.
Heard through the grapevine he might have been carrying some
sort of virus.”
“It's a possibility,” Mulder responded. He knew the CDC would
probably be rounding up all of the possible risk candidates by
midafternoon. He gestured at the blood on Canton’s uniform. “Most
likely something blood-borne.”
Canton shrugged. “Well, then we’re in the clear. The John Doe
had no external wounds. No blood at all. Actually, we hardly had
any contact with him—other than lifting him into the ambulance
and working the Velcro straps. He didn’t crash until he was in the
ER. We didn’t even intubate—the two ER kids took over, and we
went back into the field.”
Mulder moved his gaze from Canton to his partner, Emory Ross.
Neither one looked the least bit ill. “And you’re feeling all right? No
signs of fatigue or fever?”
Canton smiled. “I worked out for two hours this morning. Hit
two-fifty-five on the bench. What about you, Ross?”
Ross laughed. He seemed much younger than Canton, and it was
obvious from his eyes that he looked up to his wide-shouldered
partner. “I played pickup basketball for forty minutes before our
shift started. Didn’t score very many, but I got a handful of
rebounds.”
Mulder felt relief, and a tinge of excitement. He wasn’t a doctor,
but it sounded as though the two paramedics were not going to be
felled by lethargy. Mulder walked with the two men toward the
changing rooms located in the corner of the ER, just beyond the
admissions desk. “I was told the John Doe was brought in from the
scene of a car accident on the FDR Drive?”
“That’s right,” Canton answered. “Found him unconscious but
stable in the breakdown lane, maybe twenty feet from the lead car.
We already had one of the drivers in our wagon—a woman with a
pretty severe impact wound to her chest—but we decided to risk a
second scoop. There were other ambulances on the scene, but the
accident was as bad as it gets. Many more bodies than wagons.”
Mulder watched as Canton grabbed a passing nurse by the waist.
The young woman laughed, wriggling free. Mulder could tell that
Luke Canton was well liked. “And he remained stable en route to
the hospital?”
“Unresponsive,” Canton answered. “But certainly stable. We
doubted he was even involved in the accident itself; there were no
exterior wounds you would expect from someone thrown from a
crash, no bruises or cuts or anything—”
“Except the slight scratch,” Ross chimed in as they reached the
curtain that led to the changing room. “A circular little thing on the
back of his neck. But it didn’t look like much—I don’t remember if
we even bothered to tell the interns when we brought him in.”
Canton tossed a glance at his partner, who quickly looked at the
floor. Canton looked at Mulder. “It was a crazy night. We had to get
right back to the accident for the walking wounded. I’m sure the
kids spotted the little scratch on their own. Anyway, I doubt it had
anything to do with why the guy died.”
They pushed into the small changing room. There was a row of
metal lockers on one side, three parallel wooden benches, a closet
full of hangers, and a door that led to a shower room. Canton and
his partner moved to their adjacent lockers. As they changed into
clean uniforms, Mulder contemplated what Canton had just told
him. His thoughts kept coming back to the scene of the accident,
where the John Doe had been picked up. If he wasn’t thrown from
one of the cars—why was he unconscious in the breakdown lane,
twenty yards away?
When the paramedics had finished changing, Mulder turned to
Luke Canton. “I’ve already spoken to the dispatcher, and if it’s all
right with you, I’d like to borrow an hour of your time.”
Canton raised his eyebrows. Then he glanced at his partner and
shrugged. “If you’ve got the authority, I’ve got the hour.”
Mulder grinned. He liked Luke Canton’s attitude.
The ambulance seemed to float through the three lanes of New York
traffic as Luke Canton navigated between the moving bumpers with
an expert’s grace. Only twice did he have to reach above the
dashboard and flick on the colored lights. Mulder watched the
chain-link snakes of traffic slither by beneath the high side
windows, amazed at how the cars stayed so close together at such
high speeds. Coordinated chaos.
“It’s not surprising when they crash,” Canton said, reading his
mind. “It’s surprising when they don’t. You know how many people
die every year in cars?”
Mulder had an idea, but said nothing. Canton pointed to a
dented pickup truck weaving through the lanes two cars away.
“More than fifty thousand. About the same number as die from
AIDS. Funny thing. We’re quite willing to give up casual sex. But
give up casual driving? No way.”
Mulder felt his seatbelt tighten as Canton punched the brake,
and the ambulance suddenly veered to the right. Mulder watched
the guardrail grow closer as they rolled to a stop in the breakdown
lane. The lane was actually more like a gully, stretching fifty yards
along a curved section of rail. It was half the size of a regular lane,
a few bare feet wider than the ambulance itself. Mulder saw a
glimmer of broken glass a dozen yards ahead and the twisted
remains of a rear bumper in the grass just on the other side of the
railing. Other than the bumper and the glass, there were no visible
signs of the accident. “Looks like it’s been cleaned up pretty well.”
“Should have seen it right after the accident. The whole Drive
was cluttered with metal and glass. All three of these lanes were
closed. The cars looked like crumpled socks. You couldn’t even tell
the front few apart. Found one woman sitting in the driver seat of
the car ahead of her.”
Mulder opened his door and stepped down onto the asphalt. The
noise from the cars whizzing by was nearly deafening. A warm
breeze pulled at his jacket, and the heavy smell of exhaust filled his
nostrils. Canton came around the front of the ambulance and
pointed to the area directly ahead of them. “The accident scene
started here, with the last car up against the railing just ahead. A
few more were piled together in the center of the highway, then the
bulk of the accident was about thirty yards up. The lead car—a
BMW roadster—was upside down and crumpled pretty flat, right in
the center of the road.”
Mulder slowly walked forward, his eyes moving back and forth
across the pavement. He knew that natural exposure to the
elements, and the sheer passage of time, had probably erased most
of the evidence left behind by the thirteen-car accident. But he also
knew that investigative work relied heavily on luck. “Was it
possible to determine what caused the lead car to spin out?”
Canton nodded as they continued forward down the breakdown
lane. “According to a witness from five cars back, a white van was
careening wildly back and forth between lanes, just ahead of the
BMW. The back doors of the van popped open, and the driver of the
BMW panicked. She bounced off the guardrail, then flipped over.
The next car—a Volvo—hit her head-on at sixty-five miles per hour.
Then the others just piled on.”
They reached the spot Canton had described as the rough area
where the first car had spun out. Mulder turned to the guardrail and
saw a huge, jagged tear in the heavy horizontal iron bars. Two dark
tire tracks led up to the tear, and Mulder could imagine the driver’s
frantic efforts to stop the BMW. Obviously, those efforts had been
too late. “Did the lead driver get a good look at the van?”
“Maybe”—Canton sighed, leaning against an unmarred section
of the guardrail—“but she was decapitated by the front axle of the
Volvo. Like I said, the only good witness was five cars back. All the
police know was that the van was white, some sort of American
model, and the back doors were open. There’s an APB out on it
now, but there are a lot of vans like that in this city.”
Mulder nodded. He would talk to the police after he returned to
the hospital, but he didn’t expect them to have any answers. If the
van ran from the scene of the accident, chances are the driver didn’t
want to be found.
“And the John Doe?” Mulder asked. “He was unconscious
somewhere up here?”
Canton walked a few more paces, then pointed to a spot in the
breakdown lane. Mulder stopped at his side. The spot was only ten
yards ahead of where the lead car had gone out of control. Roughly
where the van had been weaving back and forth. With the back
doors hanging open.
Mulder knelt, looking at the pavement. Of course, there was
nothing remarkable. It had been a week. Mulder moved his eyes
along the ground, imagining the body sprawled out. “Facedown? Or
faceup?”
“Sort of a fetal position,” Canton said. “Lying on his side. His
head was away from the road.”
Mulder felt the pavement rumble beneath his knees as a heavy
Jeep roared by in the closest lane. There was a clattering sound,
and Mulder watched a foam cup bounce toward the guardrail. His
thoughts solidified as the cup disappeared down the grassy slope on
the other side. He rose and walked to the edge of the breakdown
lane. He moved slowly along the guardrail—and paused at a spot a
few feet away from where Canton was standing.
There was a small dent in the guardrail, just above knee level.
Mulder bent down and peered at the dent. Then he looked back
toward the highway. “Mr. Canton, how fast did you say the lead car
was moving?”
“Probably around sixty-five miles per hour. That’s my best
estimate, from the damage.”
“And the van was traveling at around the same speed when its
back doors popped open?”
“That’s right.”
Mulder nodded. The positioning of the dent seemed about right.
If the John Doe’s body had fallen out of the back of the van, hit the
pavement, rolled into the guardrail, then bounced back a few yards
into the breakdown lane—it would have landed right where Canton
was standing. The only problem with the theory was the condition
of the John Doe’s body. Both the paramedics and the medical
student had corroborated what the interns had written in the chart:
The John Doe had shown no signs of external trauma. Mulder could
hear the question Scully would ask the minute he told her his
theory: How could a man fall out of a van moving at sixty-five miles
per hour, dent a guardrail—and receive no external injuries?
Mulder didn’t have an answer— yet. But he wasn’t ready to
discard the theory. The John Doe was linked to Perry Stanton, and
Perry Stanton had performed amazing, inhuman physical feats.
Wasn’t it possible that the John Doe had been similarly
invulnerable?
Mulder reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a sterile
plastic evidence bag and a small horsehair brush. He leaned close to
the dent in the railing and began to collect brush samples. He
doubted he’d find anything—but there was always the chance some
sort of fiber evidence would show up under analysis.
“What are you doing over there?” Canton asked, watching him.
“T said we found the John Doe over here.”
“I don’t think the body started there, Mr. Canton. I think that
was just Mr. Doe’s final resting place. It’s the journey between that
interests me.” Mulder was about to drop to the ground and get
samples from the pavement, when his brush caught on a small
groove in the railing. When he pulled the brush free, he noticed a
few tiny strips of white cloth caught in the fine horsehairs. He held
the brush close to his eyes and saw flakes of some sort of red
powder clinging to the underside of the strips. The powder had a
strong, moldy scent—somewhat like a loaf of bread that had been
left in a damp cabinet too long. Mulder wondered whether the
powder and cloth were related to the John Doe. It was possible that
the groove in the guardrail had protected it from the elements. He
took a second bag out of his pocket and put the strips inside. Then
he crossed back to Canton. Canton was looking at him strangely.
“Why is the FBI so interested in this John Doe, anyway? Was he
some sort of serial killer?”
“As far as we know,” Mulder said, kneeling down to take more
samples from the pavement, “he didn’t do anything but die.
Problem was, his skin didn’t die with him.”
Mulder didn’t add the sudden thought that had hit him: Maybe
it was his skin that was the killer. Not some microbe carried in his
blood—as Scully had proposed—but his skin itself. Because that
was the real common denominator. Not his blood, not a microbe,
not a disease.
Skin.
Forty minutes later, Mulder entered the infectious disease ward at
New York Hospital. The ward was really just a cordoned-off section
of the ICU; two hallways and a half dozen private rooms with a self-
contained ventilation system and specially sealed metal doors. The
rooms were designed with various degrees of biosafety in mind:
from the highest level of security, with inverse vacuums and
specialized Racal space suits—to the more manageable, low-level
rooms, with glove and mask guidelines, maintained under strict
video watch by a staff of infectious disease specialists.
Mulder was directed to a low-level containment room near the
rear of the ward. After donning gloves and a mask, he was led into
a small private room. Scully was standing by a hospital bed, arguing
in a determined voice. Dr. Bernstein, Perry Stanton’s plastic
surgeon, was sitting on the edge of the bed in a white hospital
smock, a skeptical look on his face. There was an IV running into
his right arm, and every few seconds he stared at the wire with
contempt. It was obvious he didn’t want to be there. And it was
equally obvious that he wasn’t the slightest bit sick.
“Look,” he was saying, as Mulder came into the room, “I can
assure you, there was no blood-to-blood contact during the
transplant. I was masked and gloved. So were my nurses. I’ve done
similar procedures on HIV-positive patients. I’ve never had any
problems.”
“Dr. Bernstein,” Scully responded, “I didn’t order this
quarantine. The infectious disease specialist from the CDC has
decided not to take any chances. Your surgical team is the highest-
risk group—and this quarantine is just a logical precaution.”
“It’s not logical, it’s pointless. We both know there’s no real cure
for lethargica. I can understand restricting my surgical schedule
until after the incubation period ends. But why keep me and my
staff cooped up in these cells?”
Scully sighed, then nodded toward the IV. “The specialist from
the CDC has suggested you remain on acyclovir, at least through the
incubation period. It has been shown to be effective in stopping
some of the more common types of encephalitis.”
Bernstein rolled his eyes. “Acyclovir has been effective only in
encephalitis cases related to the herpes simplex virus. Lethargica
isn’t caused by herpes.”
Scully nodded, then shrugged. “Dr. Bernstein, I’m not going to
argue medicine with you. Your specialty is plastic surgery. Mine is
forensic pathology. Neither one of us is an infectious disease
specialist. We should both defer to the expert from the CDC.”
Bernstein didn’t respond. Finally, a grudging acceptance touched
his lips. He glanced at Mulder. “I guess I should do what she says.”
Mulder smiled. “Usually works for me. Scully, can I borrow you
for a moment?”
Scully followed him out into the hallway. After the door sealed
shut behind them, she pulled down her mask. “Mulder, I’ve got
some good news. Dr. Cavanaugh, the hospital administrator, has
made some initial headway tracking down the John Doe’s body.
One of his clerks found a transfer form from Rutgers Medical School
in New Jersey. Cavanaugh thinks the cadaver might have been
mistakenly sent over for dissection. We’ll know for certain within a
few hours.”
Mulder digested the information. He didn’t think it was going to
be as simple as that. “I’ll hold my breath. In the meantime, Pd like
you to take a look at something. Tell me if you have any idea what
it is.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small bag
containing the cloth strips and the red powder. Scully took the bag
from him and carefully opened the seal. She looked inside, then
scrunched up the skin above her nose. She shook the bag,
separating some of the red powder from the strips of white cloth.
Then she pressed her gloved fingers together against the sides of the
bag, getting a sense of the powder’s texture. “Actually, I think I
have seen something like this before. From the scent and grain, I
think the powder might be an antibacterial agent of some sort. The
strips of cloth look like they could have come from a bandage.
Where did you get this?”
Mulder’s body felt light as his intuition kicked in. Now he was
getting somewhere. “The accident scene where the John Doe’s body
was found.”
Scully looked at him, then back at the red powder and the strips
of cloth. It seemed as if she was suddenly doubting her own
memory. “Before you jump to any conclusions, let me show this to
Dr. Bernstein. He's a surgeon—he’ll have a better idea of what this
is.”
They reentered the private-care room. Dr. Bernstein was lying
on his back, his hands behind his head. “Back so soon? Have I been
paroled?”
Scully handed him the plastic bag. “Actually, we’re just here to
ask for your opinion. Do you recognize this red substance?”
Bernstein sat up, shaking the bag in front of his eyes. He opened
a corner of the seal and took a small breath. Then he nodded. The
answer was obvious to him. “Of course. The Dust. That’s what we
call it. It’s an antibacterial compound used during massive skin
transplantations. We’re talking about patients with at least fifty
percent burns, often more. It’s fairly cutting edge; very powerful,
very expensive. Its use was only recently approved by the FDA.”
Mulder crossed his hands behind his back. He felt a tremor of
excitement move through his shoulders. A powder used in skin
transplants. If it was connected to the John Doe, it was a stunning
discovery, and a bizarre, striking coincidence. He cleared his throat.
“Dr. Bernstein, how common is this Dust?”
“Not common at all,” Bernstein said, handing the bag back to
Scully. “I don’t think it’s used in any of the local hospitals. Certainly
not at Jamaica. I spent part of last year out at UCSF, where I first
got a chance to try it out. If you want more information, I suggest
you contact the company that developed and markets it. Fibrol
International. It’s a biotech that specializes in burn-transplantation
materials. I’m pretty sure their headquarters is nearby.”
Mulder had never heard of the company before. He knew there
were dozens, if not hundreds, of biotech companies located up and
down the Northeast Corridor. He watched as Scully thanked
Bernstein, then he followed her back out into the hallway. He could
hardly contain his enthusiasm as he told her what he was thinking.
“Scully, this is too much of a coincidence.”
“Well—”
“A specialized transplant powder found at the scene where the
John Doe was picked up,” Mulder bulldozed along. “It might mean
that the John Doe himself was a transplant recipient. Then his skin
was harvested, passing along strange, unexplainable symptoms to
Perry Stanton. The red powder—the Dust—might be the key to
everything.”
Scully squinted, then shook her head. “Mulder, you’re jumping
way ahead of yourself. You found this powder at the scene of the
accident, a spot on a major highway leading out of Manhattan?”
“You heard Dr. Bernstein. This powder is rare and expensive. We
need to talk to the people at Fibrol International, find out if we can
trace—”
Mulder was interrupted by a high-pitched ring. Scully had her
cellular phone out before the noise had finished echoing through
Mulder’s ears. Only a few people had Scully’s number—and Mulder
had a good guess who it was on the other end of the line.
Barrett, Scully mouthed. Her face changed as she listened to the
tinny voice in her ear. When she hung up the phone, her eyes were
bright and animated. “It’s Stanton. An eyewitness saw him entering
a subway terminal in Brooklyn Heights. Barrett wants to know if we
want to be in on the arrest.”
Mulder was already moving toward the elevators.
Susan Doppler closed her eyes, the scream of metal against metal
echoing through her skull. Her body jerked back and forth—her
tired muscles victimized by the rhythmic mechanical surf, as the
crowded, steel coffin burrowed through the city’s bowels. She had
entered that near-comatose state of the frequent commuter, barely
kept awake by the turbulent chatter of the rails resonating upward
through her feet.
Like many New Yorkers, Susan hated the subway. But the forty-
minute ride into Manhattan was a necessary part of her daily
routine. A single mother at thirty-one, she could hardly afford cab
fare—and there was no direct bus route from her home in Brooklyn
to the downtown department store where she worked an afternoon
shift. As long as her nine-year-old daughter needed child care and
braces, she had no choice besides the underground bump and grind.
Today, the ordeal was worse than usual. The air-conditioning
had gone out two stops ago, and Susan could feel the sweat rolling
down her back. The air reeked of body odor and seasoned urine;
every breath was a test of Susan’s reflux control, and her throat was
already chalky and dry from her labored search for oxygen. The car
was packed tight, and Susan struggled to keep from being crushed
between the two businessmen seated on either side of her. The man
to her left was overweight, and his white shirt was soaked through
with sweat. Worse still, the man to Susan’s right was angled and
bony, and every few seconds he inadvertently jabbed her with a
knifelike elbow as he turned the pages of the newspaper tabloid on
his lap.
Still, with her eyes tightly shut and her head lolling back against
the rattling glass window, she could almost pretend she was
somewhere else: a sauna in a city on the other side of the world; a
steaming beach on an island in the middle of the Pacific; the fiery
cabin of an exploding airplane hurtling toward the side of a
mountain. Anything was better than a crowded subway in the middle of
July.
Susan grimaced as she once again felt the sharp elbow poking
into her right hip. She opened her eyes and glared at the emaciated
businessman. He was tall, spidery, with grayish hair and furry
eyebrows. He seemed completely engrossed in his tabloid, oblivious
to anything but the colorful pictures of celebrities and freaks.
Susan turned away, frustrated, and rested her chin on her hand.
Wisps of her long brown hair fell down against her cheeks, framing
her blue eyes. Azure, her ex-husband had called them— back when
he had cared. The prick. Her eyes narrowed as she chided herself for
thinking about him. It had been over a year now, and he was no
longer a part of her or her daughter’s life. Her eyes were blue—not
azure.
Susan’s body stiffened as the subway car wrenched to the left,
the lights flickering. When the flickering stopped, she found herself
staring directly at the man seated across from her. The sight was so
pathetic, she almost gasped out loud. Only in New York.
The man was hunched forward, his small, football-shaped head
in his hands. His jagged little body was barely covered by a filthy
smock, the thin material stained and torn and covered in what
looked to be flecks of green glass. The man seemed to be trembling
—probably crack or heroin—and his thinning hair was slick with
sweat. As Susan watched, the man shifted his head slightly, and she
could see that his lips were moving, emitting a constant,
unintelligible patter. She caught a glimpse of his eyes—noting that
they were blue, just like hers. Maybe even a little azure.
She turned away, repulsed. The man was obviously homeless,
most likely mentally disturbed. Thankfully, he was too small to
cause any problems. Still, Susan was glad she wasn’t sharing his
bench.
Then the elbow touched her hip again, and she cursed out loud.
The spidery businessman finally noticed her, apologizing in a thick
New Jersey accent. He folded his tabloid in half, carefully resting it
sideways against his knees. As he lifted a corner to continue
reading, Susan caught a glimpse of a large black-and-white picture
on the back cover of the magazine. The picture was right below a
huge headline in oversize type:
PSYCHO PROFESSOR ROAMS NEW YORK
Something ticked in Susan’s mind, and she looked up from the
tabloid. Her eyes refocused on the little, hunched man sitting across
from her. She stared at the torn white smock, a warm, tingling
feeling rising through her spine. Slowly, her mouth came open as
she realized that it certainly could be a hospital smock.
She remembered the story she had heard on the news that
morning. A little history professor had murdered a nurse and
jumped out of a second-story window. She couldn’t be sure—but
there was a chance that same man was sitting right across from her.
She shifted against the seat, wondering if she should say
something. Then a new sound entered her ears—the squeal of the
brakes kicking in. They had reached the next stop. The subway car
jerked backward, and the little man suddenly looked up. Susan
locked eyes with him—and knew for sure. It was the psycho
professor. And he was looking right at her.
Her jaw shot open, and an involuntary scream erupted from her
throat. The professor’s eyes seemed to shrink as his entire body
convulsed upward. Suddenly, he was on his feet and coming toward
her across the narrow car. Susan cringed backward, pointing, as the
other passengers stared in shock. There was a horrible frozen
moment as the professor stood over her, his hands clenched at his
sides. Then the subway car stopped suddenly at the station, and an
anguished look crossed his face.
He seemed to forget about Susan as he turned and lurched
toward the open doors. His head whirled back and forth as he
shoved people out of his way. A heavyset man in bright sweatpants
shouted at him to slow down—then toppled to the side as the
diminutive professor slammed past. A second later he was out onto
the platform.
Susan leapt across the subway car and pressed her face against
the window on the other side. She watched the little man reeling
away from a crowd of onlookers—then she saw three police officers
coming through the turnstiles. Relief filled her body as she realized
there was nowhere for the professor to go.
The little man paused, watching the three officers coming
toward him. Susan noticed that all three were armed—and wearing
white latex gloves. The subway car had gone silent around her, as
other passengers jostled for positions at the window.
The three officers fanned out in a wide semicircle, surrounding
the professor. The little man made a sudden decision, and spun to
his left, heading straight for the dark subway tunnel ahead of
Susan’s stopped train. One officer stood between him and the oval
black mouth of the tunnel. Susan watched as the officer dropped to
one knee, his gun out in front of him. He shouted something—but
the little man kept on coming.
Susan gasped as she saw the look of determination spread across
the police officer’s face.
Officer Carl Leary held his breath as the little man barreled toward
him. He could see the fury in the professor’s wild blue eyes, the
sense of pure, liquid violence. He knew he had no choice. In a
second, the man was going to be on top of him.
His finger clenched against the trigger, and his service revolver
kicked upward, the muscles in his forearms contracting to take the
recoil. A loud explosion echoed through the subway station,
followed by a half dozen screams from the open subway doors.
Leary’s eyes widened as he saw the little man still coming toward
him. His finger tightened again, and there was a second explosion—
And then the little man was rushing right past him. Leary fell
back against the platform, stunned. He had fired at point-blank
range. How the hell could he have missed?
He watched as the professor disappeared into the subway
tunnel. Then he felt a gloved hand on his shoulder. He looked up
and saw the concerned look on his partner’s sweaty face. Joe
Kenyon had been riding shotgun in Leary’s patrol cruiser for two
years. They had seen everything there was to see in this crazy city—
but, for once, both officers were at a loss for words.
“You okay?” Kenyon finally managed. His thick voice was
hoarse from the excitement. “The psycho didn’t bleed on you, did
he?”
Leary shook his head as he checked the chamber on his service
revolver. The barrel was still hot, and he could smell the
gunpowder in the air. He counted the bullets, and confirmed that
two were missing. Then he shrugged, running a hand through his
shock of sweaty red hair. “The diseased little bastard’s out of his
mind. Came right at me.”
“He won’t get far,” Kenyon murmured, looking back at the
subway car. He watched as the other officer herded the passengers
out of the stopped train. “I think you winged him pretty good. Helll
make it twenty, twenty-five yards at the most.”
Leary didn’t respond. Kenyon must have been right. He couldn’t
possibly have missed at such close range. Then again, why hadn’t
the little man gone down? How could a guy take a hit at such close
range and not go down?
He pushed the thought away as he reached for his two-way
radio. He was about to call it in when Kenyon pointed toward the
turnstiles. “Don’t bother with the radio. Here comes Big-Assed
Barrett and the two fibbies.”
Leary watched the hulking detective and the two well-dressed
agents as they strolled onto the platform. Then he turned back
toward the dark subway tunnel.
Whether he had winged the little bastard or not—Perry Stanton
wasn’t going to get away. Not this time.
10
Scully watched in clinical disgust as a rat the size of a basketball
ran headfirst into the stone wall to her right, bounced off, then
scurried beneath the iron tracks. She turned her attention back to
the dark tunnel, maneuvering the crisp orange beam of her
flashlight until she found the outline of Mulder’s shoulders a few
feet ahead. She could hear her partner’s low voice over the rumble
of the underground ventilation system, and she hurried her pace,
closing the distance. Detective Barrett came into view, her huge
form hovering just ahead of Mulder in the darkness. Mulder was
pointing at the heavy revolver that hung from Barrett’s right paw.
“He’s not in control,” Mulder was arguing. “Certainly, there are
more humane ways to bring him in.”
“He’s a murderer,” Barrett hissed back, “and I’m not going to
put myself or my officers at risk. If you feel comfortable armed with
a chunk of plastic and a battery, that’s your prerogative.”
Scully glanced down at the stun gun in her gloved left hand. She
and Mulder had procured the nonlethal weapons at the FBI East
Side armory on the way to the subway terminal. The device was
about the size of a paperback book, no more than three pounds. The
textured plastic handle felt warm through the latex enveloping
Scully’s fingers.
“The Taser is just as effective as a bullet,” Mulder said. “It can
disable a three-hundred-pound man without causing any permanent
damage.”
“I know what the manual says,” Barrett shot back. “But have
you ever aimed one of those toys at a junkie in a PCP rage? Roughly
equivalent to poking a rattlesnake with a paper clip.”
Scully cleared her throat. In her mind, the discussion was moot.
The other three police officers were at least twenty yards ahead by
now, and all were armed with high-powered service revolvers.
Barrett had sent the officers ahead because two of them had worked
for the Transit Police before and knew the tunnel layout.
“Hopefully, there won’t be any need for lethal force. Detective
Barrett, how far does this tunnel go before we reach the next
platform?”
“About half a mile,” Barrett responded, heading forward again.
“But there are numerous junctions leading off the main line.
Construction adjuncts, equipment areas, voltage rooms; plenty of
places for Stanton to hide. I’ve got teams guarding all the exits—but
if we don’t find him now, we'll have to call in the dogs and the
search squads.”
Scully took a deep breath, nearly choking on the dank, heavy
air. She could imagine the fear and confusion Stanton was feeling as
he ran through the darkness—his brain misinterpreting every signal
from his nervous system, his psychotic paranoia sending him farther
away from the people who were trying to help.
A few minutes passed in determined silence as they worked their
way deeper into the tunnel. The ground was uneven around the
tracks, covered in packed dirt and gravel. The walls were curved
and roughly tiled, huge chunks of stone jutting out from a thick
infrastructure of cement and steel.
Up ahead, Scully made out a sharp left turn. Beneath an orange
emergency lantern stood one of the three police officers. The cop
waved them forward, and Scully quickened her gait. She followed
the turn up a slow incline and found herself at a junction between
two tunnels. The subway track continued to the left, into the better-
lit shaft. The other shaft angled into pure darkness, the walls and
floor carved out of what looked to be jagged limestone.
“Tt’s the new line,” the officer explained. He was mildly
overweight, and sweat ran in rivulets down the sides of his red face.
“Still under construction. Leary spotted him ’bout thirty yards
ahead. He and Kenyon went in after ’im.”
Scully pointed her flashlight into the pitch-black shaft. The
hungry air swallowed the orange beam after only a few yards. She
glanced at Mulder and Barrett. The under-construction tunnel was a
dangerous place to chase the carrier of a rare, fatal disease. She
contemplated asking Barrett to call for backup— when a thunderous
crack echoed off the limestone walls.
Scully’s stomach lurched as she recognized the echoing report of
a police-issue nine millimeter. She saw Mulder dart forward, and
quickly rushed to follow. She could hear Barrett and the overweight
officer a few steps behind her, but she forced them out of her
thoughts, concentrating on the dark floor beneath her feet. Her
flashlight beam bounced over slabs of stone and chunks of rail, and
she tried to keep her feet as light as possible. She saw Mulder cut
sharply to the right and found herself stumbling up a narrow
incline. She guessed it was some sort of construction access—
perhaps leading all the way to the surface. If so, there would be a
team of officers waiting at the top. If they had heard the gunshot,
they would already be streaming inside—
Scully nearly collided with Mulder’s back as he reared up, his
flashlight diving toward the floor. Scully added her own orange
beam and saw the officer curled up against the stone wall. She
recognized the man’s bright red hair and quickly dropped to one
knee. She saw a thin pool of blood seeping out from just above
Leary’s right ear. She reached forward, feeling for the man’s pulse.
“He’s alive,” she whispered, applying gentle but constant
pressure to the bleeding head wound. “Looks like he got hit with
something, probably a metal pipe or a heavy rock. Maybe a skull
fracture.”
“Gun’s still in his hand,” Mulder responded, also dropping to his
knees. “The barrel’s warm. Three bullets missing from the
chamber.”
There were heavy footsteps from behind, and Scully quickly
looked over her shoulder. She watched Barrett lumber the last few
steps, followed by the overweight officer.
“Christ,” Barrett said, looking at the downed man. Then she
glanced up the narrow, black incline that seemed to continue on
forever. “Where the hell is Kenyon?”
Scully turned her attention back to the man in front of her,
trying to get a better look at his wound. “I need a medical kit right
away. And we’ve got to get paramedics down here immediately.”
“There’s a kit back at the junction,” the portly cop said. Barrett
nodded at him, and he raced back in the direction they had come
from. Meanwhile, Mulder had taken a few more steps up the dark
incline. He glanced back at Scully, and she nodded.
Mulder started forward, his stun gun out ahead of him. Barrett
quickly moved past Scully and the downed officer. Her intention
was obvious. Mulder gestured toward the revolver in her gloved
right hand. “Just remember, one of your officers is somewhere up
ahead.”
Barrett nodded. Scully called after them, as they faded into the
darkness, “Pll follow when the paramedics get here—and I’ll make
sure he doesn’t double back and get away. That’s if he hasn’t
already reached the surface.”
“He’s not going to reach the surface,” Barrett responded.
“Why is that?” Scully asked.
“Because it’s a dead end. They capped this construction access
off with three tons of cement two weeks ago.” Barrett’s voice trailed
off as she and Mulder moved out of range.
Mulder’s chest burned as the adrenaline pumped through his body.
His eyes were wide-open, chasing the orange beam from his
flashlight as he navigated across the uneven tunnel floor. He could
hear Barrett’s heavy gasps from a few feet behind his right shoulder;
every few seconds a curse echoed into his ears as she struggled to
keep up.
A dozen yards into the tunnel, the air began to taste vaguely
metallic, and a thick, mildewy scent rose off the limestone walls.
The tunnel seemed to be narrowing as they neared the surface, the
curved walls closing in like the inner curls of an angry fist. Mulder
slowed his pace, motioning for Barrett to keep quiet. They were
close to the dead end—and that meant Perry Stanton and the other
officer had to be nearby.
The tunnel took a sharp right, and suddenly Mulder found
himself in the entrance to a small, rectangular corridor. Mulder
moved the flashlight along the walls and saw wires and steel cables
running in parallel twists across the limestone. Every few feet he
made out little dark alcoves dug directly into the walls.
“Generator room,” Barrett whispered as she joined him in the
entrance to the corridor. “They powered the excavation equipment
from generators housed in those empty alcoves. The cement wall
should be right on the other side of this corridor.”
Mulder pointed his flashlight toward the nearest generator
alcove. The space looked to be about ten feet deep, and at least
three feet in diameter. Easily enough room for a diminutive
professor. Or an officer’s body.
Mulder raised his stun gun and slowly advanced into the
corridor. His neck tingled as he swung the flashlight back and forth,
trying to illuminate as much area as possible. Despite his efforts, he
was surrounded by black air. After a few feet, he realized the
danger he was in; Stanton could hit him from either side, and he’d
never see him coming. He was about to turn back toward Barrett—
when his right foot touched something soft.
He quickly aimed the flashlight toward the ground. He saw
wisps of blue, marred by spots of seeping red. Then the orange
beam touched the shiny curves of a police badge.
He was about to call for Barrett when there was a sudden
motion from his right. He turned just as the shape hit him, right
below the shoulder. His stun gun went off, sparks flying through the
darkness as the twin metal contacts glanced off a limestone wall.
Mulder’s shoulder hit the ground, and the air was knocked out
of him. His hands opened, and the flashlight and stun gun clattered
away. The flashlight beam twirled through the blackness, and he
caught sight of Perry Stanton’s face rearing up above him, a look of
anguish in his blue eyes. Then he saw Stanton’s hands, clenched
into wiry fists, rising above his head. Stanton leaped toward him,
and Mulder shouted, raising his arms, wondering why the hell he
always seemed to lose his weapon at the worst time— when,
suddenly, there was a high-pitched buzzing. Stanton froze midstep,
his eyes widening, his mouth curling open. Convulsions rocked his
body, his muscles twisting into strange knots beneath his skin. He
arched backward, his knees giving out. He collapsed to the ground a
few feet away, his arms and legs twitching. Then he went still.
Mulder crawled to his knees as Scully entered the corridor, the
stun gun hanging loosely from her right hand. Barrett rushed out
from behind her, her revolver uselessly pointed at Stanton’s prone
body. “I couldn’t get a clear shot. Christ, he came at you so fast.”
Scully hurried to Mulder’s side. She was out of breath, sweat
dripping into her eyes. “Are you okay? Leary regained
consciousness shortly after we separated. I decided he could wait
for the paramedics on his own.”
“Good timing, Scully. And even better aim.”
Scully smiled. “Actually, I didn’t aim. I just fired. You got lucky
and saved yourself a nasty hangover.”
Mulder gestured toward the cop lying in the middle of the
corridor. “Officer Kenyon wasn’t so lucky.”
Scully followed her flashlight to the man and checked his pulse.
Then she pushed his shoulder, turning him onto his side. She looked
up, and Mulder saw the stricken look on her face. He glanced at the
officer—and realized the man’s head was facing the wrong
direction. Stanton had twisted his neck 180 degrees, snapping his
spinal column.
Barrett saw the dead officer and noisily reholstered her gun.
“The damn animal. I don’t care how sick he is—I’m gonna make
sure he spends the rest of his life in a cell.”
Mulder didn’t respond to Barrett’s angry comment. No matter
how tragic the situation—he didn’t believe Stanton was responsible.
He thought about the anguished look in the professor’s eyes—and
the strange convulsions that had racked his body. It had almost
seemed as if Stanton’s muscles had been fighting his skin—
struggling to tear through.
Mulder rose slowly and found his flashlight along the nearby
wall. Then he trained the light on the downed professor. Stanton
was lying on his back, his arms and legs twisted unnaturally at his
sides. His eyes were wide open, his lips curled back. Mulder took a
tentative step forward. Something wasn’t right.
“Scully,” he said, focusing the flashlight on Stanton’s still chest,
“T don’t think he’s breathing.”
Scully stepped away from the dead officer. “He’s just stunned,
Mulder. The voltage running through the Taser contacts wasn’t
anywhere near enough to kill him.”
Just the same, she moved to the little man’s side and dropped to
her knees. She carefully leaned forward, holding her ear above his
mouth. Then her eyebrows rose, and she quickly touched the side of
his neck with a gloved finger.
She drew her hand away, staring. Sudden alarm swept across
her features. She tilted Stanton’s head back, searching his mouth
and throat for obstructions. Then she moved both hands over his
chest and started vigorous CPR. Mulder dropped next to her,
leaning over to give mouth-to-mouth. Scully stopped him with her
hand. “Mulder, the lethargica.”
Mulder shrugged her hand away. Even if she was right—and
Stanton was infected with the blood-borne strain of encephalitis,
Mulder knew the odds were enormously in his favor. Saliva, on its
own, was not a likely carrier. And he couldn’t get the vision of
Emily Kysdale out of his mind. Despite what he had done—this was a
young woman’s father.
He pressed his mouth over Stanton’s open lips and exhaled,
inflating the man’s chest. Scully continued the cardiac
compressions, while Barrett stood watching. The minutes passed in
silence, Mulder and Scully working together to bring the man back.
Finally, Scully stopped, leaning back from the body. Her red hair
was damp with effort. “He’s gone, Mulder. I don’t understand. He
didn’t have a heart condition. He was strong enough to kill an
officer. How could a stun gun have done this to him?”
Mulder didn’t have an answer. As voices drifted into the corridor
from out in the tunnel, a strange thought struck him. Leary had
fired a total of three shots at Stanton—and hadn’t slowed him
down. Scully had hit him once with the electric stun gun, and he
had died. Similarly, the John Doe had quite possibly fallen out of a
moving van at seventy miles per hour, and had not received a
scratch. Then two interns had shocked him with a defibrillator—and
he had died on the stretcher.
“Scully,” he started—but then stopped himself as a team of
paramedics rushed a portable stretcher into the corridor. They were
followed by a handful of uniformed officers. Barrett started
shouting orders, and the paramedics rushed to the dead officer’s
side. Then they saw Stanton, and shouted for a second stretcher.
Mulder and Scully stepped out of the way as more paramedics
moved into the corridor and lifted Stanton onto another stretcher.
Scully watched with determined eyes. “I’m going to get to the
bottom of this, Mulder. I’m going to perform the autopsy myself—
and find out what really killed him.”
Mulder felt the same level of determination move through him.
Stanton was dead, but the case was far from over. Mulder was still
convinced—Perry Stanton may have killed a nurse and a police
officer, but he was not a murderer. He was a victim.
Mulder had seen it in his anguished eyes.
11
The digitized view screen flickered, then changed to a dull green
color. Scully leaned back in the leather office chair, her arms
stretched out in front of her. A radiology tech in a white lab coat
hovered over her shoulder, his warm breath nipping at her earlobe.
“Just another few seconds.”
Scully tapped the edge of the keyboard beneath the screen,
anticipation rising through her tense muscles. She pictured
Stanton’s body engulfed by the enormous, cylindrical MRI machine
two rooms away. Mulder had remained with the body while she
had accompanied the tech to the viewing room. They would
regroup at the pathology lab downstairs, where they would be
joined by Barrett and the investigator from the CDC.
“You want print copies as well, correct?” the tech asked,
interrupting her thoughts. Scully nodded, and the tech hit a
sequence of keys on a color laser printer next to the viewing screen.
The young man was short and had thick, plastic-rimmed glasses. He
was obviously enjoying her company—and the opportunity to show
off his expertise with the MRI machine.
The MRI scan was not normal autopsy procedure, but Scully had
decided to take every extra measure possible to understand what
had happened to Perry Stanton. In truth, she couldn’t help feeling a
twinge of guilt at Stanton’s sudden death. She knew it was not
really her fault—but she had fired the stun gun. At the very least,
she needed to know why his body had so fatally overreacted.
“Here we go,” the tech coughed, pointing at the screen. The
printer began to hum just as the screen flickered again, and
suddenly the dull green display was replaced by a shifting sea of
gray. The gray conformed roughly to the shape of a human skull,
representing a vertical cross section taken through the direct center
of Perry Stanton’s brain.
It took Scully less than a second to realize that all of her
previous assumptions had to be reevaluated. Even without the
autopsy, she knew for a fact that Stanton had not died from
anything related to the encephalitis virus. “This can’t be right.”
The tech glanced at the screen, then turned to the printer and
pulled out a stack of pages. The pages showed the same image,
multiplied four times at slightly different angles. “This is the
sequence you ordered. The machine’s been in use all morning—and
nobody’s had a complaint.”
Scully took the pictures from him, looking them over. She had
never seen anything like it before. There was no edema, none of the
cerebral swelling she would have expected from encephalitis
lethargica—but Stanton’s brain was anything but normal. She
reached forward with a finger and traced a large, dark gray spot
near the center of the picture. It was the hypothalamus, the gland
that regulated the nervous system —but it was enormous, nearly
three times as large as normal. Surrounding the engorged gland
were half a dozen strange polyp-type growths, arranged in a rough
semicircle. In all her time spent in pathology labs, she had never
seen such a manifestation.
She rose quickly from the leather chair, the pictures tucked
under her right arm. She wanted to get to that autopsy room as
soon as possible. She watched as the tech hit a few computer keys,
sending the viewing screen back to its original green. “We’ll keep
the pictures on file for as long as you’d like. Just ask for me if you
need a second look.”
The young man winked from behind his thick glasses, but Scully
was already moving out into the radiology wing. Her thoughts were
three floors away, in a basement lab filled with plastic organ trays
and steel fluid gutters.
Scully never made it to the autopsy room. She had taken three steps
out of the elevator when she heard Mulder’s angry voice echoing
through the cinder-block pathology ward.
She found her partner blockaded in the long central hallway that
ran down the center of the ward by three red-faced men wearing
white lab coats. All of the coats had name tags, with tiny red seals
that Scully recognized from her previous dealings with the CDC.
Mulder’s focus was the tallest man, a mid-fifties African-American
with thick eyelids and speckled gray hair. The man had his arms
crossed against his chest, a disdainful look in his eyes. His name tag
identified him as Dr. Basil Georgian, a senior infectious disease
investigator. Scully caught the tail end of Mulder’s heated
interchange as she arrived at his side.
“This isn’t merely an infectious disease scare.” Mulder was near-
shouting. “It’s an FBI investigation. You don’t have automatic
priority or jurisdiction.”
Georgian shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. We’ve got
two reported cases of encephalitis lethargica. That’s all the
jurisdiction we need. Your murderer is dead, Agent Mulder. He’s
not going to go anywhere. Our virus is still very much alive—at
least in one coma victim. We’ve got to make sure that’s where it
stays contained.”
Mulder turned to Scully. “These guys seem to think they’re
going to run off with our body.”
Scully looked at Georgian. Georgian shrugged. “Our superiors in
Atlanta have already spoken to your superiors in Washington.
Everyone agrees that it’s more appropriate for us to handle the
autopsy in our biocontainment lab in Hoboken—where the microbe
can be properly studied, handled, and contained. We’ll send you the
reports when we’re finished. Lethargica doesn’t come around often,
and we intend to figure out what it’s doing in New York.”
Without another word, Georgian spun on his heels and headed
down the hallway, flanked by his two associates. Scully could see
Stanton’s stretcher being wheeled through a pair of double doors
another ten yards beyond them— most likely to an underground
garage, where an ambulance was waiting. Mulder started after them
—but she stopped him with an outstretched hand. “They aren’t
going to change their minds. And they do have priority. From an
official standpoint, our investigation is finished. Our perp is in
custody—so to speak.”
Mulder sighed, shaking his head. “They'll send us their report?
That’s ridiculous. This is our case.”
“But the infectious disease makes it their concern. Mulder, I
don’t think we have much choice.”
“So we just let it go?”
Scully didn’t like the idea any more than he did. But they had to
let the CDC scientists do their job. In the meantime—Scully still had
the MRI scans. She pulled them out from under her arm and showed
one of the views to Mulder. “While we’re waiting for their autopsy
report, we still have a lead to work with. This is one of the strangest
MRIs I’ve ever seen. You see these polyps surrounding the
hypothalamus?”
Mulder squinted, following her finger. To an untrained observer,
the idiosyncrasy was fairly obtuse—but to Scully it was like a
massive neon sign. “Given Stanton’s sudden onset of psychosis, my
guess is these polyps might have something to do with excess
dopamine production. That would involve the hypothalamus—and
explain the violence and disorientation.”
“Dopamine,” Mulder repeated. “That’s a neurotransmitter, right?
A chemical used by the nervous system to transmit information?”
Scully nodded. She wouldn’t know for sure until she saw the
CDC autopsy report, but it seemed a viable possibility. Still, it
wasn’t an explanation. “Pd like to run these pictures through the
hospital’s Medline system, see if anything like this has been
reported before.”
Mulder was still looking longingly in the direction of Stanton’s
body. “Scully, how many times have we worked with the CDC
before?”
Scully raised an eyebrow. “A half dozen. Maybe more. Why?”
Mulder shrugged. “First the John Doe. Now Perry Stanton. It
seems that people are going to great lengths to keep us from getting
our hands on anyone involved in that skin transplant.”
Scully resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Mulder, I called the
CDC about the lethargica—not the other way around.”
Mulder gestured toward the MRI scans. “Does that look like
lethargica?”
Scully paused. “The truth is, I have no idea what this is. That’s
why we need to find out if it’s ever happened before.”
Ten minutes later, Scully and Mulder huddled together in the corner
of a cramped administrative office located one floor above the
pathology ward. They had borrowed the office from a human-
resources manager, bypassing any questions or possible red tape
with a flick of their federal IDs. The office was sparse, containing
little more than a desk, a few chairs, and an IBM workstation. In
other words, it was a no-frills window into cyberspace.
The computer whirred as the inboard modem connected the two
agents to the nationwide medical data base located in Washington,
DC. Scully was closest to the screen, and her face glowed a techno
blue as she maneuvered a plastic track ball through a half dozen
menus loaded with options and navigational commands. Mulder
had already placed one of the MRI pictures into the scanner next to
the oversize processor, and in a few minutes they would begin to
search the hundred million stored files for any possible match.
“This search should cover any MRIs, CAT scans, or skull X rays
with similar manifestations,” Scully said. “The Medline system is
linked to every hospital in the country, and many throughout the
world. If there's an associated syndrome, well surely find
something —”
She paused, as the screen began to change. Suddenly, her eyes
widened. Mulder read the notice at the top of the file that had
suddenly appeared. “One match. New York Hospital, 1984.”
Scully immediately realized the significance of the notice. As she
skimmed the first paragraph of the file, her shock grew. The MRI
scan had matched a pair of CAT scans taken on two inmates of
Rikers Island in New York, shortly before their deaths. Both inmates
had been part of some sort of volunteer experimental study
performed in the early eighties. Even more stunning, according to
the file, the study was conducted under the auspices of a fledgling
biotech company located just outside Manhattan. Scully
immediately recognized the company’s name.
“Fibrol International,” Mulder stated, his voice characteristically
calm. “The same company that manufactures the red powder I
found at the accident scene.”
Scully didn’t know what to say. She scrolled further down the
file and found the two CAT scans that had heralded the match. In
both images, she saw the same unmistakable pattern of polyps
surrounding an enlarged hypothalamus. At the bottom of the file
she found a link to an attached file. She hit the link, and the CAT
scans were replaced by a single page of official-looking text.
“It’s a prosecutorial assessment,” she said, reading the heading.
“There was a criminal investigation into the man behind the
experimentation—Fibrol’s founder and CEO, Emile Paladin. But it
looks as though it never came to trial. According to this, the
experiment had been conducted with full permission from the
inmates. There’s no explanation of the cause of death—just that it
was accidental.”
“Look at this,” Mulder said, tapping a paragraph lower down in
the assessment. There was a brief description of the nature of the
experiment. “Skin transplantation, Scully. The experiment had to do
with a radical new method of skin transplantation.”
Scully rubbed her scalp with her fingers. It was hard to believe.
Perry Stanton’s brain had been ravaged by the same polyps that had
killed the two inmates. But Stanton had not been the subject of an
experimental transplantation.
“The red powder,” Mulder continued. “It’s the link—and Fibrol
is the common denominator. We’ve got to find this Emile Paladin.”
“This happened fifteen years ago,” Scully responded. “And Perry
Stanton wasn’t part of any radical experiment.”
“Not directly. But the John Doe might have been. And Stanton’s
wearing his skin.”
Scully shook her head. What Mulder was implying was
extremely unlikely. What sort of mechanism could transfer such a
fatal cerebral reaction—through nothing more than a slab of
harvested skin? It didn’t make medical sense.
Still, she didn’t know what to make of the connection to Fibrol.
They needed to find out more about the experiment that had killed
the two prisoners. And Mulder was right, they needed to track
down Emile Paladin.
Maybe he could tell them how a skin transplant could ravage a
man’s brain from the inside—and what any of this had to do with
the encephalitis lethargica that had felled the two med students.
Maybe Emile Paladin had some idea what had really happened
to Perry Stanton.
12
The huge crimson atrium spilled out in front of the electronic
revolving door like blood from a gunshot wound. Mulder paused to
catch his breath as he and Scully stepped from inside the moving
triangle of smoked glass. Twenty yards ahead stood an enormous
black-glass desk, staffed by three men in similar dark blue suits.
Behind the desk, the walls curved upward in magnificent swells of
stone to the paneled black ceiling lined with more than a dozen
miniature spotlights, a synthetic night sky gazing down upon a
mock vermilion desert carved out of imported marble.
The interior of the Fibrol complex was nothing like the
nondescript, blank-walled three-storied boxes he and Scully had
seen from the highway. Even when they had passed through the
twin security checkpoints on the way into the parking lot, Mulder
had not realized the extent of the building’s architectural deception.
From the outside, Fibrol’s main offices seemed no different from the
hundreds of other corporate headquarters lodged in the grassy
foothills that surrounded New York City. But the interior decor told
a story more in line with the S&P reports the agents had scoured
after leaving New York Hospital. Fibrol had grown wealthy during
the biotech boom of the late eighties, burgeoning into one of the
nation’s largest suppliers of burn-transplantation materials. Along
with their most recent product—the antibacterial Dust—Fibrol held
over three hundred patents on products in use at major hospitals
and research centers. The company operated a half dozen burn
clinics in the Northeast, and satellite offices in Los Angeles, Seattle,
London, Tokyo, Paris, and Rome.
Mulder’s shoes clicked against the polished marble as he and
Scully bisected the huge atrium. He noticed a long glass case
running along the wall to his right, containing strange-looking
metal and plastic tools; each tool had a plaque explaining its use
and date of development, and by the third scalpel-like object,
Mulder realized the case was a visual history of the transplantation
art. He looked more closely as he reached the last section of the
case. He passed what appeared to be microscalpels and needles,
lying next to a specialized microscope. To the right of the
microscope, he recognized a laser device similar to the machine Dr.
Bernstein had used to remove the tattoo. Then he came to the red
powder, spread out in three equal piles above a metallic plaque.
He paused, tapping Scully’s arm. The plaque was dated thirteen
months ago, and contained a single caption in gilded script:
Antibacterial Compound 1279
EFFECTIVE IN REDUCING CONSEQUENTIAL SEPTICITY AFTER RADICAL
TRANSPLANTATION
Mulder was about to ask for a medical definition of
“consequential septicity” when a high voice impaled his right ear.
“Agents Mulder and Scully? I trust you had no problem following
my directions?”
Mulder looked up from the glass case. One of the blue-suited
men had risen from behind the black desk. Just a kid, really—he
looked no older than twenty-three, with short blond hair and an
acne-covered face. His thin limbs were swimming in his suit. Scully
nodded in his direction. “Are you the man we spoke to on the
phone?”
The kid smiled, coming around the edge of the desk. “Dick
Baxter. I set up your appointment with Dr. Kyle, our director of
research. He's waiting in his office. Ill take you right to him.”
Mulder and Scully shook Baxter’s hand. Enthusiasm leaked out
of the kid’s every pore.
“Dr. Kyle?” Mulder asked. He remembered seeing Julian Kyle’s
name in the S&P files. Kyle was responsible for a number of Fibrol’s
patents, spanning back to the company’s inception. Still, Mulder
had hoped their FBI status would get them access to someone
higher up than a director of research.
Then again, Mulder didn’t yet know enough about Fibrol’s
leadership to complain. He and Scully had been hoping to find
Emile Paladin still at the helm of the company—but to their
surprise, they had discovered that Fibrol’s founder and CEO had
died in an accident overseas shortly after the experiment involving
the Rikers Island prisoners. Since then, the company had gone
through two acting CEOs, and at present no CEO was in place.
Perhaps Julian Kyle was as close to the company’s true leadership
as Mulder and Scully were going to get.
“You asked to speak to the person in charge of our East Coast
operations, didn’t you?” Baxter continued. “Julian Kyle heads up all
new projects at Fibrol. His finger is on the pulse of everything that
goes on around here.”
Mulder and Scully followed the young man as he strolled past
the desk to an opaque glass door embedded in the marble wall.
Baxter paused, pressing his hand against a plastic circular plate next
to the door. There was a short metallic whir, and the door slid
open, revealing a long corridor with matching crimson walls.
“Pretty high-tech,” Scully commented.
“Infrared imaging,” Baxter said, smiling proudly. “It’s a lot more
comfortable than a retinal scanner, and certainly more accurate
than a thumb pad. Of course, it’s much more expensive than either
technology.”
Mulder glanced back toward the spectacular front atrium.
“Doesn’t look like Fibrol is too concerned with expense.”
Baxter laughed. “Not lately. We’ve got a number of major new
developments coming down the pipeline. Already, our foreign
division has tripled in revenues—just in the past two years. The
new board of directors has decided to update our look, to reflect
this new level of success. They’ve redesigned much of the complex;
you should see the new labs in the basement—we’re talking major
high-tech.”
Mulder raised his eyebrows, glancing at Scully as they followed
the young man through the security door and into the long corridor.
“You seem pretty excited about the changes. Is that why they have
you working the door?”
Baxter laughed, pulling at the lapels of his blue suit. “Actually,
Pm a Ph.D. student at NYU. Pm working here through the summer
—but I hope to be hired full-time after I graduate. Maybe start as a
junior scientist and claw my way up in the research department.
Beats the hell out of academia, and you get to really see your work
transformed into something useful.”
Mulder kept his eyes moving as they sliced through the inner
corridors of the complex. The place was built like a maze, and
Mulder was reminded of the interior floor plan of the Pentagon.
They passed many unmarked offices, each with opaque glass
security doors. None of the doors had knobs. Instead, each was
fitted with the same plastic handplate. A very efficient security
system, probably routed through a computer center somewhere in
the complex. Mulder also noticed closed-circuit television cameras
at ten-foot intervals along the hallway ceiling. The cameras were
painted the same crimson as the walls. He touched Scully’s arm,
pointing. “Fibrol seems to take its security fairly seriously. Cameras,
infrared access panels, and the twin security checks on the way into
the fenced parking lot.”
Baxter overheard his comment and nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes.
We’re very concerned with keeping our work private. You’d be
surprised at the sort of thing that goes on in the biotech industry.
Theft, sabotage, corporate spying, Internet hacking—just last month
we had an incident with the janitorial staff. A cleaning lady on the
third floor was caught stealing the shredded paper from a central
wastebasket.”
“Shredded paper?” Scully asked.
Baxter had a serious look on his face. “A hacker employed by a
rival biotech company could have extracted password information
from the stolen garbage. Once inside our computer banks, there’s no
telling what sort of damage they could have done.”
Mulder stifled a smile. It seemed he did not have a monopoly on
paranoia. Then again, perhaps Baxter was right. Mulder knew that
the biotech industry relied on its secrets to survive. Patents could
only protect inventions that were already complete—every step
along the way was a fierce race. And judging from the lavish front
atrium with its expensive marble walls, the payoff could be
impressive.
Baxter stopped in front of another glass door, again placing his
palm against an infrared panel. After two clicks the door slid open,
and Baxter gestured for the two agents to step inside. “Dr. Kyle will
answer all your questions from here on out. I hope you enjoy your
visit.”
Mulder could see the sincerity in Baxter’s eyes. The kid was
nearly floating on the balls of his feet, not an ounce of cynicism in
his slender body. As long as he kept his attitude, he’d probably go
far in the corporate-industrial world. Great brochure material.
Mulder and Scully thanked him, and together they stepped into
Julian Kyle’s office.
“Damn it! Just stay where you are. IIl get them back on in a
second.”
Mulder stood frozen next to Scully in complete darkness, his
skin tingling as his pupils tried to dilate. The lights had gone off the
second the door had slid shut behind them. He had caught a brief
glance of a stocky man in a white lab coat moving toward them
across a large, well-appointed office—then everything had gone
black. A second later, there had been a loud crash, followed by the
sound of breaking glass.
“It's this new environmentally sensitive system,” the frustrated
voice continued from a corner of the room. “It’s all Bill Gates’s
fault. He had to go and build that intelligent house, and suddenly
every new designer wants to copy his technology. The system is
supposed to shut off the lights when you leave the room— not when
someone else enters. Hold on, here we go.”
There was a metallic cough, and suddenly a panel of fluorescent
lights flickered to life. The office was about thirty feet across,
square, with two wide picture windows overlooking the parking lot
and the same crimson walls that lined the building's corridors.
There was a glass desk at one end of the airy room, covered with
fancy computer equipment and neat little stacks of CD-ROMs. In
front of the desk crouched a black leather love seat with high
armrests. Directly to the left of the love seat, a display case's
chrome frame lay surrounded by a pile of broken glass. Half-buried
in the glass was a shiny plastic rectangle painted in colors running
from pink to beige.
“Shit. If it’s broken, I’m going to charge it to the board. This
whole reconstruction was their idea. I thought we were doing fine
with white walls, doorknobs, and light switches.”
Julian Kyle swept out of the far corner of the room, his white
coat flapping behind him. He was built like a fire hydrant, with
solid shoulders, stumpy legs, and a cube-shaped head. His silver
hair was cropped close to the planes of his skull, and his face was
remarkably chiseled and unwrinkled for a man of his age. Sixty-
five, Mulder guessed, but it was difficult to be sure. There was a
vigorous spring in the doctor's step as he rushed to the destroyed
display case and carefully reached for the large plastic object.
“Can we help?” Scully asked, as both agents moved forward.
Kyle shook his head, carefully lifting the object and shaking away
the broken glass. Mulder saw that it was some sort of model, made
up of different-colored horizontal layers, each a few inches in
height.
“An award from the International Burn Victim's Society,” Kyle
explained, reverently checking the model for scratches. “It's a three-
dimensional cross section of an undamaged segment of human skin.
See, it's even got the melanocyte layer—done in bronze leaf.”
Mulder looked more closely at the model as Kyle placed it gently
on an empty corner of his glass desk. The cross section was divided
into three parts, showing the epidermis at the top, then the thick,
beige dermis, and finally the white layer of subcutaneous fat. Tiny
blood vessels and twisting branches of nerves curled through the
middle section, winding delicately around tubular sweat glands and
dark, towering follicles of hair. Mulder was struck by the intricacy
of the skin’s structure. He knew skin was an organ—the body’s
largest—but he had never considered what that meant. To Mulder,
skin was just there. It could be rough or soft, porcelain like Scully’s
or stained and creased like the Cancer Man’s.
Kyle noticed Mulder’s focus as he moved to the other side of his
desk. “Most people suffer from a misconception when it comes to
skin. They assume it’s something static; like a leather coat wrapped
around your body to keep your skeleton warm. But nothing could
be further from the truth. The skin is an amazing organ. It’s in a
constant state of motion; basal cells migrating upward to replace
the dying epidermal cells, nerves reacting to inputs from the
outside, blood vessels feeding muscles and fat, sweat glands
struggling to regulate the body’s temperature as the cells twist and
stretch to accommodate movement. Not to mention the constant
healing and recovery process, or the battle to stay moist and
elastic.”
Mulder lowered himself next to Scully onto the leather two-
seater as Kyle took a seat behind the desk, holding his hands out in
front of him, palms inward. He wriggled his fingers as if typing on
an invisible keyboard. “We never notice our skin until there’s
something wrong with it. A cut, a rash—or a burn. Then we realize
how important it really is. How much we’d be willing to pay to get
it back to normal.”
Mulder nodded, thinking of the building’s front atrium. “Enough
to import most of the marble in Italy.”
Kyle laughed. Then his smile turned down at the corners, as he
waved his hands at the walls on either side. “And have this entire
complex dyed crimson. It had to be the worst decision this new
board’s ever made. Yes, we specialize in burn-transplant materials—
but do we need the constant, fiery reminder on every wall in this
damn complex? Still, they tell me that it impresses our foreign
visitors, the corporate honchos from Tokyo, Seoul, and now
Beijing.”
“Sounds like business is good,” Scully commented.
“Literally,” Kyle beamed. “Our new product line is helping
thousands of people survive transplants that would have seemed
pointless just a few years ago. We’ve got new salve bandages, a
whole new stock of microscalpels, an innovative new dry-chemical
wrap—just to mention a few of our recent breakthroughs.”
Mulder listened to the laundry list in silence. Julian Kyle seemed
as enthusiastic about Fibrol as the kid at the front desk was—only
Kyle’s fervor had an edge of self-importance to it. It was as if he was
telling them that Fibrol had accomplished these things directly
because of his efforts.
“Actually,” Scully said, as Kyle’s monologue finally drew to a
close, “it’s your company’s past that interests us at the moment.
Specifically, an episode in 1984 involving two prisoners at Rikers
Island.”
Kyle raised his gray eyebrows. The motion pulled at the taut
skin around his jaw, revealing a perfectly centered cleft. His face
had an almost military bearing—and Mulder guessed he would have
been just as comfortable in fatigues and an army helmet as he was
in the white lab coat. “Forgive my surprise, Agent Scully. It’s been a
long time since anyone has asked about that. It’s something we’ve
put way behind us—ever since Emile’s death.”
The air in the small office had changed, as if the molecules
themselves had somehow tightened along with Kyle’s mood. Mulder
tried to read the man’s expression, searching for any sense of guilt
or signs of hidden knowledge. But the man’s surprise seemed
sincere.
“It was an unfortunate incident,” Kyle continued. “And I’m
afraid I don’t have much to tell you. Emile Paladin was a very
private, controlling man. The experiment was entirely under his
control, conducted in his own private clinic a hundred miles
upstate. It had something to do with a new transplant procedure—
but beyond that, I don’t know any of the details.”
Mulder saw the frustrated lines appear on Scully’s forehead. She
had expected a simple answer and, instead, they had run into
another wall. Kyle spread his hands out against the desk, continuing
in a casual voice. “After the criminal charges were dropped, Paladin
announced the experimental procedure an unsalvageable failure
and refocused the company toward the development of assistance
products, rather than transplant techniques. Barely six months later,
he died—but Fibrol continued to grow in the new direction.”
Mulder shifted against the leather couch. Kyle had told them
exactly what they already knew from the S&P reports. The blame
had been shifted to Fibrol’s founder, and since his death the
company had moved in a different direction.
Scully cleared her throat, getting straight to the point. “Dr. Kyle,
we have reason to believe that an individual died this morning from
complications similar to those that killed the two prisoners. Do you
have any idea how that might be possible?”
Kyle stared at her in shock. “Not at all. As I said, Paladin was
the only one who knew anything about the experiment, and Paladin
died almost fifteen years ago. I can’t imagine how anything so
recent could be connected.”
Scully cocked her head. “We read that Paladin died in some sort
of accident overseas?”
Kyle nodded. “A hiking accident in Thailand. It was his second
home, ever since the Vietnam War. He had been stationed in a
MASH unit, and after the incident he had wanted to take some time
off in a serene, comfortable place. He had a home outside a little
fishing village called Alkut, two hundred miles east of Bangkok. He
died while climbing in the mountains around his home.”
“And after his death,” Scully interrupted. “Who inherited control
of the company? Did he leave behind any family?”
“A brother. Andrew Paladin. But although Andrew is the major
stockholder, he doesn’t have any involvement with the company.
You see, Andrew’s what you’d call a recluse. He served in the
Vietnam War about the same time as his brother, and in the early
seventies an injury landed him in Emile’s MASH unit in Alkut. After
the war he settled in Thailand, and he hasn’t left the country since.”
“Is there some way we can get in touch with him?” Scully asked.
“To see if he has any more information on Paladin’s experiment?”
Kyle shrugged. “Not that I know of. He employed a lawyer in
Bangkok around the time of his brother’s death, but we haven’t
heard from him in more than ten years. From what I understand,
nobody is even sure of his current address. But I’d doubt he’d be
useful, even if you found him. As I said, Paladin was extremely
independent. He kept his work private.”
Kyle crossed his arms against his chest. To him, the interview
was ending. But Mulder wasn’t near finished. He leaned close to the
desk, abruptly changing tack. “Dr. Kyle, tell us about Antibacterial
Compound 1279.”
For the first time in the short interview, Kyle’s calm seemed to
break. It was barely perceptible—a tightening of the skin around his
eyes—and it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. But Mulder
was acutely attuned to the signs of human discomfort—and he
knew when someone suddenly found himself unprepared.
“The Dust?” Kyle responded. “I’m amazed you’ve even heard of
it. We only received the patent last year. It’s going to be one of our
major market leaders within the next decade. Why are you
interested in our antibacterial powder? It’s a very recent
development—it had nothing at all to do with Emile Paladin’s
work.”
Mulder glanced at Scully. He had not mentioned any connection
to Paladin’s experiment—Kyle had made the jump himself. Scully
followed Mulder’s lead, her voice stiff but nonconfrontational. “Dr.
Kyle, yesterday morning we found a sample of your powder in a
breakdown lane on the FDR Drive.”
Kyle wrinkled the skin above his eyes. Then he rubbed a hand
against his jaw. “That’s certainly strange. None of the New York
hospitals are using the Dust yet. Still, I guess it could have come
from a shipment between a couple of our clinics. Our largest burn
center is twenty miles north of here, and we have a research
laboratory down in Hoboken, New Jersey. It’s something I can
easily check out.”
Scully nodded—but Mulder wasn’t about to leave it at that.
“Weed also like to consider another possibility. Could the Dust have
been left behind by a recent transplant patient?”
Kyle stared at him in silence. Then he laughed curtly. “That’s
extremely unlikely. In fact, I’d say it’s damn near impossible. The
Dust is used only on radical transplant patients. These are not
patients who get up and walk around. They can’t even survive
transport in ambulances. There’s no way such a patient would be
found out of a hospital. Not even for a moment.”
Mulder was surprised by Kyle’s adamant tone. Even if it was
unlikely—was it really impossible that a burn clinic might have
decided to transport a patient, despite the risks? “Well, perhaps you
could show us some data on the powder, to help us understand.
Maybe a list of the types of patients you’ve used it on—”
“Tm sorry,” Kyle interrupted, rising from his chair. He was still
smiling, but his eyes were now miles away. “But I really need to
speak to the board before I can get to any of our records. I don’t
mean to be difficult—but this is a very competitive time for our
company. I need to go through the proper channels before I release
any proprietary information.”
Kyle hadn’t mentioned a search warrant, but it was obvious to
Mulder that it would take a warrant to get the information he’d
requested. The question was—was Kyle just being a good, loyal
employee? Or was there something else going on?
Scully got up from the love seat first, and Mulder followed as
Kyle hit an intercom buzzer on his desk, then strolled toward the
couch. Mulder was much taller than the doctor—but still, Kyle cut
an impressive, intimidating figure. As Kyle showed the two agents
to the door, Mulder finally asked the question that had been on his
mind since the beginning of the interview. “Dr. Kyle—I hope you
don’t mind my asking—but did you serve in the military?”
Scully glanced at Mulder, surprised by the question. But Kyle
simply smiled. “For twelve years. I joined up in the mid-fifties. I
was promoted to major during Vietnam. It’s where I met Emile
Paladin. I served under him in Alkut. It’s where I was first
introduced to the art of transplantation. I saw firsthand how
important the skin could be—and how easily, and painfully, it could
be damaged.”
There was a near fanatic’s determination in Kyle’s eyes. Mulder
had no doubt that Kyle would do anything necessary to protect
Fibrol from danger—real or perceived.
“Tm sorry I couldn't be more helpful,” Kyle continued, as he put
his palm against the plate next to the door. “Mr. Baxter will show
you back to your car. IIl be in touch if I find any more information
for you.”
The door hissed open, and Mulder and Scully were once again
face-to-face with Dick Baxter. They followed the smiling young man
back through the network of crimson hallways.
It wasn't until they were back in the privacy of their rental
Chevrolet that Mulder finally told Scully what he was thinking.
“Kyle knows something. About the red powder—and about
Paladin's experiment. We need to keep digging.”
Scully was momentarily silent, her hands on the dashboard in
front of her. Finally, she shrugged. “It won't be easy. Emile Paladin
died nearly fifteen years ago. According to Kyle, he took the secrets
of his experiment with him.”
Mulder wasn't going to accept anything Kyle had said at face
value. Paladin might have died years ago—but his experiment was
more than history. It was somehow involved in the Stanton case.
“And what about the red powder? And the link to the John Doe?”
“I thought Kyle was pretty convincing. It could have fallen out
of a shipment of medical supplies. The link with the John Doe is
still unproven.”
Mulder turned the ignition, and the car kicked to life. “Fibrol’s
involved; the MRI pictures don’t lie. Stanton was another victim of
Emile Paladin’s transplantation experiment. And if Kyle can’t tell us
how that's possible —then we've got to find someone who can.”
He could see that Scully was thinking along the same lines. As
they were waved through the first security checkpoint at the edge
of the parking lot, she put words to his thoughts. “Andrew Paladin.
The recluse brother. He might have been the last person to speak to
Emile Paladin before he died.”
Mulder nodded, glancing at the boxlike complex shrinking
rapidly in the Chevy’s rearview mirror. They could spend weeks,
even months, trying to crack through Fibrol’s nondescript facade;
but Mulder had a strong feeling that the answers they were looking
for lay all the way on the other side of the world.
13
Left alone in his windowless office, Julian Kyle placed both hands
flat on the cold surface of his glass desk, staring intently at the two
imprints in the leather couch across from him. He wondered how
many millions of plate-shaped epidermal cells rested in the
microscopic canyons in the leather, how many millions of
infinitesimal, cellular reminders of the FBI agents floated in the
invisible drafts of air. He thought about Agent Mulder’s dark,
intelligent eyes, and Scully’s determined, penetrating voice. He
thought about the questions they had asked—and their reactions to
his answers.
Kyle considered himself good at reading people—but the two
agents were a mystery. Their texture was all wrong. They did not
seem like the carbon-copy intelligence officers Kyle had dealt with
many times in his career. They were smart, and they would not give
up easily.
Kyle thought for a long moment, then reached beneath his desk
and hit a small button located just above his knees. A few seconds
later the door to his office slid open.
He watched as the tall young man with slicked-back sable hair
slid into the room and tossed himself onto the couch, his long legs
hooked nonchalantly over one of the armrests. The man’s narrow
eyes flickered playfully toward the shattered display case beside the
desk, a smirk settling on his lips. “Having a bad day, Uncle Julian?”
Kyle grimaced as the man’s heavy Thai accent trickled into his
ears. He hated the artificial familiarity. He had watched the young
man grow up—but thankfully, there was no physical relationship
between them. Kyle considered himself a religious, moral man. This
man was something altogether different. Warped. Perverted.
Dangerous. All of his father’s sins—without any of his father’s virtues.
“We have a problem, Quo Tien,” Kyle responded, keeping the
conversation as short as possible. “The situation has not yet been
contained.”
The young man raised an eyebrow. Then he stretched his arms
above his head. Kyle could see the sinewy muscles stretching
beneath Quo Tien’s caramel skin. An involuntary shudder moved
through Kyle’s shoulders. He had served in Vietnam, had known
many dangerous men; but the Amerasian man truly terrified him.
He knew the pleasure Quo Tien took in his work, the sheer, almost
sexual enthusiasm that accompanied his acts of silent violence. For
years, he had witnessed the limitless exploitation of the child’s
perverse appetite.
He hated the fact that he, too, had taken part in that
exploitation. And that conditions might force him to use the young
man once again. “These two FBI agents aren’t going to be easily
dissuaded. They can’t be allowed to get any closer.”
“You worry too much,” Quo Tien interrupted, running a hand
through his dark hair. “They don’t even have a body to work with.
As long as we remain a step ahead of them, they’ll have nothing but
guesses.”
Kyle rubbed his square jaw. Quo Tien was right—but Kyle didn’t
like to take chances. Especially so close to the final phase of the
experiment. “At this stage, even guesses can be dangerous.”
The Amerasian laced his fingers together, then shrugged. “As
always, I eagerly await your orders.”
Kyle searched the young man’s eyes for some deeper meaning—
but saw nothing but limitless black pits. He took a deep breath,
slowly reaching for his phone. “It’s not my orders you follow, Quo
Tien. Don’t you ever forget that. For both our sakes.”
14
Scully watched the creases appear above Assistant Director
Skinner’s eyeglasses as he drummed his fingers against the open file
on his desk. As usual, Scully felt stiff and uncomfortable in
Skinner’s wood-paneled office on the third floor of the FBI
headquarters in Washington. Mulder looked much more relaxed on
the shiny leather couch to her right, but she knew it was a well-
practiced facade. Her own turbulent alliance with their supervisor
did not compare to the chaotic, sometimes violent relationship
between Mulder and the bald, spectacled ex-Marine who governed
both their careers.
Well over six feet tall, Skinner had a professional athlete’s body,
chiseled features, and stone gray eyes. A perpetual frown was
carved above his prominent jaw, and the packed muscles in his
neck and shoulders struggled against the material of his dignified,
dark suit. Power emanated from every inch of his body, and Scully
had no doubt that Skinner could easily snap Mulder over one knee.
At the same time, the man’s brutish physique belied an intense and
brilliant deductive mind; there wasn’t much that went on in
Washington Skinner didn’t know about. That knowledge—and
Skinner’s ambiguous association with both the established military
and the shadowy men behind the scenes—made him a natural
target for Mulder’s paranoia. Likewise, Mulder’s unorthodox
methods and nonconformist beliefs constantly antagonized Skinner,
sometimes pushing him past the point of control. Scully prayed the
afternoon meeting would be brief.
Skinner closed the file and crossed his arms against his chest. He
shifted his gaze toward the window, letting the hazy sunlight play
across the curves of his glasses. Behind him, Skinner’s office was
spartan, another reflection of the AD’s personality. Aside from the
wood paneling and the pristine leather furniture, the only
distinguishing possessions were a colorful U.S. wall map, and a
framed photo of Janet Reno by the door. The map was covered in
plastic pushpins, each representing an open federal case. Scully
could not help but notice the large white pin jutting out of
Manhattan.
“Red powder picked off of a highway and a few MRI scans,”
Skinner finally commented, still gazing out the window. “It’s not
much to go on. Especially when you consider the expense, and the
red tape involved.”
Scully nodded. “We wouldn’t be here if there was any other
way, sir. It’s a unique situation. Perry Stanton’s condition—a
condition that caused him to commit murder—needs to be
explained. At the moment, Agent Mulder and I believe that Fibrol is
a dead end; even with a search warrant, it’s doubtful we'll find any
evidence of Emile Paladin’s work, or any connection to the current
MRIs. We believe that the only possible source of new information
is in Thailand.”
Skinner turned back from the window. “Andrew Paladin. The
deceased subject’s brother. You say he lives in the vicinity of a town
called Alkut.”
“It’s a tiny fishing village on the southeastern coast,” Scully
continued. She had researched Alkut by airphone during the short
shuttle flight from New York. “The population is around five
thousand, mostly fishermen and their families. No tourist industry
as of yet, because the town is still inaccessible by train or airplane.
There’s no local police force to speak of, and not much of a
municipal structure. There’s no way to reach Andrew Paladin
through the local authorities.”
Skinner nodded. “What about one of our foreign agencies? State
Department, CIA, perhaps even the DEA? They’ve got people all
over Southeast Asia.”
Mulder coughed, crossing his legs. He avoided looking Skinner
directly in the eyes. “Our investigation is still in a fetal stage, sir.
Andrew Paladin is not the final step—just the necessary next step.
It’s not simply a matter of having him answer a few questions.”
Skinner raised his eyebrows. He leaned back in his high-backed
chair. “Agent Scully? Do you agree with Agent Mulder? Is Thailand
the necessary next step?”
Scully took a deep breath. She did not relish the idea of
traveling halfway around the world. But she knew there was little
choice; Stanton’s MRIs were impossible to explain—and as long as
his death was a mystery, the case was still open. The only real clue
they had was the connection to Fibrol and Emile Paladin’s fifteen-
year-old experiment. In New York, that translated to a corporate
dead end; Julian Kyle could hide behind his board of directors for
months, and the investigation would get nowhere. That had left
them with two options: leave the case standing—or follow the only
real avenue left open.
Scully met Skinner’s gaze. She knew his decision would be based
on her answer. “If we want to question Andrew Paladin about his
brother’s activities, we’re going to have to do it in person. That’s if
we can find him at all.”
Skinner paused, watching her expression. Finally, he nodded.
Twenty-one hours later, Scully’s fingers dug into a thick faux-
leather seat cushion as the 747 wide-body lurched upward,
ambushed by turbulent swirls of dense black air. There was a
sudden moment of weightlessness; then the plane rolled sickeningly
to the right. Scully glanced toward the oval window next to her—
but it was like staring into a pool of oil, shades of sable broken only
by the distant flash of lightning.
“It’s moments like these that make me glad I’m a believer,”
Mulder commented from the seat to Scully’s right, nervously
stretching his arms out in front of him. “I think I’ve discovered
twelve new religions in the last five minutes alone.”
“Tm still hanging on to the laws of aerodynamics and the
statistics of air travel,” Scully responded. “But if it gets any worse,
Pll be getting my rosary beads out of the overhead compartment.
This is pretty damn intense.”
“Southeast Asia in July, Scully. The fun’s just getting started. In
a couple of weeks this will look like a calm spring evening.”
Scully turned away from the window and tried to concentrate on
the laptop computer resting precariously on her knees. The screen
had changed from green to gray as the internal modem struggled to
extract information from the static-ridden airphone link Scully had
established before the storm set in. She tapped her fingers against
the keyboard, trying to shake life into her fatigued muscles. It had
been a long, tedious flight. Even in the relative comfort of Thai
Airline’s business class, twenty-two hours felt like an eternity.
But as she had told Assistant Director Skinner, there had been no
other choice. They needed information, and the only true source
was in Thailand.
“Andrew Paladin,” Scully said out loud, as her laptop suddenly
cleared. The picture took up half of the screen, and Mulder leaned
closer to get a better look. Tall, muscular, with wide shoulders and
a blond crew cut. Wearing a green infantry uniform, arms stiffly at
his side. It was obviously an army recruitment photo, and Andrew
Paladin had the dead look of a career foot soldier in his narrow blue
eyes.
“He looks a lot heavier than his brother,” Mulder commented.
“Wider in the shoulders, maybe a few inches shorter.”
Scully nodded. They had already looked through a dozen photos
of Emile Paladin, most taken around the time of the Fibrol scandal
involving the prisoners. Emile Paladin had been a handsome man,
long and thin, with intelligent eyes and an amiable smile. He had
photographed well—and often. Especially in the years just before
his death. But Andrew Paladin was a different story. “This is all I
can find, Mulder. I’ve been through every data bank I can think of,
and all I’m getting is an army recruitment photo and a paragraph of
statistics. Born in upstate New York like his brother, served two
years in South Vietnam before getting wounded in action. He was
twenty-two years old at the time, and a pretty good soldier.
Decorated twice for heroism, consistently good reports from his
commanding officers. But after his injury, the reports end. He was
sent to his brother’s MASH unit in Alkut—and pretty much
disappeared from record.”
Mulder caught the side of the laptop as the airplane jerked hard
to the left. “What about his wounds? Anything in his file about
where he was hit—or how badly?”
Scully shook her head. She had skimmed Andrew Paladin’s brief
military file while Mulder had watched the third in-flight movie,
something about a family of talking cats. “Well, his injuries were bad
enough to take him out of the war. He received a medical discharge
three months after arriving in Alkut. But there are no specifics in
his file. It’s odd, Mulder; the army is usually pretty good about this
sort of thing. There should be some sort of medical chart, something
the VA hospital system could refer to in case of future problems.”
“Well,” Mulder said, thinking out loud, “Emile Paladin was in
charge of his brother’s medical care, right? If he had wanted to keep
the details off the record, he wouldn’t have had much trouble.”
Scully caught her breath as the lights in the cabin flickered, then
resumed. The storm seemed to be getting worse, huge raindrops
crackling against the Plexiglas double window. “Why would he
want to keep his brother’s medical state a secret?”
Mulder paused, as if debating bringing something out in the
open. As usual, he decided not to edit his thoughts. “Emile Paladin
might have had something to hide. He might still have something to
hide.”
Scully stared at him. “Mulder, Emile Paladin died fifteen years
ago.”
“Right on the tail of a scandal that could have landed him in jail
—or threatened the company he had built.”
Scully paused. “So you think the timing of his death is a bit
convenient.”
“And the circumstances, Scully. He died in an accident overseas.
His recluse brother inherited controlling interest in his company—
but remained completely invisible, without even an address or a
phone number on record. A brother whose history seems to have
ended more than twenty-five years ago—again, in mysterious
circumstances.”
Scully shook her head. “I agree that there are a lot of loose ends.
But to suggest that Emile Paladin faked his death—for what reason,
Mulder? And how does Andrew Paladin fit in?”
Mulder shrugged. “Perhaps Emile Paladin wanted to continue
his research in secret. Perhaps his brother is helping him keep his
work private. And perhaps, somehow, Emile Paladin let something
leak out—something that caused Perry Stanton’s rampage and
death. Something that forced a cover-up that led to the murder of
two medical students.”
Scully leaned back in her seat, her thoughts as turbulent as the
air outside. Mulder’s paranoia had caused him to jump beyond the
evidence—to conclusions he could not back up with facts. There
was no reason to believe that Emile Paladin was still alive. Nor was
there any way to connect the polyps inside Perry Stanton’s skull
with the deaths of the two medical students—much less classify
their deaths as murder. But at the same time, Scully knew better
than to discard Mulder’s theory out of hand. His intuition—as
insane as it often seemed—was unparalleled. “We’re not here to
chase a dead man, Mulder. We’re here to find Andrew Paladin.”
Mulder was about to respond when the 747 suddenly dipped
forward, the cabin lights blinking three times. A heavily accented
voice explained that the airplane was beginning its descent toward
Bangkok International Airport. Mulder waited for the captain to
turn his attention back to the storm before clearing his throat.
“You’re right. Andrew Paladin is where we have to start. But I don’t
think this investigation is going to end with a few answers from a
recluse brother.”
Scully let the thought sit in the air between them, as the
airplane slipped downward through the frantic black air.
Six rows back, Quo Tien’s long fingers crawled spider-like down the
window by his shoulder, chasing the teardrops of rain on the other
side. He could just barely see the cluttered lights of Bangkok
breaking through the cloud cover as the 747 sank toward the
waiting runway. The sprawling metropolis evoked conflicting
emotions inside of him; he thought about the years he had spent in
the city’s nocturnal alleys, practicing his art, keeping himself toned
and in tune—waiting for the next call to service. For seven years,
Bangkok had fed his existence—but only Alkut had ever been his
home.
Tien was a half-breed, the son of an American soldier and a Thai
prostitute; in his culture, that made him polluted, untouchable.
Still, he had never cursed the nature of his birth. The distance
between himself and the children he had grown up with had
nothing to do with the muted color of his skin. It had always been a
matter of appetite. A matter of hunger.
He thought about the two agents seated a few yards away from
him, and his stomach churned, a heat dancing up through his body.
A smile spilled across his thin face, and he closed his eyes, caressed
by the rhythm of the storm.
15
Twelve hours later, the rain was coming down in wide gray sheets
as Mulder navigated a rented four-wheel-drive Jeep down a road
rapidly changing from dirt to mud. Scully had a U.S. Army surplus
map open on her lap, and she was struggling to match the
surroundings with twenty-year-old military notations. Mulder could
see that she was both tired and frustrated; every time the Jeep hit
one of the crater-sized potholes that seemed to spring up out of
nowhere, Scully let out a curse, strands of wet hair flopping into her
eyes. In truth, Mulder sympathized with her worsening disposition.
Hunched forward over the jerking steering wheel, sweat running
down his back and chest, his fingers aching from the pitted road
and the Jeep’s overtaxed, circa 1960s manual transmission—he felt
anything but fresh.
So far, Thailand was not the tropical paradise he had imagined.
The beauty of the country had gotten lost somewhere in the midst
of the rain, the oppressive heat, the choking humidity—and the
increasingly primitive conditions. Mulder had already stripped
down to his thin cotton shirt and trousers—and still his skin felt
prickly where the material stuck to him, each breath catching in his
throat as he strove to adapt to the nearly gelatinous air.
Ahead, the road seemed almost a living thing, serpentine twists
of dark mud slithering between the lush green trees. The sky had
long ago vanished behind a canopy of rain clouds, and the Jeep’s
fog lights danced like ghosts as Mulder fought to keep the vehicle
from pitching into the encroaching forest on either side.
Physical conditions aside, it had been an exhausting twelve
hours since he and Scully had landed in Bangkok. After deplaning,
they had been met at the terminal by their military liaison, an army
corporal in dress uniform with a permanent sneer embedded in his
chiseled face. Timothy Van Epps was a career soldier with little
time or regard for FBI agents so far from their jurisdiction—and it
was obvious he had been given the assignment at the last minute,
without his approval. After taking the agents to a small, lifeless
office behind the airport customs desk, he had rushed them through
a brief discussion of the present state of U.S. relations with the Thai
monarchy, and had handed them a sheet of printed directions to
Alkut. Along with the directions came a map of the tiny fishing
village and the surrounding geography—and a disclaimer: “Things
may be a hell of a lot different in real life than they appear on that
piece of toilet paper. We haven’t had much use for that area since
Vietnam—so most of those notations are twenty-five years old at
best. If you want, you can fax me an updated version when you’re
done with your little trip.”
Mulder doubted the U.S. Army needed FBI agents to update its
information—especially in a region of Southeast Asia where it had
once deployed extensive military resources. It was much more likely
that Van Epps had been ordered—or had taken it upon himself—to
be less than helpful. Not because of some sort of overarching
conspiracy—although Scully would have assumed that was where
Mulder’s line of thought was heading—but simply because it was in
the military’s nature. The military often saw the FBI as an errant
little sibling—to be tolerated, but certainly not encouraged.
Especially when the little brother wanted to join in the fun
overseas.
After giving them the map and information, Van Epps had
escorted them to a government sedan with diplomatic plates and
transported them from the airport to Hua Lamphong, Bangkok’s
main train station. The trip had been mind-numbing after the
tedious flight. The Thai capital redefined the notion of an urban
jungle: narrow, tightly packed streets jammed with compact cars,
open-air buses, bicycles, and moped rickshaws—and everywhere
you looked, people, so many millions of people. Thai men dressed
in white business shirts and women in silk dresses, children in dark
school uniforms and monks in bright orange robes: a never-ending
sea of people, bouncing through the sidewalks like balls in a
pachinko machine. Rising up above the sidewalks, the buildings
themselves were something out of a schizophrenic’s dream. Glass-
and-steel offices towered over ancient, golden-roofed temples, while
apartment complexes sprang up on every corner, each a mixture of
a half dozen different architectural styles: jutting spires, cubic
balconies, curved white corners, levels constructed of wood, plaster,
stone, and steel. The buildings seemed locked in a battle between
old and new, and the only constant was growth—perpetual,
throbbing, unstoppable.
Mulder and Scully never had a chance to digest the eclectic
images; Van Epps squired them to the crowded train station, a fairly
modern complex lodged near the center of the city. He had pointed
them toward the right set of iron rails, then waved them on their
way. Mulder had not minded the hands-off treatment; he did not
trust men like Van Epps, nor did he enjoy having the military
watching over his shoulder. He and Scully were now free to conduct
their investigation on their own terms and timetable.
Soon the swollen city of Bangkok had given way to a lush green
countryside of dense forests and unending rice fields, as the train
had briefly wound its way into the interior of the country on its
journey toward the southeastern coast. Mulder had spent much of
the trip conversing—in a mixture of English and inadequate French
—with a Thai farmer on his way back home after a three-week trip
to the great capital. When Mulder had told the rugged-looking man
their destination, he had reacted strangely, backing away while
grabbing at something near the collar of his shirt. Mulder had seen
it was an amulet of some kind—a common Thai accoutrement. The
Thai were one of the most superstitious and spiritual people on
Earth, and most Thai men wore at least one Buddhist charm. Still,
Mulder wondered why the mere mention of Alkut had caused such
a reaction.
When Mulder had pressed the farmer on the issue, the man
mumbled something about mai dee phis—literally, “bad spirits,” as
Mulder’s English-Thai dictionary informed him. For the rest of the
trip, he had stared out the window, avoiding conversation.
The train had taken the two agents as far as Rayong, a gulf town
surrounded by white-sand beaches and sprawling European-style
resorts. A fishing village famous for its nam plaa— “fish sauce,” the
most popular condiment in Thailand—Rayong bristled with coffee
shops and souvenir markets catering to the large number of tourists
visiting the nearby newly finished resorts.
Mulder and Scully had rented the Jeep just outside the town
limits and begun the long drive away from the tourist centers,
trekking deeper into the untouched southern regions of the country.
The roads had quickly gone from asphalt to dirt, the scenery from
controlled, sandy beauty spotted by palm trees and waterfront
hotels to uninhabited tracts of dense forest and rocky cliffs. The
closer they got to Alkut, the worse the conditions; in some
instances, it seemed as if they had driven right off the edge of
civilization.
“The town shouldn’t be much farther,” Scully commented as she
unfolded a corner of the map and gestured at a break in the trees
just beyond Mulder’s shoulder. “I think the Gulf of Thailand is
directly down that slope. And that outcropping to the right—that
leads straight up into the mountains. See Dum Kao— the Black
Hills.’ A twelve-thousand-foot ascension to its highest peak,
dropping off right into the border with Kampuchea. According to
the map, the See Dum range encompasses an area of nearly two
hundred square miles. Mostly unlivable and uncharted—rife with
mud slides, avalanches, predators, and disease-carrying insects.”
“Recluse heaven,” Mulder said. “Hide out in a cave somewhere,
eat a few indigenous animals for supper, have your recluse buddies
over on the weekends to watch the mud slides—”
“Mulder!”
The Jeep tipped perilously forward as the dirt road suddenly
disappeared in a descending tangle of thick vegetation and loose
rocks. Mulder yanked the steering wheel hard to the right, fighting
to keep the headlights facing forward as the Jeep tumbled down the
steep embankment. Tree branches lashed at the side windows as
rocks the size of basketballs shot up around the churning tires.
There was a brief second of dead silence as the Jeep lurched over
some sort of rotted trunk—then the tires crashed down against
packed dirt.
Mulder slammed his foot against the brake. The Jeep fishtailed
to the left, then skidded to a complete stop. Eyes wild, Mulder
looked up—and saw that they were parked at the edge of a
cobblestone road, facing a long, flat valley bordered on three sides
by the rising forest. The Gulf of Thailand was no more than three
hundred yards to the left, separated from the road by huge granite
boulders and gnarled trees that looked like a cross between a palm
and a birch. Mulder was momentarily stunned by the sight; the
clear blue water stretched on forever beneath the sky, flat and
glistening like a plane of opaque glass. Mulder could make out a
long wooden dock fifty yards away, surrounded by brightly colored
Chinese-style junks and smaller, motorized fishing boats. The rain
did not seem to deter the fishermen—tiny shapes garbed in dark
green, hooded smocks moved on the boat’s decks and along the
dock. Mulder watched for a full minute as four fishermen struggled
with a tangled net hanging off the back of one of the junks. Then he
turned his attention back to the road ahead as he carefully restarted
the Jeep’s engine.
“T think we’ve found Alkut,” Scully commented, breathing hard.
She lifted her hands off the dashboard and pushed her hair out of
her eyes. Mulder followed her gaze, letting the Jeep idle as he
surveyed the scenery.
The cobblestone road ran parallel to the Gulf, leading toward
the center of the quiet fishing village. Beginning twenty yards
ahead, low wooden buildings were spaced every few hundred feet
along both sides of the road, with shuttered windows and colorful
vinyl overhangs covered in huge Thai letters. Most of the buildings
seemed to be commercial shops, but Mulder recognized a few
traditional Thai houses, with thatched roofs and slanted outer walls.
Most of the buildings stood on short wooden stilts, and Mulder had
a feeling the town spent many weeks of the rainy season under a
few feet of water.
Farther down the road, the commercial buildings and traditional
houses seemed to cling closer together, spreading backward from
the main road in dense pockets, some rising as high as two or three
stories. People of various ages, shapes, and sizes moved between the
buildings, and Mulder counted at least a dozen other cars in the
vicinity—most even older and more dilapidated than the mud-
spattered rented Jeep. The cars shared the road with brightly
colored wooden rickshaws, attached to rusty bicycles with wide
umbrellas sticking up from their handlebars. Like the fishermen out
by the dock, nobody seemed to notice the rain. The rickshaws
careened between the cars, the drivers shouting at one another in
singsongy Thai syllables. A small group of children ran along the
edge of the road ten feet ahead, a pair of barking dogs following
behind. To their right, two old women haggled loudly over a line of
dried fish spread across a huge blanket beneath one of the vinyl
overhangs.
“It’s certainly quaint,” Scully said, as the Jeep rolled toward the
center of town. “And quite different from Bangkok. It’s hard to
believe they’re both part of the same country.”
Mulder nodded. “It’s a nation in transition. Bangkok is a
microcosm of the whole—a totally modern, commercialized city
with a preindustrial feel. Alkut, on the other hand, seems lodged
much further in the country’s past. Less than five thousand
residents, probably no tourist industry to speak of. Just fishermen
and their families. And maybe a couple of Westerners left over from
the war.”
As he spoke, his gaze settled on an elderly man standing by the
edge of the road, a wide, toothless smile on his lips. The man wore
three necklaces around his thin, bare chest, each supporting a tiny
rectangular block of jade. Amulets, like the one worn by the farmer on
the train, Mulder reminded himself: The country had more spirits
per capita than anywhere else in the world. Men wore as many as a
dozen amulets to guard against everything from disease to fishing
accidents. Still, something about the old man unnerved Mulder. Not
merely his relative indifference at seeing two farangs rolling into
town—but something deeper, something in his smile and his dark
eyes. It was almost as though he had been expecting the two agents.
Mulder shook his head, telling himself it was just the rain, the
unending sheets of gray screwing with his perspective. The old man
was simply friendly—like most Thais. The next few villagers they
passed offered up the same genuine smile, and Mulder’s suspicions
trickled away. As the Jeep moved deeper into Alkut, he glanced at
the map in Scully’s hands. “See anything that resembles a hotel?”
Scully shrugged. “I’m sure we’ll find something near the center
of town. Nothing fancy—but we just need a place to dump our stuff.
Then we can start tracking down Andrew Paladin.”
Mulder tossed a quick glance at the forest that rose up above the
town, leading into the foothills of the See Dum mountain range. He
thought about the two hundred square miles of uncharted land
surrounding Alkut. He wondered which was easier, tracking a
recluse in all that expanse of wilderness—or trailing a man who had
supposedly died fifteen years ago. He had a feeling that both
searches would lead to the same goal—the truth behind what had
happened to Perry Stanton.
“This looks like the spot,” Scully said, huddled next to Mulder
beneath the skimpy overhang of a tired-looking palm tree.
“According to the army’s records, this clinic was built over the
original location of Emile Paladin’s MASH unit.”
Mulder kicked water out of his right shoe, then pushed back a
wet palm leaf to get a better look at the building before them. The
clinic was low and rectangular, stretching along the muddy road for
about twenty yards. The walls were made of aging yellow cinder
blocks, and the roof was sloped and encircled by a patchwork of
iron rain gutters, overflowing at the corners into huge wooden
barrels lodged in the thick mud. There were a half dozen crude
windows cut into the cinder-block facade, covered in thick sheets of
transparent plastic. Above the nondescript main entrance was a
carved, grinning Buddha sunk directly into the wall, beneath two
rows of Thai lettering. The Buddha was plated in gold, seated with
crossed legs, palms facing upward in what Mulder recognized as the
southern, meditative style. According to the white-haired old man
who ran the small hotel where Mulder and Scully had deposited
their things, Buddhist monks had been running the clinic for nearly
ten years.
“Mulder, check out the building across the street. Isn’t that a
church?”
Mulder turned to look at the small two-story structure that faced
the clinic. The building was painted white, with a single conic
steeple rising almost twenty feet above the slanted roof. The top of
the steeple housed a small bell tower, but the bell was missing,
along with a fair-sized chunk of plaster where the steeple met the
church’s slanted roof. The place looked as though it had been shut
down a long time ago, and the front doors were covered in the same
transparent plastic as the clinic’s windows. “It doesn’t look as if
they’re doing a very brisk business.”
“Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia never to have
been a European colony,” Scully commented. “Christianity never
gained a foothold here.”
Mulder turned away from the church and gestured toward an
object just in front of the clinic. It was a small wooden dollhouse set
on top of a cylindrical post. The miniature house was three feet
long and half as high, and had obviously been constructed with
great care. The walls were painted in bright colors, and the roof was
tiled in strips of what looked to be pure gold. The tiny windows had
polished glass panes, and even the doorknobs had been molded out
of brass. Someone had recently placed mounds of fresh garlands
around the base of the house, and two long sticks of incense leaked
smoke past the tiny glass windows. “Christianity never had a
chance. The indigenous religion is too strong.”
Mulder started forward toward the little house and the entrance
to the clinic. His shoulders involuntarily arched forward against the
warm rain. “It’s a spirit house, Scully. They're a common sight in
any town in Thailand—even in Bangkok, the most sophisticated city
in the country. They serve as the homes of the resident phis—spirits
—of the particular building nearby.”
Scully raised her eyebrows as they passed close to the spirit
house. She leaned over the beautiful pressed flowers that peeked
from the tiny windows. “You seem to know a lot about the Thai
religion, Mulder.”
Mulder smiled as they reached the door to the clinic. “I have an
enormous respect for the Thai—always have. Their spirituality is
extremely individualistic. In fact, the word Thai means ‘free.’ Their
beliefs aren’t a matter of doctrine—but of day-to-day observation. If
they choose to placate a certain spirit, it’s because they’ve
witnessed the results of having that spirit become angry. Not
because someone has told them it’s the right thing to do.”
Scully glanced at Mulder. He knew that she was trying to gauge
whether or not he was serious. His face gave her no clues as he
reached for the door to the clinic. “There’s something to be said for
a culture that’s remained independent—without even a single civil
war—for over eight hundred years.”
The door came open, and Mulder felt cool air touch his wet
cheeks. He ushered Scully out of the rain and shut the door behind
them. They were standing at the edge of a wide rectangular hall
with plaster walls and a cement floor. The place was well lit by a
pair of fluorescent tubes hanging from the high tiled ceiling, and a
crisp, antiseptic scent filled the air. More than a dozen litters were
set up along the two sidewalls, complete with IV racks, medical
carts, and the odd EKG machine. The litters were modern, with
chrome frames, steel wheels, and thick hospital bedding. At least
half the litters were occupied.
Buddhist monks in orange robes moved among the patients,
followed by nurses in white Red Cross uniforms. Mulder noticed
that the monks were wearing latex gloves and many had
stethoscopes around their necks. All things considered, the place
was sparser than a Western clinic, but seemed modern and efficient.
Compared to the rest of the sleepy fishing village, the clinic was
almost cosmopolitan.
Scully touched Mulder’s shoulder, pointing toward one of the
litters. Two monks hovered over the chrome rail, watching as a tall,
blond Caucasian woman leaned close to the patient’s chest. Mulder
noticed that her jacket was different from the ones worn by the Red
Cross nurses, longer in the back with an open front. Beneath the
jacket, the woman was wearing light blue surgical scrubs.
“Looks like she’s in charge,” Scully said. “That’s an MD’s jacket.
And the way she’s wearing her stethoscope—she’s trained in the
U.S. At least through her internship.”
As Mulder and Scully approached the litter, the woman stepped
back, letting the two monks have a better look at what she had just
done. Mulder’s eyes shifted to the patient. The man was mid-forties,
conscious, with his shirt tied down around his waist. A thin line of
fresh sutures ran from his upper abdomen to just below his
collarbone. Mulder could see the approval in Scully’s eyes; the
woman had done a good job closing the wound.
“Well put him on antibiotics for three weeks,” the woman said
to the monks. “He should be as good as new. Unless he gets in the
way of another swordfish hook.”
The monks nodded vigorously, and the woman turned, noticing
the two agents for the first time. “You two look like you’re from out
of town. I’m Dr. Lianna Fielding. Is there something I can help you
with?”
Mulder slid his ID out of his pants pocket, watching Fielding’s
expression as she studied the FBI seal. She was tall—almost
Mulder’s height, with sharp features and narrow blue eyes. “I’m Fox
Mulder, this is my partner, Dana Scully. We're U.S. federal agents,
and we were hoping you could spare a moment of your time. Are
you a full-time resident of Alkut, Dr. Fielding?”
Fielding pulled off her latex gloves and tossed them toward a
plastic waste bin. “Actually, I’m attached to the local division of the
Red Cross. I make a tour of all of the towns and villages in the area,
teaching and assisting as much as I can. U.S. federal agents? You’re
rather far from home, aren’t you?”
Scully had stepped next to the litter and was surveying the
stitches. The two monks were next to her, conversing in quiet Thai.
Mulder noticed that Scully was being careful to keep a respectable
distance between herself and the monks, as Buddhist law dictated.
“From your cross-stitching, Dr. Fielding, my guess is you trained in
the States. Is that right?”
“Chicago. Are you a doctor?”
Scully nodded. “Forensic pathology. But I’m not here in that
capacity.”
“We're investigating a case that goes back fifteen years,” Mulder
interrupted. “We’re interested in finding two men connected to the
MASH unit that used to be located on this spot. Emile and Andrew
Paladin—”
Fielding coughed, then glanced at the two monks, who had both
looked up at the mention of the names. “If you’re federal agents,
I’m sure you must know that Emile Paladin died a long time ago.”
Mulder’s instincts kicked in as he watched the two monks
whispering to one another. Something about Emile Paladin’s name
had struck a nerve—fifteen years after the fact. Lianna Fielding
noticed the change in Mulder’s eyes and made an attempt at
explanation. “Emile Paladin is a part of this town’s history, Agent
Mulder. His MASH unit was many of the townspeople’s first real
contact with the outside world. And as you probably know, the Thai
have an extremely—creative—way of thinking. Things that are
different inspire stories, legends—and fear. And from what I
understand, Emile Paladin was indeed different.”
Mulder felt his muscles tense. “How do you mean?”
Fielding started to answer when a commotion broke out near the
doorway to the clinic. Mulder turned and saw an old man being
half-carried toward a litter by two younger men in fishing gear. The
old man was moaning in obvious, excruciating pain, clutching
wildly at his leg. Without a word, Fielding quickly grabbed a fresh
pair of gloves from a nearby cart and rushed past the two agents.
She shouted something in Thai to one of the young men, and
received a high-pitched response.
Fielding reached the litter a few steps ahead of Scully. Mulder
saw that the old man’s pants had been torn away below the knee.
His right leg had turned a strange purple color and was speckled
with circular blisters. Fielding spoke quietly to the man, trying to
calm him, as a monk handed her a vial of clear liquid. She poured
the liquid over the purple area, and Mulder caught the distinct
scent of vinegar.
“Jellyfish,” Scully commented, watching Fielding work. “Maybe
a man-of-war. Incredibly painful, sometimes even fatally so. The
vinegar fixes the nematocysts—stinging cells—onto the skin, to
prevent further encroachment.”
Fielding began applying a dry powder over the wound. “Meat
tenderizer,” Scully explained. “It makes the nematocysts stick
together, and neutralizes the acid venom.”
Fielding reached for a scalpel from a small tray held by one of
the monks. She carefully began to scrape the top layer of skin off of
the old man’s leg. The man’s pain seemed to lessen as she shaved
away the nematocysts. Still, he seemed dazed, nearly catatonic.
Mulder’s thoughts drifted back to Perry Stanton as he watched
Fielding work with the scalpel. He remembered the wild look in
Stanton’s eyes as he leapt at him in the subway tunnel. Stanton had
been completely out of his mind, in agony—not so different from
the old man on the litter. Both were trapped in the torment of their
own skin.
Finally, Fielding set the scalpel back on the tray and began to
rinse the wound. As the patient settled back against the stretcher,
Fielding turned toward Mulder. “As I was about to say, I’m not
really the person you should be talking to. Pm not a native of this
town—and I have no personal knowledge of either of the Paladins.
But there is someone who might be able to help you. Allan
Trowbridge, one of the clinic’s founders.”
Scully had her notepad out of her pocket and was shaking
rainwater out of the binding. “Did Trowbridge know Emile
Paladin?”
“Allan served as an orderly with the MASH unit during the war.
He decided to settle in Alkut after the war ended. He helped set up
this clinic—and was responsible for getting the Red Cross to send
much of the equipment. He’s very well respected in the
community.”
“Is he here at the clinic?” Mulder asked, his interest growing.
“Today is his day off. You can probably find him at home—I’ll
give you directions. A friendly warning, though; from what I’ve
heard about Emile Paladin and his MASH unit—you aren’t going to
be making many friends, bringing up that past. Some things are
better left alone.”
Mulder raised his eyebrows. The cryptic statement was just the
sort of thing to make him want to dig deeper.
16
Mulder’s face caught fire from the inside, followed by a shrill
ringing deep in his ears. He quickly reached for his drink, but his
eyes were watering so much he couldn’t find the glass. He opened
his mouth to beg for help, but all he could manage was a fierce
choking sound, somewhat akin to a chain saw cutting through bone.
His attempts at communication were met by a gale of laughter
from the other side of the low wooden table. Allan Trowbridge
slammed his beefy palms together, a huge smile on his lips. “Like I
said, som-dtam is an acquired taste. Even the Thais treat the
northern dish with respect.”
Mulder finally found his glass of bia— Thai beer—letting the
harsh bubbles chase the fire away. He rubbed the tears out of his
eyes and looked at Scully, who was seated cross-legged on the
wood-paneled floor next to him, her chopsticks hovering above the
oversize dish. “Dive right in, Scully. Don’t let me suffer alone.”
Scully paused for a moment, then shrugged and lifted one of the
noodlelike strips to her lips. The moment she closed her mouth, her
eyes sprang open and red cauliflowers appeared on her cheeks. She
coughed, grabbing Mulder’s glass right out of his hand. Mulder
turned back toward Trowbridge, who was thoroughly enjoying the
show.
“You know,” Mulder joked, “assaulting FBI agents is a federal
crime. What did you say was in this concoction?”
Before Trowbridge could answer, his wife sidled up next to him,
bowing softly as she took her seat at the low pine table. Her
appearance was a striking contrast to her husband’s. Trowbridge
was a huge man, over six feet tall and at least 220 pounds. His
barrel chest swelled against the table with each breath, and his
bright red beard seemed to spring out over his square jaw like moss
on a boulder. Rina Trowbridge, on the other hand, was a tiny
woman—barely five feet tall, with thin, delicate features. Her jet-
black hair was tied back behind her head in a complex system of
buns, and she was wearing an elegant, jade green silk smock,
buttoned at the throat.
“First,” Rina said, her English draped in the velvet tones of her
Thai accent, “we start with raw papaya. Then we add lime juice, a
handful of chilies, dried shrimp, and tiny salted land crabs. The
finished product is pounded in a pestle, and served as is. I apologize
for the lack of warning—my husband is a sadist.”
Mulder laughed. In truth, Allan Trowbridge seemed to be a
genuinely amiable man. Despite Dr. Fielding’s warnings,
Trowbridge had not seemed upset by Mulder and Scully’s arrival—
or their front line of questions about Emile Paladin and the MASH
unit. Instead of displaying any anger, he had immediately
demanded that the two agents join him for lunch. His wife had
happily added two settings to the table.
Mulder’s gaze swept across the small living area as he gingerly
scooped a small ball of khao niew—sticky rice—into his serving
bowl. The narrow, wood-walled room had a warm and friendly feel
to it, from the loosely woven hangings to the plush, faded crimson
oriental carpet that covered most of the floor. There was a tall
rattan bookshelf by the door, filled with medical manuals and Thai-
to-English dictionaries. In the far corner, there was a small Buddhist
shrine, complete with a four-foot-high golden Buddha seated cross-
legged, palms up, on a marble pedestal. The Buddha was
surrounded by unlit incense and dried garlands, and there were two
sets of cloth slippers beneath the pedestal. No doubt, Trowbridge
had picked up some of his wife’s culture—and perhaps that
accounted for his easygoing attitude. Along with their spirituality
and superstitions, the Thai were also known for their relaxed way of
life.
“You’ve come a long way to ask questions about ancient
history,” Trowbridge said as he picked at the last remnants of his
meal—finally turning the conversation back to Mulder and Scully’s
entrance. “Emile and Andrew Paladin are a part of this village’s past
—but certainly not part of its present. I haven’t spoken either of
those names in a long, long time. And I don’t know anything about
Andrew Paladin’s whereabouts. I’ve heard rumors that he lives up
in the mountains—but I haven’t seen him since the war. So I’m not
sure how I can help you.”
“But you did serve under Emile Paladin in the MASH unit?”
Scully asked, still sipping Mulder’s beer. “Dr. Fielding led us to
believe that Paladin and his unit were not something Alkut was
very fond of remembering.”
Trowbridge nodded, his smile weakening slightly. “Well, it was
a time of war. And Emile Paladin was an intimidating, obsessive
man. He ran the MASH unit as if it was his private fiefdom. And to
the villagers, who weren’t used to the effects of modern warfare—
sometimes the place seemed like a hell on Earth. And I guess that
made Emile Paladin into some sort of devil.”
Mulder paused, as he saw a tiny, inadvertent shiver move
through Trowbridge’s shoulders. It was the first crack in the man’s
amiable facade, and it made Mulder wonder—was there something
hidden behind that smile? “What exactly do you mean?”
Trowbridge spread his hands against the table, his eyes shifting
downward for a brief second. “Our MASH unit specialized in
napalm injuries, Agent Mulder. They sent us the absolute worst of
the worst—men with burns over fifty percent of their body. A
steady stream of horribly scorched soldiers, most without faces.
Without hair. Without skin. Men who should have died on the
battlefield but had somehow survived—burned to the last inch of
their humanity.”
Trowbridge’s voice wavered, and Mulder watched as his wife
rose from the table and crossed to the golden Buddha in the far
corner. She leaned forward and took a match from beneath the
garlands. Carefully, she lit one of the sticks of incense.
“Emile Paladin was their doctor,” Trowbridge continued, his
smile now gone but his expression still light. “And they were his
obsession. He spent his days and nights surrounded by those
tortured souls. He hardly spoke to anyone.”
Scully leaned forward, the beautiful cuisine suddenly forgotten.
“Were you aware of what he was working on?”
Trowbridge glanced at his wife, who was lighting a second stick
of incense. The enormous man took a deep breath, his face slightly
paled. “Skin. He was searching for the perfect synthetic skin.
Something that could trick the body’s defenses, that would be
accepted by the immune system, that could repair the damage from
the napalm. It was his quest, the only thing that mattered to him.
He would spend weeks locked in his research laboratory, working
on his skin. By the end, the only one he allowed inside with him
was his son.”
Mulder turned toward Trowbridge, wondering if he had
misheard. Emile Paladin had a son? Julian Kyle had not mentioned
anything about a son. Nor had there been anything in the military
or FBI files on Emile Paladin about progeny. Mulder shifted his
head and saw that Scully was staring at Trowbridge with the same
intensity.
“Paladin had a child?” she asked.
Trowbridge looked toward his wife again, who instantly met his
gaze. The fear was plainly written across her face. She didn’t want
her husband to say anything more. But Trowbridge shook his head,
turning back to the agents. It seemed that he wanted to tell the
story—as if he had been waiting a long time to let it out. “The boy’s
name was Quo Tien. He was born to a prostitute who lived near the
MASH unit. She died during childbirth, and Paladin took the child
as his own. He raised the boy among his burned, tortured patients.
As you can guess, the boy did not turn out well.”
Mulder wasn’t sure what that meant. He waited for Trowbridge
to continue, but instead the big man leaned back from the table, his
face sagging. He shook his head, as if chasing the memories away.
“As I said, that’s all ancient history. The war ended, the MASH unit
closed up shop. Emile Paladin was forced to continue his research
elsewhere. He and his son moved out of Alkut. And a few years
later—as you know—he died.”
End of story, Trowbridge seemed to want to add. But something
in his eyes told Mulder the story was actually far from over. Mulder
aimed his chopsticks at another ball of sticky rice. “A hiking
accident. That’s what we were told.”
“And that’s what’s on the death certificate,” Trowbridge said,
speaking quietly. “He fell into a deep ravine while hiking in the
mountains. During the war, he had often taken trips up See Dum
Kao. He was an avid student of Thai mythology, and there are many
ancient ruins in those mountains. But the terrain can be quite
treacherous—and according to the story, Paladin broke his neck in
a canyon near the range’s peak. His body was greatly damaged by
the fall—and picked clean by local wildlife.”
Rina Trowbridge was bent in ritual prostration before the
Buddhist shrine. She suddenly cleared her throat, drawing the
attention away from her husband. When she turned away from the
Buddha, her face was strangely stiff, her eyes smoldering. “My
husband has not told you the entire story. My husband is afraid. We
are both afraid.”
Mulder was shocked by the sudden admission. The tension was
as palpable as the strong scent of incense. Trowbridge whispered
something in Thai to his wife. She lowered her eyes. Mulder felt
Scully’s hand on his arm—but he couldn’t let things lie. His senses
told him they were on the edge of something vitally important. “Mr.
Trowbridge, if you’re in some kind of danger—”
“It's nothing,” Trowbridge loudly interrupted, not meeting
Mulder’s eyes. “An old wives’ tale, a foolish myth, a farmer’s
superstition. Rumors—”
“They’re not rumors,” Rina Trowbridge declared, stepping
toward the table. “Gin-Korng-Pew is not a rumor.”
Mulder searched his memory for the words, but found nothing
that matched. He could hear Scully moving uncomfortably next to
him; she could tell they were about to delve into Mulder territory,
and she wasn’t happy about it. They were supposed to be searching
for Andrew Paladin. But from the looks on Rina’s and Allan
Trowbridge’s faces—Mulder knew, this was too important to pass
over.
“It’s a local legend,” Trowbridge finally explained, though
something in his face told Mulder that he was not as skeptical as his
words, “dating back many centuries. Gin-Korng-Pew means, literally,
the Skin Eater. It’s the name of a mythical creature that supposedly
lives in a cave at the base of the See Dum range.”
“The Skin Eater?” Scully repeated.
“I know how foolish it sounds,” Trowbridge responded, facing
her. “But as the story goes, around three hundred years ago, bodies
began to crop up around the town—minus their skin. Usually
vagrants, sometimes farm animals, sometimes missing children—
and always the corpses were found in the same state, completely
skinned. A local cult grew up around the mysterious deaths—and a
small temple was even erected, out near the edge of town. Sacrifices
were made, and about a century ago the corpses stopped appearing.
According to the myth, Gin-Korng-Pew was sated; the creature went
into an indefinite hibernation in his cave.”
Rina lowered herself to her husband’s side. “But his hibernation
was interrupted. Twenty-five years ago—around the same time the
MASH unit opened its doors—the skinned bodies began appearing
again. First farm animals. Then a pair of brothers, lost on a hunting
expedition. Then more and more villagers—poor souls who had
wandered too far from home. Every week, it seemed, there was
another skinned corpse found near the town. It got so bad, people
were afraid to leave their houses. And of course, everyone knew it
was because of the MASH unit.”
Mulder did not need to see Scully’s expression to know what she
was thinking. But he was not so quick to dismiss the woman’s story.
In his experience, old wives’ tales usually had a basis in facts. It just
took a certain sort of vision to see those facts. “And why was that,
Mrs. Trowbridge?”
“Emile Paladin had awakened the Skin Eater. Either through his
hikes in the mountains—or because of the thousands of horribly
tormented soldiers he brought to Alkut. He had awakened Gin-
Korng-Pew after so many years. And the creature was hungry.”
“And now?” Scully asked, trying to keep the skepticism out of
her voice. “Are there still skinless corpses appearing around town?”
Rina Trowbridge shook her head. “Emile Paladin was their last
victim. After his death, the creature returned to his hibernation.”
Scully touched Mulder’s shoulder as she rose to her feet. Mulder
could tell—she had heard enough. “Thank you both for lunch, and
for your time. I’m sorry we can’t stay any longer, but we need to
continue our search for Andrew Paladin.”
Trowbridge nodded. “I’m sorry I can’t help you there. You might
try speaking to David Kuo—he’s the only lawyer in town, and he
probably had some connection to the Paladins at the time of Emile’s
death. His office is connected to the town hall. The small circular
building a block past the clinic.”
Mulder shook Trowbridge’s hand and bowed to his wife,
thanking her for the meal. He waited until he and Scully had
reached the door before letting his thoughts form a question. “You
mentioned a temple built to placate Gin-Korng-Pew. Does it still
exist?”
Trowbridge seemed surprised by Mulder’s interest. Maybe he
had assumed that an FBI agent couldn’t possibly put stock in such a
story. He didn’t realize that Mulder could have told him a hundred
stories that were equally as bizarre—and all based on fact.
“At the very edge of town,” Trowbridge answered. “A stone
building with a domed roof. It is run by a cadre of monks in dark
red robes—the cult of Gin-Korng-Pew. They keep the temple in
order in case, well—”
“In case of his reawakening,” Rina Trowbridge finished, her face
serious. Mulder felt a chill that had nothing to do with the rain
spattering down outside. No matter what Scully thought, he could
not discount the story he had just heard.
Skinless corpses. A scientist whose life had been dedicated to the
search for the perfect synthetic skin. And a few thousand miles
away, aman who had murdered—and died—because of something
that had been done to his skin.
These were the elements of an X-File.
17
Quo Tien watched from across the street until the two agents turned
the corner, heading toward the center of town. Then he quietly
approached the traditional wooden house. His long, thin body was
draped in a flowing black smock, and his slicked-back hair glistened
in the perpetual rain. There was a heavy burlap bag hanging from
the belt around his waist, and a dark rucksack slung over his left
shoulder.
When he arrived at the front steps leading up to the house, he
reached into an inner pocket in his smock and withdrew a shiny
steel straight razor with a molded plastic handle. The blade was
three and a quarter inches long, the handle specially designed to
conform to Tien’s fingers. A surge of hunger swept through him as
he climbed the low steps, his free hand forming a gentle fist. He
knocked twice on the painted wood.
The anticipation was intense, as he listened to the heavy
footsteps on the other side of the door. He kept his hands at his
sides, the straight razor hidden beneath his oversized sleeve. He
could feel the rain running in twisting rivulets down his exposed
neck, and the anticipation multiplied, turning virulent. Patience.
Patience. Patience.
A few seconds later, the door swung inward. There was a brief
pause—then recognition snapped across Allan Trowbridge’s face.
His eyes went wide, his mouth jerked open and closed. He looked
like a marionette with tangled strings. Tien smiled. “Hello, Allan.
Mind if I come inside?”
Trowbridge’s cheeks turned chalky white. His thick shoulders
shook with fear. “Please. I didn’t tell them anything. I swear—”
“My father taught me never to swear, Allan. It’s a straight shot
to hell.”
Suddenly, Quo Tien’s right arm whipped forward. The razor
sliced through the soft skin beneath Trowbridge’s jaw, digging back
almost to his spine. The huge man’s head lolled to the side, and a
fountain of bright blood spattered against the open door.
Tien caught Trowbridge by the waist as the man’s body teetered
forward. A second later he had dragged Trowbridge through the
entrance of his home, gently shutting the door with the heel of his
foot. He laid Trowbridge’s body on the floor, kneeling so close he
could hear the blood gurgling out of the gash in the man’s throat.
As he watched the man die, an incredible heat moved through his
groin. He moaned softly, his eyes rolling back in his head.
Then the wonderful feeling grew, as a softly accented voice rang
out from an inner room in the house. “Allan? Is everything all
right?”
Tien leaned back, rubbing the back of his hand against his lips.
He unslung his rucksack and placed it lightly on the floor next to
the body. Then he retrieved his straight razor and slipped it back
beneath his sleeve.
“Everything is just fine,” he whispered. “It’s just an old friend
stopping by to say hello.”
He rose to his feet and slid quietly across the front entrance. He
could hear the small woman approaching from around the corner,
and he waited with his back against the wall, measuring the
distance by the sound of her feet. When she was just a few feet
away, he leapt forward, his body uncoiling like a striking snake.
Rina Trowbridge saw him and froze. Her pretty features
contorted as she saw the razor flash out from beneath his sleeve.
She tried to run—but he was too fast. His free hand caught her by
the hair, and she was yanked backward. The razor arced toward her
throat. There was a spray of blood—and her small body slumped
back against his chest. He leaned close, so that his bloody lips were
inches from her ear.
“Hello,” he whispered, as he twisted the razor free.
18
“Hello? Is anyone home?”
Mulder stood in the arched entrance to the stone temple, staring
down a long, dark corridor with smooth, rounded walls and a
packed-mud floor. Although it was still midafternoon, shadows
played across his shoulders, dribbling down against the tops of his
waterlogged shoes. He glanced upward toward the canopy of tree
branches that stretched, like living tentacles, over the domed roof of
the building. It seemed as though the trees were clutching at the
temple, malevolent green fingers trying to drag the brutalized stone
back into the encroaching wilderness. Mulder smiled inwardly at
his own dark thoughts.
It had not been difficult to locate the temple at the far edge of
the village. After he had dropped Scully off at the town hall—a
meandering wooden construct of offices and meeting rooms—he
had simply followed the main cobblestone road to its conclusion,
then taken a hard right toward the forest. Fifty yards from the road,
he had caught sight of the charcoal-colored building jutting out
from beneath the tree cover.
At first glance, the temple looked as if it had been carved from a
single, mammoth boulder; the temple was shaped like the top half
of an egg, with smooth outer walls that curved upward nearly
twenty feet to the domed roof. The roof was tiled with alternating
strips of gold and silver, and the walls were decorated with Thai
script, white and black letters curling across almost every inch of
the smooth structure. Just above the entrance was another statue of
the Buddha, this one chiseled out of shiny green jade. Set against
the massive temple, the Buddha looked helpless and forlorn, and
Mulder wondered if the idol had been an afterthought. The Buddha
did not seem to fit with the architecture of the temple, which
seemed more archaic, a product of a totemic-styled cult rather than
a religion based on philosophical enlightenment. Compared to the
rest of Alkut, the egg-shaped temple had been built on an artificially
impressive—and emotionally driven— scale: more evidence that
there was real gravity behind the legend of the Skin Eater, at least
in the minds of the villagers. They had not skimped in their efforts to
placate the beast.
Mulder took a tiny step forward, listening to his own voice
echoing back at him from the darkness. He had been surprised to
find the heavy wooden door to the temple hanging partially open,
and he had waited a full minute before allowing his curiosity to
tempt him forward. He knew it was bad form to trespass on a
religious shrine—but he couldn’t wait forever. In half an hour, he
was meeting Scully outside the town hall to discuss her progress
with the lawyer—and Mulder had three centuries of myths to
decipher in that short time. Even if David Kuo could help them
track down Andrew Paladin—Mulder was sure that the legend of
the Skin Eater was somehow involved.
His mind made up, he continued forward down the dark
corridor. The air was dense and cool, a stark contrast to the
sweltering atmosphere outside. The walls on either side were
smooth stone, polished to the point of reflection. There were
wooden torches that smelled vaguely of kerosene mounted every
few feet along the walls, none of them lit—and Mulder chided
himself for not carrying matches. Then again, he didn’t know if it
was proper etiquette to trespass into a temple waving a burning
torch. Instead, he watched as his reflection dimmed, each step
moving him farther from the gray light of the outside world.
A few yards before total darkness, Mulder came to a second
door, covered in some sort of frayed cloth. Mulder felt around the
face of the material, but couldn’t find anything resembling a
doorknob. The cloth felt strangely warm, and Mulder wondered if
there was something burning on the other side of the door. He
pressed both palms flat against the thin material and gave a gentle
shove.
The door swung inward. A sudden wave of heat splashed against
Mulder’s face. The strong scent of burning oil hit his nostrils, and he
stifled a cough. He blinked rapidly, his eyes watering from the
strong smell. As his pupils adjusted to the flickering firelight,
Mulder saw that he was standing at the mouth of a circular inner
chamber, with a polished stone floor and high, roughly hewn rock
walls. There was an ancient-looking clay altar in the center of the
chamber ten yards ahead of him, a waist-high pedestal construction
with a wide rectangular base. Bright flames leaped high into the air
above the clay, barely contained by a red-hot steel bowl filled with
flammable, pitch-black liquid. Just beyond the steel bowl, seeming
to shiver in the intense heat of the flames, stood an enormous statue
made of some sort of shiny black stone. The statue was like nothing
Mulder had ever seen before.
“Gin-Korng-Pew,” Mulder whispered, as his eyes rode up the
face of the stone beast. The black statue had a long, ridged snout
like an emaciated wolf. The lips were curled back to reveal multiple
rows of razor-sharp fangs. Two five-foot-long, curved tusks jutted
out from the stone creature’s bottom jaw, crisscrossing together just
below its flared nostrils. The beast’s eyes were enormous, with
bright red spirals instead of pupils. Hundreds of spaghetti-strand
tentacles sprang out of its head, each tipped by a single curved
claw. It was a nightmare turned to stone—and it set off something
primal inside Mulder, something he couldn’t begin to explain.
Though he knew it was a statue, he had the sudden urge to run. At
the same time, his muscles felt paralyzed, he couldn’t turn away.
“Every culture has its monsters,” a voice suddenly echoed in his
ears. “But they are all cut from the same soul.”
Mulder whirled toward the voice. He saw that the far wall of the
chamber was lined with dark alcoves, dug directly into the rough
stone. Each alcove was at least five feet tall, and it was impossible
to gauge how deeply they were dug into the temple. As Mulder
watched, a stooped figure stepped out of the center alcove. The
figure was wearing a bright red monk’s robe, tied around his bare
shoulder. His bald head glistened in the light from the fire. He
looked at Mulder—and Mulder realized that he recognized the
monk’s face.
It was the old man who had watched him and Scully drive into
town. The man with the multiple amulets who had stood at the
edge of the road, smiling as if he had expected them all along.
Mulder stared at the man, stunned. The old monk noticed his
expression and laughed. “Are you more afraid of the statue, or of
me?”
Mulder swallowed, trying to regain his composure. Scully would
say it was a coincidence, of course. The old man was a member of
the Skin Eater cult. He had been standing by the side of the road
when they had driven into Alkut. No mystery, no magic.
But the one thing Mulder didn’t believe in was coincidence. He
cleared his throat. “You speak English.”
The monk nodded. “I spent three years at the university in
Bangkok. As you can imagine, I was a theology major. My name is
Ganon.”
Mulder gestured toward the statue behind the flaming altar.
“And is this the Skin Eater?”
Ganon paused, his gaze still pinned to Mulder’s face. “Nobody
alive has ever seen Gin-Korng-Pew. This statue is based on an
ancient drawing found in a cave not far from this temple. Perhaps it
is the creature. Perhaps it is a fairy tale, chiseled out of polished
stone.”
Ganon made a brief motion with his hand, and a teenage boy in
a similar red robe stepped out of one of the other alcoves. Mulder
wondered whether there was a roomful of monks behind the wall,
waiting for Ganon’s cues. He shifted his eyes back to the old monk.
“But you don’t believe it’s a fairy tale. You believe the monster is
real.”
Ganon shrugged, a coy smile on his lips. He snapped the fingers
of his right hand, and the teenager quickly crossed the room to
where Mulder was standing. The boy was extremely thin, almost
emaciated, with an oblong, shaved head and sunken eyes. Without
a word, the boy pulled a small glass vial out of his robe. The vial
was filled with some sort of clear liquid, with tiny leaves floating
inside.
“It is unimportant what I believe,” Ganon said. “I am a lowly
servant of this temple. My role is to keep that altar lit. And to offer
my protection to those who seek it.”
He nodded, and the emaciated boy opened the vial and poured a
few droplets of the clear liquid into his palm. He approached
Mulder and reached for Mulder’s cheek. Mulder involuntarily drew
back.
“Malku will not hurt you. The balm is a spirit repellent. It is
designed to protect the skin. All who journey into the mountains
surrounding Alkut must wear the balm—or risk a horrible fate.”
Mulder raised his eyebrows as he let the boy rub the liquid into
his cheeks. It had a strong scent, bitter like almonds, with a tinge of
something sulfurous. “And you think I’m going to journey into the
mountains?”
Ganon shrugged. “Again, it is unimportant what I believe.”
Mulder narrowed his eyes, trying to read the expression on the
old man’s face. Meanwhile, the teenager stepped back, then placed
the vial in Mulder’s hand. “Take. Makes skin taste bad. Take.”
Mulder watched as the boy turned and shuffled back toward his
alcove. “Is that what the creature does—eat the skin? As its name
implies?”
“As the story goes,” Ganon answered, moving gracefully toward
the altar, “skin is the source of its immortality. Gin-Korng-Pew feeds
on the skin of the unlucky—to replenish itself. When it is asleep, it
does not need to feed. Only when it is disturbed does it feel the
hunger.”
Mulder watched as Ganon reached the altar. He wasn’t sure yet
how the information fit into the case—but he knew it was
significant. Skin is the source of its immortality. The words echoed
through Mulder’s thoughts. Somehow, the Skin Eater was connected
to Emile Paladin—and through him, to Perry Stanton. Mulder had
to fill in the links.
“So the MASH unit woke the creature and sent it on a hungry
rampage,” Mulder said, “Somehow, Emile Paladin upset the beast,
and the town suffered because of him. Now the creature is once
again in hibernation. Somewhere in the mountains.”
Ganon did not respond. Instead, he reached beneath the altar
and pulled out a long metal staff with a tiny cup on one end. He
carefully dipped the end of the staff into the flammable liquid in the
metal fire bowl and gently stirred in a circular motion. The flames
rose higher, daggers of orange twisting like living ropes around the
tusks of the monstrous statue.
“Somewhere in See Dum Kao,” Ganon repeated, staring at the
flames. “A vast cave called Thum Phi—the spirit cavern.”
Mulder had a sudden, strange feeling that Ganon was hinting
that he knew where Thum Phi was located; the old monk knew
where the mythical beast lived.
Mulder looked at the glass vial in his hand. Then his gaze shifted
to the statue of the Skin Eater. Maybe Ganon was just telling him
what he had already guessed—that the answers he was looking for
were in those mountains.
Waiting for him.
Thirty minutes later, Mulder found Scully sitting on the partially
enclosed front steps leading up to the town hall, leafing through a
manila folder. The steps bisected a small flower garden, row after
row of colorful buds creeping up between high blades of bright
green grass. The air was thick with the scent of foreign pollen, and
Mulder’s throat itched as he dropped down next to his partner. He
ran both hands through his sopping-wet hair, glancing back at the
entrance to the town hall behind them. Above the high double
doors he saw two floors of shuttered windows, and near the
thatched roof an iron rain gutter like the one he had seen ringing
the top of the clinic.
Mulder had barely noticed the perpetual gray sheets on his
quick walk back from the temple. His thoughts were still consumed
by Ganon and the Skin Eater; when he closed his eyes to blink, he
could see the creature’s face, the wolfish snout, the crisscrossed
tusks, the razor-clawed tentacles.
Scully finally looked up from the manila folder, noticing the
expression on his face. “You look as if you just met the bogeyman.”
Mulder smiled. “I think maybe I did. How was your visit with
David Kuo? Anything interesting?”
Scully sighed. “He doesn’t know anything about Andrew’s
whereabouts. He was Emile Paladin’s lawyer—but only in name. He
had very little contact with the man since the war, and almost zero
contact with his brother.”
“So what’s in the folder?”
Scully patted it with her fingers. “Kuo retrieved this for me from
the town hall records. It’s the ME’s file from Emile Paladin’s
autopsy. And before you start telling me about your bogeyman—
Emile Paladin died from a broken neck. The pathologist estimated a
fall of at least fifty feet.”
Mulder’s expression didn’t change. He reached down past the
edge of the steps and yanked a yellow flower out of the garden. The
petals were almost as long as his fingers. “And what about his skin?
Or lack thereof?”
“Again, no great mystery. His body was mutilated by three
different types of predators—all readily identifiable by the teeth
marks. Two types of wolf and a mountain lion.”
Mulder nodded, yanking one of the petals free. He hadn’t
expected an autopsy report full of tusks and clawed tentacles. It was
never that simple. “Sounds like Paladin made quite a picnic.”
“The damage was so bad, the positive ID was made from a
dental match. Two teeth, to be exact—a left front incisor and a
right canine. But there was no doubt. It was Paladin. According to
the report, Andrew claimed the body, and it was cremated a few
days after the autopsy.”
Cremated. Mulder leaned back against the steps, stretching his
neck side to side. Scully rolled her eyes. “Mulder, the body was
cremated after the autopsy, not before. There’s no mystery here.
Emile Paladin died in a hiking accident.”
Mulder didn’t respond. Scully exhaled, frustrated. “It’s a myth,
Mulder. A fairy tale. And it has nothing to do with our case. Perry
Stanton didn’t have his skin eaten by some beast. Neither did Emile
Paladin.”
Mulder nodded, tossing the yellow flower back into the garden.
He still couldn’t shake the idea that the Skin Eater was involved. He
remembered what Ganon had told him—that the Skin Eater’s source
of power was its supply of skin. It coincided closely with his own
theory about the source of Stanton’s invulnerability, and his
incredible athletic feats. And the timing of the Skin Eater’s hunger
—the link to the MASH unit and to Emile Paladin’s presence in
Alkut—was impossible to ignore. “I just don’t think we can discount
anything out of hand.”
“Mulder,” Scully started, but she was interrupted by a frightened
shout from down the street. Mulder looked up to see a pair of
orange-robed monks running toward them, their faces masks of
terror. Mulder noted that both monks were wearing latex gloves. He
realized he had seen them before. They were the two monks from
the clinic.
“Quickly!” the larger of the two shouted. “Please! Terrible thing!
Terrible thing!”
He waved his arms wildly, pointing down the cobblestone street.
The second monk was babbling in Thai, and Mulder saw that there
were tears in the corners of his eyes. Mulder rose quickly, following
Scully down the steps. The monks nodded vigorously, then turned
and rushed down the street. Mulder and Scully had to jog to keep
up. The cobblestones were tricky to navigate, but there was no
sidewalk, and the mud on either side of the street would have been
even worse. Mulder kept his head down, ignoring the buildings that
flashed by on either side, as he and Scully struggled to stay close to
the sprinting monks.
“This sounds pretty serious,” Scully shouted, as she leapt over a
puddle of murky rainwater in front of a small, open-air shop selling
bowls filled with fishtails. “How did they know where to find us?”
Mulder shrugged, narrowly avoiding a rusted bicycle lying at the
side of the road a few feet past the fishtail shop. He thought about
Ganon and the man’s knowing eyes. But he decided it was probably
nothing so mysterious. “It’s a small town. And we’re pretty hard to
miss.”
The monks turned an abrupt corner, winding out of the center of
town. Residential homes sprang up on stilts to the left and right,
triangular thatched roofs spitting rainwater toward the street in
controlled, noisy waterfalls. With a start, Mulder realized the
direction they were heading. “Scully, don’t the Trowbridges live
down the next street?”
Scully looked at him. Both agents hurried their pace, catching
up to the monks. As they approached the Trowbridges’ home,
Mulder saw that a small crowd of people had gathered on the front
lawn. Mostly women and young children, dressed in loose smocks
and homemade sandals. The women were whispering to one
another in worried voices, and Mulder made out the distinct sound
of weeping. He swallowed, a dull feeling in his stomach. Then he
saw Ganon at the edge of the crowd, and their eyes met. Ganon
nodded, his mouth moving, the words disappearing in the gray rain.
Mulder didn’t need to hear them to know their sound.
“Gin-Korng-Pew.”
19
Scully squared her shoulders as she and Mulder worked their way
through the crowd. Her face and body quickly took on the
controlled veneer of a career federal agent as her left hand slipped
to her shoulder holster, checking to see that the snap was undone.
She could tell by the grim faces in the crowd that something
horrible had happened, and she prayed that the thoughts streaking
from her own imagination were way off base. Then she caught sight
of the open door, stained in bright red blood—and her heart sank.
There was no longer any doubt; they had arrived at a crime scene.
The two monks disappeared into the stilted house, but Scully
stopped next to Mulder in the doorway. She surveyed the pattern of
blood, how it spread upward along the inside of the wooden door.
She then turned her gaze downward, to the crimson, riverlike trail
leading into the house.
“Carotid artery,” she said, half to herself. The blood on the door
was well above eye level, which meant the victim had been
standing. From the angle and arc of the spatter, Scully knew it
could not have been a bullet wound. It had been something sharp,
like a knife or a razor blade.
“The kill was made here,” she continued, slowly strolling
forward. She followed the trail of blood, walking as lightly as
possible. The blood had soaked into the fading oriental carpet,
darkening the crimson material like spilled red wine. She tried to
forget that just hours ago, she and Mulder had eaten lunch a few
yards away. She needed to be objective, to remain clinically
detached—
Mulder grabbed her shoulder, stopping her in the narrow
hallway that led to the living area. His eyes were wide, and he was
pointing toward the edge of the open main room. Scully saw Dr.
Fielding hunched near the end of the trail of blood. Fielding was on
her knees on the carpet, her face hidden in her hands. The two
bodies were on the floor in front of her.
“My God,” Scully whispered. She could hear her heart pounding
as she plodded forward. Mulder kept his hand on her shoulder.
They had both seen horrors before. Dozens of brutal crime scenes,
corpses in states too miserable to describe. Still, the sight of the two
bodies was difficult to take. Despite all of her training, despite
everything she had seen—Scully wanted to turn away.
“Skinned,” Fielding said, lifting her head out of her hands.
“Every inch removed, along with a fair amount of muscle and
interior tissue. I sent for you as soon as I got here. The police are on
their way from Rayong; there aren’t any full-time officers here in
Alkut. I figured you were the next best thing.”
“Christ,” Mulder said, standing over the corpses. The entire
living room seemed covered in blood. The oriental carpet beneath
the bodies was saturated with it. There were bits of muscle and
organs sticking to the legs of the low pine table where Mulder and
Scully had eaten lunch. “It’s them, right? Allan and Rina
Trowbridge?”
Scully dropped to one knee, next to the larger corpse. It was like
looking at an animal on a butcher’s block—but the animal was
human, and the butchering had been crude and brutal. She tried to
re-create the event, using the cues of her profession. She imagined
that the first incision had been made directly under the jaw. The
face had been peeled back, the ears sliced off, the entire scalp
removed in one piece. Then the attention had shifted to the trunk.
An incision had most likely been made down the center line, the
skin pared open to reveal the rib cage and the organs beneath.
Multiple slashes had been necessary to skin the pelvic region, the
legs, down to the feet.
Scully shifted her eyes to the second body. Rina Trowbridge had
not taken nearly as long. Scully could see strands of Rina’s silky
dark hair stuck to the bloodied mass that had once been her face.
Then she saw one of Rina’s eyeballs hanging from a strand of optic
nerve, and her jaw clenched. She needed to concentrate. This was a
crime scene. This was a crime.
She turned her attention back to the larger corpse’s pelvic area,
and below. “Dr. Fielding, do you have an extra pair of gloves?”
Fielding nodded, fishing through the pockets of her coat. Scully
took the gloves from her and slid them over her fingers. She
reached forward, gently running her index finger over a piece of
exposed tibia. There was a sharp groove right above the knee. She
found similar grooves higher up, near the pelvic bone. Then she
found a series of slightly less pronounced scratches around the hip
joint. She paused, thinking.
“The place looks pretty trashed,” Mulder commented, from
somewhere behind her. He was carefully picking his way through
the small house, searching for clues. Soon, the Thai police would
arrive—probably along with government investigators from
Bangkok. Scully knew that the FBI would not be welcomed in the
investigation, certainly not of a crime of this nature—and not ina
town with Alkut’s history. Though the town was off the beaten trail,
the nation of Thailand was a tourist’s paradise. Heinous double
murders—even in the sticks—did not make for good tourism.
So Mulder was using the time they had to conduct a quick
survey of the crime scene. Likewise, Scully could not count on
getting the results of an autopsy. She had to find answers right here,
right now. “Dr. Fielding, do you see these grooves and these
scratches?”
Fielding leaned closer. She had been momentarily overwhelmed
by the sight of the bodies; she had known the Trowbridges, had
spoken very highly of Allan. But in her heart she was a doctor. “The
grooves look as if they were made by some sort of blade. A few
inches long. But I’ve never seen scratches like those before.”
Scully nodded. The grooves were easy. Any forensic pathologist
could have identified the blade. “The grooves were made by a
straight razor. Very controlled, practiced strokes.”
“And the scratches?”
Scully paused a moment longer. “I can’t be sure. But I think the
killer used a dermatome to skin these bodies.”
“A dermatome?” Mulder asked. He had paused in front of the
Buddhist shrine in the far corner. The shrine seemed the only thing
in the room that hadn’t been overturned. His surprised expression
swam across the curved surface of the gold Buddha. “Isn’t that the
tool that skin harvesters use? Like a supersharp cheese slicer?”
Scully nodded. The dermatome had been set to an incredibly
brutal depth—all the way through the subcutaneous layer of fat,
almost to the bone. “Whoever did this was extremely skilled. He’s
had some level of medical training. And he’s done this many times
before.”
“He?” Mulder asked.
“Possibly a she. But it certainly wasn’t an it, despite what the
crowd outside might think. These incisions follow a controlled,
determined pattern. It isn’t easy to skin a body. It takes practice and
a fair amount of strength. More than that, it takes preparation.
Someplace to put the skin, some way to carry it away from the
scene.”
“But why?” Fielding asked, her voice weak. “Why the
Trowbridges—and why like this?”
Scully didn’t answer the first part of Fielding’s question. She had
a sickening feeling that the Trowbridges were killed because of her
and Mulder’s investigation. Either because of something the
Trowbridges had said—or because of something they had withheld.
The second part of Fielding’s question seemed even more obvious.
“To feed the legend,” Mulder answered for her. He was leaning
forward over the Buddhist shrine, both palms gently touching the
gold statue’s belly. It looked as though something about the idol
was bothering him. “It’s an easy cover for a double murder—and it
turns Alkut against our investigative efforts. Two foreigners stirring
up trouble—waking the beast once again, sending it on a deadly
rampage. We’re going to be on our own from here on out.”
Fielding rose, taking a deep breath. “I’ll go and speak to some of
the neighbors. Perhaps someone saw something. In any case, there’s
nothing more I can do here. It's so bloody tragic. I keep
remembering their wedding—how they looked into each other’s
eyes. Both of them were foreign to this place—she a transplant from
the north, he from America. But they had found each other. That
was all that mattered.”
Fielding sighed heavily, rubbing at her eyes with the backs of
her hands. Then she shrugged and quietly exited the house, leaving
Scully and Mulder alone with the bodies.
Scully pushed Fielding’s sentimental thoughts out of her head. It
didn’t help to see these bodies as people. With practiced clinical
detachment, she ran her gloved fingers through the pool of blood
covering most of the floor, trying to estimate the exact time of
death from the consistency of the fluid. Without skin or forensic
tools, she had nothing else to go by.
“We left them about three hours ago,” she said out loud.
“Whoever did this must have been waiting just outside. Probably
watched us leave.”
“Maybe he’s out there now,” Mulder commented. “Still watching
us to see what we do next. Or maybe he thinks he’s done what he
came here to do—cut off our line of information.”
Scully rose, slowly. She crossed to Mulder’s side, watching
curiously as he continued to rub the golden Buddha. The statue was
three feet high, and looked as if it weighed more than fifty pounds.
The gold was well polished, though there were dark hints where the
smoke from years of burning incense had stained the soft metal. The
Buddha’s wide expression was peaceful and strangely content—
despite the flecks of fresh blood sprinkled across its globular cheeks.
“Mulder, I’m just glad you’re not out there with them. I was
expecting you to argue with my conclusions.”
“Monsters don’t search people’s houses after they kill them,”
Mulder said, suddenly straining against the statue. “And they aren’t
superstitious enough to leave a Buddhist shrine untouched.”
There was a loud metallic click, and the front of the statue came
loose from its pedestal. Scully was shocked to see that the Buddha
was attached to the back of its base by two oversized metal hinges.
She stared at Mulder as he pushed the statue back, revealing a deep,
rectangular hiding place.
“Mulder—how did you know?”
“Actually,” Mulder responded, as he reached into the opening,
“the lunch menu gave it away, even before Fielding’s comments a
few minutes ago. Som-dtam and khao niew are northern delicacies.
That led me to believe that Rina Trowbridge was a transplant from
the northern regions of the country—which Fielding just verified.
But this Buddha has his arms crossed at the waist, palms up. That’s
usually a southern representation of the master. It didn’t make
sense to me—until I saw the shrine untouched by our killer.”
He pulled a thick envelope from the pedestal, then stepped back
from the shrine. “A southern Thai wouldn’t think to desecrate a
shrine like this. That made it the perfect hiding place.”
Scully was impressed. Mulder’s eye for detail was truly amazing.
She watched eagerly while he opened the envelope and peered
inside.
“Photographs,” he said, evenly. “About a dozen, divided into
two sets. And a few printed pages.”
He reached inside and removed the photographs. The two sets
were bundled separately with rubber bands. Mulder crossed to the
low lunch table and spread the two sets out against the wood.
The first set that caught Scully’s eye were almost as horrible as
the two bodies on the floor. They were pictures of burned patients,
lying naked on military-style hospital stretchers. Each picture had a
date in the corner—and according to the notations, all were taken
between the years of 1970 and 1973. “Full-thickness napalm
burns,” she commented. “At least seventy percent of their bodies.
These patients were all terminal—if not postmortem.”
She shifted her eyes to the second set of photos. These were of
naked men as well, lying on similar hospital stretchers. But none of
these men were burned. All seemed in perfect health. The second
set of photos had dates as well—but all the dates were the same:
June 7,1975.
Scully tried to make sense of what she was looking at. “The
stretchers look as though they could be MASH unit standard issue,
circa Vietnam.”
She paused, noticing that Mulder was frozen in place, staring at
two of the photos. One was of a burn victim, the other of one of the
unmarred men. He had placed the two photos next to one another
on the table.
“Mulder?”
“Scully, look.”
Scully leaned close, and realized that the burn victim’s face was
partially recognizable. When she shifted her gaze to the unmarred
man—she realized they were photos of the same man. She reread
the dates in the corners, then shook her head. “These dates must be
incorrect. Burns like that don’t heal. Even if he did somehow
recover—he would have been covered in transplant scars.”
Mulder didn’t seem to be listening. He was carefully arranging
the two sets of photos, burn victims next to their unmarred
counterparts. An eye here, an ear there—he was using whatever
clues he could find to pair them up. Some of the pairs seemed
incontrovertible, others more like guesswork. But in every case, the
effect was the same. A horribly burned body dated between 1970
and 1973, and a healthy body dated 1975.
When Mulder was finished, he looked at Scully. She shook her
head. “I know what you’re thinking. But it’s impossible. Synthetic
skin for limited transplantation, maybe. But nothing like this.
Medicine isn’t magic. This isn’t medicine—this is raising the dead.
These dates are wrong, Mulder.”
Mulder tapped his fingers against the table. He didn’t believe
her—but he didn’t have any proof to the contrary. Instead of
responding, he turned back to the folder and removed the rest of its
contents: two printed pages of paper.
The first page contained some sort of list. A row of names,
numbers, and medical conditions, all divided into columns. Scully
quickly recognized that the list was a hospital admission register.
The figures were army serial numbers. And the conditions were all
strikingly similar. Burns of various degrees, either from napalm or
other chemical-based weapons. None of the patients had burns over
less than fifty percent of his body. Most were charred beyond the
seventy percent range—again, all were terminal.
“A hundred and thirty,” Mulder said after a few moments, “all
horribly burned, like the men in those pictures—”
Mulder stopped, his brow furrowed. He pointed at one of the
names. Scully read it aloud. “Andrew Paladin. Napalm burns, full
torso, sixty-eight percent of his face and legs.”
“Another mistake?” Mulder asked. “Like the dates on those
pictures?”
“It must be,” Scully commented, nonplussed. “Or someone’s
created a long trail of lies. Andrew Paladin could not have survived
his brother with burns like that. And if, somehow, he had survived
—he’d be confined to a burn clinic, in permanent ICU. Not living as
a recluse up in the mountains.”
“Unless those pictures are real,” Mulder said, as he turned to the
second sheet of paper from the folder. “Unless Paladin’s search for
his perfect synthetic skin was successful.”
“Mulder—”
“Take a look at this,” Mulder interrupted, not letting Scully stop
him mid-fantasy. “It’s a map. It looks similar to the map of the
MASH unit we got from Van Epps. But this one’s got a basement
level.”
Scully took the sheet of paper from him. Indeed, it was a map of
the Alkut MASH unit. A second level was superimposed beneath the
roughly drawn complex, showing a series of tunnels and
underground chambers. The chambers were marked by numbers
and letters—but there was no key, no explanation of what they
meant. Still, it was significant. The official map of the MASH unit
did not indicate the existence of an underground floor.
“It might still be there,” Mulder said, his eyes bright. “The
tunnels might still be down there, beneath the clinic. Maybe there’s
more evidence of Paladin’s research.”
Scully watched as Mulder gathered up the photos and list of
wounded soldiers and shoved them back into the envelope. He
folded the map in half and slid it into his pocket. It was obvious
what he intended to do. He was going to head back to the clinic and
see for himself.
“It’s been twenty years,” Scully said. “Even if the tunnels still
exist, there won’t be anything down there.”
“It's worth a look.” Mulder paused, gesturing toward the two
mutilated bodies on the floor. “They died for a reason, Scully. They
were hiding something—and I think we found it.”
Scully envied his conviction, despite how baseless it seemed.
“What did we find, Mulder?”
“Evidence of Paladin’s success. And, perhaps, of his continued
success. If the men on that list came into Alkut with seventy and
eighty percent napalm burns—and came out like the healthy men in
those pictures, then Paladin really did achieve a miracle. But that
miracle might have had a price. Perry Stanton might have paid that
price—along with everyone who got in his way. Indirectly, Allan
and Rina Trowbridge might have also paid that price.”
There were so many holes in Mulder’s theory, it was barely a
theory at all. At least he hadn’t mentioned anything about a mythical,
skin-eating beast. “Why would anyone keep something like this a
secret? Why kill innocent people to cover up a miracle?”
“I don’t know. But we won't find out standing around here.”
Scully paused, thinking. Mulder had a point. They had leads to
follow— even if the leads seemed insane. She made up her mind and
took the envelope with the photos and hospital admission list out of
his hands. “All right. As long as we're here, well follow this
wherever it leads. You search for those tunnels. I’m going to find
out what I can about the names on this list. If these men were
casualties of the Vietnam War, I should be able to find files on
them. If they died in Alkut, then there’s a good chance Andrew
Paladin died alongside them—and we just wasted a whole lot of
federal money tracking down two dead brothers.”
Mulder was already heading toward the door. Scully waited a
few seconds before following him, her eyes drifting to the two
mutilated bodies. Wordlessly, she crossed herself, then squeezed her
hand tight around the tiny gold cross she wore around her neck.
The truth was, they were chasing a monster. The violent actions
of Perry Stanton—the case that had brought them to Thailand in
the first place—seemed to pale in comparison to the tragedy on the
floor in front of her.
Like Mulder, Scully wanted to catch the monster. But she did not
share Mulder’s bravado. Staring at the two skinned bodies, she was
gripped by a single, sobering thought.
If they got too close to the truth—the monster would be chasing
them.
20
Mulder’s shoulders ached as he strained against the heavy steel
equipment shelf, rocking it carefully back into place against the
cinder-block wall. The tiny storage room was cramped and
claustrophobic, a cluttered swamp of Red Cross surplus, outdated
radiology machines, linens, and folded military cots. The walls were
lined with off-white plaster, the ceiling covered in similarly colored
tiles. A small fluorescent tube lodged in one corner of the ceiling
gave the room a sickly yellow, hepatic glow.
The storage room was the fifth and last interior space Mulder
had found within the clinic, and he had no idea where to go next.
He had kicked every wall, stamped on every inch of floor—and he
had not found anything resembling an entrance to an underground
level.
He stepped back from the steel shelf, breathing hard. He was
becoming more frustrated by the second. The investigation was at a
critical point; the double murder had significantly raised the stakes.
The Thai police had arrived from Rayong shortly after Mulder and
Scully had shifted the Buddha back into place, and had confiscated
both bodies for their own investigative efforts. Mulder had a sinking
feeling that he and Scully did not have much time before the Thai
authorities co-opted their case. As Scully had inferred, an FBI
investigation of a vicious double murder did not make good copy
for Thai tourism brochures.
Mulder hastily reached into his pocket and retrieved the folded
map. He studied it for the hundredth time, trying to find some sort
of physical logic. Since there were no notations of scale or
direction, it was impossible to match the tunnels to the geography
of the clinic. The MASH unit had consisted of more than a dozen
freestanding structures. The triage room and the recovery ward
were by far the largest of the buildings, followed by the command
office and the barracks. The tunnels seemed to originate beneath
the command office, with a second entrance just beyond the edge of
the camp.
Mulder leaned back against the door to the small storage room,
his eyes shifting to the sheer cement floor. He knew that the tunnels
were down there—but he also knew it would take excavation
equipment to get through that floor. If an entrance still existed, it
wasn’t inside the clinic.
He shoved the map back into his pocket and headed out of the
storage room. There were three monks clustered around Fielding at
the far end of the main room, speaking in hushed tones. The monks
looked up as he moved past, and Fielding offered a weak smile. The
entire town was shocked by the murder—and rumors about the
reawakening of the Skin Eater were rapidly spreading from
household to household. Mulder could feel the tension in the air,
the sense that something ancient and terrifying had returned.
Shivering, Mulder cast a final look at the interior of the
building, then stepped out through the front door. The rain had
finally slowed to a light drizzle, and he could see breaks in the
clouds above the high wooden steeple of the dilapidated church
across the street. Mulder paused as the clinic door swung shut
behind him, his eyes resting on the miniature spirit house just a few
feet away. Someone had placed fresh flowers along the base, and
there were more than a dozen sticks of incense jutting from the
little windows. Even the post had been decorated, twists of garlands
mingling with colorful silk tassels and strings of beads.
Mulder felt his muscles sagging as he thought about Trowbridge
and his wife. Fielding had informed him when the police had carted
the bodies off, and he had considered going after them—offering his
support to the Thai investigation. But he knew it was pointless. It
would be near impossible to explain the connection to Perry
Stanton. And any reference to the Skin Eater or Paladin’s
miraculous research would be considered an offense. The Skin Eater
was a village myth, a matter of belief—not of forensic science. As
for Paladin’s research—Mulder had nothing but a series of
photographs as proof.
Still, he had to live with the guilt of the Trowbridges’ deaths.
They had been murdered because of their connection to the FBI
investigation. In a way, Mulder and Scully had awakened the Skin
Eater.
Mulder started forward, intending to head back to the hotel,
where Scully was using her laptop computer to research the list of
burned soldiers. But as he stepped past the spirit house he paused,
bothered by something across the street.
There was a young man standing in the doorway to the Church.
He was tall and thin, with slicked-back hair and caramel skin,
wearing a long dark smock with baggy sleeves. He was leaning
nonchalantly against the half-open church door, a serene smile on
his thin face. As Mulder watched, the young man turned and
slipped inside the church. The door clicked shut behind him.
Mulder felt his stomach tighten. There was something about the
young man that bothered him. He wasn’t sure—but he thought he
recognized that caramel face. He had seen a similar man on line at
customs in the airport in Bangkok. He couldn’t be sure—but the
young man might have been on the same flight from New York.
Mulder realized immediately what that might mean. Then
another thought hit him, and he quickly retrieved the folded map
from his pocket. He ran his eyes over the map, focusing on the
distance between the major structures. He looked at the church, the
way it was perched close to the road that separated it from the
clinic, the way it seemed to have been built on a slight angle to
accommodate the small plot of land beneath. He came to a sudden
realization.
The area where the church was built could have also been part
of the MASH unit.
He jammed the map back into his pocket and rushed into the
street. His heart was racing, and his hand automatically went to his
gun. He unbuttoned his holster and let his fingers rest on the
grooved handle of his Smith & Wesson. If he was right about the
young man’s arrival in Thailand coinciding with his own—then
there was a good chance he was heading toward a trap. But he
couldn’t risk losing a potential suspect in the Trowbridges’ double
murder. And a possible link to Emile Paladin’s research.
He reached the door to the church, pressing his body against the
nearby wall. There was a pile of transparent plastic a few feet away,
and he remembered seeing the door covered when he and Scully
had first arrived. He had assumed the church was closed down, out
of use. It was a good cover for a research laboratory, especially in a
place like Alkut. The Buddhist villagers had no use for a Catholic
church, with their spirit houses and their Buddhist shrines.
Mulder took a deep breath, letting his heart rate slow. He
wished there was some way he could contact Scully—but he knew
his cell phone was useless, since Alkut was out of his cell’s satellite
window.
He placed his free hand against the door and gave it a quick
shove. The door swung inward, clanging against the inside wall.
The sound reverberated through the air, indicating a wide, open
space. Mulder drew his automatic, clicking back the safety.
He crouched low and maneuvered around the doorframe. The
air was thick and musty, tinged with the distinct scent of rotting
wood. Mulder was standing at the back of a long rectangular hall
with a twenty-foot arched ceiling and wood-paneled walls. The
walls were partially covered by a green-hued mural of the Last
Supper, but many of the panels were missing, gaping holes in the
place of holy guests.
Mulder quietly slid along the back of the hall, his eyes adjusting
to the strange lighting. Huge stained-glass windows on either side
cast rainbows across the wooden pews, revealing dark gashes where
the benches had been randomly torn out from the floor. Near the
front of the room, Mulder saw a tangle of wood that used to be the
support beams of a stage. Rising up from somewhere near the
center of the tangle was a row of rusted organ pipes, dented and
twisted by age and the warm, moist air.
The hall seemed deserted; Mulder moved forward carefully,
trying to keep track of the floor in front of his feet. As with the
clinic, the floor was made of cement, though it looked as though
there had once been carpeting; tufts of moldy green padding
speckled the aisle between the pews.
Mulder had nearly reached the destroyed stage when his gaze
settled on a pair of thick, forest green curtains hanging down along
the back wall. Between the curtains was a door, attached at a
disturbed angle by a single warped hinge. There was easily enough
room between the door and the frame for someone to slip through.
Mulder hurried his pace, his gun trained on the dark opening.
He could hear the blood rushing through his ears, and his knees
burned from the controlled crouch. He reached the curtains and
kneeled next to the broken door. The room on the other side looked
small, dimly lit by a single, painted window. It seemed deserted as
well, and Mulder slid inside, shoulder first.
It was some sort of priest’s chambers. There was a low table in
the center, and an overturned chair by the wall. A pair of crucifixes
hung at eye level above the chair. Beneath the crucifixes stood a
small shelf of sacramental items: a few cheap-looking goblets, a pair
of candles, an empty wine bottle. Next to the shelf hung an
enormous, faded tapestry, taking up almost half of the back wall.
Mulder could make out the outline of three separate miracles
imprinted on the tapestry, but the details had long since eroded.
Mulder slid toward the tapestry, his feet making as little sound
as possible. The bottom of the tapestry was swinging, as if brushed
by a gentle wind. Mulder grabbed a handful of the thick material
and lifted.
He found himself peering into a dark, descending stairwell. The
steps looked worn and scuffed, and Mulder could see they had once
been covered in the same green carpeting as the front hall. He
smiled, then narrowed his eyes. Caution demanded that he head
back to the inn and get Scully—perhaps even contact Van Epps for
some armed military backup. He had no idea what he was going to
find in those tunnels.
But the longer he waited, the less chance he would find answers.
The young man could easily slip away. Mulder shook away his
reservations, bent low, and carefully slid beneath the tapestry. He
slowly worked his way down the stairs, one hand gliding along the
cold stone wall.
The stairs ended about twenty-five feet below the church, at the
mouth of a long tunnel. The tunnel had porcelain-tiled walls, with
steel support beams rising out of the cement floor at regular
intervals. It looked roughly as Mulder had imagined; more modern
and clean than the subway tunnels where he and Scully had found
Perry Stanton, but certainly not the sort of thing you’d find in any
urban mall in the U.S.
To Mulder’s surprise, the tunnel was well lit by fluorescent light
strips set every few yards into the curved ceiling. The lights meant
two things; there was some sort of power source beneath the
church. And the underground tunnels had not been abandoned
twenty years ago with the rest of the MASH unit.
Mulder headed forward, calling on his training to keep his
progress near silent. The air had a brisk, cavernous feel, and Mulder
wondered if there was a ventilation system in place. He thought he
could detect the soft hum of a fan in the distance, but he couldn’t
be sure.
Ten yards beyond the stairwell, the tunnel branched out in two
directions. Mulder paused at the fork, his back hard against one of
the steel struts rising up along the wall. To the left, the tunnel
seemed to go on forever, winding like a snake beneath Alkut. To the
right, the curved walls opened up into some sort of chamber.
Mulder shifted his gun to his other hand and retrieved his map
one more time. He tried to place himself near one of the major
chambers—but he couldn’t be sure where he had entered the
underground compound. His best guess was that he was a few feet
from a large, oval room labeled C23. Judging from the distance he
had just traveled, C23 appeared to be about fifty feet across.
Mulder decided it was worth investigating, and exchanged the
map for the automatic. He held the gun with both hands, index
finger beneath the trigger. Then he swung around the corner and
through the entrance to the chamber.
He had accurately judged the dimensions of the room. The
ceiling was higher than in the tunnels, curved like the inside of a
tennis ball. As in the tunnels, the walls were covered in porcelain
tiles, but the tiles had gone from light green to a much deeper,
oceanic blue. The floor was still cement, and there were two steel
posts in the center of the chamber supporting the high ceiling. At
the back of the chamber was the opening to what looked to be
another tunnel.
Mulder’s eyes widened as he saw row after row of hospital
stretchers taking up most of the sheer cement floor. Each stretcher
was partially concealed by a light blue, circular plastic curtain. Next
to the stretchers stood chrome IV racks trailing long yellow rubber
IV wires.
The walls on either side of the chamber were lined with high-
tech medical equipment—much fancier and certainly more
expensive than anything he had seen in Fielding’s clinic. He saw
what looked to be an ultrasound station, a pair of EEG machines,
and at least a dozen crash carts trailing defibrillator wires. Next to
the crash carts stood an electron microscope, next to that a
computer cabinet supporting a row of state-of-the-art monitors. The
monitors’ screens all emitted a blank blue light.
Across from the monitors stood a high glass shelf full of
chemical vials and test-tube racks. Next to the shelf was a
freestanding machine Mulder recognized as an autoclave, a steam
sterilizing unit with a clear glass front and a digital control panel.
The autoclave was about the size of a small closet, and the control
panel was lit; the machine seemed to be in use. Between the
sterilizer, the computers, and the various machines, this chamber
was drawing a lot of power.
Mulder moved forward, counting the partially curtained
stretchers. His eyebrows rose as he reached 130, closely packed
together in groups of ten and twenty. Altogether, the same number of
stretchers as patients on the Trowbridges’ list. Mulder reached the
center of the chamber, his thoughts swirling. Was it possible that a
group of horribly burned soldiers had been kept here, alive, for
more than twenty-five years? Was it possible that Emile Paladin had
truly discovered a miracle—
Mulder froze, as sudden footsteps echoed through the chamber.
He spun toward the sound—and saw the thin young man standing
at the entrance to the chamber. Now that there was less distance
between them, he noticed that the man was of mixed origin. His
eyes were narrow and dark, his face sharply angled. He was a good
two inches taller than Mulder, and his lithe muscles looked like
twisted ropes beneath his skin.
The young man’s hands were hidden beneath the wide sleeves of
his smock. Mulder made sure his gun was clearly visible. “Pm Agent
Mulder of the American FBI. I’m going to approach, slowly. Don’t
make any sudden motions.”
The young man smiled. There was a loud shuffling from
somewhere behind Mulder’s right shoulder. Mulder jerked his body
to the side—and saw three men enter the chamber from the
opposite entrance. All three were tall, and looked to be in their
early twenties. They had matching crew cuts and seemed to be in
excellent physical shape. They moved easily into the room,
spreading out as they closed toward Mulder. The largest of the three
strolled directly toward him, and Mulder noticed that he had
something in his right hand: a syringe filled with clear liquid.
Mulder aimed his gun at the man’s chest. “Stay where you are.”
The man continued forward. Mulder realized there was
something off about his face. The man’s eyes seemed strangely
overdilated. He was looking right at Mulder—but he seemed
somewhere else entirely, locked in some sort of daze.
“Not another step,” Mulder warned, flipping the safety off his
automatic. “I said stop!”
The two wingmen were within fifteen feet, now closing toward
him. The man with the syringe was barely ten feet away. Mulder
aimed directly at his chest. The man paused—but not because of the
gun. He was looking at the syringe. He tapped it against his arm,
knocking away an air bubble. This was going to get ugly.
Suddenly, all three men dived forward. Mulder fired twice, the
gun kicking into the air. The lead man jerked back on his feet, then
regained his momentum and continued toward Mulder. Before
Mulder could fire again, incredibly strong arms grabbed his wrists,
twisting his hands behind his back. The Smith & Wesson clattered
to the floor.
He kicked out, trying desperately to twist free. The man with the
syringe leaned over him, and he caught a glimpse of something that
sent his terrified mind spinning. The man had a circular red rash on
the back of his neck.
Mulder felt a sharp prick just above his collarbone. The three
men suddenly released him, stepping back. Mulder’s knees buckled,
and he fell, trying limply to catch himself on the curtain around a
nearby stretcher. The curtain snapped free, and he hit the ground.
He heard laughter behind him, and he used all his strength to turn
his head. The Amerasian was watching him, smiling. The smile
seemed to extend at the corners, twisting and turning like a rope
made of blood. Mulder tried to crawl away, but he couldn’t get the
commands to his muscles. His body had changed to liquid. Green
clouds swept across his vision, and he felt the cold floor against his
cheek. A second later, everything turned black.
Quo Tien shouted a blunt command, and the three drones started
back toward the other side of the room. Tien watched their fluid
progress, intrigued by their perfect muscle control, the lack of
stagger in their walk. He remembered how it was in the beginning.
The plodding, slow movements, the limited limb control. The
progress was indeed impressive. But it was only partially complete.
The drones represented only the first stage of the experiment. In a
few hours, the final stage would begin. Twenty-five years of
research funneled into a single operation—an operation that was
going to make Tien immensely rich. And now there was nothing to
stand in the way.
Tien turned his attention back to the FBI agent lying on the
floor. A shiver moved through him as he flicked the straight razor
out from beneath his sleeve. He could imagine the man’s blood
flowing just beneath his skin. He wanted to taste that blood, to feel
it spread over his hands and lips.
He slid forward. The FBI agent was lying on his side, legs curled
in a fetal position. His dark hair was spiked with sweat, and his face
was drawn, his eyes moving rapidly beneath his eyelids. Tien
dropped to his knees inches away. He ran a finger down the man’s
bare arm, feeling the slick sweat and the tense muscles beneath. He
carefully lifted the razor—
“Tien. Put it down.”
Tien looked up, anger flickering across his face. He watched as
Julian Kyle strolled into the chamber. Julian was wearing a white
lab coat over surgical scrubs. His hands were covered with latex
gloves, and there was a heavy cooler under his right arm.
“Uncle Julian,” Tien spit. “You’re ruining my moment.”
“He’s an agent with the FBI,” Kyle said, sternly. “It isn’t as
simple as that.”
“It can be,” Tien responded, glancing at the razor’s blade. “This
is Thailand, not the U.S.”
“It doesn’t matter. They’ll send agents. The military will get
involved. We can't risk the interruptions—not so close to the final
experiment. And there's a better way.”
Kyle raised the plastic cooler. Tien sighed, leaning back from the
FBI agent's body. He knew the real reason for Kyle’s reticence.
Julian Kyle was weak. But there was logic in his words. “I guess it's
not for either of us to decide.”
Tien rose, sliding the straight razor back into his sleeve. In truth,
both FBI agents had determined their own fate the minute they had
entered Alkut.
“And the woman?” Kyle asked, setting the cooler down on one
of the stretchers. “She’s being dealt with as well?”
Tien nodded. “I sent a drone. He should be arriving at her room
any moment.”
“And one drone will be enough?”
Tien laughed. The drones were primitive compared to what was
coming—but certainly, a single drone could handle the female
agent. Kyle nodded, realizing it was true. It was just a matter of
time before Dana Scully’s body was laid out next to her partner’s.
21
Scully watched from fifteen feet away as the small green lizard
crawled across the perforated metal screen. The lizard had bulging
black eyes, dark red spots, and a curved, tapered tail; probably
some sort of Asian gecko, she mused, the remnants of some species
of dinosaur too primitive to realize it was supposed to be extinct. At
the moment, the gecko was doing its best to right evolution’s
mistake. Inches beneath the metal screen, a pair of propeller-shaped
fan blades whirled by, pushing dense waves of humid air across the
cramped hotel bedroom. As the gecko crawled across the circular
mesh covering, its tail dangled precariously close to the blades. Any
second, the fan would consume the little creature, spreading its bits
and pieces across the room.
Jackson Pollock gone reptilian: In Scully’s opinion, it certainly
wouldn’t hurt the hotel’s spartan sense of decor. The squat, antique
fan sat atop a teak bed table, next to a pair of twin-sized, water-
stained mattresses. There was a loosely woven throw rug on the
floor, and a warped wooden dresser by the closet door. A chest-
high, rusting metal lamp stood a few feet from the desk where
Scully sat, a single bulb flickering behind a goatskin shade as a
tangle of exposed wires near the bottom of the base struggled
noisily with the current coming out of the wall socket.
The desk itself was barely larger than the bed table, the chair
designed for small Thai bodies. A perfect fit for Scully’s concise
frame, but Mulder would have had a hell of a time getting his long
legs beneath the drawers.
Still, there was room in the closet for their bags, a phone jack,
and an adaptable socket to plug in Scully’s laptop computer. It was
all she needed to link up with the FBI computer banks in
Washington.
Scully rolled her shoulders back against the tight chair, shifting
her attention from the doomed little dinosaur to the open laptop on
the desk in front of her. The cursor blinked at her impatience, while
the processor struggled to download her request to the data banks
ten thousand miles away. She had laboriously plugged in the list of
names—minus Andrew Paladin. Soon the computer would tell her if
the men had indeed served in the Vietnam War. She had also asked
for army registration photos, current addresses, and medical
records; she knew how Mulder’s mind worked, and she needed to
be thorough. She intended to disprove the notion that these men
had somehow survived horrific napalm burns.
Scully simply could not believe that Emile Paladin had invented
some sort of miraculous synthetic skin—and had killed to keep its
existence a secret. If Perry Stanton had died as the result of an
experiment gone bad, it was a recent experiment, perhaps some re-
creation of the procedure that had killed the Rikers Island prisoners.
It was implausible to think that Stanton’s death was somehow
related to a twenty-four-year-old secret cure.
A series of beeps emanated from the laptop, and Scully sat up in
her chair. The list of names began to spill across the screen,
followed by concise FBI terminology. Scully furrowed her brow as
she quickly interpreted the data. At first glance, the data confirmed
her suspicions. The men were listed as casualties of the Vietnam
War. But Scully noticed a strange discrepancy. The men were all
registered as having been killed in action between 1970 and 1973;
none was listed as having been transported to any army MASH unit,
let alone the unit in Alkut.
Scully tapped her lips with her fingers. It didn’t make any sense.
She and Mulder had found a list registering dead men as admissions
to the Alkut MASH. Either the list was a complete fabrication, or
someone had falsified death records and admitted the men
unofficially. Of course, the first case seemed more likely. The list
was nothing more than a piece of paper—even if it had been found
in the house of a viciously murdered couple.
Scully paused as the laptop screen changed color. Thumbnail
pictures materialized along the horizontal—and by midscreen, she
realized things were not as simple as they seemed. The photos had
been lifted directly from army registration files, and at least three
were clearly recognizable. They were the same photos she and
Mulder had taken from the Trowbridges’ envelope.
The photos weren’t proof that the men had been admitted to the
MASH unit—but they certainly implied a connection to Alkut.
Scully leaned close to the screen, scanning the photos as they
appeared, searching for more matches—
A sudden sound caught her attention, and she looked up from
the screen. The sound had come from the other side of the bedroom
door. A click of metal against metal, as if someone had tried turning
the knob to see if it was locked.
“Hello?” Scully called, but there was no answer. “Mulder, is that
you?”
Silence. Scully rose from the chair, her heart pounding. Her gun
was in its holster, sitting on the bed table behind the propeller fan.
She cleared her throat. “If someone’s out there, please identify
yourself!”
The doorknob exploded inward, a rain of wood splinters and
mangled steel spiraling into the room. Scully jerked back, stunned,
her hips slamming into the desk. A man was standing in the open
doorway. Tall, well built, with a crew cut and high, chiseled
features. He was wearing a loose white shirt and military green
slacks. His eyes seemed strange, his pupils overdilated. The muscles
in his cheeks and jaw were slack, and Scully immediately thought
of drugs—something depressive, perhaps a tranquilizer or an
antipsychotic.
The man stepped into the room. Scully’s eyes drifted downward,
and she watched as he drew something out of the right pocket of
his slacks. A hypodermic, with a three-inch-long syringe. Scully’s
pulse rocketed as she pressed back against the desk.
“Stay where you are,” she said in her strongest voice. “I’m a U.S.
federal agent.”
The man didn’t seem to hear her. He took another step forward,
his dull eyes trained on her face. Despite his numb expression, his
movements were gracefully fluid. Scully thought about her gun
fifteen feet away—and realized he would reach her before she was
halfway there. She had no way of knowing what was in the syringe,
but she had to assume it was something lethal. She needed to
disarm the man before going for her gun. She searched the room
rapidly—and her gaze settled on the chest-high lamp a few feet past
the edge of the desk. It looked heavy enough to cause damage, and
close enough to reach. The exposed wires near the bottom of the
base were menacing, but if she was careful, she could avoid
electrocuting herself.
The man moved closer. He raised the syringe, shaking it until a
droplet of liquid dangled pendulously from the point. Scully kept
her eyes on the needle as she slid along the desk toward the lamp.
She could hear her heart in her chest, and she took deep breaths,
chasing the panic away.
As the man took another step forward, Scully suddenly leapt to
the side, grabbing the lamp halfway up its metal base. Without
pause, she swung the makeshift weapon in a sweeping arc, aiming
for the hypodermic. The goatskin shade toppled away, revealing a
naked bulb and more exposed wires. There was a flash of light as
the bulb hit the syringe dead on. Then a rainbow of bright sparks
burst into the air as the steel needle touched the light socket.
Scully dropped the lamp and dived for the bed table. She was
halfway there when she realized the man wasn’t chasing her. She
turned and watched him convulse backward, the still-sparking lamp
lying in front of him, smoke rising from the hypodermic in his
hand. The man’s knees suddenly went limp, and his body collapsed
to the floor.
Scully stared, surprised. The syringe had only touched the light
socket for a few seconds; the electric shock should have been strong
enough to stun the man—but not enough to cause him serious
harm. Scully grabbed her gun from the bed table and stepped
cautiously toward him, the barrel aimed at his head. His arms were
twisted unnaturally behind his back, his eyes wide-open. His head
was partially to one side, and Scully noticed a red rash on the back
of his neck. Her cheeks flushed as she remembered that both Perry
Stanton and the John Doe had had similar rashes.
She stopped a few feet from the collapsed man and lowered
herself to one knee. Keeping the gun a careful distance away, she
reached forward and checked his pulse.
Nothing. Scully grabbed the man’s shoulder and rolled him over
onto his back. His chest was still, his eyes shifting back in their
sockets. Scully made a quick decision and slipped her gun into the
back of her waistband. She began CPR, pressing as hard as she
could against the man’s muscular chest.
A few minutes into the CPR she realized it was pointless. The
man was dead. As had happened with Perry Stanton, this man had
been killed by a relatively small jolt of electricity. Although it was
possible for a lamp to draw enough power to cause a cardiac arrest
—it was definitely unlikely.
Scully shifted her gaze to the rash on the nape of the dead man’s
neck. She saw that it consisted of thousands of tiny red dots,
arranged in a circular pattern. Like Perry Stanton’s and the John
Doe’s rashes. And all three men had died after receiving electric
shocks. Scully wondered— what would this man’s autopsy show?
She needed to get the body to an operating room. She hoped
Fielding would let her use the clinic—
She froze, her gaze shifting to the syringe still clamped in the
man’s right hand. The clinic. Mulder was there, searching for the
underground tunnels. If they had come for Scully, then they must
have gone after Mulder as well.
A second later, Scully was on her feet and heading for the door.
22
Mulder tried to scream, but the beast was too fast. Its enormous
black body hurtled toward him through the milky gray air. The
monster landed on his chest, its heavy body crushing him back
against the stretcher. The wolfish snout was inches from his face,
and he stared in terror at the fiery red spirals that were the
creature’s eyes. The curved, crisscrossing tusks scraped together like
kissing scimitars, while a stream of fetid yellow saliva dribbled
against his cheeks.
Suddenly, the halo of clawed tentacles on top of the beast’s head
lashed forward. Mulder felt his skin being flayed away in burning
white strips. Again and again the tentacles slashed at him, ruining
his face, his neck, his chest. He writhed back and forth, trying to
dodge the claws, but the beast was unrelenting. The Skin Eater had
been disturbed—and he was hungry. He would tear at Mulder until
every ounce of Mulder’s skin had been removed. His tentacles and
his tusks and his spiral eyes, slashing, gouging, gorging! Mulder
convulsed upward with every ounce of strength, refusing to give in,
refusing to let the beast have him so easily. He wasn’t ready to
die....
Mulder’s eyes came open. His vision swirled, a wave of nausea
working upward through his throat. He gagged, trying to lift
himself to a sitting position—but his arms were pinned at his sides.
He blinked rapidly, letting the yellowish light clear away the fog.
He was staring at a curved stone ceiling, lined by fluorescent light
strips. He shifted his head to the side and saw that he was
surrounded by a blue plastic curtain. He realized immediately
where he was. The underground chamber.
His head fell back against the stretcher. He blinked rapidly,
fighting away the nausea. He did not know how long he had been
unconscious, but from the lack of pain in his muscles, he guessed it
was not more than a few hours. There was a black Velcro belt
running around his chest and down beneath the stretcher, holding
his arms in place. There was a similar restraint around his ankles.
He could move his hands a few inches and wiggle his toes—but
other than that, he was completely immobilized.
His thoughts shifted back to the violent attack. The three men
had overpowered him without much effort. He had fired two shots
—could he have missed at point-blank range? Unlikely, but not
impossible. And the circular red rash he had seen on the back of his
attacker’s neck? Was it the same rash that had been reported on
both Perry Stanton and the John Doe? And how was it connected to
the dazed, overdilated look in the man’s eyes?
Mulder took a deep breath, calming himself. He didn’t want to
use up his energy building theories. He remembered the smiling
young Amerasian man. There had been violence behind that smile
—a sort of violence that Mulder well recognized. The same edge he
had seen in dozens of serial killers throughout his career. Controlled
psychosis. The Amerasian was a killer. Perhaps he was the young
man Trowbridge had spoken about, Emile Paladin’s son. Perhaps he
had been responsible for the brutal double murder. Perhaps he was
stalking Scully right now....
Mulder clenched his teeth and slammed his body back against
the stretcher. He was helpless, impotent. He couldn’t protect his
partner. He couldn’t even protect himself.
Or could he? He had a strange, sudden thought. He twisted his
body a few inches beneath the Velcro strap and felt something hard
and cylindrical in his right pocket—just within reach. Slowly,
carefully, his fingers crawled toward the object.
With effort, he managed to get the vial free from his pants.
Using his index finger and thumb, he went to work on the cap. It
finally came free, and a bitter scent wafted up toward his nose. He
remembered what the emaciated teenage monk had said when he
had given him the balm: “Makes the skin taste bad.” He thought
about the monster in his dream, picturing the crisscrossing tusks.
He shivered, gripping the vial tightly in his hand. Then he flicked
his wrist upward toward his body.
He felt the transparent liquid splashing across his chest. A few
drops touched his chin and neck, a few more landed on his shoulder
and cheeks. The bitter, sulfuric scent burned at his nostrils. He
knew Scully would have thought he was insane. He was in an
underground research lab—not a monster’s cave. But he couldn’t
shake the feeling that, somehow, the Skin Eater was involved.
Either way, he wanted his skin to taste as bad as possible—
He froze, as footsteps reverberated through the stretcher
beneath him. Someone was approaching the curtain from the other
side. Mulder quickly pushed the empty vial beneath his leg, hiding
it from view.
The curtain whipped back, and Mulder squinted at the
apparition standing a few feet away. Over six feet tall, long-limbed,
with narrow shoulders. The man was wearing light blue scrubs,
latex gloves, and a white surgical mask. His hair was completely
covered by a surgical cap. The only features Mulder could make out
were the man’s eyes. A flickering, almost transparent blue—like the
base of a flame. Mulder swallowed, trying to appear calm. But those
eyes were almost as unnerving as never-ending spirals. Mulder
wondered—could this be Emile Paladin?
The man turned and said something in a quiet voice. There were
other people in the room, just out of view. Gloved hands held out a
thin plastic tray. The blue-eyed man took two objects from the tray
and turned back to Mulder.
Mulder’s gaze dropped to the man’s hands. In the right, he held
a steel device shaped like an oversize stapler. Mulder remembered a
conversation from days ago, when he and Scully had questioned
Perry Stanton’s plastic surgeon. Something about a stapler used in
skin-transplantation procedures. Christ. Mulder’s eyes shifted to the
man’s other hand. He saw a long pair of steel tweezers, delicately
gripped around a four-inch strip of something thin and yellow. The
material looked organic and wet, as if it had just been removed
from some sort of preserving solution. Washed and ready for
transplantation.
“Wait,” Mulder whispered. He tried to regain his composure.
“You’re making a big mistake. They’ll send people looking for me.”
The blue-eyed man shook the tweezers, and tiny droplets of
liquid splattered toward the floor. “Put him under. Now.”
Suddenly, strong hands clamped a rubber gas mask over
Mulder’s mouth and nose. He stared wildly at the square face
leaning over him from the head of the stretcher. The second man
was also wearing a surgical mask, but Mulder recognized the cubic
shape of his head. Julian Kyle. Here, in Thailand. Mulder held his
breath, struggling violently against the old scientist’s grip. But the
ex-military man was too strong.
“Take a deep breath,” Kyle whispered into his ear. “You won’t
feel any pain.”
Mulder arched his back against the Velcro strap. His lungs
spasmed, but still he held on. Kyle pressed the mask tighter against
his face. “It has to be this way.”
Mulder saw spots in the corner of his vision, and suddenly he
couldn’t fight any longer. He gasped, filling his lungs. A sweet taste
touched the back of his tongue, and his eyelids fluttered shut. He
heard the material of his slacks tearing, and he felt something
touching his left calf. Something cold and wet. My god, my god, my
god! But he was helpless, fading fast. As he flirted with
consciousness, a faraway voice swirled in his ear.
“He won’t cause us any more problems.”
“And his partner?” came the response. There was a brief pause.
When the first voice answered, it had a tinny, almost musical
quality.
“Something went wrong. It was a mistake to send a first-stage
drone on an unobserved mission. We need to send Tien—”
“Julian, we don’t have time.”
“But his partner—”
“Forget her,” the first voice snapped. “We need to head back to
the main lab and proceed with the final stage. The satellite link will
allow us only a small window for our demonstration.”
The voices disintegrated as Mulder’s limp body settled back
against the stretcher. Reality faded away to the rhythmic click click
click of an oversize steel stapler.
23
Scully sat on the wet front steps of the clinic, staring in frustration
at the blueprint open on her lap. It had been more than two hours
since she had left the hotel, and still she had found no trace of
Mulder. She had scoured every inch of the clinic, had questioned
Fielding and her staff; Mulder had left the clinic the same way he
had come—through the front door. He had found no underground
tunnels, no hint of the basement floor.
But Scully knew better than to discount Mulder’s ability to find
what didn’t seem to exist. After searching the clinic, she had headed
straight to the records library in the town hall. While at the town
hall, she had considered reporting the body in her hotel room— but
had decided she didn’t have time. She had to make sure Mulder was
all right.
She ran her fingers across the center of the blueprint, tracing a
shadowy line that she assumed represented Alkut’s main road. She
had found the blueprint in a booklet printed by the national Thai
power company—an idea that had come to her while looking at the
electrocuted man in her bedroom. Someone had dug power lines
beneath the town’s streets, which meant there had to be a better
map of the town— and perhaps its underground—than the one
provided by the U.S. military.
But after twenty minutes of trying to decipher the strange Thai
notations and geographic cues that covered most of the power-
company blueprint, Scully was no longer sure that the map was
going to provide much help. The town’s buildings were represented
by little more than numbered dots, connected by dark lines that
could have been anything from dirt paths to paved highways. The
only structures represented clearly on the blueprint were the power
lines; the entire map was covered in spiderwebs of bright red ink,
connected by larger blue trunks. The blue trunks seemed to be
focused near the larger town buildings, such as the clinic and the
town hall. Scully guessed they were the feeder lines, connected
directly to the hydraulic power plant located a half mile beyond the
north edge of town.
Scully flicked an oversize mosquito off the blueprint as her
fingers reached the junction between the main road and the street
where the clinic was located. The mosquito angrily buzzed off,
leaving behind one of its front legs. Beneath the leg ran one of the
blue trunks leading toward the clinic. Scully followed it with her
eyes, her mind wandering to Mulder. Damn it, where the hell are
you? In a few minutes she was going to have to putina call to
Washington, then another to Van Epps. On orders from Washington,
the military would turn the town upside down searching for a
missing FBI agent—and in the process, scare off any chance they
had of solving the mysteries of the Stanton case.
Scully heard a buzzing in her right ear, and felt the injured
mosquito land on her exposed neck. Even missing a leg, it would
not give up. Like the lizard on the fan, it was a creature too simple
to face reality. She was about to slap it away when her eyes
involuntarily focused on a spot on the blueprint.
She saw that three of the blue trunks converged within a few
centimeters of each other, somewhere close to the clinic. She leaned
over the map, trying to decipher the exact location. She barely even
noticed the sharp pinch as the mosquito dug its nose into her skin.
Her head was spinning as she traced the few centimeters of map
between the clinic and the three blue trunks. She suddenly looked
up.
She stared at the decrepit building across the street. Then she
moved her eyes from the steeple to the door—to the heap of plastic
sheeting next to the front entrance. She remembered how the
sheeting had covered the door. She had assumed that the church
was abandoned.
She turned back to the blueprint, oblivious of the bloated, sated
mosquito that lifted off from her neck and flew past her face. The
blueprint didn’t make any sense—unless she and Mulder had both
been looking in the wrong place. The thought was like a gunshot,
sending Scully to her feet.
If she had read the blueprint right, there were three power lines
feeding electricity to the abandoned church across the street.
24
Mulder’s throat constricted, and he lurched forward, gasping for air.
His skull throbbed, and he violently shook his head back and forth,
desperate to silence the horrid ringing in his ears. Then his eyes
came open—and memory crashed into him with a burst of
fluorescent light.
He was lying on the same stretcher in the same underground
chamber, but the Velcro straps were gone. The curtain was pulled
back, and there was no sign of the blue-eyed man or Julian Kyle. As
far as Mulder could tell, he was alone in the chamber. He noticed
with a start that his clothes were gone; he was wearing a white
hospital smock, and there was a thin rubber wire sticking out of his
right arm. Eyes wide, he followed the rubber wire to a bottle of
yellowish liquid hanging from the IV rack above his shoulder.
Without thought, he grabbed the wire and yanked it out of his
arm. Thin drops of blood dribbled down his wrist, and he quickly
applied pressure, cursing at the sharp pain. As he stared at the
yellow liquid dripping from the detached IV wire, his entire body
started to tremble. A strange, crawling feeling was moving up his
left leg. It felt like a thousand worms twitching through his skin.
He clenched his teeth and yanked the smock up. A dozen
oversize staples were sticking out from his calf, winding down
toward his Achilles tendon. To his surprise, the yellow strip below
the staples had shriveled into a hard mass, barely touching the skin
beneath. Mulder quickly grabbed the withered slab and yanked as
hard as he could. It tore free, dragging half the staples with it.
Blood ran freely down his calf, but he barely noticed. He was
staring at the failed transplant, relief billowing through him. As he
pressed the slab between his fingers, it disintegrated to a fine dust.
Mulder exhaled, watching the dust flow through his fingers to the
floor.
“T’ve heard of a patient rejecting a skin transplant,” he mused,
“but never a transplant rejecting a patient.”
He carefully tore a strip of material from the bottom of his
smock and wrapped it tightly around his calf. The bleeding slowed,
and although he could still feel the few remaining staples, he barely
felt any pain. He thought about the balm he had splashed on
himself, and how the transplanted skin had reacted. In his mind,
connections were forming. But he still needed more information to
convince himself that his theories were true.
He shifted his legs off the stretcher, ignoring the dull pounding
in his skull. No worse than a bad hangover, he told himself—a cup
of coffee and you'll be as good as new. His feet touched the cold
cement floor, and a new shiver moved up through his shoulders. He
felt exposed in the thin hospital smock, and he half expected the
blue-eyed man to return with another slab of skin. This time, he
would not have the balm to protect him. The transplant would stick
—and then? He had a feeling he knew exactly what would happen.
But he needed proof.
He rose, slowly, and staggered through the open curtain that
surrounded his stretcher. The other stretchers that filled the
chamber were still empty, and he noticed again that each had a
single IV rack nearby, supporting similar bottles of yellowish liquid.
As he moved past the stretchers, he scratched the tiny wound in his
forearm, wondering how long he had been unconscious—and how
much of the unknown substance was coursing through his veins.
He reached the far wall of the chamber and paused, his eyes
shifting across the medical machinery. He was a few feet away from
the electron microscope, and his gaze settled on the row of
computer monitors nearby. As before, the monitors were all
switched on, the screens glowing blue. Mulder noticed that the
processors beneath the monitors were connected by a series of wires
to the electron microscope. It was a situation he could not resist.
He ran his fingers along the boxlike microscope housing and
found a pair of switches. He flicked both of them to the on position,
and watched as the computer screens changed color. A second later,
tiny, plate-shaped objects bounced across a background of swirling
red. Mulder recognized the objects from the broken model in Julian
Kyle’s office. Epidermal cells; but there was something unnatural
about the way they were moving—an almost violent cadence
spurred by some unknown desire. The skin cells seemed—for lack of
a better word—hungry.
Mulder chided himself. His body and mind had suffered extreme
abuse in the past few hours, and he was letting his thoughts get
carried away. He drifted past the computer screens—and noticed a
small steel file cabinet by the last monitor. The cabinet was barely
waist high, and he hadn’t noticed it before. A thrill moved through
him as he dropped to one knee. File cabinets were an FBI agent’s
pornography.
Mulder began rifling through the drawers. Within a few seconds,
he had forgotten about the pounding in his skull and the blood still
soaking through the loose tourniquet around his calf. All of his
thoughts were trained on the pages that sped past his fingers.
He had reached the back half of the second drawer when he
stopped, drawing out a familiar sheet of paper. It was the same list
of 130 soldiers he had found beneath the golden Buddha. But in this
list, there was a difference. One of the names was crossed off. Next
to the name was a small, handwritten note:
Dopamine inhibitor deficiency, due to IV malfunction. Began
cardiac convulsions shortly after 2 A.M. en route to in-house
demonstration. Drone escaped custody shortly afterward.
Mulder rocked back on his feet, rereading the words. He thought
back to the three men who had assaulted him. He pictured their
overdilated eyes, their faraway stares. Drone was a fitting
description. He remembered the tail end of the conversation he had
heard, just before he had lost consciousness. Kyle had mentioned
something about sending a drone after Scully. The memory sent
shards of fear down Mulder’s spine—but then he remembered the
last part of the conversation. Kyle had said that the drone—the
‘first-stage drone’—had been unable to complete the mission. Then
the other man had mentioned something about a final stage—and a
demonstration. A demonstration that was going to take place at a
main laboratory...
Mulder turned back to the file cabinet. Near the back of the
same drawer, his fingers hit a thick sheaf of pages. As he lifted the
sheaf free, he saw that the front page was another copy of the
familiar list. But as he turned the pages, his pulse quickened. The
list did not end at 130 names: It was sixteen pages long. Mulder
quickly did the calculations. Over two thousand soldiers. All
designated as napalm-burn victims brought to Alkut between 1970
and 1973. It was unthinkable. Two thousand men who should have
died more than twenty-five years ago. His mind whirling, Mulder
opened the last drawer in the filing cabinet. The drawer was filled
with photocopies of MRI scans. He pulled a handful free, leafing
through them. The scans were cross sections of human brains,
similar to the scans Scully had taken of Perry Stanton. Mulder was
no expert, but he remembered what Scully had shown him, and he
noticed some obvious similarities. As in Stanton's and the prisoners”
MRIs, the brains in the scans had enlarged hypothalamuses. But as
far as Mulder could tell, there were no polyps surrounding the
augmented glands—
“Mulder!”
Mulder nearly dropped the scans as he whirled on his heels. He
saw Scully rushing across the chamber. She had her gun out, and
her eyes were scanning the room. Mulder tried to stand, but a rush
of dizziness knocked him back to a crouch. In his excitement at
finding the file cabinet, he had forgotten about the abuses his body
had suffered. He leaned against the cabinet as Scully dropped to his
side. She took in the hospital smock, then saw the bloodied
tourniquet around his calf.
She quickly slid her gun back into its holster and put the back of
her hand against his neck, checking his pulse. Her hand felt warm
and reassuring. Mulder tried to smile. His head was pounding worse
than before. But he wasn’t going to give in to the pain. They were
too close to solving their case. “I’m fine. A little elective surgery,
that’s all.”
“Elective?” Scully asked, as her fingers probed beneath the edge
of the makeshift tourniquet.
“As you can imagine, my vote was in the minority.”
Scully’s concern abated slightly as she discerned that the wound
was minor. Then she shifted her attention to the small puncture
where he had pulled out the IV wire. The anxiety returned to her
face. “Do you know what you were given?
“Over there, by the stretcher. The yellowish liquid. I think it was
some sort of dopamine inhibitor.”
Scully raised her eyebrows. “That would explain your
sluggishness. But what makes you think that?”
Mulder showed her the first list, with the handwritten notation.
“According to this, one of the transplant patients died from a lack of
dopamine inhibitor. I believe all the transplant recipients have to
get periodic infusions of the inhibitor—to keep them from going
psychotic.”
Scully stared at him. “All the transplant recipients. Are you
implying—”
“They tried to transplant skin onto my calf. Thankfully, the
procedure was a failure. But they didn’t know that—and hooked me
up to the inhibitor.” Mulder had made enormous jumps to come to
the conclusion—but he knew he was on the right track. The blue-
eyed man had tried to transplant skin onto his body—to turn him
into a drone. They had left him with a dopamine-inhibitor drip. As
Scully had explained back when she had first seen Perry Stanton’s
MRIs, dopamine was a neurotransmitter related to psychotic
violence. Excess dopamine might also have explained the polyps
surrounding Perry Stanton’s hypothalamus.
Mulder handed Scully the MRI scans, and watched as she leafed
through them. “The hypothalamuses are enlarged,” she said, “like
Stanton’s. And look at this. The motor cortex has nearly doubled in
size—while the amygdala has become almost nonexistent.”
Mulder raised his eyebrows, confused. “The motor cortex and
the amygdala?”
“The motor cortex is the part of the brain associated with
involuntary reflex and motor control,” Scully explained, still staring
at the MRIs. “The amygdala is associated with personality and
thought. If these MRIs are real, then the people whose brains have
been photographed would be almost automatons—”
“Drones,” Mulder interrupted. For some reason, Scully wasn’t as
shocked by the term as Mulder would have expected. Mulder
shifted against the file cabinet. “They can follow simple commands
—they can be controlled. Unless they don’t get their dopamine
inhibitor—and turn out like Perry Stanton.”
Scully paused, still looking at the MRIs. “If your list is to be
believed, our John Doe arrived here in Alkut—along with one
hundred twenty-nine others—more than twenty-five years ago,
burned almost to death. You’re saying that all these men have been
turned into drones?”
Mulder paused. He knew how insane it sounded. But he had his
own experience to go from. They had tried to put the skin on him—
to transform him. “That’s just the beginning.”
He showed her the list of two thousand names. Her eyes
widened as she flipped through the pages. Two thousand men
stolen from their families, turned into guinea pigs. Scully shook her
head. “Impossible. The logistics alone would be incredible. These
men would have to be kept in an intensive care facility. Someplace
really big—with enough financing to last more than two decades.
And for what purpose? Two thousand mindless drones—what’s the
point?”
Mulder slowly struggled to his feet, using Scully’s arm for
balance. “I don’t think the drones are the final product. They were
the first stage, the prototype. Paladin must be planning to create
something much more valuable.”
Scully exhaled. They had been through this before. She knew
that death certificates could be faked—but Mulder had no real
evidence that Paladin was still alive. Mulder thought about
describing the blue-eyed man—but the surgical mask had hidden
most of his features.
For the moment, Scully let the argument go and gestured toward
the open chamber. “So you're convinced that Paladin’s search for
synthetic skin led to all of this.”
Mulder paused. He had been developing a theory since his trip
to the temple—but he knew that Scully would never buy into it.
Still, he felt the need to tell her his thoughts. “It’s not synthetic. It’s
scavenged.”
He started across the chamber. Scully followed alongside. “What
do you mean?”
“Trowbridge told us that Paladin was a devoted student of Thai
mythology. I think Paladin knew about the Skin Eater before he
ever came to Alkut. He went looking for the creature—and has been
using its skin as the source of his transplants.” To Mulder, it made
perfect sense. Skin was the source of the Skin Eater’s power. Skin
was also the source of Perry Stanton’s invulnerability, and his
strength. Paladin had wandered in the mountains surrounding Alkut
—and had found a way to make miracles.
Scully stopped near the row of computer screens. She stared,
silently, at the unnatural epidermal cells migrating across the swirls
of red. Finally, she shook her head. “It has to be synthetic, Mulder.
Some sort of chemical structure that interacts with the patient’s
bloodstream, spreading into the muscle-control centers of the brain.
An extremely elastic and inviolable substance—except to electricity.
Electricity passes right through the skin into the nervous system
itself, setting off a cardiac reaction.”
Mulder raised his eyebrows. Stanton and the John Doe had both
died from electric shocks. But Scully had not accepted the
connection before.
“I had an encounter with one of these men,” Scully explained.
“In my hotel room. He went into cardiac arrest after shoving a
hypodermic needle into a light socket.”
Mulder nodded. Now he understood why she had been willing to
accept his premise—if not his conclusions.
“If these men are just the beginning,” Scully continued, “what’s
next?”
Mulder wasn’t sure. But the sinking feeling in his gut told him
where they would have to go to find out. “If Emile Paladin is
experimenting on two thousand missing soldiers, he needs a private,
secluded place to work. A place where no one would dare bother
him.”
Scully exhaled at his obvious attempt at melodrama. But Mulder
was sure she was thinking along the same lines. As soon as he
recovered his balance, they would be heading into the mountains
that surrounded Alkut.
Searching for a secret intensive care unit—and a mythological
lair.
25
Scully sprawled next to Mulder against the fallen evergreen trunk,
watching in awe as the three Thai guides hacked at the underbrush
with their huge, curved machetes. All three men were bare to the
waist, and their sinewy bodies glowed in the sweltering heat. A few
feet away, the emaciated teenage monk guided their progress with
abrupt flicks of his bony hand; even after seven hours of trekking
upward through the dense tropical forest, he and the hired guides
showed no sign of tiring. The sky had gone from orange to gray
nearly an hour ago, and still they pushed forward, refusing to give
up on the promise of reaching the mountain base before darkness
set in.
“Very close,” the teenage monk called over his shoulder, as he
checked the sky with his eyes. “Trail ends over next hill.”
Scully contained her enthusiasm. Malku had been making
similar statements for the past three miles. What the teenage monk
described as hills were actually small mountains covered in densely
packed broadleaf evergreens, oak, laurel, and dipterocarps, a native
Southeast Asian tree. And as far as Scully could tell, the “trail” was
little more than a handful of disconnected breaks in the underbrush,
separated by lush green barriers of tropical plant life.
Mulder noticed the skeptical expression on Scully’s face, as he
slipped off one of his combat boots and shook stones the size of
marbles to the ground. A cloud of mosquitoes buzzed around his
face, and he blinked rapidly, struggling to keep the irritating insects
out of his eyes. “He knows where he’s going, Scully. It’s his religion,
after all.”
Scully glanced skeptically at her partner. It was a strange sight—
Mulder in military camouflage, with combat boots and an assault
rifle slung over his right shoulder. They had found the uniform and
rifle at a shop next door to the town hall. Like the Jeep, the items
were souvenirs of the Vietnam War—and both had been kept in
surprisingly good shape. The uniform was frayed at the edges, and
there were three quarter-sized holes in the lower back—but it fit
Mulder’s frame. He had balked at wearing the uniform until the
shop owner had promised him that the original owner had survived
his wounds.
The automatic rifle was a much easier decision. Mulder’s gun
had vanished with his clothes, and they did not have time to
navigate the necessary channels in search of a replacement.
Mulder’s FBI training covered most models of assault rifles,
including the CAR-15 slung over his shoulder. Basically, it was a
shorter, carbine version of the M-16, chambered in 5.56 mm. The
gun had come fitted with a single box magazine containing twenty
rounds. The shopkeeper had done a good job keeping the machine
oiled and clean, and it seemed battle-ready. A brutal weapon; surely
capable of cutting through even the most durable synthetic skin.
“I don’t share your confidence,” Scully finally responded,
focusing on the thin young monk. His jutting chin and narrow eyes
made him look like some sort of plucked bird. “Even if the place
we’re looking for does exist, there are literally thousands of caves at
the foot of See Dum Kao.”
Mulder shrugged, pulling his boot back over his foot. He winced
as the motion tweaked the edge of the fresh bandage around his
calf. “You saw the map Ganon showed me in the temple. Malku has
spent years memorizing its twists and turns. His whole life has been
dedicated to understanding the legend of the Skin Eater. The cave is
at the end of this trail.”
Scully tightened the clasp holding her hair. It had been a
struggle holding back her reservations when Mulder had brought
her to Ganon and the Skin Eater temple. When the ancient monk
had instructed his young apprentice to guide the agents to the
legendary home of the Skin Eater, she had remained silent for one
simple reason: The legendary mountain lair was their best bet for
locating a private hospital large enough to hold two thousand
burned soldiers. The myth was a good cover for unethical, radical
experimentation. Emile Paladin could have set up some sort of
private hospital during the war—and transferred control to Fibrol
after his death. The company could have provided the funding
necessary to keep the hospital functioning, while someone else—
perhaps Julian Kyle—continued the transplant research.
But in no way did Scully give credence to the fairy tale itself.
She had seen Allan and Rina Trowbridges’ bodies. She had read
Emile Paladin’s death certificate. And she had found nothing in the
underground laboratory that remotely suggested a connection to
some sort of skin-eating beast. The skin sample that had been
transplanted onto Mulder’s calf had disintegrated into dust—and
during microscopic analysis, the dust itself had decomposed beyond
the molecular level, making any conclusions impossible. When
Scully and Mulder had returned to the hotel before setting off for
the mountains, they had found no trace of the electrocuted corpse.
Scully assumed that the body had been discovered by the owner of
the hotel and carted off along with the Trowbridges. She had
unsuccessfully tried to track the body down by phone, and had
finally accepted the obvious: another autopsy that would never take
place.
All of the evidence pointed to a medical conspiracy: transplant
experimentation with some sort of nefarious purpose, one valuable
enough to kill for—and to spur a cover-up of violence and
misdirection. In retrospect, Scully realized that their entire case had
been watched, and to some extent guided, by sources unknown.
From the missing John Doe to the outbreak of encephalitis
lethargica, they had been steered away from the simple truth. In
that, Mulder had been completely on target. The skin Perry Stanton
had received was the source of his murderous rampage. But Scully
was equally convinced that the source of that skin was science, not
myth. And the people behind the skin were criminals: accessories to
murder, conspirators who had at the very least falsified Vietnam
War records—and at worst, kidnapped and experimented on
American soldiers.
“Mulder, it’s important that we keep focus. We’re here to
conduct a limited search of the area, to see if we can find traces of a
major intensive care clinic or a laboratory. We’re searching for
criminal suspects—not monsters.”
Mulder’s response was cut off by a terrified shout that rang out
from one of the machete-wielding guides. Mulder leapt to his feet,
the assault rifle spinning expertly to his hands. Scully’s Smith &
Wesson seemed minuscule by comparison. The shouting changed to
rhythmic chanting as the three guides backed away from the
cleared underbrush. Scully moved between Mulder and the
emaciated monk, her gaze shifting to the ground.
The skeleton was half-lodged in mud, curled in a fetal position.
The bones were yellowish, obviously weeks old, and the skull was
partially destroyed. Scully noticed the bowed shape of the spine and
the short limbs. The skeleton wasn’t human. “A gibbon. Dead at
least a week.”
“And picked clean,” Mulder commented.
“By wildlife, yes. See the tracks in the mud over there? Cleft
front hooves. Most likely a wild boar. Fierce animals. They’re easily
big enough to kill a gibbon.”
Mulder dropped to one knee, looking over the skeleton. Malku
was talking in quiet tones to the three other Thais, who had
retreated a good ten feet back. One of them had slung his backpack
full of camping supplies over his shoulders.
“Wild boars don’t skin bodies,” Mulder said.
“But jackals do,” Scully responded. “There are at least two
species indigenous to this area. Not to mention a number of feline
carnivores, wolves, and flesh-eating insects.”
Mulder nodded. They would need a zoologist to determine what
had really happened to the gibbon. Mulder rose to his feet, then
turned back toward the guides. Malku was pleading in a high-
pitched voice, but the three guides were all shaking their heads. It
was plainly obvious what was going on.
“They go back,” Malku finally explained, his eyes sad. “Back to
Alkut. They say I must lead them.”
Scully glanced at Mulder, then at the underbrush. There was a
break in the green, about the size of a person, extending beneath a
thick canopy of branches. There was no telling how far the break
continued. “I guess that doesn’t give us much of a choice.”
Mulder looked past her. “Malku, how much further is the base of
the mountain?”
“Not far. Just over hill.”
“Mulder,” Scully said, “this trail could continue for miles. It’s
going to be dark, and we don’t know the area.”
“Before I became unconscious, I heard Kyle and the other man
talking about the upcoming demonstration. It’s happening now,
Scully. We can’t head back to town.”
Mulder pointed to one of the packs lying next to the fallen
trunk. “We can carry what we need. Malku will come back for us.
Right, Malku?”
The young monk bobbed his head. Scully bit her lower lip,
thinking. She did not like the idea of heading farther into the forest
on their own, especially so close to nightfall. But Mulder was right
—if they didn’t reach the mountain soon, there was no point in
reaching it at all. She took a deep breath, tasting the steaming, wet
air. “Another hour, Mulder. If we don’t reach the mountain, we turn
back.”
“The key is in the wrist,” Mulder grunted, bringing his machete
down in a vicious arc. “Don’t let the weight of the blade control
your swing. Like golf, only this sucker will take your head off if you
mistime your follow-through.”
Scully swung her own machete, severing a branch almost half
her length. Her body was slick with sweat, and her shoulders ached
beneath the weight of the heavy assault rifle. Mulder was carrying
the backpack containing enough rations for two days in the forest.
Overkill—Scully hoped. It had been only forty minutes since Malku
and the guides had turned back, and already the forest felt as if it
was closing in on her, an enveloping crush of nature. Her ears were
ringing with the strange whistles and calls of tropical birds and
monkeys, and she no longer noticed the carpet of blood-sucking
insects stuck to most of her exposed skin.
“It’s getting pretty dark,” she commented, as she stepped over
the freshly cut branch and went to work on the next obstacle, a
thick bush nearly twice her height. The effort seemed futile, and she
was more than ready to turn back. All she could think about was a
cool shower and a flight back to Washington. “We’ll have to make
camp soon—and wait for Malku to return. Unless you think we can
find our way back ourselves.”
Mulder moved alongside, slashing deep into the fingers of green.
“Tm not ready to give up yet.”
“It’s not a matter of giving up,” Scully said, chopping into the
bush with frustrated swipes. “It’s a matter of being reasonable—
shit.”
Scully watched as the machete slipped out from her sweaty
fingers and somersaulted through a breach in the thick bush. The
blade quickly disappeared from view, and a second later there was
the loud clatter of metal against stone. Mulder’s face brightened.
“That sounded promising.”
Scully did not argue. She delicately stepped after the machete,
working her way between the minced branches. To her surprise, the
other side of the bush opened into a narrow rock canyon leading
steadily upward. The canyon was little more than shoulder wide,
running between twenty-foot-high rock walls. It was impossible to
tell if the canyon had been purposefully carved into the rocks or
was a feat of evolution. The rock walls were rough, with sharp,
jutting protuberances and clinging green vines. Ten feet ahead, the
canyon twisted tightly to the right, making it impossible to see
beyond a few feet—but it seemed the agents might have finally
reached the edge of the forest.
“It’s a pretty tight fit,” Scully said. “We’ll have to go one ata
time.”
It was an unpleasant thought—but they had come this far
already. Scully slid the rifle off her shoulder and held it lightly in
her hands. She had not used anything as powerful as the carbine
since her days at Quantico, but she was mentally prepared to fire if
it became necessary.
She quietly worked her way forward, Mulder a step behind. The
rocks grew steeper on either side, until she could no longer see
anything but the narrow incline ahead of her. She found herself
turning sideways to fit through the walls, and every few seconds she
felt a sharp pinch as she brushed against the jagged rock. She was
getting scraped and bruised by the forward progress—and from
Mulder’s cursing behind her, she knew he was suffering as well.
“Tm beginning to know what a kidney stone feels like,” he
whispered, yanking off the heavy backpack to make more room for
his body. Scully silenced him with her hand as she came to an
abrupt turn in the canyon. The walls finally opened up into a brief,
rock-strewn plain, stretching upward in a gentle slope. The ground
was reddish brown, a combination of packed forest mud and thin
gravel. Other than a few knee-high bushes, the ground was clear of
significant obstructions. It was strange seeing so much empty space
after the long trip through the tropical forest.
Just on the other side of the cleared, reddish plain, Scully saw
sheer rock cliffs rising almost straight up, disappearing into the
charcoal sky. The cliffs seemed staggeringly large, and she knew her
and Mulder’s forward progress was about to end. They had reached
the base of See Dum Kao.
“Scully,” Mulder whispered, his cheek almost touching hers.
“Over there.”
He gestured toward a huge black oval carved directly into the
sheer cliff, about thirty yards away. It was the mouth of a vast cave,
exactly as Ganon had described. A foreboding sight. The opening was
at least twenty feet high, with a span nearly twice as wide. Twisting
green vines hung down across the cave entrance like a living
portcullis.
“It looks deserted,” Scully commented.
“There’s got to be another entrance,” Mulder explained. “There’s
no way they move supplies back and forth the way we just came.”
“Well,” Scully said, shaking sweat out of her eyes. “Let’s take a
look.”
She started forward, casting a glance at the sky. In a few more
minutes they would be in total darkness. Isolated in the middle of
nowhere, waiting for Malku to lead them back to Alkut. It was not a
pleasant thought. On the bright side, at least night would bring
relief from the overwhelming heat. If the cave was as deserted as it
looked, they would have a place to camp out and wait.
They made short work of the rocky glade, angling along the
sheer cliff toward the opening. See Dum Kao seemed to rise straight
upward forever to Scully’s right, a dagger stabbed deep into the
dark skin of the sky. She wondered how many thousands of caves
pockmarked the ancient mountain—and how many miles of
subterranean caverns spread out like a hollow circulatory system
beneath the stone.
She slowed as she reached the edge of the opening. One of the
vines hung down just inches from her body, and she reached out,
gently touching the thick green rope. Its outer layer was rough,
speckled with tiny prickers like an elongated cactus. She looked up,
searching for the plant’s center, but she could no longer see the
arched top of the cave entrance. She carefully unslung the
automatic rifle and handed it to Mulder. Then she withdrew her
handgun.
Without a word, Mulder slid between two of the vines and into
the dark cave. Scully followed, noting how the air seemed to change
instantly. The temperature dropped by at least ten degrees, while
the humidity seemed to increase, causing an involuntary shiver to
move down Scully’s back. A dank, mossy smell filled her nostrils,
and she fought the urge to cough. She knew there was a danger of
inhaling poisonous gases—carbon monoxide, methane, even
cyanotic compounds resulting from natural decomposition. But she
hoped the wide opening kept fresh air circulating enough to provide
sufficient oxygenation.
Beyond the entrance, the cave opened up into an oval chamber,
similar in size to the laboratory beneath the church. Huge
stalagmites rose up at random intervals across the red-mud floor,
sparkling with crystal deposits. Some of the stalagmites were nearly
fifteen feet tall—thousands, if not millions, of years old. The ceiling
was shrouded in darkness, but Scully could make out the points of
similar stalactites hanging down like dulled fangs. Directly across
the room was another arched opening, leading deeper into the
mountain. A yellowish light trickled across the stone floor, coming
from somewhere beyond the second entrance. Scully could not tell
for sure—but the light seemed artificial. Still, it was possible that
some sort of natural aperture was directing reflected light through
the cavern. Perhaps the moon had broken through the clouds, and
its light was funneling through fissures in the surrounding stone.
Mulder touched her shoulder, pointing past one of the larger
stalagmites to a cleared-out area by the far wall. A glint of reflected
light caught her eye, and she held her breath. There was a large,
rectangular object at the edge of the chamber. From the distance, it
seemed to be made of glass.
Mulder advanced, the automatic rifle cradled in his arms. Scully
weaved behind him, circumnavigating a huge stalagmite. As she
moved closer to the reflection point, she saw an enormous glass
tank running waist high along the wall. The tank was at least
twelve feet long, perhaps four feet wide. A series of rubber tubes
twisted out of the bottom of the tank, disappearing into holes
drilled straight into the stone wall.
Scully’s thoughts swirled as she stood next to Mulder, peering
into the tank. It was half-filled with transparent liquid, and a strong
scent wafted in Scully’s nostrils. Salty and familiar. It reminded her
of the many thousands of hours she had spent in bio labs during
college, medical school, and beyond.
“Ringer’s solution,” she said, softly. “It’s a biochemical solution
used to keep organic cells alive. Tissue cultures, bacteria—”
“Transplant materials?” Mulder asked.
Scully shrugged. She was stunned by the sight of the tank. Now
there was no doubt—the enormous mountain cave was the site of
some sort of medical research. The long path from New York had
led to this place in the mountains of Thailand—through the
guidance of a religious cult and an ancient fairy tale. Scully
reminded herself—there was logic behind it all. The myth of the
Skin Eater was a cover story, much like the outbreak of encephalitis
lethargica. “It’s possible synthetic skin was kept in this tank.”
“Maybe just the family pet,” Mulder commented, reaching into
the tank and touching the liquid inside. He took out his hand and
shook the droplets toward the ground. Then he started toward the
inner entrance. Scully followed, her nerves on edge. As they moved
closer to the yellowish light, unnatural, vaguely mechanical sounds
drifted into her ears. Soon the sounds reached a recognizable
volume. She clearly made out the rhythmic pumping of respiratory
ventilators, mingling with the hiss of liquid infusers and the beep of
computer processors. She cautioned Mulder with her hand as they
reached the entrance, and they spread out to either side, crouching
low.
The inner room was at least four times as large as the initial
chamber—massive and naturally domed, nearly the size of a
football field. It was the largest underground cavern Scully had ever
seen. Soft yellow light poured down from more than a dozen
enormous spotlights hanging from steel poles suspended along the
walls. And beginning just a few feet in front of Scully, stretching as
far as her eyes could see—row after row of empty chrome hospital
stretchers. The stretchers seemed to go on forever, parallel rows
extending from one end of the cavern to the other.
“They’re not here,” Mulder whispered, slowly moving between
the stretchers. “These stretchers are all empty—”
He paused midsentence. Then he pointed up ahead. There was a
group of stretchers—between twenty and thirty—separated from
the chrome sea, situated near the far end of the cavern. Each of the
segregated stretchers was covered by a milky white oxygen tank.
Mulder rushed ahead, Scully a few feet behind. Their pace
slowed as they reached the first oxygen tent. At the head of each
tent stood a semicircle of medical carts; Scully recognized
respirators and cardiac machines—but some of the other devices
were foreign to her, and there were numerous infusion pumps
attached to vessels full of unidentifiable chemicals. Tubes ran from
the carts to valves attached directly to the plastic oxygen tents.
Scully followed Mulder through the maze of oxygen tents,
counting as she went. Her approximation had been accurate; there
were twenty-five tented stretchers. She took a deep breath and
approached the closest plastic tent. She could hear the rhythm of
the oxygen being pumped through the tubing—creating a pristine,
sterile environment inside. She searched the outside of the plastic
tent—and found a triangular flap held down by a steel zipper. She
called Mulder over, and carefully undid the flap.
“My God,” she whispered, as she stared through the thin
transparent plastic viewplate beneath the flap. She was looking at a
horribly burned face and upper torso. Nearly every inch of skin had
been seared away, and in many places she could see straight
through to the muscle and bone beneath. The patient was a
patchwork of black, white, and red, with charred regions, exposed
subcutaneous fat, and pulsing veins and arteries revealed to the
sterile air. Both eyes were burned away, leaving blank sockets, and
the patient’s mouth was wide-open—and missing all of its teeth.
But amazingly—the patient seemed to be still alive. Scully could
see the mechanical rise and fall of his chest. She could watch the
blood pumping through the body’s circulatory system. Still alive—
in a sense. More an organic machine than a human being. Blood
pumping, lungs working, but brain function? Doubtful, if not
impossible.
“This one’s in the same condition,” Mulder called to her from a
few feet away. He had opened a similar flap on another oxygen
tank. As Scully watched, he moved from stretcher to stretcher,
carefully unzipping the flaps. “Twenty-five of them, all in similar
states. The rest of the two thousand must have been moved, maybe
to other holding areas.”
Scully shifted her eyes to the semicircle of medical carts at the
head of the stretcher. She listened to the symphony of life-support
machinery. “We don’t know that these twenty-five patients are from
the list. And I’m not even sure there’s any way to identify this man.
No fingerprints, no teeth.”
Mulder had paused by one of the stretchers. He peered down,
then continued to the next. “None of these men has teeth—for that
precise reason. But there’s no doubt in my mind. These are Paladin’s
guinea pigs. And the rest are out there, somewhere. Waiting for the
next phase.”
Scully tore herself away from the stretcher and followed Mulder
through the chamber. She thought about the man who had accosted
her in her hotel bedroom. Had he once been like one of these
patients, a skinless vegetable kept alive by tubes? It seemed
impossible. The changes in Perry Stanton—in the MRIs she had seen
in the basement of the church—these were changes she could
fathom. Chemicals affecting brain structure, neurotransmitters
affecting behavior, synthetic skin as a method of transmission. But
Mulder was suggesting something completely different. The raising
of the dead.
“No,” Scully finally said. “These burns can’t be healed. Not to
that degree. Medicine isn’t magic.”
Suddenly, Mulder grabbed her arm and yanked her to the side.
She gasped, nearly losing her footing. Mulder was pointing straight
ahead. They were barely twenty yards from the back wall of the
enormous chamber. A double door had been cut directly into the
stone, and there was a circular viewing window set waist high in
one of the doors, a few feet in diameter. Bright light poured
through the window, and Scully could see movement on the other
side.
“Over there,” Mulder mouthed, pointing toward a pair of huge
machines a few yards from the doors. Scully identified them as
autoclaves: enormous steam sterilizers, each about the size of a
small closet, with a transparent Plexiglas face. One of the autoclaves
was open, its digital display glowing red, indicating that it was set
on automatic and ready for operation. The other looked as if it had
been recently used; Scully could see traces of the superheated steam
on the inside of the glass, and there were racks of syringes and
scalpels glistening inside.
She crouched next to Mulder behind the second autoclave,
craning her neck for a better angle through the viewing window.
“Looks like an operating theater,” she whispered.
“Theater’s the right word,” Mulder responded. “Do you see the
cameras?”
Scully nodded. From her angle, she could see at least three video
cameras on tripods focused on the raised operating table on the
other side of the window. A tall, thin man in surgical garb was
speaking into one of the cameras, his face covered by a sterile white
mask. Another man—squat, square, in similar surgical clothes—was
hovering closer to the operating table. In his hands was an oversize
plastic cooler, partially opened.
“Julian Kyle,” Scully commented, snapping the safety off her
Smith & Wesson. She didn’t know what sort of surgery was going on
in the other room, but she was ready to make an arrest. There were
twenty-five burned patients on life support in a cave. She certainly
considered that probable cause. “What do you suppose the cameras
are for?”
“It's a satellite link,” Mulder responded. His fingers had
tightened against his automatic rifle. He was also preparing for the
confrontation. “I heard them talking about it before I lost
consciousness. They’re demonstrating their procedure—probably to
interested buyers.”
“Do-it-yourself drones?” Scully asked. She still found the idea
implausible. Nobody would go to this much trouble for mindless
drones. Trained soldiers could fight circles around men who
couldn’t think. The drone who had accosted her was a perfect
example. He had been unable to react to her surprise attack. How
much money could an army of drones be worth?
“As I said before,” Mulder responded, “the drones were just the
first step. The procedure has been perfected—and the next stage is
in that room.”
Mulder’s whisper had changed to an angry hiss. His objectivity
was long gone. Looking at the twenty-five oxygen tents clustered
together in the room like white ripples in a tormented ocean, Scully
felt her own objectivity waver. She wanted answers as badly as her
partner.
She nodded, and Mulder slid forward. Scully followed a step
behind, her focus trained on the double doors. Another few seconds,
and it would all be over.
26
Quo Tien’s face suddenly drained of color as he watched the two
agents sweep out from behind the autoclave. He was standing
twenty feet away, in the dark entrance to a secondary tunnel
leading off from the main chamber. He could not believe the sight
in front of him. The male agent—Fox Mulder, whose flesh Tien had
almost tasted—had somehow escaped the effects of the transplant
procedure. Now he and his partner were here, in Tien’s playground
—seconds away from ruining everything.
Tien’s surprise rapidly turned to rage. This was his home. The
agents’ very presence was an abomination. This time, Uncle Julian
would not get in the way.
Tien slid forward, his hands breaking free of his long sleeves. He
had just returned from securing the last of the first-stage drones; in
his left hand he held a compact stun gun, which had become a
requirement since the debacle involving the drone in New York.
Better to kill a drone than let it escape. His right hand embraced the
hilt of his straight razor. The two agents were heavily armed—but
Tien knew the razor and the stun gun would be enough.
The hunger screamed in his ears as he quickly closed the
distance between them.
27
Scully saw the sudden flash of movement and jerked her head to the
side. The thin young man was sprinting toward them, his lithe body
cutting between the oxygen tents with amazing agility. His face was
a mask of rage and violence, his eyes narrowed to black points. He
looked more snake than human, his hands rising like fangs. Scully
saw the sharp razor blade flashing under the yellow spotlights, then
the stun gun—pointing right at her. She didn’t have time to get her
gun around, didn’t even have time to scream. Instead, she did the
only thing she could think of. She reached out and grabbed
Mulder’s shoulder.
The bolt of electricity hit her in the side, and there was an
enormous popping in her ears. Her body lifted a few inches off the
ground, and her muscles spasmed, sending her careening into
Mulder. He jerked beneath her hand as half the electricity
transferred to his body. The automatic rifle whirled out of his
hands, clattering beneath a stretcher a few feet away. Together,
they slammed into the stone wall, just inches from the double
doors. Scully’s skin felt as if it was on fire, her head spinning, black
spots ricocheting across the plane of her vision. She felt Mulder roll
free from beneath her, crawling toward his gun.
Her cheek touched the floor, and the room turned to liquid in
front of her eyes. She blinked rapidly, struggling to remain
conscious. She had avoided the full effect of the stun gun by
grabbing Mulder—and she had warned him with the same stroke.
But she had partially incapacitated them both. She managed to get
her hands in front of her, lifting her face off the ground. She saw
Mulder a few feet away, his hands inches from the rifle. Then she
saw a long dark shape land on top of him, a shadow come to life.
The shadow dragged Mulder back from the gun and spun him onto
his back.
Scully shook her head, her vision clearing. The shadow flickered
into three dimensions. It was the young man, straddling Mulder
around his waist, the razor blade rising above Mulder’s face. Christ.
Scully clenched her jaw and launched herself forward. She slammed
into the young man’s back, knocking him off Mulder with her
weight. Even before they hit the ground, the young man had
twisted out of her grip. The back of his left hand caught the side of
Scully’s jaw, and she spun across the floor, crashing into a
semicircle of medical carts. She tasted blood and felt the sharp pain
of a pulled muscle daggering down her right side. She was lying
against the legs of one of the occupied stretchers, staring up at the
white-plastic oxygen tent. One of the carts had collapsed on top of
her, and a cardiac machine was lying shattered next to her
shoulder. A long plastic tube had yanked free from the machine,
and Scully saw a sharp steel wire sticking out of the end of the tube.
A trochar, used to insert an emergency cardiac balloon into a
patient. Relief filled her as she realized that the machine had not
been attached to the burn victim in the oxygen tent, that it was
there in case of an emergency. Then her eyes focused on the
trochar. The hollow steel wire was eight inches long, with an
extremely sharp point.
Scully grabbed the trochar, yanking it free from the plastic tube.
The sharp pain in her side sent tears to her eyes, as she struggled
into a crouch. She spit blood, searching for Mulder and the young
man.
She spotted them directly in front of the two autoclaves. Mulder
was on his knees, his hands clenched around the Amerasian’s wrists.
There was blood pouring from a gash in Mulder’s cheek, more blood
from a deep cut in his left arm. The Amerasian clearly had the
upper hand. The bloody razor blade was moving steadily toward
Mulder’s throat. The Amerasian’s face was perfectly calm, the
surface of a lake right before a storm. His lips twitched upward at
the edges, a strangely erotic smile.
Scully clenched her hand around the trochar and hurtled
forward. The Amerasian looked up at the last second, his eyes going
wide. He tried to twist his body out of the way, but Mulder held on
tight to his wrists, limiting his range of motion. The trochar caught
the side of his shoulder and plunged through, ripping deep into his
muscle, wounding him severely. A geyser of bright red blood
sprayed Mulder’s face, and he reeled back. The Amerasian lurched
to his feet, his eyes wild. He staggered back, swinging the razor
blade impotently through the air, his face draining as the blood
fountained out of his deeply skewered shoulder. His feet tangled
together, and he fell, crashing into the open autoclave. His weight
sent the machine rocking backward, and the door swung shut.
There was a mechanical click, followed by a series of loud
beeps. Scully’s stomach dropped as she realized the machine was set
on automatic. She lurched toward the control panel—but she was
too late. She watched in horror as the Amerasian’s body slumped
against the transparent door, his knees buckling. Suddenly, a
thunderous hiss erupted from the machine. Plumes of superheated
steam exploded out of the half dozen sterilizing jets, hitting the
young man from all four sides. His skin was instantly flayed from
his body, tearing off in long, bloody strips. In less than a second he
had been reduced to a skeleton shrouded in white steam.
Scully stared in shock, unable to turn away. Mulder staggered to
his feet next to her, his hand over the wound on his left arm.
“Karma,” he said, simply. “Two thousand degrees of pure karma.”
Scully looked at him. The blood flowed freely down his face
from the cut in his cheek. Her own mouth ached, and she realized
that one of her lower teeth was loose. “Was that Emile Paladin’s
son?”
Before Mulder could answer, there was the sound of a swinging
door behind them. Scully turned, and saw Julian Kyle staring at
them from in front of the double doors. He had the plastic cooler in
his hands, and there was a shocked look on his face.
“Stay where you are,” Mulder shouted, but Kyle was already
sprinting across the chamber. Mulder ignored him, heading toward
the double doors. The other man was presumably still inside the
operating theater. “Scully, don’t let him get away. He’s got the
skin!”
Scully thought about going after her gun, but decided she didn’t
have time to waste searching the chamber. Kyle was already near
the secondary tunnel from where the Amerasian had entered the
room. Scully raced after him, ignoring the pain in her side. She
heard Mulder hit the double doors behind her, and she knew he was
also unarmed.
She wondered how far they’d get on karma alone.
28
Mulder crashed through the twin doors shoulder first, bursting into
the bright light. His boots skidded against the floor as he narrowly
avoided a video camera set atop a tripod. The raised operating table
was ten feet away, surrounded by surgical equipment. Anesthetic
tanks stood by the head of the table, next to a respirator pump and
two enormous canisters of oxygen. On the other side of the table,
Mulder recognized the articulated arm and cylindrical housing of a
high-powered laser scalpel, similar to the device he had seen used
during the tattoo removal in the surgical ward at Jamaica Hospital.
Next to the laser apparatus stood a defibrillator cart, next to that a
cardiac monitor. Bright green mountains raced across the monitor,
the fierce cadence of an overstimulated heart. Each peak sent a
high-pitched tone echoing off the walls.
The blue-eyed man in the surgical mask stood frozen beside the
monitor, a serrated steel scalpel in his right hand. Three separate
video cameras were trained over his shoulders toward the operating
table, and Mulder saw a spaghetti-sea of wires looping behind the
cameras to an enormous receiver plugged into a generator by the
wall. The cameras whirred in a quiet symphony of invisible gears.
“Sorry to interrupt the show,” Mulder said, breathing hard in the
doorway.
The blue-eyed man remained still, a strange calm moving across
his features. He gently lowered the scalpel. His eyes shifted to the
patient on the table in front of him. Mulder followed his gaze.
The patient was a work in progress. His bare torso was split into
two distinct sections; his abdomen was still covered in terrible
burns, a mix of white, black, and ruby red. But his upper pectorals,
shoulders, neck, and face had been delicately reconstructed. The
new, yellowish skin was pulled taut against his muscles and bone,
giving off a jaundiced glow. At the edges of each newly
transplanted section, Mulder could make out the thin staples—and
spread around the staples, tiny flecks of red powder. The Dust—the
antibacterial substance that had first connected their investigation
to Fibrol, and Emile Paladin.
Beneath the fresh skin, the patient’s face was unnaturally
smooth, the features icily still beneath the anesthesia mask. His eyes
were wide-open, the same piercing blue as those of the surgeon by
his side.
Mulder realized with a start that he recognized the patient’s
face. Andrew Paladin. He had found the recluse brother. He shifted
his gaze back to the masked surgeon. The blue-eyed man moved
slowly to one of the video cameras behind him, and hit a switch.
The cameras stopped whirring. “You’ve disturbed a delicate
procedure. This man could die because of you.”
The voice was soft, almost melodic, tinged with confidence. He
did not seem fazed by Mulder’s presence.
“This man should have died a long time ago,” Mulder
responded, slowly moving around the operating table, his eyes
flickering toward the scalpel. He could feel the warm blood still
trickling down his jaw to his neck, staining the front of his
camouflage. His wounded left arm hung uselessly at his side. “There
are twenty-five just like him imprisoned in the next room. And
there are close to two thousand more hidden somewhere, suffering
the same horrid fate. Tortured souls, separated from their families
for more than twenty-five years.”
The blue-eyed man took a step back from the operating table,
the scalpel poised expertly in his gloved hand. “Those men are alive
because of me. My skin will give them a second chance—a way out
from the torture.”
Mulder shook his head, anger filling him. “You mean turn them
into slaves—drones?”
The blue-eyed man backed between the two oxygen tanks as
Mulder skirted the bottom corner of the operating table.
“No,” Mulder continued, his anger turning his voice sharp. “That
was just the first stage. Incapable of individual thought—willing,
unthinking servants, following your orders. But the next stage—it’s
something much more advanced, isn’t it? Much more valuable.”
“This is beyond you,” the blue-eyed man said, his voice
indifferent, even clinical. “You can’t possibly begin to understand.”
Mulder felt his anger multiply. “I know that you’ve kept these
men alive for the past twenty-five years. Medically, that seems
impossible. So it must be the skin itself—or perhaps chemicals
within the skin, that has made this longevity possible. You’ve used
the skin to alter these men—to prepare them. For this
demonstration.”
Mulder paused, looking at the patient on the stretcher. Then he
glanced at the cameras, then at the receiver by the wall. He
assumed it was connected by a fiber-optic link to a satellite dish
somewhere high in the mountains. “Soldiers—intelligent,
invulnerable soldiers. That’s what you’re trying to create, isn’t it?
And you intend to sell them—to the military? To another
government? Who’s on the other end of the cameras?”
The blue-eyed man’s face tensed as his left hand suddenly
slipped into his coat pocket. When it reappeared, he was holding a
small-caliber handgun. Mulder’s chest constricted, and he took a
step back. The cold glint in the man’s eyes scared him almost as
much as the gun.
“That’s enough,” he said, quietly.
It was more than a statement—it was a command. Looking at
the man’s face, at the intensity of his gaze, Mulder was struck by a
sudden thought: This man was nothing like Julian Kyle. He might
have worn a green uniform—but he had never been hard-line
military. He was arrogant, egotistical, controlling; certainly, he was
not aman who followed orders. His motivation came from within,
from his own obsessions, his own unquenchable ego. Mulder
glanced back at the cameras, at the operating table—and he
realized it didn’t make sense.
“It’s not about money at all,” he finally said. “The men who are
funding you might think that’s what you’re after—but that’s not it.
You’re chasing something else. Something much more powerful
than money.”
He thought about the twenty-five burn victims in the vast
chamber, kept alive for twenty-five years. Then he thought about
the first-stage drones—men who should have died during the
Vietnam War, men who still appeared as young as they had the day
they were injured. He realized that he and Scully had missed the
point from the very beginning.
“Immortality,” he whispered, his eyes widening. “Invulnerable
soldiers are just the beginning. The skin is ageless. Timeless.
Immortal—like the Skin Eater itself. That’s what you’re after, isn’t
it? Immortality—”
Mulder ducked to the left just as the gun went off. He felt
something slam into his right shoulder, and he was whirled off his
feet. He hit the floor, rolling as fast as his wounded body could
manage. A second shot exploded against the floor by his feet,
sending up a plume of shattered stone. Mulder scrambled the other
way, his mind churning as he partially concealed himself beneath
the raised operating table. He couldn’t tell how badly he’d been
shot, but a dull ache was moving through his shoulder, mingling
with the pain from his slashed left arm. He could hear the blue-eyed
man circling the operating table toward him, and he crawled in the
opposite direction, struggling against the growing sense of panic.
He had grossly misjudged the situation. He had let his adrenaline
drive him carelessly forward. He had not counted on the hubris of a
man who had turned a myth into a miracle. A man who had spent his
adult life searching for a way to beat death.
“Two thousand regenerating sources of immortality,” Mulder
said, his voice low. “Including your own brother.”
There was an audible cough, and Mulder’s shoulders trembled.
He had been correct all along. Emile Paladin was the man behind
the surgical mask. Mulder leaned back against the operating table,
the pain from his gunshot wound sapping his energy. Paladin’s
hubris was numbing—his accomplishments, overwhelming. Two
thousand invulnerable soldiers, each to become a regenerating
source of the transforming skin. A demonstration—and presumably,
a sale of the product—to unknown forces within the Defense
Department, men who had funded Paladin up until this point.
Tinkering with the human species, an experiment that meddled
with evolution itself—it was abominable. But there was nothing
Mulder could do. He felt his head falling forward— when he noticed
a rounded pedal just a few inches from his right foot. He followed
the pedal to its cylindrical root, and realized he was lying a few feet
from the base of the laser scalpel.
His heart slammed in his chest, the adrenaline rocking his body
awake. He heard Paladin circling around the head of the operating
table. He closed his eyes, imagining the man’s position. He pictured
the articulated arm with the attached laser, the way it pointed at a
slightly upward angle. He set his jaw, tensing his aching muscles,
forcing his body to coil inward. He counted the seconds, listening as
the footsteps moved closer and closer and closer...
Suddenly, Mulder leapt out from under the operating table and
rose to his full height. Paladin reared back, stunned, the gun
sweeping upward. Before Paladin could pull the trigger, Mulder
slapped at the steel arm with his open right hand. The mechanical
arm sprang forward on its hinged springs, spinning wildly away
from the cylinder. At the same moment, Mulder’s foot came down
hard on the control pedal and there was a loud, electric snap, like a
leather belt pulled tight. The red guiding light flickered out toward
a spot a few inches past the blue-eyed man’s shoulder. Mulder’s
eyes went wide as he watched the light land directly on the rubber
gasket at the top of one of the oversized oxygen tanks by the head
of the operating table. Christ, he thought to himself. Another
miscalculation. There was a moment of frozen time—followed by a
blinding flash of white light.
Mulder was thrown backward as the oxygen tank exploded. A
searing heat licked his face as a sphere of flame billowed out from
the eruption point, instantly consuming Paladin from behind. The
fiery sphere continued to expand, enveloping the operating table,
licking at the canisters of anesthetic gas. Mulder crashed back into
the wall, covering his head with his hands as a second explosion
rocked the operating room. Metal shrapnel tore through the air,
chunks of stone and steel pummeling the walls and floor. Something
hit Mulder in the stomach, driving the air out of him. He doubled
forward, gasping, the heat singeing the hairs on the back of his
neck.
And just as suddenly, the heat evaporated as the oxygen burned
out. Mulder staggered to his feet, staring at the devastated room.
Medical machinery lay strewn against the walls, most of the devices
charred beyond recognition. The video cameras lay mangled in the
corners, lenses melted into crystal pools against the floor. The
operating table itself had split down the middle—and Andrew
Paladin was nothing more than a curled, blackened shape. The
anesthetic gas inside his lungs had obviously ignited, engulfing him
from the inside.
Mulder stumbled forward, his eyes searching for the man who
had started it all. He stepped over the smoking remains of the
cardiac monitor, wincing as the motion exacerbated the pain in his
right shoulder. Still moving forward, he pulled open the buttons of
his shirt and slid the material gently away from the wound. Relief
filled him as he surveyed the slash of blood; the bullet had only
nicked him, cutting through his skin but missing the muscle and
bone beneath. His gaze moved back to the floor—and he stopped
dead, his heart pounding in his chest.
“Mulder?” he heard from the entrance to the devastated
operating room. “My God. What the hell happened in here?”
Mulder stared down at the blackened, mangled thing on the
floor by his feet. “Emile Paladin. Though you'll have to take my
word for it. There's even less of him to autopsy, this time around.”
Mulder looked up. Scully was gingerly touching a burned corner
of the operating table. There was dried blood on her lower lip, and
her red hair was matted with sweat.
“What about Julian Kyle? And the cooler of skin?”
Scully shook her head. “Kyle got away. The tunnels go on for
miles into the base of the mountain. It could take days to search
them all. We need to get back to Alkut and call Washington, then
bring in Van Epps and the military.”
“The military,” Mulder repeated. He glanced at the ruined video
cameras. Despite the horror he had just witnessed, an ironic smile
inadvertently touched his lips. “The military may be less than
helpful.”
Scully shrugged. It was not the first time Mulder had made such
a statement. Mulder sighed, frustration and fatigue tugging at his
insides. The case was over—but they had little more evidence than
when they had started. He knew it would be next to impossible to
match the twenty-five soldiers with any of the names on the list.
And by the time the military got involved, he doubted there would
be any evidence of the 130 first-stage drones, or any trace of the
rest of the two thousand burn victims. Without Kyle and the drones
there was no remaining evidence of Emile Paladin’s miracle skin—
and no definitive proof of its source.
Scully seemed to have come to the same conclusion. She moved
carefully into the room, her eyes focused on Mulder’s shoulder
wound. In many ways, she was a doctor first, a federal agent
second. “We may never know the truth behind Paladin’s synthetic
skin. But we’ve put an end to his experiments.”
Mulder wondered if it was true. Kyle had escaped with the
synthetic skin. And the rest of the two thousand guinea pigs were
still out there, somewhere. It was possible he could start again. Still,
Julian Kyle wasn’t Emile Paladin. It wasn’t his experiment—and it
wasn’t his obsession.
Mulder sighed, letting Scully’s expert fingers probe his bared
shoulder. “Another case without closure, Scully. Without any hard
evidence to take back with us.”
Scully finished with his shoulder and stepped away, watching
him rebutton his shirt. “Actually, on my way back to the chamber, I
did find something. But I’m not sure what it means.”
Mulder looked at her eyes. There was something there, deep
beneath the blue. Something was bothering her. Mulder felt the
fatigue disappear from his body.
“Show me.”
Twenty minutes later, Mulder stood next to Scully in a small alcove
near the center of the network of tunnels, staring up at two objects
embedded in the stone wall. Mulder could feel his heart pounding
in his chest.
Finally, Scully broke the silence. “I can think of a number of
plausible explanations.”
Mulder didn’t respond. To him, no explanations were needed.
Scully could break the objects down to their molecular level, stare
at them under an electron microscope, bathe them in an acid bath
or weigh them on an atomic scale. She could subject them to every
possible abuse in her scientific arsenal, and it wouldn’t make any
difference. To Mulder, the objects were an explanation in
themselves. Their meaning was as terrifying, abrupt, and obvious as
their appearance.
Mulder shivered, then slowly turned away. Scully remained
behind, staring uneasily at the pair of crisscrossing, razor-sharp
tusks.
29
Scully leaned back against the chain-link fence and shut her eyes.
Even through her eyelids, she could see the lights: a caravan of
flashing red and blue, a Christmas tree on its side stretching more
than fifty yards beyond the edge of the cordoned-off runway.
Although the sirens had been silenced because of the late hour and
the proximity to Dulles International’s main terminal, sound filled
the night air: the rumble of diesel emergency vehicles, the shouts of
medical personnel, the shrill squeal of steel stretcher wheels against
pavement.
“It's like watching some sort of macabre carnival,” Mulder
commented from a few feet away. He was also leaning against the
fence, his bandaged right arm resting in a sling against his chest.
The razor wound on his cheek was covered by two strips of gauze,
there was an Ace bandage around his left forearm, and heavy bags
under his eyes. His stooped shoulders showed the effects of twenty
hours in a plane and another ten in debriefing at FBI headquarters.
“From here, it seems like a lot more than twenty-five ambulances.”
Scully opened her eyes, watching the colored lights play across
her partner’s battered cheeks. She wondered if she looked as worn
as Mulder. Her jaw still ached from Tien’s backhand blow, and her
eyesight had begun to blur from exhaustion. She had napped briefly
on the plane, and had showered and changed at her apartment; but
she knew it would take at least another week to recover fully from
the rigorous case. It didn’t help that there were still so many
questions left unanswered. Sadly, lack of closure was not unfamiliar
territory.
She rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes, clearing her
vision. A hundred yards down the runway, beyond the ambulances,
she could just make out the Boeing 727. A dozen high-intensity
spotlights surrounded the curved fuselage of the plane, illuminating
the military markings on the tail and wings. Both the front and back
hatches of the plane were open, and bright orange mechanical
hoists squatted beneath the openings, surrounded by medical
technicians in light blue military uniforms. Scully watched as one of
the hoists smoothly lowered a pair of stretchers from the front
hatchway. Once the hoist had reached the ground, the medics
spirited the stretchers to one of the waiting ambulances. Then the
hoist rose back to the hatchway, ready for another pair.
Skinner had estimated that it would take only two hours to
remove the patients from the specially outfitted plane. The expense
of transporting the twenty-five burn victims—and for the years of
medical care that would come next—fell squarely on the taxpayers.
A VA hospital in Maryland had already been outfitted with the
necessary life-support machinery, and a staff of full-time
convalescent nurses had been hired. Frankly, Scully had been
pleasantly surprised by the military’s swift response to the situation.
The first recon teams had arrived in Alkut only hours after she and
Mulder had contacted Washington; led by Timothy Van Epps, three
squadrons of Marines had quickly prepared the scene for transport.
Meanwhile, Skinner had worked through the red tape in
Washington, using Mulder and Scully’s case report as a guideline for
the upcoming analysis and management of the situation. Six hours
later, the two agents were in an ambulance on their way to
Bangkok. Scully had insisted that one of the burn victims be
transported with her—perhaps in response to Mulder’s growing
paranoia at the military’s swift presence.
The long journey to Bangkok had given Scully the opportunity
to evaluate the patient firsthand. On closer inspection, the longevity
of the napalm-burn victims seemed less miraculous than tragic. As
she had suspected, the patient was in a vegetative state, in complete
organ failure, kept alive by mechanical intrusion. Despite what
Mulder had hypothesized, from a medical perspective there was no
chance the patient would ever recover.
Still, Scully had discovered evidence that the patient’s cellular
structure had been infused with an unknown chemical—a strange,
carbon-based molecule Scully had never seen before. The unknown
chemical displayed two amazing characteristics: the ability to
strengthen cell walls and to stave off fibroblast deterioration. Scully
could only assume that the chemical was another synthetic
breakthrough, like the red antibiotic dust. According to Mulder’s
theory, the chemical had “prepared” the patients for Paladin’s
radical transplant procedure. It would take years of further analysis
to determine fully if that was true.
In the meantime, the military was considering her and Mulder’s
request for a regional search for the rest of the two thousand
Vietnam casualties. Scully was pessimistic about the likelihood of a
major operation ever taking place—after all, there wasn’t any real
evidence that the burn victims were still alive, nor was there much
hope of tracking them down after so many years. Still, she could
envision quiet diplomatic inquiries being circulated throughout
Southeast Asia, and perhaps even a more wide-scale search of the
mountains around Alkut.
She was more optimistic about the current efforts being made to
match the twenty-five recovered patients to the list of casualties.
Without teeth and distinguishing features, it would be difficult—but
not impossible. DNA samples would be matched to blood taken
from the casualties’ surviving family members, and identities would
be confirmed. The only obstacles were time and money, and the
U.S. military had plenty of both.
“Isn’t that Skinner?” Mulder interrupted, gesturing with his good
arm. Scully saw a tall man separate from a group of uniformed
officers fifty yards away, just beyond the rear ambulance. She easily
identified the assistant director’s broad shoulders and distinctive
gait. Skinner was moving down the runway toward them, a heavy
clipboard in his hands; Scully recognized the case file she and
Mulder had prepared on the flight back to Washington.
“Maybe there’s been some progress in the search for Julian
Kyle,” she said, hopefully. She and Mulder had sent out an
international APB on the fugitive scientist, and had transferred his
stats to Interpol and the Southeast Asian division of the CIA. Still,
despite her hopes, she doubted Kyle would be apprehended anytime
soon. Kyle was ex-military, and assuredly had the resources to hide
in Asia indefinitely.
“I wouldn't hold my breath,” Mulder commented, putting voice
to Scully’s thoughts. “From what the search teams reported after
hitting Fibrol, Pd say Kyle planned for this contingency a long time
ago.”
Scully sighed, straightening her slacks as she pushed off the
fence. Mulder’s sentiments were accurate; there was little hope of
finding Kyle or, for that matter, any evidence of a connection
between Paladin’s work and Fibrol International.
Three FBI search teams had descended on Fibrol’s main complex
just hours after Scully and Mulder had reported their findings to
Skinner. Every office and laboratory had been thoroughly searched,
every file cabinet and computer processor scoured for evidence. No
links to Paladin or his experiments were found. Nothing to indict
either Fibrol or Julian Kyle, and no indication that anyone at the
company had previous knowledge of Emile Paladin’s faked death or
continued existence. Fibrol’s board of directors had stood up to
twelve hours of direct questioning—and not one member of the
executive staff had shown evidence of the slightest deception, or
any knowledge of Kyle’s possible whereabouts. Paladin and Kyle
had obviously been working alone. If, as Mulder maintained, they
had been funded by sources within the Defense Department, the
paper trail had long since vanished.
Still, the raid on Fibrol had not been a total waste of time. While
going through Julian Kyle’s office, the search team had found an
unlabeled phone number in a locked drawer in his desk. The
number had been traced to a studio apartment in Chelsea. The
apartment had been deserted for at least a week, but the forensic
specialists had found a number of hair and skin samples in the sink
and shower drains matching similar samples taken from the cave at
the base of See Dum Kao.
According to preliminary DNA matches, the apartment had
belonged to Quo Tien, Emile Paladin’s son. Twenty minutes after
the search team began to scour the apartment, they made a chilling
discovery. Beneath a hinged tile in the apartment’s bathroom, they
had found a small vial of clear liquid and two specially
manufactured, spring-loaded miniature syringes. Scully had
recognized the description of the syringes from a New England
Journal of Medicine article on microsurgery; they had been designed
for intercapillary intrusions during microscopic surgical procedures.
That in mind, she was not surprised when the clear liquid in the
vial was identified as a rare viral sample suspended in a
supercooled chemical base. The search team had solved the mystery
of the encephalitis lethargica outbreak.
“Kyle’s long gone,” Mulder continued, as he and Scully started
toward the runway, intending to meet Skinner halfway. “And he
took Paladin’s skin with him. We’re left with twenty-five unknown
soldiers, a trail of brutal murders, a medically exonerated Perry
Stanton—and, of course, a pair of tusks. In retrospect, I guess it’s a
pretty good ending to a three-hundred-year-old myth.”
Scully avoided looking at her partner. They had been over the
subject a dozen times. The tusks had been transported to the FBI
headquarters along with Scully and Mulder’s case file. Preliminary
molecular dating had placed the age of the objects at approximately
three hundred years—a fact that, on its own, was inconclusive.
Elephants and wild boar were indigenous to the region, now as well
as three hundred years ago. Although DNA analysis had not yet
found a species match, there was a good chance the tusks belonged
to a strain of elephant or boar that had since gone extinct.
“Maybe that’s what Skinner wants to talk about,” Scully finally
responded, her voice low. They were now only a dozen yards from
the assistant director, closing fast. “Maybe he wants to donate the
tusks to a museum. Or better yet, sell them to pay for our little
excursion.”
“Pd rather mount them on the wall of my office,” Mulder said.
“A memento of our romantic journey to Southeast Asia. What do
you say, Scully? We could split the pair.”
“Thanks,” Scully responded, her face stiffening as they met
Skinner at the edge of the runway, “but I think they’re more your
style.”
About the Author
BEN MEZRICH has published nine books, including the New York Times bestseller
Bringing Down the House (set to be a Sony picture in March 2008 starring Kevin
Spacey). He is a columnist for Stuff magazine and Boston Common and a
contributor for Flush magazine (U.K.). His most recent book is Rigged, and he lives
in Boston, Massachusetts.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite
HarperCollins author.
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