Title: Becoming Judas
Author: darkstar (clone347@aol.com)
Rating: pg-13 violence
Classification: see part one
Disclaimer: see part one
Summary: see part one

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becoming judas: 3/12
darkstar
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He had come to grips with the very real possiblity that Krycek had forgotten that human beings needed air in order to survive when there was a small click and the lid of the trunk popped open in a rush of fresh air and blinding sunlight. Mulder squinted to see through the haze of golden light, his lungs working greedily to make up for the staleness of the last few hours.

"We're he-re." Krycek leered, giving Mulder a not-so-friendly hand out of the trunk.

"I noticed." Mulder growled, more intent on keeping his balance than on anything the little ferret had to tell him. A slightly smaller blur emerged from the trunk, and he assumed it was Scully. She seemed a little worse for the wear but Mulder noticed that she had no trouble pushing Krychek's hand away when he tried to help. He charted a course for her side, his eyes still watering from the million rays of sun hitting them like tiny needles.

"Hey." he mumbled, not quite being able to stop bumping into her. "Sorry."

Obviously they wouldn't have that much time. The sound of hurried footsteps to the left drew Mulder's attention, just as a group of black distinctly threatening blurry...soldiers?....emerged from the sea of morning. Their voices faded in and out, like a bad radio transmission, but Mulder had the whole litany memorized anyway.

"Stay still sir.....hands behind.....escape attempts..... severe punishment."

The familiar pull of handcuffs tugged at his wrists as they secured his arms tightly behind his back. Mulder shifted uncomfortably as the tiny steel teeth of each one bit into his skin. Class-six containment bracelets. Whoever the men in black belonged to was taking no chances.

Then they were moving, again, or at least trying to. From his view the world was underwater and he was trying to swim with his eyes open in chlorine. Mulder stumbled once, but Scully spared him the humiliation of falling down by a well-placed shoulder.

Straight ahead, immense and gray and forbodeing, was a building. The guards conveniently "forgot" to tell him there was a door until *after* he had walked straight into it. Mulder may be dizzy but he hadn't forgotten his manners. He explained their stupidity in a few clear vivid sailor words he'd learned from Bill. Hey, sometimes it paid to be the man everybody hated.

Now was definitely not one of those times.

Inside the door the breath of cooler air on his face and the muted lights did wonders for his eyesight. Within moments the needles stopped and he could regain the awareness of his surroundings he needed. He immediately wished he had remained blind.The name of their fate was written in iron lettering across the top of the huge stone doorway.

Enforcer Headquarters. Vive Novus Ordo Seclorum

Long live the New Order of the Ages. Such a grand title for the birthplace of so much carnage.

There wasn't much time for staring, since the guards were already shoving them into the belly of the building, a sprawling room abuzz with activity not unlike a police station of the old times. They were manuevered through the maze of desks and soldiers and secretaries, up a flight of stairs, and into an office reading Minister of Police. Most of their escort fell away at that point, leaving only one guard for each of them when they walked into the room.

It would have been called luxurious even in the height of the world's glory. The carpet was at least four inches thick, the color of red wine, and something his bare feet were very, very, grateful for. The walls were paneled with mahogany stained to a golden brown shine, almost glowing from the inside out. A chandelier sprawled like a great golden spider in the middle of the ceiling and the mellow strains of Bach in the background didn't quite drown out the quiet breath of an actual *air conditioner*.

Because of the splendor, it took Mulder exactly three and one half seconds longer than normal to hone in on the real source for the invisible power of the room. He was sitting behind a large, antiquated desk, probably "confiscated" from the office of a dead Senator, with no less than three lightening bolts adorning the shoulders and cuffs of his jet black uniform.

The name on the desk read Richard Matheson. Disbelief whipped Mulder's eyes up to the man's face just as "Matheson" turned around. It was like looking into the face of a ghost. No, it *was* looking into the face of a ghost. The real Senator Matheson had been killed in the same mass execution that terminated- literally- Congress. This imposter was very good, however. Same snowy hair, same ernest face...no, wait. Different eyes. The eyes of the Matheson he knew were alive, intelligent, human. The eyes of the man who stared back at him were cold, and utterly foreign. They were lacking any pupil at all , totally black like the void of space.

Which was another reason why this wasn't his one time friend and mentor. Merely another of of the aliens, wearing his face of choice. Mulder stiffened in spite of himself, and the Matheson noticed, a slow smile spreading across his face.

"Agent Mulder. How very nice to meet you at last."

"The agent part is as dead as the man who's face you wear," Mulder said flatly.

"Yes, well, there are those among our race who believe it advantageous to keep trappings of the old ways about us."

"Some trappings," he snorted, casting a pointed glance at the finery.

"The original Senator Matheson appreciated such things. I have attempted to become as much like him as possible, since he is my chosen persona."

"Chosen persona. He was a human, not a halloween costume."

"You are too easily swayed by your emotions, Agent Mulder." The Matheson put slight emphasis on the Agent. "Which is why you were caught."

The door slid open and Krycek entered the room as if on cue. He saluted the man, then fell into a lax imitation of attention, his trademark smirk threatening to split his face in two. "I believe these two are worth something, sir." Mulder was semi-impressed. Even Krycek showed respect to this man. Krycek, who had threatened the Smoking Man on more than one occasion.

"You shall have your bounty in full." The Matheson said, leaning back in his seat. "I merely wanted to take a look at the man who was said to have started the rebellion and the woman who belongs to him."

Mulder noticed Scully's jaw tighten but she had more sense than he did and kept her voice cooler than ice. Her eyes were blazing though, a fire that reminded him of the way her hair used to be.

"I belong to no one," she said, soft like silk over steel. The Matheson regarded her critically. "Scully, isn't it? Your name is familiar- I've seen it in the data files from our scientists. I think they should be eager to have their wayward subject back on the table."

Scully may have been ready with a response to that one, but Mulder beat her too it. "You or your cronies so much as *touch* her and I'll personally see to it that they'll be scraping what's left of you off those nice walls with tweezers."

The Matheson laughed. "False heroics never got anyone anywhere. You'll learn that soon enough. In the mean time," he waved to the guards. "Start processing them. I'll have their destination orders down in a moment."

The guards snapped back to life like good robots and herded them out into the hall. Scully's head was down, but he caught a glimpse of the stark paleness of her face, the way her eyes glittered with an emotion she was trying hard to keep from him. He knew that look. She was afraid. She would never let him know but he could read the emotions brought on by the Matheson and his innuendos about continued testing.

He could only hope it was a mind game.

Either way he knew from now on that Bach and red wine carpet would go on his list of things he hated. As would the alien behind them.

*************

Scully would ultimately forget a great many things about her imprisonment but processing would not be one of them. Even years later, it would amaze her that such a detailed, organized process for stripping away humanity existed.

But it existed. No denying it.

The first step into the nightmare was the strip search. A pale cold room and a female guard- their only concession to decency throughout the whole thing- to give orders in curt monotone icier than the white walls. Even worse, the red eyes of cameras above her mocked as they recorded the whole spectacle. For a moment she allowed herself to feel enough bitterness to wonder if the alien with the face Mulder knew was watching everything, that same maddening smile on his face. Bitterness led to hate, and it was the hate that sustained her through the rest of the ordeal.

It was a privilege though, being able to feel at all.

After the primary humilation was over, she was a thin cotton shirt and pants. The shirt and pants were both a pale grey-blue, small enough not to hang too much from her body. And she had shoes, at long last. <Thank God for the little things.> As soon as the thought crossed her mind she wondered if there even was a God left to thank, or if the aliens had killed him too. She rebuked herself for doubting. Her faith was the one thing that they couldn't take from her unless she gave it up. But she never planned on being a martyr. She never planned on this.

It was not until after she had dressed again that she was hurried along to the next station and met up with Mulder again. Almost subconscious relief eased the tension in her bones, and from the mirrored emotion in his eyes, he was feeling similar. Also she read worry, even fear that she couldn't fully understand until he brushed close enough against her to whisper a question in her ear.

"Did they..."

"No." She lied not for him but for herself. She couldn't not bear the weight of his guilt and make it out of this a whole person. Not this time.

Was it a trick of her eyes or was that the tiniest hint of a smile playing near his lips ? "Terrible liar." he whispered, the words falling almost like a caress on her ear before the guards noticed and pulled him away with shouts of no talking.

No talking. Did that still leave room for screaming? Because that's what she was afraid she would do, if they tried to put needles in her again. Scream and scream until the fragile cord of sanity snapped and she was allowed the blessed haven of madness. If only she could go insane without betraying everything she was. Everything she had left.

The second part was simple in and of itself, but if she had known what was coming she would not have let herself think of it that way. Intstead of the old fashioned ink and paper method of fingerprint identification, their retinas were scanned using tiny lasers that irritated her eyes like sandpaper but captured her true self for all time. People could, if they tried hard enough, change their fingerprints. It was a little harder to pop out your eyeballs.

She may have let her guard down just a hair's length by the time they reached the third room but Mulder had become tense, even as far as to suspect what awaited them. So maybe that was the reason when the door opened and the horror smacked them across the face he was able to keep walking and she was paralyzed. But then again, he hadn't seen the Chairs before. She had.

Right at this second her mind was filled with nothing else. Black like the eyes of Death, they were reclined just enough to pass as macabre impressions of dentist or barber chairs, with a few "minor" alterations. Dentist chairs didn't have straps for your ankles, wrists and head. Barber's may nick you once or twice with the razor but they didn't drain your blood from you like mechanical vampires, taking part of it for records. Most of it for the amusement of the aliens.

The paralysis crept over her rather slowly, compounding the sudden dizziness that swirled the room around her like one too many times on a carousel. It was like powerful yet invisible hands had clamped around her arms, around her legs, around her very heart so that it was forced to fight for just one more beat. Scully did not hear the men telling to move forward, did not feel their hands tugging at her, did not see Mulder's eyes trying to pull her back to life.

The calm came slowly but the storm was lightening quick and that powerful. Her arm snapped out, catching the nearest guard square under the chin. The others rushed in like wolves for the kill, and in scarce heartbeats she found her arms pinned behind her back. A second later a numbing wall of pain crashed down around the back of her head as the rigid edge of someone's hand collided with the base of her skull, hard but slightly under the force that would have knocked her out.

She could hear Mulder now, see him thrashing against the guards and the restraints as they shoved him into the chair. Was he screaming her name? She needed to answer.

<I'm fine Mulder>

She had to be fine. It couldn't be a lie. She herself believed it until the soldier she had hit buried his steel toed boot in her gut. The pain sealed her off from the world around her, sucking in all light and sound and feeling until all that was left was numbess, white and cold like the first room. She saw Mulder's mouth forming her name, saw his eyes turn to the guards and spit out soundless words that she could probably guess if she wanted too.

But she didn't want to do anything anymore, least of all see, hear, or feel. They were all symptoms of a disease called life.

Very slowly, stiffly like the robot she wished she could be, she rose to her feet, bent over from the pain that felt like someone had folded her gut and then stapled it, then sat down in the chair. Mulder struggled when the needles began to pierce his flesh. She didn't. She scarcely acknowledged the pain save as another layer of novacain to coat her world.

It was a privilege to feel. A privilege she no longer had.

*************

Clickety clackety. Clickety clackety. Her brain melded to the rhythm and hummed along. Clickety clackety. It took a while before she could place it. Train tracks. She was on a train. Her hands felt the floor beside her. Wood. She continued to reach out until she bumped into something warm and soft. Flesh. Oops. Before Scully could recoil a large hand swooped down and captured hers. She flinched in spite of herself.

"It's okay. I'm right here."

As her eyes adjusted to the dark inky blue of evening she could see Mulder sitting beside her as well as a train car packed full of gray blue bodies. She recognized the slats in the walls from cattle cars. Cattle? So that's what they were now. Her internal clock told her that time had passed since the Chairs but for some reason the memories were slippery and elusive, like tiny fish in a vast and stormy sea.

"We're alive." She was bordering surprised. Alive to Mulder meant living and breathing. Alive to her meant anywhere but the manacles and the needles.

"Yes." His voice smiled so he assumed his face was too.

"I don't remember." Scully blurted out, frustrated with her mind that seemed to love playing such games with her. "It's gone."

"It's there somewhere. But you'll have to think about it." He was tentative for some reason, sounding unsure that she should take such a risk. "I would let it slide Scully. You don't have to remember everything."

"Not everything." she agreed. "But this I need to." He sighed, and she couldn't help a near smile. It was his "I don't agree but I can't argue with you" sigh, reminiscent of happier days. The smile carried with her when she closed her eyes but vanished like a candle in a hurricane when the memories began to come out of hiding.

<Needles...oh dear god they hurt....please don't do this to me....they're going to suck all the blood out of my body!> Her lungs began to constrict and she had to order them to keep breathing.

<Alive....i'm still alive....it hurts....mulder ?!?....he's alive too....standing in line....such a long line...i can't stay on my feet....he's got me. Mulder won't let me fall.> The smile hovered on the brink of recovery but was doused again by the next string of memories.

<They're what ?!?.....those people in front of us....they burned them with that iron !.....mulder, what's happening.... don't let them burn us....burn me....mulder's talking... asking them not to use it on me....they're laughing at him... no! keep that away from him! he doesn't like fire!....oh mulder....they burned you....that's funny, from here it looks like little black numbers.....mulder, they're coming towards me with it...stop them mulder...stop them!!!!!....>

Her eyes shot open and her fingers flew to her wrist. Crinkly waves of red hot pain worked up her nerves and to her brain then back again.

"They burned us." Scully turned to Mulder, her eyes widening with disbelief. "Like some kind of animals." "Identification numbers." Mulder said grimly, pulling back his sleeve and running her fingers lightly over the rough skin of his burn. "Looks like our friends took lessons from the Nazis. Or taught them."

She leaned her head back against the splintery wood of the box car, feeling the beat of the tracks pound with her pulse inside her head. "So where are we going?"

"I heard Arizona. Least that's what they put on our records. It's not to say that it's where we're really going."

"I guess it could be worse." Scully wasn't sounding as convincing as she needed to, even to herself. Mulder didn't understand. He lived too passionately to survive the camps. Everything was a fight, everything was a battle. She was going to have to be strong enough to submit to the routine, to make sure he didn't get himself killed. She was used to being the strong one. Not that today had been a brilliant start. How could she take care of Mulder if she couldn't take care of herself?

"Mulder, about this morning, I'm sorry."

"Sorry? What could you possibly have to be sorry about ?"

"I was totally out of control." She felt her soul twist in disgust with herself. "I freaked. I was unacceptable." Her words were clipped, detached.

She insisted on doing this, didn't she? Mulder fought the irrational frustration her words brought. But then again, what had he expected? He took a deep breath before he spoke. "The only thing unacceptable about you is the brand on your wrist." he said. "You don't have to be so John Wayne all the time. Look how many times I've lost it, how many times you've pulled me right back in line."

"But I...." Whoa...that voice was too close to the tears trying to leak through her defenses. She gave up on explanations and waited for him to do something, anything to break the dangerous silence.

His arm slid around her shoulders, securing her against him. He spoke slowly and she could feel the hesitancy in what he said, the way he dragged his words out as his brain racked itself for the right words to say.

"You weren't alone, Scully. You'll never be."

Her heart stuck in her throat, and she was forced to look away before he noticed the change on her face. How did he do that? Know just what to say and when to say it? Scully let her body relax against him into a warm, dark sleep. She knew she should be awake, turning the events of the day over and over in her mind. She knew she should be coming up with some sort of self-survival plan. But she slept.

The world was very, very strange at times. Mulder's words had been just short enough to strip away the novacain. He made her live life outside of her shell, pulled her out of her fortress no matter how much she kicked and screamed. He made her feel again.

Looking ahead to the danger and the pain awaiting them at the end of the tracks, Scully wondered how long it would last this time.

*************

Morning was somehow lost in a gray shroud of mist when the train stopped and the doors opened. The protesting gears and the shrieking of the brakes roused Mulder from uneasy sleep, and it took him a moment to figure out where they were. Opening his eyes didn't help much. The sea of people in front of him blocked all view of the outside. Everything except the mist, or fog, or whatever it was that reached for him through the slats like the death camp had grown fingers and wanted to pull him into it's belly.

Scully stirred restlessly on his shoulder, and though he thoroughly hated to pull her into this warped reality he shook her awake, trying to give her the bad news as gently as possible.

"We've stopped."

She nodded, blinking as she chased the sleep from her eyes and mind. From somewhere out in the fog came a frenzy of angry shouts, punctuated by the cracking of whips and agonizing screams. He felt her shrink against him, as if she was trying to disappear, but from the look on her face she didn't know she was doing it. The subconscious gesture served to strengthen the resolve he had built up all during the night. Life here was every bit as brutal as the horror stories told and he was going to do everything he could to shield her from that.

"C'mon Scully, we have to move." He helped her to a standing position as they waited for the herd of people to shift forwards. "They're probably going after stragglers. So we stay ahead of them, right?"

She nodded again, chewing on the corner of her lip. "Ahead of them."

"Keep your grip on my arm. It'll be chaos out there and we can't be separat-"

He didn't have time to finish his sentence, barely long enough to grab her arm, because the mass of gray blue shirts ahead of them surged forward with all the speed of water bursting through a dam. Chaos was the understatement of the year- the confusion was a living, breathing entity that sucked people into it's vortex left and right. The fog was *everywhere*, obscuring the landscape from five feet away on, and the cracking of whips mixed with screaming beat an otherworldly rhythm just under the surface of things. In fact Mulder found himself wondering if the train hadn't transported them into another universe all together. The thought was hurridly shoved aside by the louder voices of his survival instincts coming into play.

<Move away from the whips. The whips mean guards.>

Of course it would help if he knew exactly where he was moving. The jam of people seemed to know, or at least they all were heading toward one general direction. He stood on his toes, grateful for once for his six feet of heighth advantage, and was able to catch a glimpse of the goal. It was the camp itself, a black congolmeration of buildings peeking out through the fog like some ogre's castle. Instinct told him that inside the gates was where you were supposed to be and they couldn't beat you if you were obeying them.

Instinct was wrong.

Mulder was still on his toes when the rifle sharp sound of whips punched holes in the fog behind him and the crowd pushed forward like a stampede of panicked cattle. Scully's thin cry was swallowed whole by the roar of frightened humans as her hand was torn away from his in the craze. He spun on his heels, shoving people out of the way on either side of it as he fought to keep panic of his own kind from freezing his spine.

<She's goneshe'sgoneshesgoneshesgone>

Hopelessness was the first emotion to latch onto his back, raking it's claws across his soul. The fog was gray. Every other human being in the crowd was grey. Scully was gray. The guards were waiting somewhere in between all the grays like sharks ready to strike at any who fell.

The blood red of her scream dislodged the demons of despair from his back onto another hapless victim, but he was intent on only one thing. His fists and his curses carved a path through the crush of people in the direction of the sound. Even the fog parted in awe of him, disappearing just enough for the situation to sink in.

Scully lay on the ground, clutching her ankle with one hand and attempting the shield her face for the whip poised above her with the other. The guard was barking orders in a stream of slightly marred English, but Mulder was more interested in his hand and the slight flick of his wrist that would drive the whip down into her soft skin.

The muscles of the guard's arm twitched. The spring of tension inside Mulder released, exploding him toward her. The black snake of the whip curled through the air, cracking once then hissing as it descended. Mulder heard her grunt as his full weight slammed into her, but his mind was quickly consumed by the knife of pain ripping across his shoulders and back as the whip fell. He gritted his teeth against the sensation, looking down at Scully to reassure himself that it really was her. The guard continued to yell, pulling his arm back for another blow.

"You! Keep moving! Into the courtyard! NOW !" The hybrid or whatever he was followed his orders with a few of the curse words he had obviously learned since his creation.

Mulder nodded his agreement, hauling Scully to her feet and pushing her in front of him as he rushed as fast as was possible in the direction of the gates, leaving the guard behind to hurl his fury on the next who stumbled. She was running too, but her mouth sucked in lungful after lungful of air in dry gasps of pain. He was torn between watching her suffer or picking her up and delivering a near irrepairable blow to her independence. In the end he chose to let her alone, more by necessity than
anything else.

If they stopped again they could very well be crushed.

The gates of the camp opened before them like the gates of hell itself and he plunged through them willingly. Once he realized they were inside he dragged Scully away from the main stream of people. She collapsed to the ground, panting as she dealt with her pain in that frustratingly silent way of hers. It wasn't until her eyes fell on his back and were filled with fresh shock did the thought of his own pain registered.

"Mulder. You're bleeding." Her voice was surprisingly low in the whirlwind of noise around them. "He hit you."

"It's nothing Scully." <Nothing compared to what will happen to us when the interrogations start.> "It'll be fine."

She rewarded him with another of her almost smiles. "Isn't that my line ?"

"How's your ankle?"

"Sore, but I think I'm lucky. It's just bruised." The fine lines of her face twisted in a grimace as she rose to her feet, testing her weight on it a little at a time. "Someone pushed me down."

"Well show him to me and I'll kill him while he sleeps."

That one got an outright laugh, tinkling from her lips like fairy bells and then skipping out into the fog, the only beautiful thing in the ugliness of the place. "You have such a way with conflict resolvement."

"When we have time you can tell me what that means."

The sharp shriek of a whistle demanded their attention just as the last of the prisoners ran through the gates, followed by guards snapping whips at their heels. Shouts came to "form a line! form a line!" and Mulder fell into place beside those around him. They were near the front, luckily or not so. At least he could see what was going on.

A man strode out of the fog, the black of his uniform standing out sharply amidst the prisoners around him. This man was only two lightening bolts strong, but there must be power there if he ran the whole show himself. A black leather riding crop completed his ensemble, and he carried it tucked under his left arm in imitation of an earth general. Mulder wondered if he had seen it on a movie. He knew the Colonists had preserved some for their "historical records".

Then the man began to speak and even without the threat of the whips, every soul in the camp fell to a stone dead silence at the power in his voice.

"Welcome to Camp 118." he said, gesturing around him with the riding corp. "The place all you rebel scum will call home for the rest of your pitiful little lives." His eyes raked the crowd like twin daggers.

"I am Commander Mastof. You are to call me Commander and if you do not call me that call me Sir." Maston. "Now that we are all accquainted, I'm going to lay down the rules once and only once." He paced from on end of the line to another as he talked, the harshness of his eyes and voice causing more than a few prisoners to flinch and look away.

"Disobey, you die. Attempt escape, you die. Follow the rules, you live. Is that simple enough for all of you?" No one answered him but the silence spoke their agreement. Mulder felt an overwhelming urge to break free of his place in line and scream that no, he would not follow the rules and they could just shoot him now.

But he didn't. He didn't because of the woman standing beside him, trying to camoflauge the pain that cracked her mask of cool indifference. Mastof's gaze did another searing run across the prisoner's and this time it collided with Mulder's. What Mulder saw shook pieces of his soul because it wasn't the inhuman black of the Matheson's eyes. No, they were the gray of tempered steel. A collaborator. Despite the revulsion the word conjured up, he refused to look away and Mastof refused to back down. The standoff could have come to more than just staring if the loud shriek of moving metal parts hadn't stolen Mulder's attention.

The huge gates were sliding shut, grinding together until they slammed shut, locked like the jaws of a monster. Locking them inside. Away from hope, away from help. Away from life that had somehow been swallowed up in the fog.

He couldn't help but wonder how long it would be before the prison consumed them too.

to be continued. . . part 4