below . the . moon

Title: Becoming Judas
Author: darkstar (clone347@aol.com)
Rating: strong pg-13. this part contains violence which some people may find disturbing
Classification: see part one
Disclaimer: see part one
Summary: see part one

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becoming judas 5/12
darkstar
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The glaring white of the lamp swinging over his head was the only light in the room, allowing whoever was asking the questions *this* time to see him as well as blinding him to their faces. Monsters liked the dark. They had this allergy to things like light and truth and exposure. That was why they wished to destroy those those things. This particular group of monsters seemed to have gotten the idea that they could use him to do it.

Mulder wished they hadn't taped his eyes open this time. The light burned like someone was dripping acid in his eyes drop by excruciating drop. All in all he was surprised the shadow men hadn't thought of that yet. It didn't help matters that he was hanging from the ceiling like a piece of meat on a hook, and his arms were about to drop off from his bodies dead weight. The alien mind had a genius toward new and different ways of producing screams. Lots of them. He hadn't screamed today. Yet. It would be a long eternity where minutes and seconds no longer existed, where time was measured only by the pounding of his heart inside his skull before they threw him back into the barracks to lick his wounds before the next field trip through hell. Today it would be extremely hard to concentrate, to keep his mind on the strenuous task of holding his mind together. Today marked the end of a week of baited breath and fumbled prayers that Mastof had indeed kept his word, the day his luck ran out.

She had still been asleep, her hair spilling across his arms like an ocean of fire, when the guards had come to get her. He slept close to her now, ever wary of another Eddy wannabe. And too it was just an excuse to be near her. Little rays of light like that were the only things that reminded him why he would walk into this room and hold his silence when everything else screamed for him to talk. Scully hadn't asked questions; the realization in her eyes said it all. But she didn't flinch, merely followed the guards down the hall, head held high as if she were a queen surrounded by her court rather than a prisoner escorted by guards.

The three biggest guards in the camp- and Mulder was willing to say the meanest too- arrived to take him next. They were his usual escort. All the way across the courtyard and through the scream-haunted corridors his mind had been on her. He had tried insisting she knew nothing, nothing at all. He had tried phony confessions. The profiler side of his brain told him that they probably expected Scully to break easily because she was a woman.

He was afraid for her because he knew she wouldn't.

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

For one moment she honestly believed she would faint for the first time in her life. The whole situation was unreal, like someone else was in her body being strapped to a black metal platform. The real Scully, the Scully that was her, watched from above as the attendants reached under her shirt to attach electrodes to the major nerve centers of her chest to match the others on her temples and pressure points. That Scully had already detached herself as the glistening spikes of hypodermic needles pumped the other Scully's body full of endorphin-dampening drugs designed to suppress the body's natural pain relief. Adrenaline too, it's function being to make her senses wide and receptive to the torture, pushing her as far away from the shelter of unconsciousness as possible.

She was calm and she was terrified. Mulder had been taken no less than five times already, including today's session, and she had expected her turn to follow soon. But the fact that she was ready for it did not make the prospect any easier. The anticipation had settled in her stomach like a lead weight, making her wonder if she would throw up. Not that she could. They never fed prisoners on the day of their interrogations. Scully supposed it made the clean up process easier.

As if on cue the attendants vanished to their stations, the various monitors and machines that were meant to let the doctors push her body to the breaking point and beyond if they so wished. She hated the helplessness more than anything, the way she was pinned to the platform like a butterfly on a vivisection table. The hum of machinery above her drew her attention, as a silver band of metal attached to a robot arm fit tightly around her head.

"Do you know what this is, Ms. Scully?" The band wouldn't allow her to move her head, but the voice came from her left. A high, nasal voice probably belonging to a doctor or a scientist, her old enemies.

She chose silence as the best answer.

"It's called an electrolysis machine. Quite a brilliant device actually, engineered by the brightest of the aliens. I quite wish we had thought of it first."

<Human?!?> This man was human. One of her own kind and flesh and blood....human? She pushed the shock aside so she could hear the man's description of the machine. Knowing was dreadful but not knowing was twice as bad.

"It feeds of the body's own nervous system. Uses the electrical pulses of the body and the brain against itself. I read your file. You used to be a doctor. You know, then, how much raw power is contained within the fragile vessels of our nerves. Of course, we made a few minor improvements- juiced it up a bit for when it's necessary. But that's what I'm hoping to avoid." He paused for a moment. "We need information from you, Ms. Scully, information that your partner hasn't been very open with. Names, places...."

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

"...people, faces, numbers. Strengths and weakness. Everything you can tell us about the rebellion." The voice of the entity- Mulder was pretty sure it was alien but not completely- who headed the interrogations from nightmare to nightmare came floating out of the darkness, low and rasping like the hiss of a cobra. He was pretty sure this was the shrink Mastof had warned him about, the one flown in just for him and Scully. He whole-heartedly wished they hadn't gone to so much trouble on their account.

The light was beginning to slice past his eyes and deep into his brain, sending tiny ripples of pain wherever it touched to meet the larger waves traveling up and down his arms and upper back. He didn't need to think before he gave his answer, however.

"I can't help you with that." he said.

Snake Man sighed heavily. "To be blunt I grow tired of the pointlessness of these meetings-"

"Then let me be the first to advise you to relax." Mulder interrupted him. "Take the day off. We can have a nice friendly chat over coffee. No tape on the eyeballs....no beatings....no cattle prods. Sounds good to me."

"I will be more than happy to if you will just answer a few questions first." His voice fell into the "bargaining" cadence that Mulder knew preceded the order to begin the heavy stuff. "You know, we might even be able to do away with these sessions all together. Not only for you, but for your partner as well. The doctors who are treating her are not as patient as I am. The longer you persist, the longer you force us to interrogate her as well, the more damage will be done. And you know how hard the first time can be."

Mulder closed his eyes and tried not to listen. Hard wasn't the word for a person's first encounter with the limits of human endurance and willpower. He remembered the night after his first meeting with the Snake Man, how he couldn't move without after screaming from the pain it caused. Scully had stayed beside him, her voice and hands like an angel of light in the midst of demons. The hiss continued, forcing him to hear the words.

" *Permanent* damage. Oh I'll admit, she's a brave girl, but you and I both know that her body can only take so much before it breaks."

"You don't know her." Mulder could barely speak the words around the guilt clogging his throat. "You don't know her strength."

"Well the point is useless now. All I want to know is this-are you willing to answer the questions or not? Think about it Mulder. For yourself. For her."

"I can't help you." His standard answer saved him when he wanted to agree, to sell out and buy her safety again.

Another sigh and this time the voice was not directed to Mulder but to the invisible men around him. "You may..."

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

"...Begin." The doctor waved at the attendants as they stepped back, finished with their preparations. A silence so heavy that single heartbeats rang out like drums settled over the room like a storm cloud, smothering everything in it's path.

Scully's hands instinctively balled into fists but she forced her body to relax, reminding herself that tense muscles would only worsen the pain. She drew in a deep breath, sending her mind other places than the fear hovering around her. Remembering Melissa and home and the innocence of childhood. She had been free then, and happy. <Whatever happened to us?> All of a sudden, the words of a nursery rhyme they used to sing sprung out of the closet of her memory.

A scalding hot wave of pain ripped through her, momentarily halting the beating of her heart and her breathing, then throwing her body into an arching convulsion. As if on cue, every nerve in her body cried out in pain and the scream battered against her lips, but Scully refused to give them the satisfaction of hearing it.

Finally the shockwave passed, leaving her shaking on the table. Just in time for another. And another and... ************

Another man entered the room, sending a crack of light into the monster's shadows, but the darkness soon engulfed it as the door closed again. Snake Man's voice returned once again out of the darkness. "Meet Dr. Soki." he said. "Since you refuse to talk of your own free will he will stimulate your mind into cooperation."

Through the agonizing light and the blurry world he saw through the tape, Mulder could see the silhouette of a man advance towards him out of the shadows. More importantly, he could see the glistening needle of a syringe in his hand.

Then it hit him. Truth drugs.

His mind was so occupied trying to piece together a strategy to get around this new tactic that Mulder scarcely felt the tiny prick of the needle as a rush of something both scalding hot and icy cold flooded his veins.

He had expected the drugs to take effect rapidly- maybe within five minutes- but the instant transformation caught him completely off guard. His blood carried the poison swiftly to his brain, where it exploded in a shower of white sparks that floated down across the panel of his vision like snowflakes in the winter. The world around him began to darken in an ever-widening vortex that sucked him down into it's grasp, and the name his mind screamed was....

"Scully," the doctor spoke slowly, as if talking to a small child. "We can stop it any time you like. Say the word," his fingers danced around the control button. "And it's all over."

She heard his words, but cursed herself for wanting to listen to them. All over...no more pain...no more fire. Until now she never knew you could be burning and soaking wet at the same time. Her skin dripped sweat, her hair clinging to her face in damp tendrils she wished she could push away, but her body ached. Muscles, tendons, nerves, joined forces to beg her for relief. Or at least unconsciousness.

The doctors would not even allow her that. Scully would never have dreamed she would face something as terrible as her abduction had been, as frightening as the shadow memories of lights and doctors and needles that seemed to vanish whenever she wanted to look at them head on. Memories no one knew but her, because she couldn't tell them to a living soul, not even Mulder. To talk about them meant they were real and she needed something left to deny. At least one demon she *didn't* had to face at this moment.

"You make this so hard when it can be simple. All we want is information, Scully, cold impersonal facts. You don't actually believe this is worth dying for, do you? That your pitiful attempts at resistance will come to rescue you?" The doctor laughed, and the sound cracked like ice. "No one will come. No one can help you but me. Tell me what we need to know. "

Her vocal cords were sore and barely worked enough so she could get her words out in a whisper as dry as two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together. "And you...call....yourself....a...human..."

"Who is the leader of the rebellion?"

She spit at him.

"Increase the charge!" the man roared, hurriedly wiping the spittle from his cheek. "I want to hear her scream."

She gasped as the white hot heat returned,cooking her body from the inside out. Her teeth attacked the inside of her cheek, drawing blood in a desperate bid for silence. The shock was longer this time, repeated more quickly. When she opened her eyes, jagged flashes of red and white-blue danced around the outline of her vision.

"Lower the charge." The voice of an attendant sounded miles away instead of right beside her. "You'll kill her! She's had enough!"

"Not nearly." the doctor growled. "Higher."

Pure, unadulterated hell jolted through Scully's body, twisting it around like a pretzel on a stick. Instead of lasting a moment of two, the shock prolonged into a lifetime, until blue sparks begin flying out of her body. <Ring around the....> She couldn't think of the next words, they were pushed out of her mind by a numbing wall of fire. The acrid scent of something burning bit into her nose, and in horror she realized it was *her*. The longer she waited for the pain to decrease, the longer she prayed for a slight relief, the hotter the agony grew. From the very pit of her soul a cry began to build, exploding out of her mouth when she had no strength left to stop it.

"Mulder!!!!" Her eyes, blinded by tears, pried themselves open, crying out to his soul.

The sound of his name caused him to open his eyes. Mulder shook his head, regretting the action immediately as the contents of his brain sloshed from one side to the other like nauseating soup. They must have moved him. This room was empty. No lights. No men. No tape. He looked down and found himself standing on the floor instead of dangling above it. A soft, muted light filled the room but not from any lamp he could see.

Was the interrogation over? Or was this some new trick?

"Fox." The girl's voice repeated his name, a voice that sounded so familiar he didn't believe it was true. Turning around he saw Samantha standing in front of him, wearing the same nightgown she had "that night". "Hi Fox."

"Hello." he said, looking around hesitantly for some indication of a deception. "Samantha?"

"Who else would it be?" she giggled, and tugged on his sleeve. "Sit down."

He obeyed, still staring at her in shock. <Hallucination....> A distant corner of his mind breathed. But it couldn't be. She looked real, she sounded real. When he touched her it was flesh and bone, not vapor. "Why are you still young?"

"Because I am young! The aliens put me in cryo-something after they were finished with the tests. When they woke me up again they said it was to keep me from aging."

"Why wouldn't they want you to grow up?"

Samantha shrugged. "I don't know." She shook her finger at him, her face suddenly stern. "They say you're being very, very bad, Fox. All they want are some old names and other junk. Then we can be together again." She edged closer to him, and wrapped her arms around his neck. "I missed you."

"Sam, I can't tell them."

She pulled back, her face falling down in a pout. "But Fox, don't you want to be with me?"

"Of course I do," Mulder put his arms around her and held her close to him. "But if I give them the information, innocent people will die."

"The aliens said the only people who die are bad people. You shouldn't hang around bad people Fox. Mommy wouldn't like it very much."

Mulder couldn't speak. <Atrickatrickatrick> A tiny voice inside him chanted over and over, but his mind seemed far away, locked outside the room. "I can't tell them." he repeated his answer when he could talk, not for Samantha's benefit but for himself.

"Oh Fox, don't say that." she covered his mouth with her hand. "They told me that if you don't tell me, they'll have to do bad things to you. To me too." Her eyes were wide and frightened when she looked up at him again. "You won't let them hurt me, will you?"

Before he could answer, tongues of yellow orange flame rose up from the floor across the room from them. The fumes already began to sting the eyes and the back of his throat. Mulder craned his neck around the room in search of an exit, but the room remained sealed. Samantha shook her head sadly. "You see? You've made them angry. We're both in trouble now."

Another patch of fire started to the left of them, rapidly eating it's way toward them. Other parts of the floor began to catch fire on their own, and the fumes became choking, as did the rush of fear within him. Smanatha's face reflected his emotions as she pleaded with him.

"Tell them the answers, Fox. Tell them or else we'll both die!" Through the thickening smoke he opened his eyes to look at her.

"I....can't...."

One of the tongues of flame licked at the edge of Samantha's nightgown, and she began to scream as the fire spread over the rest of her. "Fox, they're hurting me. Make it stop....Fox it hurts....tell them...." Mulder groaned in pain as the fire began to surround him, reaching out for her only to be slung back by an invisible hand. "Samantha...."

The room began to fade as her screams grew louder and the fire began to eat away at his own body. Her voice continued on, begging him.

"Tell them, Fox. You have to..."

<Tell them.> The thought ended an eternity of crystallized seconds, and Scully's body fell back to the platform, limp and motionless. Her eyes flickered like a dying flame as her mind tried to cling to the thin precipice of consciousness, but they eased shut as it sheared away above her, casting her down into nothingness. As she fell the rhyme danced like children's voices in her head.

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

"Hey, look who's alive after all."

The voice was muffled and distant, like it was coming from above the surface of consciousness into the gray film where he drifted. He didn't want to answer. He wanted to sleep....Mulder tried to roll over but a hand stopped him.

"No you don't. C'mon Mulder. Wake up time."

Slowly but surely the voice drew him closer and closer to the surface until all at once the film fell away and he discovered he was standing in the blackness behind his eyelids as they opened and shut to test their strength. A pair of bright green eyes, filled with concern mingled with relief, came into focus first, followed by the rest of Trader's face.

"Welcome back to planet Earth." The voice was still distorted by the buzzing in his ears, but the cup that held cold water to his parched lips was welcomed. "For a while I'd thought you'd left us for good."

"How long have I been back?" he croaked.

"I'd say about an hour. You've been in and out of consciousness. When they first brought you back you were calling for someone named Samantha." Trader didn't ask a question about it but Mulder knew he wanted to so he answered anyway

"My sister. She...uh...disappeared when I was a kid. Kidnapped."

"Man, that's harsh." Trader said. "I was wondering what your trip into la la land was like. Mine was a Bermuda beach and three gorgeous blondes asking me to confess to robbery for my own good."

"You mean the hallucinations are a side effect of the truth drugs?"

"They are the drugs, man. The whole purpose is to surround you with something you like, and then maybe you'll be more receptive to it."

"I feel like I've been chewed up, spit out, and stepped in."

"That's one of the real side effects. You'll be sick for a couple hours but then you'll even out. Hey look on the bright side....as long as you're doped up you can't feel those bruises." Trader grimaced. "Looks like someone took a broomstick to the better part of your body."

<So that's what it was.> At least he had survived yet another of their mind games, relatively intact....Scully. The thought burst back onto the surface of his mind. The room shook from dizziness caused by the speed at which he moved his head to search for her. Nothing.

"Where is she?" he said, groaning at the nausea the dizzy spell left behind. "Scully...is she back yet?"

Trader's face grew solemn in a way Mulder had never seen him look before. "The guards dropped her here about ten minutes before you showed up. Or what was left of her."

"Where is she?" Mulder was halfway to his feet before the room started spinning again and he started to sway with it. Trader grabbed his shoulders.

"Take it easy. I bargained with one of the others for their bed, so I put her in that. She wasn't exactly in a condition that would be benefited by stone floors."

"I want to see her. I want to see her now."

"Relax, she's right over here."

Mulder followed Trader over to a corner of the room as far away from the business of the outside hallway as possible. He could see the outline of her body over Trader's shoulders but when he stepped in for a closer look, Trader stopped him.

"Are you sure you want to see this now?"

"Trader," Mulder said, "Do you want to try and stop me?"

There was a moment of silence and then he moved out of the way. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

Mulder stepped to the bed side, feeling the drug-induced sickness drain out of his body in place of another kind of illness. She lay on the bed, her face a white so pale the skin was almost transparent. It played a stark contrast against the sweat-matted tangle of her hair and the blood red of her lips. On closer look, Mulder realized that it *was* blood, pooling around her lips from the inside of her mouth. He had to stare long and hard at her chest before he could detect the faint up-and-down motion that meant she was alive. His fingers covered her wrist, searching for a pulse. For a moment he was terrified, and then he felt the beating of her heart, weak like a newborn butterfly.

It was amazing how clear his head was all of a sudden. "Trader," he said, his voice quiet, a deception of it's true intensity. "What did they do to her?"

Trader's voice was sad in itself as he talked. "I can't be sure, but the best bets say shock treatment."

"I didn't hear you right. You didn't say shock as in electric, did you?"

"Shock treatment's just the slang for it. Who knows what the real name is. See this?" Trader pointed to a webbing of fine burns across her arms. "It comes from nerves burnt from the inside out."

"Burnt?!? What are you talking about?"

"I don't know, I told you. I've only heard the rumors."

"Well start spreading them."

"It's one of the least friendly methods of interrogation in this whole freak show. The doctors hook you up to this machine that turns your nerves and brain into this giant network of live wires and then they zap you if you don't play ball."

"They did that to her?" Mulder swallowed hard to keep the instant fury to a dull roar for the moment. He had to focus, keep his attention on her right now. Not on revenge.

That would come later.

If he just kept telling himself that maybe he could resist the urge to hunt down the Snake Man and wrap his self-assured vocal cords around his neck. His hand slipped over Scully's. Why did it always end up this way? He was the one knocked around but she was the one who ended up lying on Death's doorstep like an abandoned child. He was the one who pulled her back. The cycle couldn't end now.

"She needs real medical treatment." he said. "This hell hole has to have an infirmary."

"Oh they do. Top of the line, so I've heard."

"Then why are we standing here?" Mulder moved to scoop Scully into his arms. "We have to get her there *now* before she gets any worse."

"No, Mulder, you don't understand." Trader's hand rested on his shoulder. "It's not for prisoners. We have to tend our own sick. The weak die off. The strong live for the next round."

"What?" Mulder couldn't wrap his mind around the idea. He could do nothing for her? Nothing? Ask him to do something easy, like stop breathing.

"All we can do for people in her...condition....is keep them fed and cared for until they wake up."

"How long does it take them to wake up?" His eyes bled the pain leaking from his soul as he brushed a stray lock of hair away from her face.

"I don't know." Trader said. "Sometimes...well, sometimes they don't."

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

Time itself seemed to mourn, the hours losing definition until it was night again and he found himself the sole person awake in a room full of sleep. His own eyelids felt lead-heavy, and Mulder would have gladly surrendered to the velvet soft seductions of sleep. He would have, if it were not for the tiny hand so limp in his own and the perhaps irrational- perhaps not- fear that if he slept Death would catch him off guard and steal her away. He had been caught sleeping once. Never again.

"Scully, we have to stop this kind of conversation." Talking to her helped keep him awake, and Mulder didn't care what standard medicine said, he knew she could hear him. "It's bad for your health."

Her left eyelid twitched. Mulder took it as a sign she agreed.

He traced patterns on her skin, the feathery red burns looking so out of place in the milky white. "God Scully, I'm so sorry. I need you to wake up and talk me out of something "incredibly rash". Because if you don't I'm going to go kill someone and that wasn't a joke either."

No movement this time.

"If this was the outside world, I'd be running around with my gun terrorizing nurses and hunting old men who smelled like smoke. But there's nothing we can do Scully. They don't treat prisoners here. It's just up to us...."

At this point his eyes lighted on her face, studying it for the thousandth time, but it felt like the first. There was no emotion on her features, and he could almost fool himself into believing she was asleep if it hadn't been for the tiny crinkles of pain around her eyes and the blood on her lips. As he watched, a thin line of it spilled down the side of face, staining the skin in scarlet. He reached out and wiped it away with his finger, noticing how it shone in the moonlight.

Something inside him gave.

Sliding his arms under Scully, he lifted her body off the bed, holding her as gently as he could. There was one man in this whole god-forsaken camp who could help him. And Mulder was going to get to that man. He began to move toward the door, when Trader's voice caught him.

"Don't do it, man. If they catch you outside barracks after curfew, you'll get end up in solitary. We're talking a three foot wide, five foot high metal box where they feed you so little a mouse would starve."

"Is that supposed to stop me?"

"Yes." Trader rolled to his feet. "Hey, look, I'm sorry about Scully. But you can't help her if you're not with her. And I've seen plenty of good men go nuts in those lockers."

"I don't have a choice." Mulder said, turning back so Trader could see her. " You can sit and watch if you'd like, but I'm going to get her into that infirmary, if it kills me."

"You really are insane, do you know that?"

"So they've said." He turned to go.

"Wait." Trader grabbed his shoulder. "You don't know jack about this camp. You'll probably end up wandering into the guard's quarters." He shrugged and gave a half-hearted laugh.

"I must be catching the insanity because I'm going with you."

Mulder shook his head emphatically. "No. I'm not going to ask you to do that. If the penalty's as tough as you say I don't want to be responsible for bringing another person in on it."

"Mulder, are you going to try and stop me? "

A wry grin spread across Mulder's face. "Point taken." He shifted Scully against him in a better grip. "But for the record I protested."

"Yeah whatever." Trader stepped in front of Mulder, a shadow among shadows. "Actually breaking and entering was the reason I landed my butt in here in the first place. This ought to be fun."

"Fun would not be the word that comes to mind."

"Shhh." he held a finger to his lips. "We're at the door. They don't post guards at the door but they have patrols. And b-e-lieve me, you don't want to meet one."

The click of the doorknob turning seemed unnaturally loud, and Mulder found himself holding his breath as they stepped from the darkness into the dimly lit hallway, waiting for shouts and the sound of whips. Only the walls and the floor greeted them in stony disapproval of their actions.

"So far so good." Trader whispered. "Where are we headed ?"

"The Commander's office."

" *What?*" He spun around in his tracks, his jaw hanging open. "Did those drugs put you *permanently* out of your *mind*? Man, that's just asking for solitary."

"You wanted to come." Mulder reminded him. "If you want out, step back into the barracks and I'll find my own way."

Trader shut his mouth, a determined set to his jaw. "No, I'll take you. My brother always said I should get involved." He raised his eyebrows. "Think of it as my contribution to humanity for the year."

Mulder rolled his eyes. "Lead on, boy scout."

"Hey- I was one once, don't knock it."

Their conversation stopped when they started moving again, the silence filled with private thoughts and buried apprehension. Each step was a thousand miles to Mulder, his muscles bunched together in expectation of a fight. Mastof wasn't exactly his definition of an ally, but he was the closest thing to help he had left.

<And if he says no?> To be honest, Mulder didn't know what he'd do. He had no room to make threats or promises of retaliation if the man refused to help. He didn't beg. But begging might be the only option he had. The threat of a patrol was a welcomed excuse to take his mind away from the subject. When they had passed three corridors undetected, he knew they were lucky. "Lucky" didn't apply to him very often.

At the corner where the third hallway ran into the fourth, whatever charm had been protecting them thus far, stopped. No sooner had they turned the corner when they all but ran into a patrol. A very large, very mean looking patrol. Surprise froze both sides for a moment, staring at each other in something close to shock. The guards regained life first.

"You two! Stop!"

The words were enough to jolt Mulder and Trader back into reality, and the mayhem started. He hugged Scully to him as tight as he could, breathing a silent prayer that she would forgive him if he was hurting her, and ran. Trader ran in front of them, the feet of the guards thundered behind, and Mulder was caught in the middle trying to run as fast as possible without dropping her. The muscles in his back were taut the point of snapping in two, and he could almost feel the lash of the whip. He recalled the biting pain from the courtyard, and decided he never wanted to feel that again. But he would welcome it head on, if it would just make her open her eyes again.

<Not fast enough....> He could see Mastof's door at the end of the hall, drawing closer by the minute but not as fast as the guards were closing in. The pounding behind him grew louder, and a ribbon of slicing pain caught around his ankle, jerking him to his knees.

His momentum carried him forward, crushing Scully's body between him and the floor. For a moment, concern that he had hurt her took precedence in his mind, and then the guards surrounded him, the black snakes of their whips tearing at his flesh like living things. Mulder rolled over on top of Scully, crouching over her to try and keep her out of harm's way, leaving his back open and unprotected before the beating. He could hear the angry taunting of the guards, their voices as sharp as the lash of the whips they carried.

"You think you're a big boy, huh ? That you don't need to sleep like the rest of the prisoners ?" Another crack and another strip of his skin split in two. "See how you like *this*...." Mulder zoned in on the epicenter of his pain, detaching himself from himself until he had numbed his feelings into mechanical actions. It helped, he had learned, to lessen the pain if one identified with machines, because metal and gears couldn't hurt.

In many ways he felt like a robot, the only command registering in his brain was to <get Scully safe>.

Between the red hot pain and the icy blue defeat he couldn't see where Trader had gone until he heard a familiar voice call out in front of him. "Hey, slobs, catch me if you can!"

Three of the guards started after him, and the others were distracted for all the space of a heartbeat. That was all Mulder needed. He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pain that radiated from his back throughout the rest of his body as he ran with speed he didn't know he had.

Think machine. Think unfeeling. Think Scully.

The door edged closer and closer, and the shouts of the guards seemed to fade away as Mulder focused all his concentration on forcing the jelly-like muscles of his legs one stride further. And another. And another. They caught up with him about the time his fingers closed around the doorknob, speed pushing all of them through the door and into Mastof's office.

The guards surrounding Mulder shoved him to the floor, and a boot to his side made sure he stayed there. One of them dared to reach for Scully. Mulder fought until he had beaten the soldier, back, clutching her to his chest for dear life. They wouldn't take her. They wouldn't hurt her anymore. Chaos ruled a moment longer and then Mastof's voice demanded insant order.

" *What* is this?"

The guard trying to pull Scully away stepped back, and Mulder found his breath suddenly cut off as a whip curled around his neck, forcing his head back. "We found this scum breaking curfew in the halls. Permission requested to take him and the woman to solitary."

"Permission denied." Mastof growled. "Let him up."

A fresh dagger of pain sliced upward through his heart and lungs and the guard hauled him to his feet. Mulder pulled away from their hands, standing up as straight as he could. "I need to talk to you." he said, his voice dry to his own ears, cracking as some of the pain broke through his machinery. "Please...I need your help."

Mastof's eyes traveled from him down to Scully's limp body. A long second dragged by before he nodded. "All of you, leave us alone."

Muttering an obscenity in Mulder's direction, the lead guard walked out of the room, followed by the others. Mulder didn't give them a second glance, blood rushing to his head as he turned back to Mastof and tried to think of the right words to say but wisely waited for the other man to speak first.

Mastof remained silent one moment more, taking in the thin lines of crimson marking Mulder's arms and the torn cloth of his shirt. <They must have really went to town on him...I shouldn't be bothered...it's their job.> The pain in the his eyes couldn't lessen the note of pride in Mulder's gaze, in the way he stood straight and tall even though he was swaying.

"If you went through all that to get to me, it had better be important."

"She needs medical treatment." Mulder said, going directly to the point before Mastof could change his mind and call the guards back. "The infirmary is off limits to us, but not to you."

Mastof shook his head instantly. "I can't help you there Mulder. The medical facilities aren't for prisoner use."

Anger pushed Mulder's words out of his mouth. He moved forward until he was standing directly in front of Mastof's desk.

"So that's it? So you're just going to sit back and pretend that you're still human when !she is dying!?" He laid Scully's body across the desk. "Look at her. This is what your bosses did to her, hooked her up and cooked her from the inside out !"

"I warned you about his interrogation methods but you refused to listen. You brought that on her yourself. She didn't cooperate. She knew what would happen."

Mulder toned his voice down from shouting, and leaned across the desk, grabbing hold of Mastof's arm. He never begged but he was going to now. "Please... that may be true, but she's a human too, your own flesh and blood, and she is not going to wake up from this unless you get her into that infirmary very soon. I'll take a beating, I'll take solitary, but don't let her die."

Very slowly Mastof disengaged himself from Mulder's grip and looked down at Scully. Mulder had no idea what he was asking him to do- commit a serious breach protocol *while* there was a high ranking alien official in the camp, and in the process risk his job and even his own freedom for two prisoners. But there was no denying the fact that she was going to die if he did nothing. The tell-tale burns of electrolysis told him what they had done. The method was not his favorite, but it was standard interrogation procedure and it usually got results. This time, however, he could see that the snake-voiced alien and his friends had gone a long way past simple stimulation to produce an answer. Business was business, but Mastof had no stomach for torturing prisoners out of simple pleasure.

He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "I'll take her to the infirmary." Mulder began to thank him but he held up his hand. "Don't. You're to leave this office and report to solitary for three week's confinement due to breach of curfew and direct disobedience of orders. If you still want to thank me at the end of three weeks, you can, but don't now. "

Mulder nodded, not caring if it was three months. Scully would be safe, Scully would be cared for. "You won't let anything happen to her, will you?" he asked gravely. "You won't let them do any tests, or experiments. She can't go through that again...just don't let them near her. Ok?"

Mastof was intrigued. Again... Scully had been abducted? Memories his own encounters with testing tables and lost time sent a barely suppressed shudder up and down his spine. "No." he promised. "She'll be under my personal protection. No one will hurt her." <Not even snake breath.>

Satisfied, Mulder bent over Scully and brushed a feather light kiss on her forehead, near her hair, wondering if it would be the last thing she would feel this side of paradise. The thought hit him smack in the forehead that he was leaving her alone and defenseless in the arms of the enemy.

He had to nearly run out of Mastof's office for fear he wouldn't be able to leave.

to be continued... part 6