“No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” – Donne

They say you never forget your first time.

Well, the first time you died was sure as hell the most shocking – but it was the second that hurt the most.

After that, all the pain just merged into one, and you weren’t entirely sure how many times they killed you thereafter. After the fourth or fifth time you lost count anyway.

The cell is quite big. Outside its one small porthole, the stars shine brightly in the black sky. Sitting above the Earth in the belly of their mothership you’re almost filled with awe at the sight of your home planet far below, hanging in the sky like a beautiful, ripe, blue-green fruit, waiting to be plucked.

Waiting…waiting…waiting for you to say the few words that would result in it being gobbled up and swallowed whole. Only you won’t. No matter how many times they kill you.

Yesterday they killed you slowly, the day before it was fast. At least you assume it was the day before. It’s hard to tell when outside it’s always perpetual night.

Today…today they drag you from your cell and take you to the torture room as usual. Their jaws are slick and hungry, secreting slime so thick it trails over the floor, making you retch from the stink of it. They rub their long, sharp, shining mandibles together with a mocking, rasping sound, as if in anticipation of your pain. You long ago gave up any pretence at bravado. You scream all the way down the hallway and all the way through the interrogation, performed, as usual, on a cold, stone, bloodstained table. The first time you saw that table you struggled so hard they broke your arm as they strapped you down. Now the blood on it is mostly yours, and you only struggle out of habit because you know there’s no escape.

They don’t speak English, or any other Earth tongue – they don’t have the vocal chords for it. So they use a bounty hunter as their go between. You’ve grown to loathe him and his shape-shifting form. He stands over you, seemingly human, smiling pleasantly, asking their questions for them, and then he shifts, becomes grotesque before your eyes, morphing into one of them in order to relay your reply. You’ve lost count of how many times you’ve had this particular dialogue. They tried drugging you first, in order to get you to talk, but your genetic inheritance protected you and your information. Nothing they had was effective against your cast iron genes combined with the very effective antidotes the Consortium pumped into your body since you were born, along with god knows what else. That, you think bitterly to yourself, was probably the Consortium’s most evil legacy. If you had been drugged you’d at least have had no choice. As it is…as it is the truth rises to your tongue at least a thousand times a day, but on each occasion that’s where it dies.

A world.

A whole world.

If you spoke…if you surrendered what you know, then a whole world would die. That’s too much for one man’s soul to bear. So, no matter how many times they beat you, how many times they flay your skin from your body, drain the blood from your veins, and dismember you while you’re still breathing…no matter how many times they kill you and then bring you back to life as good as new to suffer all over again…no matter how often they do it, you won’t talk.

You wish you could.

You wish with all your heart and soul that this one burden hadn’t been placed on your shoulders. You curse the day you were born and every single one of your long line of ancestors stretching all the way back to the primeval swamp from which they emerged…but all the same, you won’t talk.

Today they cut off your thumbs and fingers, one by one. You wonder whether to them it’s the same as a human pulling the wings off a fly. You never did that – but you remember watching, fascinated, as your childhood friend did, years ago. Crouching in the dirt in your back yard, you watched his freckled face frowning as he concentrated on his ghoulish task. Is that any different to these aliens, as they rasp and slide and stink in the torture room, watching, unmoved, as you scream yourself hoarse with pain?

“This little piggy went to market,” you yell, as your index finger goes, sliced from your hand with meticulous precision by one of their shining surgical implements. It’s pointless defiance, but it does at least mean that the bounty hunter has to shift back into alien form in order to relay the meaningless utterances of an old nursery rhyme. You watch the aliens making clicking sounds with their mandibles, and one of them throws back what passes for his head, his jaw opening to reveal several long, sharp teeth. You shudder.

“This little piggy stayed at home!” you scream, your voice newly born, no longer hoarse as it was yesterday because every time you die they resurrect you, good as new, in order to make you live through another session of torment. Your middle finger is sawed from your hand, but this is nothing. You’ve endured this before, or something similar, and not even at alien hands.

“This little piggy had roast beef!” You screech, as your ring finger goes. You won’t miss it; you were never the marrying kind anyway. Not that it matters. Tomorrow, or the day after, it’ll be grown back, miraculously, and you’ll be in perfect health again.

“This little piggy had none.” Your little finger goes and you slump, the sweat sliding down the side of your face. They hold up your hand for you to view their work, and you survey the bloodied mess.

“Been there, done that,” you hiss, “and much worse than this. Try having your whole arm sawn off with a rusty knife.”

They glance questioningly at the bounty hunter who obligingly shifts form and interprets your words. Undaunted, they move onto your other hand. You throw back your head, your body held tautly in place on their stone operating bench.

“And this little piggy cried, ‘wee, wee, wee’ all the way home,” you cry, your voice sliding up and down an octave as they remove a finger on the stroke of each “wee.” Then you pass out.

You wake back in the cell, on your side. Your thumbs and fingers are still missing, the pain throbbing through your veins, making it impossible to do anything but just lie on your side with your stumpy hands clutched to your chest, gazing sightlessly out of the porthole at that glowing green-blue ball hanging in the sky for which you have just suffered one more day of a torment more extreme than any man could be asked to bear. Is it worth it? All this just to save one small world, and the billions of people on it? Stupid question. Of course it is. Maybe one day the endless suffering and dying will turn you insane and you won’t be able to reply to their questions, even if you wanted to. Insanity would be such a blessed relief. You lie still, humming softly to yourself. It’s a shame really, you think to yourself, because the first time you died should have been the last. It should have been permanent. That had certainly been its intent – you’re pretty sure of that.

You have no fingers with which to touch, so you can’t trace the place on your forehead where the bullet that took your first life entered. You remember the feel of it though. Red hot, burning, lancing deep into your brain. There was a split second when you wondered what the hell had happened and then realisation flooded in just as your legs gave way from under you. The last emotion you remember feeling was relief. Strange that. Relief that it was all over, maybe? Maybe. Relief that you no longer had to bear this huge burden of responsibility for a world you didn’t like and which sure as hell didn’t much like you? Maybe. If so, it was short lived.

You woke on their ship. Trust Mulder and Skinner not to even wait around and see you decently buried. If they’d taken charge of your body, committed it to the flames, or even put it in the ground where it belonged, then those alien bastards wouldn’t have been able to find you. As it was, lying there in that parking garage, exposed, unable to protect yourself, you were an easy target. They found you, spirited you away, and brought you onboard their ship, all the time doubtlessly rasping away with their mandibles in glee at having one of the key figures of the Resistance handed to them on a fucking platter like this. Fuck. You should have killed Mulder when you had him there at the end of your gun. Would have fucking killed him if it hadn’t been for one last vestige of stupid affection you had for him.

He could have been you.

You could have been him.

You were both working for the same ends only he didn’t know it and you did…and he was too much the boy scout to deal with what you know. All the same, the genetic inheritance you both share makes you blood brothers, if nothing else. Was it some stupid notion of family that stopped you killing him that day? Probably. Why else had you fought so hard, so dirty, for so long, if not because you cared? Deep down at least, you have some affection for the hapless, clueless citizens of this benighted planet. You must, or you wouldn’t be keeping your mouth so firmly shut throughout these long days of suffering.

They cauterised the wounds on your hands before they threw you back in here. The blackened stubs remind you of another time and place where a similar unauthorised amputation took place. Must be your destiny – history repeating itself. Out in the woods in Tunguska you offered up your arm for sacrifice. Now, you’ve lost your fingers, but like your arm they’ll grow back in the Resurrection Tank. You have no idea what it’s really called – that’s just a name you made up for it. They throw your corpse into a pile of green gunk and you slide out some time later with everything grown back into place, all shiny, and perfect, and new. The first time it happened you couldn’t believe you’d gotten your arm back. For a split second you were even elated. That was before you realized where you were.

There’s still some blood, despite the cauterisation. It streaks your hands and has stained your naked chest. You gaze at it blankly. It’s a splash of colour in the unredeemed gloom of your empty cell. No blanket. No bed. Comfort isn’t a priority after all. There are no human rights up here, no Geneva Convention to dictate the treatment of prisoners of war. These aliens have no understanding of human culture – they take what they want like a giant swarm of sentient locusts, gobbling up planets and people. Maybe it isn’t even really possible to resist them. Maybe you should just give them the information they want. There’s not much at stake after all. Only a world. Just one little world. You raise your head to look at it, hanging like a shiny Christmas ornament through the porthole, almost near enough to touch. Such a tiny thing – hardly worth giving up a hundred lifetimes for.

You lay your head back down again, a bitter, twisted smile on your face. If only they would just let you die and stay dead.

A noise at the door startles you. They’ve come to take you back for more torture. You open your mouth to scream your protest, your memories providing you with a dozen or more nightmare scenarios of what they might do to you next…when what you see brings you up short.

It’s a man. Last time you saw him he was aiming a gun at your head. This time he looks bemused, befuddled, and scared. You don’t blame him. You haven’t forgotten your own reaction to first being in the same room as one of the aliens. You lost the contents of your breakfast in pure fear. Skinner is white as a sheet. They throw him into the cell and shut the door, and you gaze uncertainly at the man who killed you first.

You feel sure there must be a point to all this, a reason why they’ve brought him here and why they imprisoned him with you, but if there is it’s beyond you. It feels surreal. What the fuck do you have to say to him, lying on your side, naked, bruised, beaten, with bloody blackened stumps where your fingers once were? What the hell does one say in these circumstances?

“Welcome to paradise, Skinner.” Ironic, drawled – nice to know you can still summon the old bravado from somewhere, even in the most desperate of circumstances – and, let’s face it, they don’t come any more desperate than this.

“Krycek.” He stares, aghast, unable to take it in. Then he’s crawling over to your side to check out your injuries. Not a boy scout this one, not like Mulder. He’s far more pragmatic – that’s why he killed you and Mulder never could. He’s a man after your own heart, although not cut from the same cloth. Maybe, if he knew what you did, he’d be what you are, because he has the kind of soul that would make this kind of sacrifice of his own ideals, nobility and integrity in order to fight against pure evil. “Christ.” He rocks back on his heels as he surveys the blackened stumps where your fingers once were, but most distressing of all is the way he looks at your forehead, searching for that bullet he knows went in.

“Yeah. It’s me. Always turning up, like the proverbial bad penny.” You grin, ghoulishly, and he gazes back blankly. Your feeble attempt at humour has been utterly rebuffed but then you never were all that funny. Too much angst. That’s what comes from carrying around the kind of knowledge you’ve had in your head for far too long. It eats and claws and gnaws away at your insides. “I’m not a clone if that’s what you’re thinking,” you snap at him. He frowns.

“Then what the hell are you?” He asks. He traces a finger over your forehead and you lie, unmoving. It feels strange to be touched by a human hand again after so many days – or has it been weeks? – with only these monsters for company. “You were dead,” he says. “Shit, why the hell should this surprise me? I’m on a spaceship, god knows how many miles above the surface of the Earth, imprisoned by a horde of giant locusts, and I’m worried about something as simple as your conjuring trick with the grave?”

He rocks back on his haunches and actually laughs. It’s a peculiarly compelling sight. You didn’t know he had it in him. He’s dressed in what remains of his work clothes. The tie is missing, the shirt is torn and stained with blood and there’s a dark streak of grime down the side of his face that’s barely distinguishable from the black bruise on his cheek and chin. However they got him, he didn’t come easily.

“So, what happened? Did you piss them off too? Is there anyone who likes you on any world in the known universe, Krycek?” He asks.

“My mom was fond of me,” you drawl, deadpan. He looks at you for a long moment, and there’s a slight softening of those dark brown eyes.

“Yes,” he murmurs. Perhaps he never imagined you had something so mundane and earthly as a mom. If that’s what he’s thinking he’d be right. You were created in a test-tube, and implanted in some poor woman’s womb. Consortium born and bred – that’s you. Born for your purpose, for your destiny, poor little hybrid boy. No wonder you could never kill Mulder. He had it easy. He was one of the early batch – they never reclaimed him and taught him what you know. He never had to live under this shadow from the youngest age. He had the luxury of freedom and innocence: you didn’t. And yet every time you saw him you could never begrudge him that. However much you might have envied him you couldn’t bring yourself to ever really resent him for his peace of mind. Isn’t this what you’ve fought for all your life? Isn’t it what you’ve died for, several times? So that they can keep their peace of mind. All of them. Friends and enemies, black and white, men and women.

“Why did they do this to you?” he asks, and he gestures to the blackened stumps where your fingers once were, not because he likes you – he doesn’t, and who can blame him? – or because he cares about your distress, but because he’s human and out here that alone makes you the closest thing to a friend that he has.

“Why? Because they want information.” You smile. “And this?” You hold up the aching, stubby lumps of flesh that are now your hands, wincing as the movement hurts almost more than you can bear. “This is nothing, Skinner. You wait until they kill you for the first time and then you’ll know what I mean.”

“Kill…?” He looks confused. Poor bastard.

“Well how did you think I rose from the dead? They brought me back to life and they’ve been torturing, killing and resurrecting me ever since. It would be naïve to imagine they won’t do the same to you.”

“They have the power to bring you back to life?” All his certainties rocked in one go – but he’s seen this before, or something similar. Mulder died on him and came back after all.

“Yes. Over and over again.” You smile, grimly, and he looks appalled.

“But I don’t know anything,” he whispers.

“No. That’s your tragedy – and your saving grace,” you tell him. “Because if you did you’d have to make a choice – sell out your whole planet to save yourself, or keep on dying over and over again. As it is…well you don’t know anything anyway. So you can at least have the luxury of being sure you won’t crack and sell out a whole world – that whole world.” You turn your face away and stare out of the porthole at that beautiful, green-blue globe hanging far below; that loved, hated orb for which you’ve died so many times.

“And you?” He asks.

You don’t reply, just stare into space, the full horror of your own predicament reflected back at you from the echoing chasm of his humanity. Because until now it was just you, and you had to just get on and deal with it, but now he’s here, full of shock and despair, and that’s harder to bear than your own emotions which you’ve been successfully ignoring until now.

“Krycek?” His hand shakes your shoulder, roughly, urgently. “Alex?” He rolls you back to face him. “And you?” He asks. “What do you know?”

“Everything.” You sit up, and gaze at him. Is he ready for this? Probably not. Who could be? Even the act of telling him is pointless, but it’s something to do to take your mind off the pain and distract you from the total despair of our situation. You somehow manage to lever yourself up into a sitting position, and lean back against the padded wall of the cell. “I’m one of the last leaders of the Resistance, one of the few left who know what they are, what they’ve come for, and how to fight them. You might judge me, Skinner, and you have in the past, but I was always playing for higher stakes than you, or Mulder, or anyone else realised. This isn’t just a local war, it’s a fight against beings you can’t begin to understand.”

“Try me.” Good, honest Skinner. Always wanting to figure it all out, never standing a fucking chance of understanding it all, because it’s too horrific to fully understand and he doesn’t have the imagination to visualise just how bad it really is. In his heart he doesn’t want to know. None of them do, not even Mulder, for all his endless questing. And you’ve tried to give them that, honest to god you have. Tried to keep them safe from what you know – why share that kind of agony around? There would be nothing they could do. This isn’t a conventional war against a conventional enemy. This is something else entirely. Although…that altruism isn’t entirely the truth of it. You didn’t tell them, just as the Consortium didn’t tell them, because you didn’t want anyone to interfere with your plans or question your decisions. You didn’t want to waste time and energy on debating strategy or defending your actions. Easier, and far more expedient to just not tell them. Isn’t that the truth of it? There can be no lies here – not now, after so many deaths, and so many of them your own. You can tell him though. He won’t interfere now. It’s too late for that. He’s still looking at you with those earnest dark eyes, so you lean your head back against the wall, and shatter his peace of mind forever.

“This was once their world – and they want it back. If I’ve done anything over these past 10 years – and god knows there’s a lot I’ve done, and most of it enough to damn me to hell a thousand times over – I’ve done it for one reason only. To save us. All of us. To save our world and our way of life. To save our whole fucking species, and so many others too because the aliens aren’t interested in the birds and the fish and all the cute fucking furry animals down there. All they’re interested in is providing food for their hatchlings. They want to swarm and lay their eggs – and I’m not talking about a few eggs, but enough to fill this planet to the brim, and when they hatch the young eat voraciously – they devour everything in their path, and when they’re done that planet down there, our planet, would be as devoid as life as surely as if the worst kind of nuclear winter had taken place. Imagine a field destroyed by locusts and then think of that only a billion times bigger. That’s what this species do. It’s who they are. Then they move onto the next planet, and the next one. Thousands of years ago they stripped us bare and moved on – and over long millennia we recovered and became plentiful again. Well, now they’re back.”

“Shit.” Whispered, but succinct, and to the point. Typical of the man. His face is drained of blood and he’s deathly pale, his dark eyes filled with a savage kind of pain, but of course what you told him was only the tip of the iceberg. He doesn’t know the full horror and you won’t tell him because then they’d begin to guess the extent of what you know, and that wouldn’t be smart. And if there’s one thing you are it’s smart – it was bred into you.

“Yeah. Shit. So, if I’ve killed, and lied, and cheated to save us from being eaten alive by the spawn of those alien monsters – and I’ve done all those things – I don’t give a damn. If that’s wrong, so be it. But it was a choice I made freely, knowing things that would make you weep, Skinner.” You wish, almost idly, that you could still weep but knowledge has made you hard and distant – or maybe that was another genetic gift from your makers. Maybe that has nothing to do with knowledge at all. Maybe that’s just you.

“What kind of things?” He asks. “What else do you know?”

“I can’t tell you that without telling them, can I? I’m not stupid. If they thought they’d bring you here and I’d spill my guts to you and they could just listen in…” You incline your head towards the walls, because of course they’re listening. They need the information locked up inside your head and they’ll stop at nothing to get it, short of slicing off the top of your skull and scooping out the contents, and fuck knows they might have already tried that during one of the torture sessions you’ve deliberately blanked out. “If they thought I’d be so fucking stupid then they must need their fucking brains examined.” You shout this last out loud to the walls.

“Surely they can’t think you’d be that sloppy,” he says, perplexed. “That can’t be why I’m here.”

“Then why are you here?” You ask, weary beyond belief, a total abject weariness of the soul rather than of the body. He frowns and shakes his head.

“I have no idea,” he whispers. “None at all. Do you know?”

“No.” And you don’t. You really don’t. Why bring him here? For what reason? They must know he was the one who killed you – what purpose does it serve to bring him here? You wish you knew. You think they’re playing games with you…and you wish you could figure it out, but you’re too tired and too weary to do that and what’s more, and this worries you most of all, you’re beginning not to care.

“Why don’t they just come?” He asks, sitting now, in this empty, padded cell, next to this empty, soul-sick man. “If they have all this?” He waves his arm expansively around the cell, the gesture encompassing their ship and all their technology. “They could just walk in and take over our world. What’s stopping them?”

“Well, firstly they’re not ready to swarm yet. They have to make the planet ready first, prepare huge underground nurseries to accept the eggs. It’s a mammoth task and will take them some years. And secondly…” You smile at him wearily. “Secondly, we have a secret weapon, and that’s why I’m here, dying over and over again until I tell them where it is, what it can do, and how it can be destroyed.”

“Only you won’t.” He gazes at you steadily. He’s an old soldier. Maybe he was even captured by the Vietcong once, so he understands what this is all about.

“Only I won’t,” you confirm with a shake of your head, closing your eyes as you do so. “No matter how many times they kill me.”

“Is it true? Do they really keep bringing you back to life just to kill you again? Is the information you have so important?”

His hand comes to rest on your shoulder again and for a second you’re surprised by how comforting it is to be with another human being right now, to smell human sweat and fear and hear a human voice – to accept human fucking comfort god damn it. Yes, even you, Alex Krycek, a man who has gone into the dark more times than any man can reasonably expect to and still stay sane – if, with your hybrid blood, you can even claim to be truly human. Yes, it’s true, Alex Krycek, quasi-leader of the resistance, and saviour of the entire ungrateful fucking planet – he needs comfort just like any other man.

“Yes, Skinner. It’s true.” You open your eyes lazily, just in time to see the look on his face and it takes you by surprise. It isn’t just revulsion you see in his eyes – there’s genuine pity. And more than that. There’s something else, something you haven’t seen in anyone’s eyes since you started on this hard path: respect. Walter Skinner is looking at you with respect. He doesn’t know the half of what you’ve given up for that orb in the sky out there. He doesn’t know about the sacrifices, and the hardship, and just how dirty you got your hands for the sake of your mission. He doesn’t understand what it’s been like to be hated and despised by people who don’t know you’ve been trying your hardest to keep them and their families and their entire world alive. Respect. Nothing else but that could bring tears to your eyes right now. Maybe that’s why they sent him here – to make you soft. After all these years, Alex Krycek’s going soft because someone placed a hand on his shoulder and treated him with respect. In the circumstances you have no choice – you move your face and bite down on his hand. Hard.

“Christ!” He pulls back, the blood streaming down his wrist, much to your relief. “Krycek, what the hell was that for?” He demands angrily.

“I thought you might be the bounty hunter, wearing Skinner’s face, sent to trap me, but they don’t bleed right when you break the surface of the skin,” you murmur. “The blood doesn’t run you see. It just needs to give the appearance of warmth and pinkness to the skin – so it’s stagnant. When you bite them it doesn’t flow like that. It’s kind of…congealed. Trust me, I tried it a few times when that bastard was interrogating me. He soon learned to keep out of my way. So, it would seem that you’re real, Skinner.”

“Yes, boy. I’m the real thing,” he growls, getting his handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapping it tightly around his hand to stem the flow of blood. “So, what do we do now?” He glances around the cell helplessly. He’s a big man, and one used to action. He’s finding it hard to face up to the fact that he’s stranded hundreds of miles above the surface of his planet, locked away in an empty padded cell with a man he killed just a few short weeks ago.

“Do? What the hell is there to do?” You raise an eyebrow, and throw back at him the words you’ve wanted to say to him for a very long time. “We just think warm thoughts.”

*****

Impasse. He moves away, as far away from you as possible in this large white cell, and sits, slumped against the wall opposite you, while you drift in and out of consciousness, half watching him, half lost in your own thoughts. The bruise on his jaw subtly changes colour, from dark red to purple. Time is fairly meaningless in a place where there is no day and night but some considerable time must pass in this way. Finally, he moves.

“Do they bring us food or water?” He asks, moistening his cracked lips with his tongue. You wake from your hazy slumber and smile.

“Sometimes. If they remember. Mostly they don’t bother. They don’t much care if we die of starvation or thirst anyway as they can always just sling us in the tank and bring us back to life.” You shrug, then grimace as the movement sends shockwaves through your hands.

“What about…” He glances around the cell. “Isn’t there anyplace to piss?” He asks.

You laugh out loud, but the dour and ironic sound you were aiming for just comes over as deranged and manic. You wonder how you must look, lying here naked, sans fingers, unshaven, un-dead, unbroken, and utterly without hope. His dark eyes reflect his concern but he hasn’t seen anything yet. He doesn’t know how bad it can be. He doesn’t have a clue about any of this. Poor bastard.

“No, Walter,” you say softly, relenting, taking pity on him. “There’s nowhere. You can use a corner of the cell. It has some kind of renewable lining. When it starts to stink too much they just replace it. Don’t ask me how – I haven’t seen it. They usually work on it while I’m in the tank.”

He nods, brusquely, and, sitting forward, wraps his arms around his knees. He’s a big man and the action is strange – ungainly. You can’t imagine him ever normally sitting on the floor like this. He’s usually so in control , so private, so immaculately dressed, but that’s just a veneer. It’s the civilised veneer that our human society affords him but it isn’t the real man. You suddenly realise that you don’t know the real man underneath at all and that, for some reason, makes you wonder what Vietnam was like. A man such as this has been used to the privations and discomforts of war. Nothing, though, could possibly have prepared him for this.

“What happens next?” he asks, still watching you as if he could find the answers he seeks in your face, or ruined hands.

“I have no idea,” you shrug.

More silence. You know that time has passed because the bruise on his face has turned a shade of dull blue now. There’s a small pool of urine in the far corner of the cell so you guess that at some point he got up and relieved himself there, but you don’t remember him moving. He’s still sitting with his back against the wall in that same place, marking it out as his territory as human’s tend to. You’ve noticed that – the way people always sit in the same chair in meetings, even though it’s irrelevant where they sit. You wonder if your captors are even aware of these small nuances of homo-sapiens’ behaviour. These things that make us human. These little things…

“Christ!” His exclamation rouses you some time later. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” He asks, seemingly outraged by something. Glancing down you see the small river of yellow fluid seeping out between your legs.

“What the fuck does it matter to you?” You growl, and turn your face back to the wall.

“Lying in your own filth – doesn’t that bother you?” He asks and you laugh.

“Skinner, I’m dead,” you explain patiently. “I’ve died more times than I have fingers to count on – no wait, that’s not saying much now is it?” You hold up your stumps and laugh at him some more. “So no, it doesn’t bother me. Why would it bother me? I’m a corpse. It doesn’t matter.”

He stands and stretches out that large frame as much as he can. The cell has a low ceiling – our captors are long rather than tall, and he can’t quite stand to his full height.

“You’re still human,” he says, in a low tone. “That matters, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?” He moves across the cell slowly, and you can see that he’s limping so they obviously hurt him more during capture than was originally obvious. He stands over you, an expression of pity warring with disgust in those dark brown eyes as he glowers down at you. He seems to be having some kind of internal discussion with himself, which is finally resolved when, with a sigh, he crouches down in front of you. “You should have said if you needed some help,” he offers, softly.

“Help? From you? Forgive me but I seem to remember that you were the first person to kill me, if not the last,” you murmur.

There’s a vein that pulses in the side of his neck, and his jaw has the most peculiar ability to shift and lock into place, betraying his emotions.

“I have just one word to say in answer to that charge,” he hisses in a low tone. “Nanobots.”

Ah. That word. You smile, almost lazily, aware that it will enrage him – and it does. That jaw shifts sideways again, and clenches hard. Then he does a surprising thing. He reaches down, puts his hands under your arms, and lifts you. You complain about being moved, about the pain in your hands, but he doesn’t listen. He drags you out of the pool of urine you were sitting in, and dumps you further away, your back to the cell wall once more. But he still isn’t finished with you. He tears a strip off his already torn shirt, then crouches down and cleans you up as best he can. It feels strange to be touched so gently after all the many days of torture and you flinch away from him. The shock and pity register in his eyes but he says nothing, just continues his self-appointed task, and then sits down on the padded white floor, closer to you now, close enough that you have no choice but to look at him.

“Why, Alex?” He asks softly.

“Why what?” Your head lolls back and you long for the hazy indifference of sleep once more.

“Why poison me with the nanobots? If you are what you say you are, why didn’t you just come to me and explain?”

His tone is gentle, soft and reasonable, but that’s a deception that hides pure cold, angry steel. He hates you – and he has every good reason to do so. You cannot hate him for that, or for the consequences of that. You fucked with his mind and you paid what should have been the ultimate price. If only it had been the ultimate price.

“Would you have believed me?” You ask, head flung back, tone so weary it surprises even you. You once would have welcomed the trust of a man such as this, but your years with the Consortium, before you understood the full breadth of the truth, mean that he can see you as nothing but an enemy, and you don’t begrudge him that.

“I don’t know…but to poison me, to coerce me, to force me, against my will…” His voice is rising in tone. “And what’s worse, to have every appearance of enjoying it,” he spits. “Explain that, Alex.”

“Enjoying it?” You sit up, a little surprised. “Now that you mention it…maybe I did. Maybe I’ve come that far,” you muse out loud. “I never said I was any kind of fucking saint, Skinner. I had an objective and I used you to get it. I never even thought about enjoying it, but yes, you’re right. I did enjoy it. It was a little power, and I revelled in it. So much of this shit has been beyond my control, from the moment I was born. For once I could be the one pulling someone else’s strings, instead of having my own pulled. Yes, Skinner – I enjoyed it. I enjoyed watching you writhe as I pressed those buttons. I enjoyed making you smart with hurt pride every time I asked you to do something you didn’t want to do. Oh yes. I did enjoy it. Very much.”

You gaze at him, expectantly, not entirely sure what you’re hoping for. His anger maybe? His fists? The sound of a good old-fashioned punch, human flesh landing violently on human flesh – anything that isn’t that dark room with its stone torture bench and the rasp, rasp, rasp of alien mandibles rubbing together.

He inclines his head and this causes the overhead lights to flicker in his dark eyes and for a moment you see yourself reflected in his irises. You look like a piece of meat, an animal – this is how he must be seeing you, and this is all that you are. Maybe it’s all you’ve ever been to him. A worthless animal that took pleasure from his pain because of some sadistic human instinct that enjoys having power over others. Disgusting maybe, but the right to be a sadistic human bastard is one you’re fighting for, along with a pantheon of other, more edifying human attributes, such as the right to love, and nurture, and protect.

“That, at least, is honest,” he growls and it’s only then you realise that he hasn’t raised his hand to hit you. Instead he seems to accept what you’ve said calmly, as if this admission is one he can live with. Is it one you can live with though? You never saw yourself through another’s eyes as clearly as in this moment in time. From birth you’ve been trained to transcend your human limitations; to lie, cheat, steal and kill for your mission, to treat the people you’re trying to save as less than yourself, lesser beings to be pitied, protected, patronised and sacrificed as need be – and of course, genetically speaking you aren’t even fully human anyway. Does his humanity shame you? Lying here, now, watching him, so shiny and pink and warm, he seems to be everything you never were and could never aspire to be. Ironic, isn’t it? You’ve fought all your life to save humanity from destruction but you don’t even know what it is to be human.

Wearily, you turn your face away from the reflection of yourself in his eyes. You don’t recognise that person. You don’t even have any idea what species he belongs to. Humans prefer their heroes clean and pure; they don’t want murky excuses for a hero, such as you’ve become, and yet you’re all they’ve got, and right now you’re all that’s standing between that tiny orb out there and certain annihilation. Ironic, isn’t it?

When they come for you again, a little while later, you scream like the animal you are as they drag you away. He tries to intervene for some reason you don’t understand. What can your fate matter to him? He’s killed you once, after all, but you suppose that the battle against an outside enemy makes friends of us all, whatever our colour or creed. He doesn’t succeed, of course. He never stood a chance. Razor sharp mandibles slice through his skin, flaying great gouging lines of red across his chest and ripping long horizontal slits through his shirt until, defeated, he falls back and watches as they drag you away, feet first, your fingerless hands trailing on the floor over your head, and the last thing you notice before the door closes is the look of defeat and guilt in his eyes…and it takes you quite a while to figure out that he’s actually upset that he couldn’t save you.

Then you’re too busy screaming as they strap you down and start in where they left off and before very long you’re dead again.

*****

New born. Shiny. The first breath hurts – the gunk is still in your lungs and you feel smothered. Then you’re deposited face first on the floor and that knocks the stuff out of your body. You get up on all fours and retch the last of it up, reminded of a silo, a long time ago, and sleek black oil leaving your body from every orifice – and that’s every orifice, like having a bad dose of the runs as well as a streaming cold and being violently sick at the same time. This isn’t as bad as that and only lasts for a few moments. Then the stuff, whatever it is, is drying on your body in little dark green rivulets, and you’re gazing down at your newly formed hands. They look just like the last ones, just like the first ones – only minus the battle scars of everyday life. That burn on your left palm, legacy of a childhood accident is still missing and you find, bizarrely, that you long to see it again. The nails are all even and regular and clean, the skin beneath them pinkly perfect and so soft. Your hands, the real ones, were never like this. They were harder, slightly calloused in places. These aren’t your hands, this isn’t your body – this isn’t even your life. It’s a life you have no right to, a life you don’t even want. The death Skinner dealt you, a week or a month or however long ago it was, is one you welcomed. With it came the knowledge that all the burdens were on somebody else’s shoulders now. You’d done your bit, played your part, and departed this life, shot through the head like a rabid dog put out of its misery by a bullet from a kindly gun. What is it the military call it when they shoot down one of their own? Friendly fire? Yes, friendly fire. Skinner might not have intended it that way but that’s what it was. Friendly. A way out. And then these bastards brought you back to life. You’re not even aware that you’re crying until they wrap their tentacles around your arms and drag you off back to the cell.

Skinner. You’d forgotten about him. How many hours have passed? The bruise on his face is a myriad of yellow hued tones now, so you guess it’s been awhile. He looks like shit. There’s blood all over his shirt, which is torn to shreds, and he has the makings of a promising beard.

He stares at you for a moment, the shock registering in his eyes as his gaze lingers on your newborn fingers, and your soft, pink, unblemished, beardless skin. Yes, you’d told him this would happen, but seeing it is different.

“How long was I gone?” You ask, enjoying the fact that you’re no longer the weak, crippled one in this room. Now your head is clear and your body is humming with life. Now you can meet him on equal terms – or better than equal, because he’s still dirty, bruised and hungry.

“I don’t know. I have no way of measuring time.” He shrugs, and points to the cracked watch on his wrist. “Quite a while. Why?”

“I just wondered…I wondered how long the resurrection takes – how long I’m dead for.” You shrug.

“Does it hurt?” He gets up, slowly, his entire body almost creaking and now you can see how cracked his lips are. It isn’t the hunger that’s debilitating him – it’s the thirst. You know that thirst all too well, and feel a wave of unexpected empathy for him. The resurrection tank at least takes that craving for water away. You’re reborn in perfect condition and it’ll be several hours before the thirst kicks in.

“Being reborn? No. Not really. You’re not even aware of it until they dump you on the floor with all this gunk coming out of your ears. You gesture at a tiny piece of dried green on your chest but most of the rest has disappeared miraculously into your skin, leaving you looking absurdly clean. He’s fascinated, and repulsed at the same time – you can see it in his eyes. You’re surprised when he reaches for your hand and examines the new fingers minutely.

“Looking for a seam?” You joke, uncomfortable with his touch, not because you don’t like it but because you like it too much. Back on Earth you never allowed anyone to get close enough to touch you. Even sex was violently done, an explosive coupling for the sake of relieving a need rather than for comfort, company, or even love. You can still remember the way Marita tasted, the faint tang of her blood on your tongue from where you’d bitten her lip, how the sex with her was hard and almost vicious. There was never anyone who just touched you, nobody who ever held you, or stroked your hair. Not even when you were a child – the Consortium bred experiments, not little boys. You never had a mother to love you and you never missed human contact – until now.

“Something like that.” He shrugs, and, finding nothing, he releases your hand and you fight down an absurd wave of disappointment. “So, what happens next?” He asks, and as if on cue the door opens again and you start screaming and cursing even before those sharp tentacles wrap themselves around your body.

“Christ, can’t you at least give me an hour? One fucking, lousy hour to enjoy being whole again!” You yell, twisting and turning in pointless, fruitless struggle. As they drag you out of the room, you’re not entirely surprised to see that they have him too, wrapped up tight in their stinking, slimy talons, and he’s fighting as hard as you are only with less noise – good old Skinner; he always was the strong, silent type.

So it’s back down into the bowels of the ship, on this journey you know only too well. It takes on a nightmarish aspect – only you know this is one nightmare you can never wake up from. The lighting in the ship is low, the ship’s walls a dark reddish brown, made of some kind of organic substance that beats and throbs like a living entity. Then you’re in the interrogation room again, and they sling you down on the stone slab and start strapping you in place, ready for a new day of torture. Out of the corner of your eye you can see Skinner – they thrust him against the wall and tie him there with some kind of manacles that wrap around his chest and hold him fast. He looks at you because you’ve been here before and understand it all better, and you just stare back because you have no words of reassurance to give him, and anyway, you have no idea what they’re intending to do.

The bounty hunter enters the room, stops for a moment to look at Skinner, and then gives that nasty, ghoulish grin that you’ve come to hate so much. He says nothing though – he’s always been a man of few words and most of those are direct interpretations for his masters. He comes over to you and smiles, and then you hear the sound of a motor, or a drill…and, looking down, you see the revolving blade buzzing towards your chest.

“No…Christ, no…” You pant, twisting as much as you can to avoid it as it begins its slow journey towards your beautiful, delicate, pink new skin.

“So…the questions remain the same. Tell them what they wish to know,” the bounty hunter says, glancing at Skinner and then back at you. “Or, if you will not, maybe this one will?”

“He doesn’t fucking know anything!” you scream and the bounty hunter shifts form and relays this information to the aliens who are inhabiting the shadows down the entire side of the room, like huge preying mantises, mandibles rubbing together, jaws slick with foul smelling saliva. You can see Skinner watching it all, paling visibly when the bounty hunter changes form, his jaws clamped together so hard that they look as if they could crack from the pressure. The bounty hunter changes back into human form, and you realise that they don’t believe you and they’re going to torture you just to find out whether it’s the truth or not. The next thing you know your chest is being cut open and the blood is spraying out onto your face and neck, turning the whole world red.

At some point there’s a pause in the proceedings, and, half-conscious, you turn your head and gaze blearily at Skinner. He’s deathly pale, but it’s those dark brown eyes of his that haunt you. They’re so strong, so full of purpose, so encouraging. It’s almost as if he’s physically reaching out to you from across the room, reminding you that he’s here, sharing your agony, and trying to give you the strength to deal with it. From somewhere, the realisation kicks in that he’s staying strong so that you don’t have to deal with him falling apart on top of all that you’re suffering and for some reason that just makes everything worse. You lay your head back with on the table with a thud and try to ignore the dull, throbbing pain in your chest.

Next they attach some kind of hook into your cheeks, pulling the flesh so tight that you feel sure it’s about to be ripped from your skull and you wish that whatever is going to happen will happen quickly, so that you can have the blessed if only momentary relief of death, or unconsciousness. The pressure on your cheeks forces your mouth open and then you’re in the middle of some kind of surreal orthodontic nightmare as the sound of a drill starts up and a shiny silver implement is inserted into your mouth and begins shaving away at your teeth. You can’t even scream properly now, can’t do anything but whimper and shudder as the torture continues.

More questions, but you barely hear them. You hear Skinner talking, urgently, insisting that he knows nothing, begging them to stop this torture, telling them that it’s for nothing, that he barely knows you, and you sure as hell aren’t his friend…for some reason that makes you feel cold inside and after that you block out all sounds and disappear into some hazy world of your own, where you can feel, see, and hear nothing at all.

Continued in Chapter 2