MISPRISION

Misprision: (pronounced, miss-prizz-ee-on); adjective; Middle English, a mistake, misdirection or a misunderstanding, deliberate concealment or deflection in the release of information - from Old French 'mesprendre' to mistake, ... was still in common usage in 16th century England.

Chapter Five

Skinner awoke to find his head much clearer and the pain dulled to bearable proportions. Sitting up he glanced over at his desk and was slightly taken aback to see John Doggett asleep in his chair, head cushioned on the desk by his suit jacket, tie undone. Checking his watch he saw it was almost 5 am. Standing carefully he went to the bathroom, washed his face and cleaned his teeth before venturing back out into his office to retrieve the coffee pot. Filling it, he returned to the office and set the machine going then he turned back to look at Doggett.

It appeared that Doggett was still sleeping and Skinner was reluctant to wake him, but the sense of urgency he felt with regard to Spender's cryptic message spurred him on. Gently he placed a hand on Doggett's shoulder. Doggett opened his eyes instantly and gazed at him blearily for about half a second before sitting up and stretching his arms up behind his head. Skinner heard his spine popping and winced in sympathy.

"Coffee's ready when you are," he said, "there's soap in the bathroom along with all the other necessities."

Doggett nodded his thanks and went to freshen up. When he came back Skinner had poured their coffee and was sipping his appreciatively. Doggett took the other cup and swallowed at least half of it before he ventured to speak.

"I read through it all," he said, "and I must admit it all seems very thorough and all too believable."

"I know," Skinner said "The question now is, what do we do next?"

"Have you spoken to Mulder about any of this?" Doggett asked.

"No, there was no time yesterday and besides, he needed to be with Scully."

"What about now though?" Doggett said. "Reyes called me and told me everything is fine, Scully and the baby are both in good health and they were released from hospital immediately following their check-up."

"Mulder may still want to be with her, but I think I'd like his thoughts on this." Skinner said. "In the meantime I need to check in with Conrad."

Doggett nodded. "Sure, and while you do that I'll check in with Agent Reyes, see if she's up for some private sleuthing."

He pulled out his cell phone and began punching in the numbers whilst Skinner did the same.

Alex felt grateful that for once no one had turned off the lights. He'd always hated the dark. Dark to him always meant danger, pain and often hunger, ever since his early childhood. Since the silo in Dakota though, the dark had not just hidden danger, it had presaged it, even embodied it in his mind, as if the dark itself was a physical entity with inborn malice aimed directly at him.

He was also grateful that whatever it was Graaf had been giving him to induce muscular paralysis was now wearing off and seemingly almost gone from his system. This enabled him to flex his fingers and toes, open and close his mouth and eyes. He was irritated though, to note that return of sensation to his body was accompanied by severe pins and needles in his extremities. Whilst he was pleased to have regained some control over his body, he couldn't help worrying about what Spender and Graaf had in store for him next.

To him their earlier conversation had given little away, except that their damned experiments so far had yielded results greater than they had hoped for. He hadn't liked the glee they had exhibited when discussing his physical state. He gathered that what they had done had enhanced his body in a way that might in some way be beneficial to Spender, and this gave him grave cause for concern.

The other thing that worried him greatly was that he barely remembered the majority of time he'd spent here as a lab rat. Graaf had said that he'd been working on him for several weeks, yet he could clearly remember no more than five or six days of his captivity here. He fought the urge to scream in fear and frustration, to do so would be to give his captors greater satisfaction, he knew. No doubt they were filming his every move, recording it for posterity as was their usual habit.

He shuddered, remembering how - at Romberg's seventieth birthday celebrations - there had been a champagne reception. Music had been provided by a string quartet. All the consortium elders had been present as had several young men 'specially procured' for the occasion. One of the highlights of the evening had been the screening of some of Romberg's past 'triumphs' as well as some of his newer forays into 'medical research'. Alex clearly remembered the evening for two reasons.

Firstly, most of the newer films had been of him, though there were others. Since he had been working with the consortium Romberg had found it easier to secure new subjects for his 'tests' though more often than not Alex had been the favourite. Romberg had boasted that it was much simpler to get new test subjects now than it had ever been even when he was with the Third Reich. During the screenings of the films of his own tests Alex had been ordered to stay and watch, though to this day he had no idea how he'd forced himself to stay and do so without breaking out into a panic attack. Somehow he'd managed to do it without reverting to the hysterical behaviour he'd exhibited during the actual tests themselves. Everyone, it seemed, had thoroughly enjoyed his begging and pleading and terrified screams on film, shooting him amused glances when they could tear their eyes from the screen.

A casual observer might have thought that the assembled group was watching a Laurel and Hardy movie or a Tom and Jerry cartoon from their reactions and their laughter - even his own father had joined in with the general hilarity.

Secondly, and this was a much harder memory for him to deal with, he'd made his debut that night.

Much later Alex had learned of the very old practice of Southern Belles making their debut. It being a genteel way of introducing young ladies of marriageable age into polite society. Alex snorted. His 'debut' had been anything but genteel. he'd been so bloodied and bruised by the end of Romberg's party that he's spent the next several weeks in Romberg's own medical unit being patched up so that he would be serviceable again as soon as possible.

He'd been a virgin, though in theory he knew a great deal about the things that were required of him. Everything there was to know about sexual intercourse had been drummed into him, one painful lesson at a time. Nevertheless that had been his first physical experience of either men or women.

There had been a dozen men at the party and all of them had made use of his services in one way or another, showing their disapproval of any failure to please then on his part in the time honoured way. Hence the broken ribs, dislocated hips, fat lips, lost teeth, perforated ear drum, bruised kidneys and blackened eyes that affected his vision to the point he was barely able to see straight for a month. No his debut had been anything but genteel. He'd been thirteen years old.

Conrad looked up as Skinner and Agent Doggett entered the lab. He was as tall as Skinner, not quite as muscular though, with sandy coloured hair, a little sprinkled with grey. The hair was short, cropped, although not quite a buzz cut. His deep blue eyes conveyed a perplexed look as he frowned at them in greeting.

"I'm glad you came so quickly," he said, "frankly I fear that unless we move fast on securing the data from this autopsy it will never get finished and I wanted you to see for yourselves exactly what I mean."

He gestured to them to follow him into what he liked to call his 'inner sanctum' or his 'holy of holies'. It was rare that Conrad undertook autopsies these days. Something for which he thanked god on a daily basis. At first he'd thought his mind was playing tricks on him due to the lateness of the hour, or due to his lack of practice in autopsy work of late - that maybe that had caused him to make some mistake in the care of the cadaver and had somehow caused the enhanced decay he had noted. Though he had no idea what that might have been.

As he had progressed through the examination though he's begun to realise that nothing he could have done would have resulted in any of the effects he's seen on the internal organs as well as on the fleshy musculature or the skeletal frame of this man, if man he was.

He led them to the table in the centre of the room and raised the surgical green sheeting which covered the body. He looked at Doggett and Skinner.

"I'm sure you are used to grisly sights in your line of work gentlemen," he said, "but believe me this one is particularly gruesome and bizarre. If you need to leave at any time here please feel free to do so."

Skinner grunted an acknowledgement and Doggett merely raised his eyebrow expectantly at Conrad. Sighing, Conrad finally withdrew the sheet from the lifeless body. Skinner had to admit that even after the warning the sight that met his eyes was one of the most grisly that he had ever seen. The man he'd shot, he no longer allowed himself to think of him as Alex Krycek, had been young and vibrant - irritatingly so at times. He'd had youth, vigour and even a certain amount of beauty.

This 'thing' looked worse than any corpse of his acquaintance. He'd been prepared for the normal discolouration, the waxy yellow appearance usually observed in those no longer living. This body, however, still seemed to be oozing blood from the wounds his bullets had made and the autopsy incision. Not only that but the flesh appeared to be disintegrating. The body, it seemed, was decomposing at a remarkable rate, and yet the blood continued seeping - for all the world as if the heart was still beating.

"My God!" Skinner said hoarsely.

"Yeah!" Doggett agreed.

"I did warn you gentlemen." Conrad said looking earnestly at them both. "Walter, I told you last night that the internal organs showed signs of decay. At first I thought that this was due to hard living. Now, however, I 'm absolutely certain that everything here has been caused by attempted genetic recoding."

"Are you serious?" Skinner asked incredulously

"Couldn't be more serious if my life depended on it." Conrad replied.

Dr Borrachio," Doggett began, "are you familiar with a company named Zeus Genetics?"

Conrad screwed his face up in thought for a moment.

"I've heard of it," he replied, "they do work on IVF treatment and genetic coding for birth anomalies."

"That may have been one of the things they did." Doggett commented dryly and he went to outline the discoveries he and Mulder had made concerning Drs Lev and Pirenti and the things they had seen at the laboratories.

"Damn!" Conrad said, "now I remember. The facility was razed to the ground in an arson attack a few days ago. One of the chief researchers was presumed killed."

"Actually Conrad, both of the men responsible for policy and research at Zeus Genetics have been killed this week and all of their 'research samples' have been destroyed." Skinner said.

"Ok Walt," Conrad said, "you've been playing things pretty close to your chest. Suppose now you tell me exactly what you think is going on here?"

He replaced the sheet over the body on the table, but before he could complete the task Doggett grabbed a corner of the sheet to take another look.

"You know Sir, " he said to Skinner, "this reminds me of one of Mulder's files."

"Which one?" His boss asked interestedly.

"The Incanto case Sir, the guy who sucked the adipose fat from those women. I recall the file saying that the bodies suffered 'severe autolysis' in a very short period of time."

Skinner nodded, he recalled the case now.

"But that wouldn't explain things here," he said, "I mean this advanced decay seems to have been brought about by the bullet in his brain not - er, what was it Mulder called it? A fat sucking vampire?"

Conrad looked incredulously at the two men, then shook his head.

"I hope you aren't pulling my leg here gentlemen," he said, "but in any case Walt is right, This man still has all his fat tissue, though it is now degrading rapidly along with the rest of him, nevertheless he was pretty intact when you brought him to me."

"What about his arm?" Skinner asked.

"Ah yes, that's very odd." Conrad said.

"In what way? Doggett asked.

"Well it seems a curious thing to do to encase the lower part of a perfectly serviceable arm in a rigid plastic mould."

"Shit!" Skinner said, and pulled the sheet back again to look. Sure enough there was the so called prosthetic arm lying next to the body which had two perfectly normal whole upper limbs. Perfectly whole except that, like the wicked witch of the west, they seemed to be melting.

"Just another little mystery among many eh Walt?" Conrad said. "So why don't you tell me all about it?"

Whilst his voice clearly said 'don't bullshit me marine' his face showed a willingness to listen and to help where he could.

Looking at Doggett, Skinner sighed. He was tired of this mess and tired of being tired but they needed help and they needed it soon. Though he hated to get his friend in any deeper than he was already. He indicated that they should leave the corpse and go out into Conrad's office. The presence of the body of the man he'd shot made him feel uncomfortable.

When the three of them had found seats Conrad looked at Skinner, waiting. So much of what his friend and Agent Doggett had spoken of to date had seemed like a bad Sci-Fi movie. Somehow he doubted he was going to like the whole story any better. However, he owed Walt and he trusted him, so he listened at first in disbelief and then with growing anger as John Doggett and Walter Skinner laid out the Consortium's plan and their resulting actions for him.

end of chapter 5

Chapter Six

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