PART 8-C
Narrative

Attempting to access the vaccine

I thought about it later--going to Mulder, figuring out if there was some way he could help us out, because I had the feeling that this time he might actually do it.  But what we really needed was the vaccine in Cali, and there was no way Mulder could get that for us.  The group might get lucky and cure Marita and we'd get the code from her, but realistically it was a long shot.  We needed some kind of Plan B.  I thought of trying to place someone on the inside at FarmaCol who could release the stored vaccine to us, but that would be a one-shot deal; once the stuff disappeared, Arizábal would tighten his security.  Doing away with Arizábal wasn't an option; he was coordinating the entire production process.  If we could slip a scientist in, or bring somebody already there into the fold, we could get the formula and start again somewhere else.  But that would be like reinventing the wheel; it would take months and months.  The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that getting someone who could release the already-produced vaccine to us was my best option in the short term, even if it only meant getting our hands on 12,000 doses.  Make that 24,000 by the time I had somebody in place.

Naturally, the Brit was on board with my plan; he was as eager as I was to access the vaccine.  Miguel Ansbach seemed a little reluctant, though, or maybe just overwhelmed, given everything that had happened.  Added to his concerns about the distribution program, he'd just started a risky cold-based course of treatment on Marita, hoping, pretty much as a last resort, to try to kill the temperature-sensitive Oil without killing her in the process.

And me, I was going to be walking on eggshells.  I needed Ansbach's cooperation, but he wasn't ever going to believe Marita'd up and turned on me for no reason, and I was going to have to live with the fallout from that.  He was frantic to cure her not only because she had the code, but because she was like family to him--at least in his eyes.  And much as I would have liked to wipe Marita and everything that had passed between us out of my mind, it wasn't going to happen because I'd be hearing about every effort they made with her, every little change in her condition.  I'd just have to suck it up and do what I had to. 

So I spent a lot of time putting out feelers, looking for infiltration candidates, following up leads, setting up little tests to see if people were trustworthy, checking backgrounds.  Did I mention that they either had to be Columbian or able to pass as a native of the region?  Needle in a haystack, but at least it kept me busy.  It kept me from thinking too much about my situation, or the possibility of imminent alien invasion, or the Brit's little digs.  The honeymoon, such as it had been, was over, his bitterness over what I'd done to Charne-Sayer back close to the surface.  He wanted me to know I was getting my due for what I'd done.  His insinuations were wrapped up in that genteel exterior of his, but they were there all the same, little razor blades waiting to slit the skin.  I kept reminding myself not to get distracted, just to keep my eye on the goal, the way you pour your focus into pinning the crosshairs to a target at a hundred yards.

About two weeks after I'd started searching for potential infiltrators for FarmaCol, Ansbach scored his big victory.  The entity that had been pooled inside Marita expelled itself, finally dead.  For a week or so it was touch and go, but ultimately Marita stabilized and finally regained consciousness.  If we could get the access code out of her, I could drop this project I had going, but she wasn't coherent enough to talk, and who knew whether what she'd been through would have caused any kind of brain damage.  It would take time before we'd know anything. 

When I went looking for Ansbach a day or two later, I found out he'd taken off for a well-deserved break and flown home to Peru for a few days.  But the next time I saw him, he seemed as haggard as before.  They were waiting for Marita to regain a little more strength and coherency before they tried to get the information out of her, he said.  In the meantime he'd thrown himself into working on the topical vaccine in his off-hours.  I should have suspected something, but I took him at his word.

I didn't see too much of the Brit for a while, either, which was okay by me.  The group was busy with their hybrid project, probably showing off their hard work to the Colonists and kissing ass to highlight their loyalty in the face of the recent Rebel attack.  I kept working away at my little project.  I had three potential candidates and needed to narrow it down to two. 

Three weeks later, the Brit and I got together.  He'd just come from Fort Marlene and he wasn't happy.  He'd talked with Marita the day before to find out what she knew, but she'd seemed to only vaguely recognize him.  Evidently she was coherent enough to cover herself, though, because later he found out that earlier in the day she'd told a couple of visiting elders she'd taken the boy to keep me from manipulating the group.  Good old loyal Marita: anything for the organization.  Well, as far as they knew.  So the Brit had gone back and had Miguel inject her with something designed to elicit a little more unfiltered information, but he didn't find out anything new.  And no access code.  It was a letdown, but what wasn't these days?  I shrugged my shoulders and went back to work.

By this time I had a guy I was pretty sure would fit my requirements for the FarmaCol job.  But halfway through going over the final details of his assignment, the guy disappeared.  I waited a few days, hoping he'd surface, but eventually I had to track him down.  What I found was a room he'd rented, but it was pretty obvious he'd cleared out with no intent of returning.  All I found was a T-shirt I'd seen him wear a couple of times hanging in the back of the closet.

Like a sucker punch, I hadn't seen it coming.  At all.  I went over and over our meetings in my head, looking for clues, but I couldn't pull up a single red flag.  The more I wracked my brains over it, the more I just wanted to shoot something.  Actually, I did go to an indoor range that afternoon, and I put one hell of a lot of lead through a half-dozen targets.  Shooting can be great stress relief, but this time it didn't help the way I'd hoped it would.  But then there was no way it was going to change the hard facts: I was back to square one, a couple of months completely wasted, the vaccine still locked away.  Marita'd survived, but if she had the access code in her, she wasn't giving it up.  And who knew what the damn Rebels were up to?  We were at a standstill, if not actually moving backward, and in the meantime the clock to colonization hadn't stopped and waited for us to catch up.  It was ticking down just as fast as ever.

I went to report to the Brit only to discover that he was out of town.  He never went anywhere without telling me--or at least checking in to give me one of those steely-eyed gazes and let me know I'd better keep myself in line while he was away.  I should have realized then that something was up, but my mind was hung up on my MIA operative, on what I'd like to do to him, and on scrambling to make up for lost time.

In a crazy stroke of luck, within a few days I stumbled across somebody a lot better suited for the job. I put Fernando Cisneros through a lot more than I had the first guy, but in the end I felt pretty confident about him.  Eventually we flew to Cali, spent some time snooping around and finding out who worked in the warehouse.  Got buddy buddy with our target and offered him a whole lot more money than he'd ever seen before to tell his employers he'd had a sudden family emergency and desperately needed a couple of weeks off, but that he knew of someone capable who could fill in for him while he was away.  Fernando was gone for a good half hour talking with their HR people; I figured he was in for sure.  And he almost made it.  But when they went to have Arizábal sign off on him, all of a sudden they decided they could get by with the personnel they already had.

I wanted to put my fist through something, probably Arizábal's face, and squeeze him until he agreed to hand over the goddamn vaccine, but I knew that even if I succeeded, he'd alert the authorities and we'd never make it out of the country with the stuff.  Worse, the vaccine and our program would be exposed, and that was something we absolutely couldn't afford.  Getting to Arizábal would mean tracking down his family, knowing exactly who to threaten and how.  It would take time and careful prep work.  I retrieved Cisneros and headed back to New York. 

But if I thought I'd hit bottom, I was in for a big surprise.  While I'd been away, something had come up that nobody could have foreseen.

End
 

Author: bardsmaid
Archive: only complete, and please let me know where it is
Spoilers: through Patient X/RatB
Rating: worksafe, some sharp language
Summary: Krycek works at finding a way to access the secret vaccine, but things don't go as planned.
Disclaimer: The X-Files characters are the property of Chris Carter and 1013 Productions, but the real spirit of Alex Krycek belongs to Nicholas Lea, who brought him to such vivid, nuanced life.
 

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