Title: Swords 4: Lightning Strikes  
Author: Batela  
Rating: R  
Summary: Alex has a new owner and Skinner gets a rude 
awakening.  
A/U: Part 4 in the Continuing saga of 'The 'Sword of Damocles' 
universe  
E-mail: batela@angelfire.com  
URL: http://www.angelfire.com/mb/wsjournal/index.html 
LIGHTNING STRIKES 
By Batela 
FBI Headquarters 
The X-Files office was burned; most of the files were gone. 
Mulder had stood staring at his office in shock. He didn´t even 
notice that Scully had put her arms around him and laid her 
head on his chest. Skinner noticed as he stood behind them, out 
of the way of the Firemen. He blamed himself for the mess, for 
trying to play both sides of the fence without even choosing a 
side to call home. 
New York 
"He did WHAT?!" Krycek yelled and jumped to his feet, 
stomping back and forth across the room, his arm flailing in the 
air all the while shouting obscenities. When he switched 
languages, the Elder sat back and sighed. Such an excitable 
young man, he mused. 
"He´s mine, do you hear me? MINE! When he becomes 
expendable I want him myself. Black-lunged bastard! How 
dared he?" Alex wasn´t sure if his boss even understood 
Russian but at the moment he didn´t care. All Alex knew was 
that he wanted the blood of a certain cigarette smoking old son 
of a bitch. 
"Alex." The younger man didn´t hear him; still raining Slavic 
curses down on old Smokey. 
"Alex, pay attention." The older man rapped on the desk. 
"What." Krycek said rudely. He slumped in a chair and kicked 
his booted feet up onto the desk. The Elder overlooked this little 
breach of etiquette. This time. 
"You are going back to Virginia." 
"Why." 
"Because I said so. I want you in a new position. Someone 
needs to reign in Mr. Skinner, he has started getting out of 
hand." Alex sat up and withdrew his boots. 
"In what way." 
"He is weakening toward Mr. Mulder´s cause. Get him back in 
line. I have the utmost faith in you, Alex, I´m sure that you can 
do it. In fact, you will be accompanying one of our deep 
operatives. You will take your orders from her until I say 
otherwise." Krycek growled. 
The Elder frowned at him. 
"Be nice, Alex. Don´t underestimate her just because she´s a 
woman." He pressed a button on his desk console and a 
moment later the door opened. The woman was about Alex´s 
age with long brown hair and a cold expression to match his 
own. She held out her hand to him. 
"Diana Fowley, Mr. Krycek. I believe we will be working 
together." 
Crystal City, Va 
3AM 
Skinner awoke abruptly to a hand shaking him. Familiar green 
eyes glittered at him in the moonlight and he breathed a sigh of 
relief. 
"Damn, what is it with you and late night excursions?" he 
complained, sitting up and turning on the light. 
"I thought I´d give you something to ponder as you went back to 
sleep." Alex said, leaning against the right side of the 
headboard. Skinner groaned and scrubbed at his face. Alex 
was a little too calm, his voice softer than usual. Skinner looked 
at him with concern. 
"Well, Walter, because of that little incident in Mulder´s office, 
Smokey is in the dog house for a while with the Head High 
Honchos. These past few weeks they have been laughing 
themselves silly over two little changes in the corporate 
structure, besides the new royal dog house, that is. First, they 
decided that I needed a new handler so they gave me to a 
woman, one of your own troops, I might add, one Ms. Fowley. 
No reason for me not to tell you, she´ll be informing you herself 
tomorrow. The other big joke is that since you´ve been getting 
out of hand, their words, even when Smokey was visiting, 
they´ve decided that you need a new handler, too. They thought 
it would be absolutely hysterical to give you to me." 
Skinner looked at him with growing horror. 
"You know what, Walter? I hate BABYSITTING!" Alex 
screamed at him, jumping to his feet, pacing again. He picked 
up a pillow and threw it at Walter. 
"What the fuck is wrong with you, Vlad? I´ve read Mulder´s 
reports, your signature is on them but obviously you either didn´t 
actually read them or you didn´t believe them. You are not a 
stupid person but I swear to you, sometime in the past 20 years 
you lost your balls." Skinner frowned, a thundercloud building. 
Krycek pointed a finger at him. 
"Can it. Whether you like it or not, I want you to actually survive 
that damned invasion so I am going to become your worst 
nightmare. What, you don´t believe in the little green men 
theory, do you? Gray men, whatever." He leaned at the end of 
the bed, bringing his face down to Skinner´s level. 
"I´d show them to you if I could. I know where the Facility is. 
This is your first piece of advice from your new owner; believe 
a few more of Mulder´s reports. If they were bullshit, do you 
really think that my bosses would be concerned about him?" 
"I won´t do it. I told you, Alex, I want out. I believe in Mulder´s 
cause and I will continue to help him. What the Elders are doing 
is wrong." Skinner said forcefully in a voice that sent seasoned 
agents running for cover. Krycek glared back at him. 
"You´re a boyscout, Vlad. I´ll tell you the same thing I told 
Mulder; get your head out of the sand. Yes, I agree that the 
Elders are not nice people, but there isn´t time to play with little 
white lab mice. Do you want to be exterminated or become a 
slave to a bunch of alien squatters? I don´t." He sat down on the 
edge of the bed. 
"I´ve read the reports, I´ve been in on meetings; hell, I´ve 
facilitated some of the meetings. There´s a lot of shit that´s 
going down in the near future. Long term tests are reaching their 
conclusions; things are about to get wild." 
Skinner stared at him, wondering what creature was sitting 
before him. 
"I didn´t raise you to be this person. You used to cry at the sight 
of a dead mouse or a cat in the road. Hell, Mulder said you 
practically fainted in Scully´s autopsy lab. How can you do this 
to me? To Mulder? What´s happened to you?" 
Krycek stood up and paced. 
"Mulder is safe, he´ll survive. That´s why Sam was taken; it´s in 
her file, read it yourself. She´s insurance for his life during 
Colonization. Another report you didn´t pay attention to. His 
actions need to be tempered, though; he´s like a bull in a china 
shop. He´s going to ruin everything and no one will survive, the 
human race will be destroyed. Mulder is his own worst enemy 
at the moment. Don´t you get it, Walter? 
"I want you to survive, too. You won´t if you don´t start paying 
attention. They will only be so lenient, I´m the last resort before 
they take you out." 
"You would kill me, Alexei?" Skinner asked softly. Alex turned 
his face away, swallowing hard. 
"They would have to kill both of us. Don´t push this, Vlad. If I 
have to beat the shit out of you just to keep you alive, I´ll do it. 
By following orders, you will keep you, me and Mulder alive." 
"And Scully?" 
"She´s safe. I can´t tell you those details, just... she´s safe. 
Besides, without her Mulder would have nothing else to live for, 
and They very much want him alive." He looked at Skinner. 
"They won´t take much more from him, either. He can 
investigate all the hauntings and sea monsters he wants to, but 
he needs to stay away from my side of the fence. They won´t 
kill him, but They will put him on ice. That´s why you need to put 
a leash on him." 
Skinner looked at him sadly. 
"You´ve chosen, Alex, did you hear what you said? 'My side of 
the fence´. There has to be better ways of going about all this; 
get it out into the open, let the public decide. We are living in a 
democracy, Alex, we are not cattle to be owned, pushed and 
prodded into whatever action our owners deem fit for us. I think 
that you have underestimated the intelligence of the human 
race and by not giving them a chance to decide their own fate, 
to determine their own futures, that alone consigns them to a 
slave pit with or without alien intervention. We choose our own 
chains, Alex, and we choose to break those chains. I´m 
choosing." 
Alex turned, his face getting red with anger. 
"So help me, if you don´t get that fucking idealistic crap out of 
your head, I´ll start beating you here and now even without 
orders to do so. Do you think for one moment that the Colonists 
will give a rat´s ass what you choose? Well, everyone, Walter 
here chooses not to help us, ok Walter you can go along your 
merry way. We understand. Bullshit, Walter!" Krycek yelled at 
him in frustration. 
"You´re asking me, no telling me, to betray Mulder and Scully; I 
can´t do that. I believe in their cause. I´ve worked too damn 
long and hard on gaining their trust just to flush it all away now. 
I´ve sacrificed my own morals and ethics to keep Scully alive; 
I´ve risked a hell of a lot to cover for them when they needed 
me to. I won´t throw away the past six years just to be 
someone´s puppet again. I refuse, Alex!" Skinner pounded the 
bed with his fists as he yelled back. Alex looked at him, 
breathing hard. 
"Just remember this. I´ve pulled back on orders as often as I 
could when it concerned you or the X-Files. I now have a new 
owner; I´m under observation by Queen Bitch herself. The 
Snow Queen. If she tells me to hurt you, and it´s the only way to 
keep you alive, I will hurt you. You don´t want her attentions; 
I´m a hell of a lot easier to deal with. You can growl and glare at 
me all you want to, go ahead and hate me because I tell you, 
moi brat, I don´t like myself much at the moment, either." He 
leaned over the bed again, putting his face close to Walter´s. 
"I will be Their creature in a effort of self-preservation. Get with 
the program, because it´s tough love time, baby." 
Alex turned and left. 
Skinner pounded on the bed in frustration. Bastards! He had no 
doubt that Alex wouldn´t do Their bidding, he was well trained 
and he believed in Their cause. Mulder thought he was blind to 
what Alex had become; he wasn´t, he knew that Alex could and 
was quite frequently a cold vicious snake, or Rat; a play on his 
name. Krycek was Czech for rat. 
The past few months were wonderful with Alex; he was almost 
his normal self. Playful, affectionate, passionate about 
everything. Walter had his baby brother back for a while. God, 
what he wouldn´t give to turn the clock back 20 years and start 
over again, making the necessary changes. Now with a new 
handler on his leash, Alex didn´t have much choice; play the 
game or sacrifice his place on the board. Alex was wrong, 
Walter had heard every word he said, he paid close attention to 
Mulder´s reports, most of them anyway. He could have done 
without the vampires and lake monsters. 
Skinner knew about Diana Fowley, more than what Mulder 
would be comfortable with. He wondered if Alex knew. Scully 
obviously didn´t, Mulder is still in one piece. She´d kick his ass if 
she ever found out that Mulder wore Diana´s ring for a brief 
period. 
Yes, with Diana at the reigns, Alex was going to be jumping 
through hoops. Diana was the coldest of Smokey´s pets; 
Skinner was quite aware that he was in trouble if he didn´t 
immediately get in line. 
He picked up the phone. 
"Get Fowley and Krycek off my back." He demanded when it 
was answered. 
"Really? Diana and Alex? My my, you must have been a very 
naughty boy, Mr. Skinner." Came the dry chuckle and the 
sound of a cigarette being inhaled. 
"I´m sorry, however, there´s nothing I can do to help you. 
They´re under orders from even higher up than I. My advise to 
you would be to behave. Diana can be very creative." The old 
bastard actually hung up on him before he could protest. He 
threw the phone across the room. 
Krycek pounded the wheel of his car in frustration. Stubborn, 
pig-headed fool! The world was about to go down the drain and 
Walter wanted to play ostrich, thinks the Colonists will just pat 
him on his shiny dome and go along their merry way. Walter 
needed a reality check; he´s been behind a desk too long. The 
Queen Bitch played nasty games. 
His cell phone rang. 
"What." he snarled. 
"What did Skinner have to say?" SHIT! He must have missed a 
bug. 
"Don´t you have anything else to do at this hour than to bother 
me?" he asked waspishly. 
"Just answer the question, Alex." Diana insisted. 
"Yes, I talked to him and he refused." He felt his betrayal 
keenly, but dammit, Walter was wrong this time. Big brother did 
not always know what was best. 
"I see." 
"Listen, I´ve said it a hundred times before; Skinner responds 
best to a well laid out proposal not threats. Show him the 
evidence and he´ll fall into line." 
"Need to know. He doesn´t need to know, he needs to obey." 
Diana said with a chill. 
"Skinner isn´t the type to obey, he´s an alpha, you need to give 
him information so that he can lead." 
Diana chuckled. 
"Don´t try that pop-psychology with me, Alex. I thought he 
would resist, so I have some plans. He´s going to participate in 
an experiment. Don´t go near him until I tell you to, it´ll be a few 
weeks until the experiment is ready for a human subject. And, 
Alex; no dropping any warnings to him." she hung up. 
Alex felt a cold chill on his forehead. How much did she know 
about them? A few weeks, huh? It gave him some time to 
gather ammo. First thing, though, he needed to switch cars, get 
some new clothes and a new cell phone. 
Allentown, Pa. 
The next afternoon, Krycek drove up to the Lombard Research 
Facility. He made his way into the main lab and sat at a desk, 
kicking his feet up before anyone was even aware that he was 
there. Finally, one of the red-headed clones noticed him. 
"Who are you? How did you get in here?" he asked. The others 
turned and looked. 
"I know who that is," one of them said. "Krycek." The others 
obviously knew his name. 
"Very good, boys, now I won´t need to introduce myself. We´re 
going to do a little business, boys. Just answer my questions 
and we´ll all get along just fine." 
Two days later 
Alex looked at the little palm pilot and moved the pen 
experimentally, watching the simulation on the computer 
respond to the commands. He looked at the woman next to 
him. 
"You know, Diana, even I´m not twisted enough to be 
comfortable with this." Alex was feeling sick. It took a lot to 
make him sick these days. 
"Your comfort level is not my concern. Just do it; and 
remember. I´ll be watching, monitoring his reactions." 
"I know Skinner better than you do. In the long run, you´re going 
to regret this." 
Diana frowned at him. 
"I´m getting tired of arguing with you, Alex. Anymore and I´ll try 
out the next phase on you. Just follow your orders." She turned 
to leave, her hair nearly slapping him in the face. 
"Fucking bitch." He muttered in Russian. 
"I speak Russian." She called back to him in that language. 
That night at Alex´s apartment. 
Krycek answered the door to find a young teenage boy standing 
nervously outside. 
"Comrade Alexei?" he whispered. Krycek nodded. The boy 
handed him a thick package and ran off. Alex opened the 
documents he had requested and sat down for a long read. 
By morning, his blood was running cold, chilling him to the bone. 
Oh my God, he thought. Mulder. 
Alex knew what he had to do. Walter was going to hate him, 
possible dis-own him, but the stakes were too high to consider 
beginning another course of action. He took out some blank 
paper from the cupboard and wrote out three letters, one each 
to Walter, Mulder and Scully. He would leave the letters and the 
documents someplace safe, to be delivered in one year´s time. 
He needed to explain, just in case he didn´t make it. 
"Dear Vlad, 
It has been a year since I sat down to write this. Just days 
before I reluctantly leashed you and broke both our hearts. 
What I have done over the course of that year, ultimately I will 
have done for you. I will have hurt you, both physically and 
emotionally. I don´t want to, but I know you, you will give me no 
choice. You´re so stubborn. 
By now you will have been shown the Truth and I hope you will 
be able to forgive me. 
It began like this........." 
End of part 4. 
Coming soon- "Swords 5: The Bough Breaks"