Refraction, a Homicide : Life on the Street, X Files, The Sentinel crossover by Glacis. Rated NC17 for violence, adult and homoerotic themes. No copyright infringement intended on any of the aforementioned television shows. Includes spoilers for the season opener for Homicide; set before the events of Sentinel Too; set before the X Files episode that ended the 1997-98 season. Follows the events of my Sentinel stories Distortion (here)and Reflection (here) and refers to events in my Sentinel/Homicide crossover Catalyst (here), but can stand alone if necessary.

Genetics, training and instincts gave him an edge. From the Pacific coast to the Atlantic, he ran, underground when he could, in plain sight when he had to, never stopping long enough to be seen. He put his future behind him and, in a final attempt to find a plan that would work, he headed into his past.

Lee Brackett would never consider himself a desperate man. But since Plan A and Plan B had both been spectacular disasters, and Plan C hadn't the hope of a snowball in hell of panning out, he was forced to reconsider. He was a Sentinel. He needed a Guide. He was a loner by choice who had to rely on a partner for his life, and the partner he had chosen had escaped from him. Twice. A third time was not feasible. One could not improvise a melody on the same tune forever. And his repertoire was nearly exhausted.

As was he.

He'd healed from the injuries Detective Ellison had dealt him in the final fight for control of Blair Sandburg. Brackett wasn't used to losing. And he wasn't used to running out of options. At first he'd blamed Ellison. Then he'd blamed the federal agent who'd initially tripped him up. His field operations supervisor, his superiors at the CIA, hell, even his parents, for giving birth to a freak to start the whole merry-go-round off. But he couldn't change the past, and he couldn't kill people who were already dead. Which only left one direction to go.

Forward.

Starting with the one who was responsible for triggering this so-called gift. Maybe Doctor Rangely would be lucky, and would be able to tell him where to go to find another Guide. Surely he wasn't the only lab rat in the maze. Or maybe the doctor would be unlucky. If he couldn't help, it would take him much longer to die.

Nine days after leaving the mountains of southwestern Canada, he slipped into Washington D.C. After runs on lockers in an airport, bus station and train station, he had his stash, his weapons, and the beginnings of a plan.

Two nights later, he had his target.

"Hello, Doctor," he said quietly, one hand on the back of the dark man's neck, the other holding the Glock steadily at the center of the scientist's back. "Do you remember me?" A shaky, hesitant nod made him smile. "I thought you might. We're going to have a little conversation." The snub nose of the gun gently nudged the man forward past the living room toward the dining table. "You have information. You will give it to me. If you tell me quickly, I will kill you quickly. If you make the foolish choice to try to hold out on me, you will die slowly. I do hope, for your sake, that you live up to your reputation for brilliance and do the intelligent thing. But one way or another, you will give me my answers."

"What do you want?" The voice was calm, steady. Lee sighed. This was going to be a long night.

With a mental shrug, he forced the doctor down into a straight-backed chair and placed two fingers along his carotid artery. Pressing just long enough to give the man a taste of pain, he asked, "Who, besides Blair Sandburg, is qualified to be a Guide for a Sentinel?"

"Go fuck yourself, Brackett."

It set the stage for a very long night, indeed.

As morning was breaking through the kitchen window, Lee wiped the last of the surfaces clean of prints, and stared pensively at the remains of Arlen Rangely. He'd lasted longer than expected, considering the leisurely pace Lee had set. By the time Lee'd broken every small bone in his body and started in on the joints, he'd been delirious, but he hadn't actually lost consciousness until Lee had started to flay the skin carefully from his extremities. The vodka washed over the bared flesh had been an artistic touch. But it hadn't been enough. The scientist had died without revealing the identities of any other suspected Guides or Sentinel/Guide pairings. Brackett sighed again, washed the last specks of skin and blood off his Bowie knife, and stowed it carefully in his pack.

There were always other sources. And while revenge was too petty a reason to risk capture, he had to admit there had been a visceral satisfaction in revisiting a little of the agony he'd endured for eight months of solitary torture on the man who had masterminded it.

One down. Many to go. Perhaps in the frenzy Rangely's death would cause one of the man's colleagues would lead him to a substitute for Sandburg. And even if he didn't find a Guide … at least he would have some fun.

"Homicide." Tim Bayliss stared up at the white board as his mind automatically went through the motions of taking a new report. Not many names up in red, but then he hadn't been back in the squad long enough to have too many names in any color. He was 100% according to the docs, 100% according to Gee, and 100% flaky according to the rest of the murder police, who had taken to calling him Zen Detective. But dying would do that to a man.

So would losing his partner.

He forcibly yanked his mind away from Frank Pembleton's abrupt departure from his life a few months before. As soon as Frank knew he was going to make it, that the bullets he'd taken saving Frank's life weren't going to take Tim's own, he'd split. Not that Tim could blame him. He'd been doing some heavy soul searching of his own. Of course, the conclusion he'd reached, that he was a detective, and death and departing partners wouldn't change that one solid fact in the shifting landscape of his life, was the opposite of the one Frank had drawn. But, hey, that happened sometimes.

The voice on the other end of the line started talking about skinned broken bodies and his ears perked up. Disgusting. Back on full duties a week, and the first one he catches is dismembered, the second one skinned. What was Baltimore coming to these days?

"Munch," he called out, grabbing up his coat and heading out into the cold, "Come on." He ignored the cynical look he got. Munch was just sitting on his butt waxing philosophic about sex. They could both use the fresh air.

A short ride took them from the downtown hustle to a pocket of wealthy refuge, a renovated suburb within the city that breathed power over the cold streets. Bayliss stared at the darkened windows shutting out the reality around him, and muttered softly, "The night is my companion, and solitude my guide." Munch stared at him for a moment.

"Keats?"

"Sarah McLachlan. Anything strike you funny about this place?"

"Besides the ooze of untouchability and the affronted dignity that only the wealthy and powerful can have when touched by the hand of death?"

"Yeah, besides that."

Munch shrugged. "No, not really."

"It's quiet." Bayliss gestured around the street. "No nosy neighbors. No looky-lous. No bystanders. Nobody walking a dog. Nothing."

Munch looked up the street, down it, and back up at Bayliss. "So what?" Bayliss shrugged.

"Just struck me as weird, that's all." He couldn't explain it, but the back of his neck was itching. It was too quiet. Almost like the neighbors were afraid to look.

"Lately everything is striking you weird, Timmy. Let's go in before I freeze my balls off."

Bayliss shrugged, tried to throw off the feeling, and headed inside. Once he got past the uniform with the slightly green complexion and glassy eyes at the front door, he smelled it. "Shit." Blood. Lots and lots and lots of blood. He bit back the instinctive urge to throw up, sternly ordered his stomach back where it belonged, and headed further into the townhouse.

The corpse was tied to a dining room chair. The room itself, other than the copious amounts of crimson fluid that had seeped into the thick pile of the carpet until it squished under their shoes, was spotless. He licked his lips, trying to ease the dryness, and canvassed the crime site. The body was destroyed, all four limbs broken, all the fingers on both hands broken. The slacks had been cut away at the thighs, and the skin removed in strips from ankle to the jagged hemline, on both legs. The same had been done with the arms, shirt sleeves cut away at the biceps and forearms skinned in long, symmetrical strips. Deep cuts were carved through the fine linen shirt into the chest beneath. The man was drenched in blood. The face was completely untouched. The eyes were rolled back in the head and the lips were pulled back into a scream, but the tongue had been cut out, probably post mortem given the lack of blood pooled behind the lower jaw.

"Somebody went to town on him," Munch opined. No shit, Bayliss thought but didn't say. "Neat housekeeper, though." He gestured through to the kitchen, and Tim looked through the doorway. The counters, sink, and floor shined.

"Wiped down, betcha," he said quietly. "Whatever it was, it wasn't amateur night." He rolled rubber gloves over his hands and began the grisly task of searching the area directly around the corpse. "ID?" he asked the uniform still standing guard at the door.

"A guy name of Arlen Rangely, worked out of the Pentagon, some kinda scientist," the cop offered, trying not to look at the corpse. Bayliss sympathized. Not being able to ignore it, he tried his best not to bathe in the blood all around him and got on with his work.

Two days later, Rangely was in red under his name. The autopsy had listed cause of death as heart failure brought on by extreme trauma and exsanguination. Bayliss had gone home, changed his trousers, and tossed the old ones. That much blood even the best dry cleaners couldn't remove. The scene was swept so clean the lab guys hadn't been able to find a damned thing, and the quiet he'd noticed in the neighborhood extended to every aspect of the victim's life. No family. No friends. No known associates, at least none that he and Munch could shake from the tree. The man had been a cipher, or a true spook, walking through life without leaving any footprints. It had been a very frustrating forty eight hours.

An unexpected influx of suits headed into the Lieutenant's office made him sit up and take notice. Less than ten minutes of muted barking later, the door opened, and Gee waved at him. "Bayliss! Get in here!"

"What's up, Gee?" he asked, crossing the floor and staring curiously at the suits. They stared coolly back. The door shut firmly behind him, and he cocked his head at his boss.

"What's the status on the Rangely case, Detective Bayliss?"

Tim swallowed. Gee wasn't usually so formal, and the suits made him antsy. "No solid leads at this time, sir. No one saw anything, heard anything, and we haven't been able to dig anything up about his life to give us a motive. We've also run into a brick wall with his employers, sir -- nobody wants to talk, at all."

"That's where these … gentlemen come in," Giardello responded. Tim noticed the barely perceptible hesitation before the description and knew that the lieutenant wasn't happy with whatever was going down. He leaned forward, staring at the strangers. "This are Special Agents Morrison and Leavell. They will be taking over the Rangely case."

"But-" he started to protest before the shorter of the two suits interrupted.

"There are aspects of the case that impact national security, Detective," the man said smoothly. Bayliss opened his mouth again and the second one, a tall pudgy guy, stepped in. "Doctor Rangely was working on several projects that could have made him a target for assassination. We will pursue the investigation from this point."

"Turn over the file, Bayliss," the lieutenant said firmly. Tim looked at him. Gee looked back. Neither one of them had any choice. He thought for a moment of attempting one more time to protest, then weighed the possibility of the name ever turning black, given the total lack of clues and cooperation.

"Sure, guys," he acquiesced with false good humor. "Be my guest. Have fun." Stick it up your ass, he mumbled under his breath as he fetched the file. "And good luck. There's not a damned thing there to go on."

"I'm sure we'll do fine," Shorty replied with a nod. I'm sure you will, Tim thought, wondering just what it was they were hiding. He didn't trust the Feds, but his hands were tied on this one. He shrugged, looked over at the Sergeant erasing Rangely from his list, and shook his head.

Weird, from start to finish.

Settling deeper in his chair, ignoring the shadows in the basement office that held so much of his life, Special Agent Fox Mulder stared at a grainy, black and white photograph of a being that could be anything from a Sasquatch to a skier in a gorilla suit and wondered about the mysteries of the universe. Across the floor from him, at her own small desk, his partner muttered something about coagulants and venom under her breath and typed away at her computer.

Just another day in the bowels of the FBI, slogging away on the X Files.

Before he could come to any decisive conclusion about the furry blotch against the snow drift, his phone rang. "Mulder," he answered, happy to be distracted.

"How sharp you feeling, Spooky?"

He smiled at the voice even as he winced at the nickname. Stan Convers was one of the few profilers who would still talk to him. Of course, the fact that he fed Stan hints from time to time and let the other agent take the credit for cracking the cases didn't hurt. "Stan, my man, what's happening?"

"Not sure, Spooks. But if you get the chance … take a look at file SP-10953B. You're good at looking below the surface."

"O-kay," he replied slowly. "Any clues here you can drop? This your case?"

"Don't think so, Mulder. And it's not mine. Came across the desk and right out the door, all hush hush. Makes me wonder. Just take a look, okay? Gotta go."

The phone went dead, and Mulder stared off into the distance as he reached out to cradle the receiver. Then he popped his keyboard with two fingers, wending through a few layers of security to get to the file in question. As his eyes skimmed over it, his brain dissected what he was seeing, looking through the bare facts of what seemed to be a routine, if somewhat gruesome, murder to try to find the reason for the secrecy. As he checked through the background of the victim, something clicked.

Rangely. Leavell. Another man named Trudie who'd been involved in what had at the time been explained away as a profile on a rogue agent a couple years before. Put the three together, and he had the military, the FBI and the CIA. All three up to their necks in black ops and medical experimentation. Now, one of them was dead. And before the locals could do their investigation, it was whisked away from them and buried in a dead file in the back of a cabinet.

Smelled like a cover up to him.

"Hey, Scully." She looked up at him, screen glowing eerily off the lenses of her glasses. "Wanna go on a fishing trip?" She quirked a brow at him.

"What's the bait? And will I end up getting bitten?"

"I hope not. But one never knows." He leered playfully at her. She shook her head.

"You bring the beer."

He grinned, and reached out for the phone. "Root?" Scanning through the report, he hit on a number and dialed by touch.

"Homicide," a raspy voice answered.

"This is Special Agent Fox Mulder of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," he spieled rapidly. "May I speak with the officer in charge of the … hello?"

The voice on the other end of the line was too busy chortling to answer. Mulder grimaced. Sure, he had a funny name, but it wasn't that funny. "Hello?" he demanded again, more sharply.

"Mulder," the man managed to stop laughing long enough to answer. "Fox Mulder."

"Yeah," Mulder growled.

"I bet you don't remember me," the voice continued, still fighting laughter. "Name's Munch. I arrested you awhile back in Baltimore. Buck naked. Fighting little green men. So, how's the alien business going these days?"

Mulder glared straight ahead, fist tightening on the phone until his knuckles glowed white. "Are you the detective in charge of the Rangely murder?" he barked.

"Nope, that'd be Bayliss, if anybody. Hang on a minute." He could hear Munch calling for Bayliss, still almost - not quite - laughing his ass off. A few moments later a puzzled light baritone answered the phone.

"This is Bayliss. Munch, are you okay?" Off to the side, then back into the mouthpiece, "What can I do for you?"

"This is Agent Mulder with the FBI. I have some questions I'd like to ask you about the Rangely murder." Mulder barely managed to maintain a professional demeanor, when what he really wanted to do was drive down to Baltimore and strangle Detective Munch. He remembered the man, alright.

"You'd know more about that than I would," Bayliss answered. "Your guys took the case away from me."

"This is just a follow up," Mulder lied through his teeth. "Can we meet?"

There was a pause, then a thoughtful, "No. I don't know what you want, but I'm no longer associated with the case. Take it up with your own people. Leave me out of it."

"Will you at least take my number?" He rattled it off, then repeated, "I'd really like to discuss this with you."

"You want me to buck the Feds who took this over? Why? What's in this for you?"

"There's something about the case that caught my interest." It was the best he could do over an open line.

"Take it up with your own boys." There was the sound of someone calling the detective's name, and Bayliss answered before coming back to the call. "Haveta go. Have cases that are still Baltimore PD's to take care of."

The line disconnected, and Mulder stared at the phone in disbelief for a moment. As he was reaching for the button to disconnect and redial, Scully's hand came over his shoulder and caught his wrist.

"Leave it, Mulder." He looked up at her. She'd moved around behind him while he'd been talking to Munch, and had read the file over his shoulder. "This is one fishing trip I think we should skip." He tried to protest and she gestured at the screen. "It's a cold case, no motives, no suspects. It's a military matter, and it is being investigated by military authorities," she pointed at the relevant information running across his screen. "It's not our case, and it's not even an X File. It's a murder. A gory one, but just a murder." She patted his shoulder, then nodded at the hairy blob picture on his desk. "No bigfoot, no ghosts, just a man murdered by a madman. That used to be your job, Mulder, but it's not any more. Let them do their job."

He watched her walk over to her desk and settle back at her computer, then asked with the tiniest whine in his voice, "But if it turns out to be an X File?"

She grinned at him. "In that unlikely event … I'll bring the beer."

Four men, two in uniforms, one in a white lab coat, one in a slate gray suit, gathered around an oval table in a small room lined with books. A deceptively elegant setting. Files lay on the table in front of each man, china cups with steaming coffee at their elbows. The drinks were ignored in favor of the papers scattered over the shining surface of the table.

"There are a few possibilities, but the most compelling is the test subject from Project Bird Dog," the first man, a heavy-set Admiral with cold eyes, pointed at a high-resolution black and white photo on the top of the file. The man in the lab coat nodded.

"Based on his past behavior and psychological profile, it would fit."

"Why the hell did you ever let him out?" the second uniformed man, a four star general, growled.

"To see where he would run," the pale man in the suit answered softly. His own eyes were fixed on the photo, but they were seeing things the other three men could not even guess.

"Well, we sure as hell did that. Now what do we do?" The general thumped the table with his fist. The suited man looked over at him, unsmiling, and the general subsided.

"We find out where he came from, and why he is doing this. Then, when we have leverage against him, we force him to come to us."

"How?" the admiral asked. "He's a fucking nutcase."

"He may be a sociopath," the scientist responded, "but he is a highly logical and goal oriented one. He has a reason for what he has done. He always does. We must simply discover it and turn it to our own purposes."

"And how the hell are we supposed to do that?" the general growled again, carefully leaning away from the man in the suit, trying to hide his discomfort with the spook.

"Backtrack," the pale man said. Turning and walking to the front of the room, he trailed one finger across a map of the United States spread along the front wall. When the fingertip had wandered the length of the country, it came to rest in a corner of Washington State. "Backtrack."

Heading down the steps of the police department in Cascade, Washington, Detective Jim Ellison was acutely aware of the absence of his partner by his side. Sandburg had an article to finish and was going to be late at the University, and Ellison had missed him that day. It had been long, distracting, and difficult, with two new cases that had demanded the most of his heightened senses. With no Guide beside him to help him focus, no lover's scent there to keep him grounded, no warm hand on the small of his back to pull him out of the blood and the gore, he'd nearly zoned twice. He was tired, over-extended, and distracted.

He was running the grocery list through his head, of all things, when the burst of light from the oncoming sedan literally blind-sided him. His sight went off the scale, eyes exploding in a spectrum of red, yellow, green, blue and violet before coalescing into an overpowering white. Hands flew from the steering wheel in a vain attempt to shield his eyes, foot stomping on the brake, belt snapping him back into his seat. He felt the thump as a solid body of metal hit the side of his truck, then the jolt as he went off the side of the road.

Instincts kicked in and his senses of hearing and touch cranked up to compensate for his sudden blindness as he dove for the door and rolled out of the truck cabin. As he was coming up into a defensive position, every still-functional sense reaching out to identify the threat, a lancing pain hit his neck and set his throat and shoulder on fire. Quickly dialing down touch until he could breathe again, his hand came up to barely graze the end of a dart sticking out of the side of his neck. His mind barely had time to realize he'd been drugged, and scream, silently, for Blair, before the world disappeared in a wash of red and he slumped to the ground.

"Oh, man, I am so late. I canNOT believe some of the faculty here. Take a journal out before it even hits the stacks, then keep it forever and a day, lay it on a desk somewhere, stuff it in a drawer somewhere, and do the students ever get a chance to actually read it even when it's the only one that addresses the subject and it's absolutely vital to the paper? Oh, no, gotta go round up every TA you can think of who might have some idea whose got it and go on a needle in a haystack search and call in every favor you have left, not that that's too many at this stage in the game, Jim, I'm home! That's funny," Blair Sandburg stopped rattling to himself as he got through the door and realized that not only were none of the lights on in the loft, but it was colder that a well digger's butt in the Klondike and there was no sign of human occupancy. "Oh, shit, I hope you didn't zone, man!"

They'd both been running off their asses lately, and when Jim got tired, Jim lost focus, which meant when Jim was alone, Jim could very well zone out. Blair dumped his backpack by the door, decided to leave his coat and muffler on in deference to the cold inside the building, and went looking for his Sentinel.

Calling softly, then more loudly, he quickly canvassed the entire loft. The bathroom was in its typical spotless post-Jim state, their bed was made, the kitchen was devoid of activity and clean enough to eat off the floor. In short, it looked just like Jim always left it on the way out the door in the morning.

"Funky. I could've sworn he said he'd be home before me tonight. I distinctly remember the words football, fettuccine, and all-night make-out session coming from his lips." Blair stared at the kitchen, unable to shake a feeling that something was radically wrong. "He probably got stuck on a stakeout, or something." He glanced over at the answering machine. No blinking light. Rolling his shoulders, trying to ease the tension, calling himself seven kinds of a fool for over-reacting, he reached for the phone to call the squad room and find out where the hell his partner was. The shrill ring of the bell when his fingertips were an inch away from the handset made him jump a good foot in the air.

"Yes!" he yelped, then calmed down and tried again. "Ellison-Sandburg residence. Hello?"

"Blair." Oh, shit. Simon's voice, the 'professional Captain being gentle with the innocent victim' voice that always creeped Sandburg out.

"What's wrong, Simon?" he asked, dreading the answer.

"Jim has disappeared." Ignoring Sandburg's whispered "fuck!" he continued. "We found the truck in an arroyo on the east side of town. It looks like he was on his way home, and was forced off the road. The hood's crumpled, but there is no blood, anywhere, so I don't think he was hurt."

"Who?" Blair managed to croak out past a throat that felt like the Sahara on a dry day.

"We don't know yet. We're going to find him, Blair. We will."

Somehow, the steely determination in Simon's voice didn't make him feel any better. He didn't remember hanging up, or moving, but he found himself sitting on the couch, staring out over the nightscape of Cascade. Just sitting, staring, wishing not for the first time that he had Sentinel abilities himself, and could see through that darkness to where his partner was being held. He put his fist over his mouth and muffled the scream of pure anger that bubbled out past his clenched teeth.

He fucking hated being helpless.

Reaching for the phone again, he thumbed through his version of a little black book, now reserved for friends since he'd hooked up with Jim. Running a finger down the K page, he found a number, punched in the numbers, and curled up into the corner of the couch, counting rings. On the fifth ring, it answered.

"Hello?" Not even sleepy. He wasn't sure his friend ever slept.

"Jack? This is Blair."

"You sound terrible, Blair." The concerned tones calmed him, centered him. He could freak out later. First, he had to find Jim.

"Something's happened. Jim's been kidnapped. I think … I think it has something to do with Brackett." The nearly silent gasp on the other end of the line echoed his own reaction. "Can you help me? Help me find Jim?"

"I'll do everything I can, Blair. Can you come over? Now? If Brackett had anything to do with this you could be in extreme danger."

"Yeah." That, he knew. Boy, did he ever. "Half an hour?"

"I'll be here." In the background, Blair could hear the tapping of keys. The mundane sound of Kelso on the case cheered him up more than he would have expected.

"Thanks, man," he offered sincerely. "Be there ASAP."

Simon would do his best, and if the kidnappers were enemies of Jim, the cop, Simon would find them. But if it was Brackett, then Kelso would find the bastard. This time, Blair might just kill the son of a bitch himself, Sentinel or no Sentinel.

Several hours and six pots of tea later, Jack and Blair could barely keep their eyes open. All they hit were dead ends and false leads. Kelso was beginning to believe that, for once, Brackett might not actually be behind the crime. Scanning through personnel reports from his Agency source in a last ditch effort to find any sort of link to follow, he suddenly straightened in his wheelchair and stared, hard, at the screen.

"What the …"

Blair leaned forward in response to Jack's agitation. "What'd you find, man?"

"Not Brackett," Kelso responded absently, "but a connection, I think." Pointing to a name on the screen, he added, "Arlen Rangely was the medical researcher in charge of Brackett's interrogation after his capture. He's the one who released Brackett from Agency custody on agreement that Brackett would work for them -- something about a Project Bird Dog, using humans with special abilities as advance scouts in infiltration situations."

Blair stared at him. God. That sounded like … "They're using …" Sentinels. They had force-bloomed a Sentinel with Brackett, then let him run to see what would happen. They'd released fully enhanced senses in a sociopath then turned him loose on society so they could watch the results. "Those bastards." Kelso looked at him strangely, but Blair didn't explain. "What about Rangely?"

"He was murdered. Tortured to death, actually. From the methodology described in the report, it sounds like the sort of thing that Brackett was adept at, actually. The Baltimore PD picked it up but the FBI took it out of their hands and it ended up in a dead file at the CIA."

"What's this got to do with Jim?" Blair asked, eyes scanning over the report on Jack's screen.

"Nothing, that's the point. Rangely was murdered last week. In Baltimore. Probably by Brackett, with this MO. So, while it's not conclusive, my instincts are telling me Brackett's involved with something in DC, something having to do with his time in custody with the Agency. I don't think he's gone after Jim." He looked solemnly up at Blair. "I think the CIA has."

"Shit. Oh, shit." Blair stared at the screen, more than a little horrified by the possibilities.

"Yeah," Kelso agreed softly. "I'll keep digging. See what I can find."

"Thanks, Jack." Blair gripped his shoulder gently, then glanced back at the screen. "So will I." Kelso looked askance at him and he tapped the screen with the tip of his index finger. "I know the homicide cop who took the call."

"Be careful, Blair," Kelso warned him. "These guys play for keeps, and they don't care who gets hurt in the process."

Sandburg smiled grimly at him. "They have my partner. I'll be careful, Jack. But I'm going to get him back."

Staring into the depths of a glass of cabernet sauvignon liberated from the Waterfront's stock, Tim ignored the congressional posturing on CNN and mused about life, loneliness, and the reality of nothingness. He'd been doing that a lot, ever since he'd been shot. He'd do the same thing again if he had to, of course, as much as it had hurt and as scared as he'd been. Frank had been his partner and was still his friend. And if taking a couple bullets, dying and fighting back to life, and being frightened out of his mind were the price he had to pay for saving his partner, well, so be it.

It was something he couldn't begin to explain, and from the reactions of his coworkers, they weren't in any mood to hear it if he tried. A fresh coat of paint, a shuffle of desks, a new detective in and an old one out, didn't cover up the reality of what had happened. Denying it would not make it so. He'd seen three uniformed cops die. He'd gone out on a hunt with his fellow detectives, and in the course of that hunt he had been severely, almost mortally, wounded. He had seen death in Frank Pembleton's eyes, felt life in the clutch of his hand as he was fighting to stay together. Recognized, and understood, when the component elements of his being tried to fragment, refracting like light through a prism, breaking into their component parts and sundering the wholeness that made up Tim Bayliss into elemental parts that rendered him into nothingness.

Nothing really was as real as nothing. And when it came down to it, he was alone, in that nothingness.

The phone rang, shattering the contemplative mood and nearly causing him to upend his wineglass all over his shirt front. Shaking the cobwebs out of his head, he lurched sideways and picked up the phone.

"Bayliss."

"Tim?" The voice was vaguely familiar, and it brought an image of warmth with it, but he couldn't pin it down. "This is Blair. Blair Sandburg. From Cascade. Washington. We met last year when you were out on vacation. You gave me your business card when you were, uhm, proving that you were a cop. Do you remember?"

Oh, christ, did he. Bayliss looked down at the erection that was pushing up behind his zipper, and couldn't restrain the smile pulling at his mouth. "Blair. Hi. Yeah, I remember you. How are you?" And why are you calling me? The question was apparent in his tone, but it was a welcoming tone, a warm memory.

"Well, this is a little odd, I know. But I was wondering if I could ask for your help." Tim straightened up on the couch. Blair sounded stretched thin. "You, uhm, remember the guy who, uh, came in on us?" Just a hint of embarrassment in the question, but Tim grinned.

"Yeah. Lucky man."

There was an answering smile in Blair's voice. "I'm the lucky one, man. Or at least, I was." The smile disappeared, and the strain was back. "Jim's disappeared, and I think it's related to a murder you were working on. A scientist, named Rangely."

Tim tilted his head back against the couch cushions and closed his eyes, one hand coming up to rub at the tension lines furrowing his brow between his eyes. "I remember it. But I don't have that case any more, Blair. The Feds took it."

"I know," came the reply. "But I think there's more going on here than just somebody whacking a researcher, Tim. I need your help. I'd like to fly out and talk with you."

Bayliss shrugged, then answered, "Sure, if you want. But I don't think it'll do any good. Are there any leads in Jim's … disappearance?"

"No." A world of determination and fear on one syllable. "But if this pans out … I need to know."

"Tell me when and where and I'll come pick you up at the airport," Bayliss offered. "But Blair -- it's out of my hands. And given the total lack of any leads on it, I'm just as glad it is. If there is anything I can do to help, I'll try. But I really don't know-"

"I have to try, man. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Okay. Call me with the flight details. Bye." He carefully hung up the phone, picked up his wine glass, and finished it in one swallow. This one was getting weirder and weirder all the time. For a case that had been taken out of his hands before it even got cold, a hell of a lot of people seemed to be interested in it.

Captain Simon Banks stared at a tiny figurine of a Black angel strumming a harp and wondered why the hell he hadn't become a teacher like his mother had wanted. He'd been up for almost sixty hours straight, his eyes had stopped focusing ten or so hours before, and his brain was spinning in circles. One of his best friends had disappeared off the face of the earth, and not a single thing he could think of to do had gotten them any closer to finding Jim Ellison.

To top it off, Sandburg hadn't been driving him loopy. When Sandburg acted out of character, it was time to worry.

The object of his thoughts dragged in the door, and Simon winced in sympathy. Blair looked like he hadn't slept either. Forestalling what he thought was going to come out of the young man's mouth, he offered, "Not yet, but every man I can scrape up is looking."

Sandburg smiled tiredly at him. "I know, Simon." He blinked. Not what he'd been expecting.

"I need you to stay settled down, Sandburg," Simon forged ahead. "You're personally involved, and you're not a cop, and besides, we don't know yet if the nutcase who did this might be after you as well. I've had a man shadowing you since the kidnapping, but so far no one seems to be making a move. That doesn't mean you're safe, though. I want to put you in protective custody until we get Jim back." He braced himself for an argument.

"Not necessary, Simon. I'm going to see a friend on the East Coast, try to get my head together. If I stay here, I'm just going to get in the way, and I'm a target. Out there, I should be far enough away from the action to stay out of your way and not end up on the menu. Plus, the friend's a cop, so I won't be without protection. Here's the number."

He placed a post-it note with a Maryland telephone number on it in the middle of Simon's blotter. Simon looked at it in shock. Leaving? Ellison goes missing and Sandburg takes a vacation? This was really not what he was expecting. But the kid did have a point. "Does this friend know the situation?"

Sandburg nodded impatiently. "Yeah, he knows all about it. Listen, I gotta go. Got a flight to catch. Call me if you find out anything?" He had one foot out the door.

"When. Not if." He looked sternly at the kid, then nodded. Sandburg gave him a weak attempt at a smile and strode out the door, minus his usual bounce. Too tired to figure it out, too worried about his friend to have any energy left to put toward trying to figure it out, and too used to not being able to figure Sandburg out no matter how hard he tried, Simon gave it up and reached for the coffee pot. There were still those lists of recent parolees to go through; maybe he'd get lucky.

Straggling out at the end of the line of people off the 747, Blair struck Tim as being just as beautiful as he'd been the first, and only, time he'd seen him. The lines of fatigue and stress around his eyes and mouth were deeper, and there were shadows in the dark blue eyes, but the full mouth was just as inviting, and the strong arms pulled him into just as warm a hug. He laid his cheek atop the curly head and hugged back. So much energy. So much warmth.

"Hey, Blair. Welcome to Baltimore. Flight okay? You hungry?" Can I pull you into a dark corner somewhere and kiss you 'til neither one of us can breathe? Yeah, the attraction was still there.

"Thanks for meeting me, Tim." Another squeeze and the hug was reluctantly released. "I'm not real hungry. Can we … go somewhere and talk?"

Tim looked down into the serious eyes, and reined in his libido. They had serious business to see to, whether he could help or not, and Blair was in no shape for seduction. He smiled gently down at the worried face, and slung an arm around the broad shoulders. "Sure, Blair. Let's go back to my place, and you can tell me all about it."

A couple hours later, Tim was almost regretting the invitation. He'd heard an amazing, bizarre story of rogue CIA agents and stolen planes, vendettas, kidnappings, strange abilities, government conspiracies, and sociopathic stalkers that would have had him wondering what kind of mushrooms Blair was putting in his salad if not for the complete seriousness of the younger man's recitation. He wasn't sure what to believe, but he could see that Blair believed it. Sitting side by side on the couch, hands wrapped around mugs of hot tea, feet propped up on the coffee table, he watched the shadows overtake the room and entered a world that redefined weird.

When Blair had run down, Tim stared at him for a long moment. "Can you help me, man?" Blair wasn't above begging, and Tim took a deep breath.

"I don't think so." The desperation in those azure eyes hurried him on. "But I think there's somebody with the Feds who might be able to." He hooked his finger into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. "An FBI agent called after the Feds took the case, said he wanted to meet me about it. I put him off -- didn't have the files anymore, and I had too many bodies on my plate to worry with one that wasn't. Maybe he can help us out." He reached across Blair's chest for the phone, trying not to get distracted by the warmth of Blair's skin.

"Cool, man. Thanks so much." Blair smiled at him, and Tim suddenly felt ten feet tall.

He'd hit the labs directly after his abortive attempt to obtain information from the late Doctor Rangely, but they'd been a waste of effort. All the records he could find pertained solely to his own torture. There was nothing, anywhere, about Sandburg, or even Ellison, and nothing to point toward any possible fill-in for the young Guide. It was more than a little frustrating. Then, the day after Rangely was found, there was a flurry of activity and security at the research station clamped tighter than a professional virgin's chastity belt. Unable to crack the net of electronic and human surveillance, he switched gears and tried the Feds. They'd taken the case from the police, so there had to be some sort of connection between the Agency and the FBI.

It led him nowhere.

Resolving to settle back and wait, watch, and take his chance when he found it, he assuaged his boredom by following the homicide cop who'd taken the original call. Detective Timothy Bayliss, tall, gangly, bespeckled and intense, was an interesting man to study. He didn't know anything, of course, just had the bad luck to get caught up in a situation beyond his understanding, and had the sense to give it up when he had no choice. But there was something about the man that held Brackett's attention. He tapped the detective's telephone, just to listen to the sound of his voice. There was something there, something that drew him, and he was intrigued by the sense that he was both completely relaxed and missing something important. Then, the second night of his voyeuristic eavesdropping, a familiar voice came over the line and he started, sitting bolt upright, listening as hard as he could.

Tim Bayliss knew Blair Sandburg. Blair was coming to Baltimore.

Without Jim Ellison.

Brackett smiled. This situation had definite possibilities.

He followed Bayliss to the airport, drinking in the sight of the man who should have been his guide. To his internal surprise, Blair didn't capture all of his attention, as he had the last few times he'd seen him. While the sight and scent of Blair made his body hum, the light rumble of Bayliss' voice seemed to pull at him, over-riding even the usually soothing baritone from Sandburg. Musing on this, he trailed them to Bayliss' apartment and settled in to a handy corner to do some up-close eavesdropping. Overlaying his vision with his hearing, he focused in on the two men, sitting close as lovers on the couch.

Interesting. Blair was willing to tell someone outside of Cascade PD and his dissertation committee about Sentinels. Very interesting.

He'd never considered himself a sociopath. He had his own code of conduct. It just didn't happen to coincide with the standards taught in grade school to the ankle biters of America.

Even more interesting. Ellison was missing. Blair fell silent, turning pleading eyes on Bayliss, and to his mild shock, Brackett realized he was more interested in listening to Bayliss talk than in staring at Blair. Something very strange was going on. He centered all his attention on the two men, trying to figure out his unexpected attraction to Bayliss and his equally unexpected, if still weak, immunity to Sandburg's pull. As more of his energy was focused on his sight and hearing, directed through the small slit in the blinds at Bayliss' window, he didn't hear the whoosh of displaced air until after the dart impacted his back. Twisting instinctively, clawing at his shirt to get at the dart, he felt his hands go numb as his eyesight faded out to deep gray. He didn't feel a thing as the world tilted and he hit the ground.

Sight had been the final sense to come back on line after Jim regained consciousness. Smell had been first. Scenting the air, he'd identified antiseptic wash, saline, urine, sweat, bleach and blood. He could taste the coppery tang of blood along his tongue, too, where he'd apparently bitten himself, and an aftertaste of cloying sweetness from whatever it was they'd used to drug him. Then touch had snapped in, and he'd nearly screamed at the clamp of shackles on his wrists and the cold tile against his bare skin until he'd managed to wrestle the dials down to a bearable level. Hearing had filtered back after that, and his ears were blanketed with the hum of computers, and the wet cotton stuffed sensation of a white noise generator. Sight finally trickled in, first as hazy images, gradually solidifying into white on white on white -- white bench, white padded wall, white floor, white door. White skin and steel manacles. Naked, colder than sin, hungry and so angry he couldn't stop shaking, he waited for someone, anyone to come in that damned door so he could rip their heads off. With his teeth.

There was a disturbance out in the hall beyond the door, and he quickly dialed his senses down, not wanting to get caught with another burst of light or sound. The door was opened and another body was shoved inside. Ignoring Jim's presence, the two men hauling the body between them went to work. Limp arms were held up to shackles matching Jim's on the other side of the small room, and ankles were dragged into place and locked down. Then the captors, still without speaking a word or acknowledging Ellison in any way, left the room and locked the door behind them. When Jim caught a clear look at his fellow captive, the rage boiled out in an incoherent howl.

Brackett.

The son of a bitch.

Jim went ballistic, all logic flying out the window with the sheer instinctual need to kill Lee Brackett. The chains snapped tight, jolting him to a halt inches from his enemy. He strained at the chains until his muscles revolted, then slumped against the wall and watched, unable to do anything else. As the shaggy blond head lifted and consciousness returned to the other Sentinel, the temperature in the room shifted as well. An eerie growl emanated from Jim's throat, and echoed throughout the room.

The black jaguar prowled between the two men, hissing, claws flexing. The threat was immediate, and it responded with flattened ears, thrashing tail, bared fangs. A groggy, shaky cougar attempted to stand against it, but staggered to the side. The panther leapt, and the cougar rolled to catch it, claws extending, jaws snapping. Brackett's head snapped up, and his dark eyes locked with Ellison's. The challenge arced from crystal blue to deep brown, and was returned with hate-fueled interest.

A clang at the door interrupted the fight for dominance, and the jaguar and cougar separated, each growling at the other. The Sentinels' attention was diverted to the small man in a white lab coat who entered the room, smiling at them both.

"This should be very interesting, gentlemen. Instinctive antipathy aside, I do believe you will both be excellent test subjects." He walked over to stand in front of Jim, carefully keeping out of range of either man. "There is a connection between you and our Mr. Brackett, Detective Ellison. I do not know what it may be that keeps drawing him to you. But over the course of the next several days, I intend to find out. I fear it will not be a pleasant experience. But it is in the interests of science. And it should be very interesting indeed."

Jim froze in place. They didn't know he was a Sentinel. They just knew … that Brackett had stalked him. They didn't know why. In a heartbeat, he turned all his dials as low as he could get them and still function, and did his best to lock the dials in place. If there was any way he could help it, they wouldn't find out that he was a Sentinel. It might be the only chance he had of getting out.

The nightmare began almost immediately. He and Brackett were chained together, hands behind their backs. For the next several hours they were placed in a sensory deprivation chamber, first together, then separately. At the point when he seriously began to believe he was going to lose his mind completely, he was pulled from the chamber and put in an overload situation that made him damned thankful for Sandburg's never-ending tests. Lights strobed him, sounds blared out at him, constantly. Hot air buffeted him, sharp scents nearly imploded his sinuses. Brackett was tossed in with him, and very soon he saw the effects of the concentrated sensory bombardment on the other Sentinel. Brackett was curled up in a ball, whimpering, banging his head against the padded wall, arms thrown over his head in a useless attempt to stop the pain.

Jim began to lose his control after a few hours of constant overpowering input, and instinctively reached out to find an anchor. There was a heartbeat there, not the one he was used to using, not one he recognized, too fast, too erratic, too frantic. But it was outside himself, and it was stable enough to latch onto. Over the course of the next several hours, it kept him concentrated, kept him from betraying the fact that he was a Sentinel. Kept him sane.

He nearly puked when he came to back in the cell and recognized Lee Brackett's heartbeat.

The other man was slumped against the wall, staring at him. Behind the exhaustion, Jim didn't see the hatred he expected. Instead there was calculation and desperation. He saw Brackett's lips move, but didn't hear anything. Eventually, exasperation joined the other emotions, and he reluctantly dialed up his hearing.

"-you listening? May be the only chance we have."

He gave a nearly imperceptible nod. Brackett acknowledged it with a slow blink, then started whispering, Sentinel-soft, again.

"The only way we're going to get out of this is by working together."

Jim stared at him for a long moment. When Brackett's mouth opened slightly, as he got ready to argue the point, Jim finally spoke, equally softly. "I agree. On the proviso that I kill you when we get out of here."

Brackett bared his teeth at him. "You can try." Then he lost the snarling caricature of a smile. "Later."

Jim nodded. Dialing up his senses, very carefully, he began to scope out as much of the situation as he could, relying on his greater range and control to get past the safeguards the scientists had put up to cage Brackett's less extensive gifts. Speaking softly, the two Sentinels began to plan.

Bayliss had only thought he was on a weird trip. After dinner with Special Agent Fox Mulder and his skeptical other half, Special Agent Dana Scully, he was convinced somebody'd slipped acid in his coffee.

He stared around the shadowy maze of electronics and black boxes in the tiny room they'd all trooped off to, trying not to listen to the three stooges Mulder had introduced to him as the Lone Gunmen. One looked like a surfer nerd, one a frog, and one an accountant. To hear them talk, the whole impeachment fiasco was a manifestation of a conspiracy reaching back to the days when J. Edgar Hoover wore silk stockings and tried to ambush the civil rights movement. And he'd thought Munch was paranoid.

Blair was in a corner talking on a 'secure line' -- which looked like a telephone attached to electronic life support in a metal suitcase -- to a man called Kelso who was some kind of CIA retiree. Mulder was discussing supernatural powers in the natural world with Scully, who was shooting down nearly every argument he made almost before he got the words out of his mouth.

Bayliss felt a very long way from home. He'd kill for a pair of ruby slippers.

By the time he was ready to raise his hand and ask for a ride back to Baltimore, the accountant yelped. A restrained yelp, but definitely a yelp. "Got it!"

Blair handed the phone over to the frog-like man, and an incomprehensible dialog about megahertz and black spots started up. Tim shut his mouth. It was getting weirder by the minute. He glanced over at Blair, and was taken aback by the desperation in the younger man's face. All at once, the cartoonish aspects of the evening lost their edge, and he was reminded of the fact that there was a life on the line here. A fellow cop. A good man, according to Blair, and his partner. He felt a surge of emotion at his own dedication to his previous partner, and the lengths he had been willing to go to protect him. And he hadn't even been sleeping with Frank. He took a deep breath, reached out a hand to squeeze Blair's shoulder, and gave him a reassuring smile.

"We'll find him, Blair." He put as much confidence into the words as he could, and was rewarded by a beaming if somewhat shaky smile.

"We just did," Mulder's quiet voice cut across the room. Tim turned back to see the surfer guy handing a variety of pieces of electronic equipment to the two FBI agents. He patted his gun with one hand, patted Blair's back with the other, and followed the little party of rescuers out the door.

The initial breakout was the easy part. Speaking in tones that were so low as to practically be subliminal, Ellison and Brackett put covert and black ops training to good use. The first half dozen guards fell like tin cans at target practice in the back forty, only a hell of a lot more quietly. They caught the seventh goon as he was reaching for the alarm, snapping his neck an instant before he could reach the handle.

On the opposite side of that particular patch of woods in Allegany County, Mulder took point, with Scully on the laptop, disabling electronic perimeter alarms as they went. Bayliss cut wire, Sandburg slid into places only Scully could follow, and in less time than even they had expected, they were inside the compound grounds. Less than a hundred feet from the building where they believed the prisoners to be held, all hell broke loose.

Two figures broke into the clearing outside the compound just as huge floodlights lit up the entire area. An alarm shrieked through the stillness of the night, causing an unexpected zig zag in the fugitives' running pattern that had Sandburg screaming for his partner. He jolted forward unexpectedly, breaking cover, and Bayliss cursed under his breath and followed. In an attempt to distract the following guards, Mulder broke the opposite direction and fired his Sig Sauer over the heads of the advancing black-clad thugs. Scully scrambled to cover him.

From behind the mob converging on them, a frantic male voice came over a loudspeaker, exhorting the soldiers, or whoever the hell they were, to take the prisoners alive. Since the prisoners had no such compunctions, even though they were outnumbered, they were gradually beating back the guards. The fight quickly degenerated into a hand to hand melee, as Ellison and Brackett fought with fists, kicks, head butts and teeth, and Blair threw himself into the fray to protect his Sentinel. Bayliss cracked a thug over the head before he could shoot Sandburg, then Mulder took out two more before they could kill Bayliss. Scully kicked in the kneecap of one who was about to bushwhack Ellison. Scully and Mulder were yelling something about the FBI, and freeze. Bayliss found himself hollering "Baltimore PD! Drop your weapons!" even as he realized that it was a stupid, and ultimately useless, thing to scream. But training will out.

The boiling mass of goons in black was thinning nicely, when Bayliss decided he'd had about enough. Pulling two thugs off the other fugitive by brute force, he was shocked into immobility by the look on the man's face. For an insane moment he actually thought the man was going to kiss him, then the stranger shook his head, hard, pulled Tim to the side, and kicked out at a soldier who had nearly shot Bayliss, catching the man in the throat with the side of his foot. The thug went down with a wet gurgle. The hard grip eased, Bayliss tried to stammer out thanks, and the other man smiled. Then Tim heard Blair scream in rage, and turned to bail out his friend.

Before he got there, Ellison stiff-armed the man who'd gotten Sandburg in a neck-lock, successfully breaking both the hold and the man's arm. He yanked Blair out of the way and kicked out in much the same manner Tim's rescuer had, catching the thug in the side of the head and snapping his spine. Then with a roar, he scooped Blair up and headed for the woods. Mulder got off a few more shots, and with Bayliss and Mulder guarding the rear, Ellison, Scully and Sandburg went deep into the woods.

Scrambling through the brush as fast as they could, they made it to Mulder's borrowed Rover and squealed away through the trees, much faster than Bayliss would have considered safe. Curled up into as small a ball as a six foot four inch man could make, Tim wondered if he'd managed to survive the rescue mission only to die from Mulder's driving. Before he could make up his mind which would have been worse, they cleared the woods and hit the highway.

Looking up, he saw Scully winding a bandage around a bloody cut on Blair's forearm. Blair was staring at Ellison, who was staring back the way they'd come, his features like granite. Mulder was looking front, back, and sideways all at once, foot pushing the accelerator all the way to the floor. Tim peered around the side of Mulder's shoulder and raised an eyebrow at the speedometer. He hadn't known vehicles built for climbing mountains and fording streams could do a hundred and twenty flat out.

Sinking back into the seat, he heard Blair ask quietly, "Jim? You okay, man?"

After a moment, Ellison relaxed a fraction and settled closer to his partner. "Yeah, Chief. But … he got away."

That's when Bayliss realized that the man who had saved his life had not made it to the Rover. He wondered why that should upset him as much as it did, since, if what Blair had told him was true, the guy was a killer and a nutcase, who carved people up for fun. Too tired, too wired, and too busy trying not to get carsick to think about it, he closed his eyes, leaned against the jolting seat, and tried to think about nothing at all.

Nothingness had its attractions, after all.

After a quick stop to drop off an exhausted Tim Bayliss, Jim, Blair and Scully decided to unwind and debrief at Mulder's apartment. Camped out around the small living room, Mulder and Jim sprawled on the couch, Blair on the floor with his back leaning against Jim's leg, Scully in the single chair, they devoured two large pizzas and several bottles of beer.

Taking on the covert military establishment could work up quite an appetite.

Ellison hadn't been particularly forthcoming about his experiences while locked up with Brackett, but Blair knew he'd get the rest of the story when they were back home. He was just impressed that Jim had managed to control his hatred of the other man long enough to work with him to escape. Jim just nodded, anchored his heartbeat to his Guide's, and finally relaxed.

"What I don't understand is, why? Why Brackett? What were they after? And why did they kidnap you? What's your connection to Brackett? And how did they think they could profit from it? What did they think to gain?"

Mulder's litany of questions washed over them, and Jim looked to Blair for guidance in answering or avoiding them. Blair bit his lip, then leaned closer to Jim to reassure him. "Off the record?"

"Nobody ever reads our records, Blair," Scully informed him dryly. Mulder shot her a mock-dirty look.

"Sure they do, Scully. They just don't believe them." He turned to Jim and Blair. "Off the record if you want. But I can assure you, there are stranger things in the X Files than anything you can tell me."

"Jim's been a target before," Blair said softly. "I don't want him to be a target again, just because the wrong person gets hold of one of your files."

Mulder stared at him for long moment, then took a deep swallow from his bottle of beer. "Okay. Strictly off the record. What can you answer?"

"All of it." And, to some extent, he did. He touched on Jim's heightened senses, and Brackett's, and why those senses would make them vulnerable to being unwilling test subjects by those who would try to twist their genetic gifts into a weapon. He recapped their history with the rogue agent, and how he believed the long months of isolation and torture had triggered Brackett's senses, in much the same way the year and a half of isolation and hardship in Peru had triggered Ellison's. By the time he finished, both Mulder and Scully were silent, considering the ramifications.

"He's dangerous. And he is active in the area." Jim summed it up in a few words. "He could be a threat to you both." The agents nodded, sharing a look, then Mulder spoke up.

"Now that we know he's here, and what he can do, we'll keep a watch for him. We've encountered even stranger things, things no one else would believe, and lived through it. One rogue Sentinel won't be too hard to handle."

"Stranger things?" Sandburg asked, eyes rounding as he leaned forward. Jim sighed, then grinned at his partner's insatiable curiosity.

"Much," Scully agreed, then gave the floor over to Mulder. For the next few hours, Sandburg and Mulder bonded over tales of flukemen, liver eating mutants, vampires and shapeshifters. Ellison and Scully sat back and watched their partners.

"You believe this stuff?" he finally had to ask her, while Blair was busily telling Mulder all about a large, hairy Sasquatch type being he'd seen on a field expedition to a rural area in China. She smiled in response, but there were shadows behind the smile.

"I'm not sure what to believe anymore, Jim. Mulder believes, and sometimes, with what I've seen, I find I have to. But I'm reserving judgement." She nodded her head slightly, eyes lighting with affection as she looked over at her partner. "Somebody's got to be the skeptic."

Mulder caught the tail end of the comment, and smiled back at his partner. "And somebody's got to be the believer."

Alone again, too tired to move and too wound up to sleep, Bayliss stared at the ceiling in his bedroom and wondered if anyone would ever believe what he'd been through that night. Not that he could tell anybody.

"They'd lock me up in the loony bin," he finally decided, shaking his head at his own mental meandering.

"No." A soft voice that slid over his ears like satin over his skin came out of the darkness. "I wouldn't let them.

He jolted up, reached for his gun, ready to defend himself -- or at least, he tried to do all those things. What he actually did was turn directly into the warm bulk of a man almost as tall as he was and both broader and stronger, pinning him in place against the mattress. He tried to fight, to squirm away, anything, but the stranger held him fast. Breathing hard, he opened his mouth to ask who the hell he was, but in the dim light in the room he recognized him.

The other fugitive. The man who'd saved his life earlier that evening.

The sociopathic killer.

Macho social expectations of manhood be damned, Bayliss opened his mouth to scream his head off, and nearly choked on a sudden mouthful of tongue. He pulled in as much oxygen through his nose as he could in a desperate effort not to suffocate, and moaned as loud as he could into the other man's mouth in protest. To his mingled shock and horror, he could feel himself responding to the heat of the body pressed so intimately into his. Timmy, my boy, he thought half hysterically, you really need to get laid more often.

When the lips finally unglued themselves from his and the invading tongue stopped trying to take out his tonsils, he dragged in a ragged breath. His eyes opened, without his being aware that he'd ever closed them, and his body shuddered. He refused to consider that arousal was just as strong a motivation behind the shaking in his limbs as adrenaline.

"Hello, Detective Bayliss," the madman laying on top of him smiled down at him. "I'm Lee." He bent down and fastened his teeth into the side of Tim's neck. Bayliss tried to scream, or at least he thought he did. The only sound that escaped was a breathy whimper. The nutcase raised his head again, dipped it to lick across the bite Tim could feel bruising already, then reared back to stare down at him with satisfaction. "You're mine."

Tim opened his mouth to protest and found himself thoroughly kissed again. By the time he could draw another clear breath, he'd forgotten what he was supposed to be protesting. "Do you mind if I call you Tim?" He started to shake his head, then amended it to a shaky nod, before stilling all movement to simply stare up at his captor, completely confused. "Thanks for the rescue."

"You … " his voice didn't sound like his voice. It was never that winded. Sounded like he'd run a marathon. "You saved my life."

"So, we owe each other," Lee grinned down at him, a sharp, feral expression. "Guess that means I'm yours, too." His hands were busy, roving under Tim's tee shirt, dipping below the waistband of his sweatpants. When long fingers wrapped around an erection Tim didn't remember getting, he started to panic. "Talk to me."

Talk to him? Talk to him?? Shoot him, take him into custody, arrest him, call the Feds and have them cart him off -- these were all viable alternatives. Lie here while the guy felt him up and talk to him? Not in the realm of the possible. "Who are you?" Okay, that would work. Monosyllables were about all his brain would manage, since ninety eight per cent of his blood was rushing to his groin, and the only thing he could think about was how amazingly good that hand felt moving up and down his cock. "What do you want? You're under arrest. What are you doing here? Are you nuts? Oh, holy mother of god." The last groaned phrase was in direct response to the hand that dove between his thighs and did things to his testicles that could get them both arrested. They were the last coherent words he was to say for some time.

"On second thought," the crazy man doing crazier things to him whispered in his ear, "Just lie there and moan."

Good. That, he could do. That was about all he could do. Well, that, and squirm a lot.

Bayliss had very little experience with men. Some bad, stemming from childhood abuse, some good, with a recent, tentative, experimental relationship with a man he'd met on a case. Nothing in any of his previous experiences prepared him for what Lee Brackett did to him. The man seemed to be able to map his nerve endings, dragging depths of reaction from him that he'd never felt with anyone. He was vaguely aware of a burning sensation at the back of his neck as his shirt was ripped away, even less aware of a slight cool breeze over his thighs as the rest of his clothing was stripped from him. But all he could concentrate on, the totality of his sensual input, was the combination of hands, mouth, body and voice that swamped his mind and turned his body inside out.

From somewhere outside himself, he heard a vaguely familiar voice, crying out softly, moaning continuously. There were words in there, but they didn't make any sense. The only constant in the universe was the edge he was brought to time and again, with overpowering touches, firm bites, strong movements, only to be gentled down before the cycle started to build all over again. He didn't think he could take much more, was dimly aware that he was lying with his legs spread, arms flung out, fists clenched in the sheets, back arched, head digging into the pillow as he begged for something, if only he could remember what. The pressure, and the pleasure, finally crested, and he flew apart in a shattering of light and sound, surrounded and penetrated and held by strength that linked with him in a way he had never imagined.

When the world finally pieced itself back together, he was curled up against a sweaty body, hands petting his hair and running over his shoulders, his own arms draped bonelessly around a lean waist, head flopped against a broad chest, soft hair tickling his cheek, steady strong rhythm beating under his ear. Words were rumbling softly over his head, and he fought to concentrate, to find the energy to listen.

"I'll see you again. Soon. Don't tell anyone about us." The fingers stroked across his shoulders again, running along the line of his spine to pet his nape. "They wouldn't understand."

No wonder. Neither did Tim. Long fingers cupped his chin, and turned his face up to his seducer. All his cop instincts were screaming at Tim to clobber the guy, cuff him, grab the phone and call it in. Something, not just the liquefication of his bones, wouldn't let him do it. So he lay there and stared back into those dark eyes. One finger ran gently over the bow of his top lip, and Lee smiled.

"My Guide." Then the hand slipped lower, tightened over his throat, and closed gently. By the time Bayliss figured out what Brackett was doing, he was already slipping into unconsciousness.

Some time later, he woke with a slight headache, a sore throat, and an even sorer backside. Staggering into the bathroom, he stood under the shower until the water ran cold, then stood at the sink and stared into the mirror. Evidence of Brackett's visit was painted in vivid finger bruises and bite marks all over his chest, down around his groin, and as he turned and verified, all over his back and buttocks. He shivered, pulled his robe from the hook on the back of the door, and huddled into it. Easing onto the side of the bed, he stared at the telephone.

He really should report this.

To somebody.

It was his duty.

On the other hand, while there was nothing quite as real as nothing, there was nothing quite as crazy as this reality.

He reached for the phone with one hand, reached for his wallet with the other, and dialed a number.

Staring at his fish running tag team circles in the tank at four thirty in the morning was not unusual for Mulder. Insomnia was his constant companion, and after the things he'd heard that night, he really hadn't expected to get much sleep. Imagine, a mythological creature like a Sentinel in the modern world, and he couldn't even open an X File on it. He knew what it was like to be hunted, and he wouldn't bring that down on Jim Ellison's head if there was any way he could avoid it. Or Blair Sandburg's.

He smiled at the thought of the partners. Two such dissimilar men, so completely connected. Sort of like himself and Scully, only with sex added to the mix. He was deep in thought on the ramifications of partnerships when the phone rang. Half expecting a "Mulder, it's me" he was somewhat startled to hear Tim Bayliss' raspy voice.

"You okay, Bayliss? You sound a little rough."

"Been screaming." It sounded like it. Then what he'd heard hit Mulder, who sat upright and stared at the phone.

"Screaming? Are you okay?" Damn. He knew he shouldn't've left the homicide cop alone. God only knows what kind of revenge the soldiers in black could have taken.

"Had a visitor. Brackett."

Okay, maybe not the thugs. But still, a lone sociopath could be a very dangerous thing. "What did he do?" Mentally, he was already summoning Scully and her little black bag.

"Fucked me raw."

Oh. Then again, maybe not. "Come again?"

"Don't think I could if I tried." Mulder blinked, and Bayliss went on. "I dunno what's going on. I know I should turn him in. I mean, he's a killer, right? A nutcase. Goes around skinning people and breaking bones and psycho crap like that."

There was a long silence, then Mulder prompted him gently, "But?"

"But I couldn't do it. Even though I'm a cop. And he's a killer. Maybe I'm just nuts, myself." Bayliss sounded completely confused, and not a little depressed.

"Actually, I don't think you are." Mulder looked up at a muted sound from the doorway. "I know what it's like to think your duty is to turn a man in, but you can't bring yourself to do it. Tim?"

"Yeah?" He also sounded exhausted.

"Get some sleep. Don't think about it unless you have to. And … call me when he comes back."

"If?"

"No. When." He looked again at the doorway. "Trust me on this one."

"'Kay. Night. And Mulder?"

"Mmhm?"

"Thanks." There was a click, then the dial tone in his ear. He slowly cradled the handset and swallowed, staring into the shadows by the doorway. The figure there slowly moved forward, and he started to shake, just a tremor, deep in his muscles.

God, yes. He knew precisely what it was like.

Green eyes met his, and he slumped back on the couch even as he held out a hand in helpless welcome. Krycek's wiry fingers came out to wind around his, and the weight of him, cold from the night air, smelling of sweat and leather, draped over Mulder, pushing him into the couch. As a hot mouth opened over his and his eyes squeezed shut, he had one last thought. No one else could understand, as Mulder could, the inability of a cop to turn away from someone so very wrong for him.

Finis