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There is a tradition in Naval warfare. The ship demanding surrender fires a shot across the bow of the opposing ship to demonstrate the seriousness of the demand. This shot showsboth your resolve -- you don't idly waste ammunition in the middle of the sea, days or weeks from resupply areas; and your honor -- defeat in a naval battle can mean that all hands perish when the losing ship sinks.
It is a serious gesture -- never made more than once. It is a warning and a promise: Surrender or die.
**WHAM** **WHAM** **WHAM**
The gunshots in the enclosed space of the cigarette smoker's room were deafening, surreally loud. The acrid smoke of the gunpowder burned Skinner's nostrils and eyes -- momentarily distracting him with memories of other firefights, other casualties. The weight of the pistol, now hot and heavy in his grip slowly dragged his hand from shoulder level until the muzzle pointed at the floor.
He left without looking back.
*******************
At first the new assignment had simply been one more annoyance, one step further down the road that he'd committed himself to what felt like a lifetime ago.
I need a miracle.
He'd become the chain smoker's tool. Skinner knew that he was now simply a pawn to be moved at the SOB's whim around a chess board whose dimensions Skinner couldn't even begin to fathom. Skinner also understood with a brutal clarity that as a pawn he was expendable, and would be sacrificed once his purpose had been served.
He'd carried out the assignments that the smoker seemed to take such glee in giving him: a file conveniently misplaced, a piece of evidence contaminated, an agent reassigned. They were, for the most part, minor. An odd assessment for a sworn member of the Justice Department, he thought -- that any violation of the law could be considered minor. Particularly for him, who was well known for his rigidity on issues of ethics and conforming to rules.
He tried to decide if he'd simply gotten cynical, or if his personal code of ethics had actually become more....flexible. He decided he was too tired to think about it.
This assignment, though, had clearly signaled a new phase in the cigarette smoker's plan. It was almost as though the previous assignments had been a series of tests. A way of gradually assessing exactly how far Skinner would go to buy his miracle for Scully. It hadn't escaped his notice, either, that each assignment added to the previous shackled him more irretrievably to the smoker's control.
His career had long since ceased to be any sort of consideration. When this game ended, Skinner knew he would be dead, or out of a job. It no longer mattered which, really. Dead seemed preferable. But this job was something else entirely.
Sanitizing the bathroom in the mail facility had really been almost amusing. For a brief minute, on his hands and knees on that tile floor, Skinner had been transported back to his days in Basic Training at Parris Island.
"Did I give you permission to stop cleaning that latrine floor, Marine?"
"No Drill Sergeant, but I thought..."
"Did I give you permission to think? Marine?!?!"
Skinner reflected with a grim amusement that so little in life changed. There were always Drill Sergeants barking commands -- only the voices and agendas changed. No matter the situation, or his current rank, he always seemed to end up on his knees cleaning floors.
As he met his own gaze in the mirror, though, he could no longer feel the amusement. Nothing was left but the grimness, and no amount of glass cleaner could remove the distortions he saw in the man in front of him.
He no longer recognized himself. Or maybe he simply didn't want to recognize the man he saw. For the millionth time since it all began he decided to end the charade and walk away from it all. And for the millionth-and-one time, he recommitted himself to the tasks at hand. There were larger stakes than simply this night, this job, or even Scully.
Staring into the furnace where he disposed of Jane Brody's body, Skinner thought the flames were just a little too obvious in their symbolism: he knew he was in Hell. He really didn't need the reminder.
The rest of that assignment's tasks were nothing more than a half-remembered haze of actions and words. He'd become so adept at lying, at leading his double life that impersonating Mulder and switching the blood sample seemed almost routine. And it was so much easier to do these things if he didn't have to really pay attention to what he was doing.
The unexpected appearance of Detective Ray Thomas in the parking lot had thrown him for a bit of a loop, but Skinner had long since learned that his best cold stare and no-nonsense manner could send almost anyone packing. He came back to his senses briefly as he heard himself saying "Just doing my job, detective, same as you." He unexpectedly found himself yearning for the days when his job had been simpler, more readily defined.
Mulder's appearance at 4 that morning signaled the end of any simplicity in Skinner's life ever again.
In the moment that he heard Mulder describe the "execution style" death of Detective Thomas Skinner could begin to feel it all begin to unravel. The news of Scully's hospitalization was simply the final confirmation that Skinner had failed. The deal was no deal.
The next 48 hours passed in a surreal blur of events.
He should have known even when confronting the chain smoker in his garage that it was too late, that he was already involved in murder, even while he was threatening to walk away.
He should have known even before Mulder's call the next morning that the bullet found in the detective's body would be from a Sig Sauer P-228, and that his gun would be missing.
He should have known that his implication in the murder wouldn't end with simply the gun--of course there would be pictures.
Should have known.
He'd always known.
He'd walked into the trap willingly. He'd exchanged it all for what he knew to be the greater good. Scully had to be cured. Mulder and Scully together were the only hope of bringing down the smoker and the conspiracy.
But Skinner found he couldn't let go of his basic ideals of justice and honor. They had been a part of him for so long that he wasn't sure who he'd be if he let them go completely. They had become luxuries, but still he couldn't give them up.
The evidence of the bees that he recovered from the mail facility gave him the first glimmer of hope he'd had in weeks. Maybe it would still be possible to beat these bastards at their own game. He'd done it once before. It was not impossible.
But the full horror of what the bees represented -- small pox, the deadliest of plagues ever known to mankind -- combined with the fact that Mulder was rapidly closing in on him as a murder suspect dashed that tiny hope in its infancy.
The trip to South Carolina, he later had to acknowledge, was purely quixotic. A last symbolic attempt at wearing a white hat. Dr. Lindser had been as polite as possible under the circumstances, but the arrival of military medical personnel had laid to rest any hope Skinner had of actually making a difference.
His conversation with Mulder's contact had been less than satisfactory. He instinctively didn't trust her, and found himself wondering why Mulder did.
In his rage at the situation and his self-loathing, he'd finally told her that he wasn't responsible, and he could read in her eyes that he'd betrayed himself -- had let her know that he knew who was. Despite her words about his responsibility in coming forward and her office's responsibility to the Secretary General of the UN, Skinner was left with the distinct impression that nothing he'd said had come as a surprise to the too-smoothly coifed blond. He thought he needed to find a way to warn Mulder that perhaps she shouldn't be trusted.
The confrontation with Mulder that night was inevitable. It had been pre-ordained from the moment he asked the smoker for a miracle. He was glad it had finally arrived.
He could see in his agent's eyes the fury that he expected, but was surprised to find there was also a carefully hidden pain. He realized that Mulder had finally come to trust and respect him on one level, and that that was now destroyed. He suddenly felt older than time.
Even though Mulder had his gun leveled at his head, Skinner was never actually worried that Mulder would shoot him. In fact, it took remarkably little persuasion on his part to convince Mulder of the frame-up. There were occasional benefits to dealing with a man who saw conspiracies at every turn.
It was almost a relief to finally tell Mulder what he'd done. There would be another price to pay for the revelation, he knew. Even if the cigarette smoker didn't find out that their deal had been disclosed, Skinner understood that Mulder would never fully trust him again. It was fitting. He wasn't sure he trusted himself anymore.
He'd also understood that Mulder would eventually demand an explanation from him about why he had failed to heed his own advice. He would have to tell his agent why he'd offered himself to the smoker in Mulder's place. He knew in his gut that Mulder would feel that Skinner had somehow usurped his rightful place as the agent of Scully's cure. He hoped when the time came for that discussion that he would be able to explain his actions to himself.
Mulder's ready lie to the gun tech about where the weapon had been found had caught him off guard -- had saddened him, actually. Mulder was now ensnared in the conspiracy as well. Had this also always been inevitable? Had he been doing nothing but tilting at windmills from the beginning? Had he merely given the smoker two pawns instead of one?
But the filed-off serial number had felt like a punch in the gut. He couldn't be sure if the chain smoker's goon had removed it, or if Mulder had. He thought perhaps the SOB had had that done. He thought that maybe it was a message that his term of service was not yet complete. But he couldn't discount either possibility.
And finally it was that, the thought that Mulder might have tampered with the evidence, evidence that the agent must have realized could ultimately bring down the whole shadow conspiracy, that drove Skinner to confront his master in his lair that night.
They had all run out of time. Mulder, Scully, that bastard, Skinner. It was time to begin the endgame.
Leveling the gun at the SOB had felt terrifyingly satisfactory. Skinner thought he'd long since reached the peak of his ability to feel rage at the bastard. He was surprised to find he was wrong.
There was no need to perform the drama. The players each knew their predetermined lines. Skinner would rage, and the smoker would remind him that although he had done nothing as yet to cure Scully, it remained within his power to save her, and therefore Skinner would do nothing.
But Skinner let the drama play out anyway, because tonight it would end differently.
**WHAM** **WHAM** **WHAM**
There was no need to say anything. The smoking man knew Skinner's background. He knew what had just happened.
The shot across the bow is never fired twice.
END