Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 17:18:57 -0700 Reply-To: Hank Wyckoff Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Hank Wyckoff Subject: (10B/10) The Duplicity -- HL-list posting The Duplicity (10B/10) -- By Henry Wyckoff A Crossover between Highlander/Forever Knight/X-Files/A Poem by Rudyard Kipling/and Sharpe's Rifles A continuation of When the Veil is Lifted This concludes The Duplicity, and leads into part three of the five part cycle. THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN SPLIT IN ORDER TO OBEY THE MAXIMUM LINE LIMIT RULE The buzz had passed, and Axer was starting to feel a bit nervous. He could handle a fair fight, but 150 to three was a bit much -- if he had his sword, it might have been more of an even match, but knife and fist against 150 swords and axes was much less of an even fight. And they weren't drunk either... Axer, Richie, and Coleen were placed a few feet away from the altar. On it rested only an obsidian orb and a sacrificial obsidian knife. The pews were filled with Odinssons praying, mumbling, and counting prayer beads. //Idiots!// smiled Axer. Then he felt a presence so strong it nearly flattened him. Richie and Coleen were startled so much that they flinched. The man who must have been the head priest approached the altar. His face was covered with a hood, so all that was visible was the man's chin and nose. He droned, "O Invisible Ones, Observers from the Highest Reaches, we bring You sacrifices. The abominations whom You have commanded us to destroy have come here to spread their evil. We rid them from the world in your name!" Axer found the melodramatic speech mixed with the man's Brooklyn accent to be absolutely hysterical. He tried his best to keep from laughing out loud -- Richie and Coleen looked at him with worried expressions on their faces. The mumbling Odinssons instantly turned into raving maniacs, screaming such unimaginative things as: "Abominations!", "Die!!!", and so on. What made Axer want to laugh even more was the fact that while they were screaming and foaming at the mouth, they remained in place at their pews, with their bodies relaxed -- it seemed like a humorous dichotomy to him. The priest then said, "Before we bring them to You, let us remind ourselves of Your Majesty with the Remembrance. Bring the Book!" The Book was a thick one, perhaps bound centuries ago. The priest began to read from it in a chant. It was none other than Old Norse -- authentic, fluent Old Norse. Axer spoke many languages fluently, but he'd never bothered to learn the language of the people who lived on the other side of the sea. Being called a Wielas by the invading Angles and Saxons -- in his own land -- tended to make him less generous towards the Scandinavian barbarians in the later centuries. Whenever he dealt with a Dane or Norwegian, he would always force them to use Welsh or Latin -- never in English or Danish -- which was as bad as insisting that they speak without saying a word. //Dammit!// he swore, wishing he wasn't such nationalist in his youth. The priest must have droned on for at least half an hour, while the three fidgeted. They were glad for the delay for obvious reasons, frustrated that they couldn't understand a single word the man was saying, and so bored with it all they just wanted the guy to get on with it. When he did, all three began to get a bit nervous. The priest picked up the knife and laid his left hand on the orb. "Invisible Ones, let us see the dark side of the mirror. Let us open the door to endless possibilities... Random access... All happens at once, and all is a rush... Let the Maelstrom be!" "LET THE MAELSTROM BE!!!" echoed the congregation, the roar shaking the very foundations of the church. The priest approached Richie and grabbed him by the shirt. "Let the youth open the door." All three broke loose from their bonds at once. They didn't have their swords -- which had been taken away -- but they still had hidden knives that the cultists didn't grab. They ran for the door, and the cultists who were in the pews were falling over themselves, unable to move very well. They almost reached the door, but enough of the cultists moved between them and their exit, axes and swords at the ready. The priest smiled -- it didn't matter who died. It was the fear, blood, and hatred that mattered. It was the chaos that would open the door, and not the ritual. He stood behind the altar, his hands on the knife and orb, unmoving and observing. He whispered, "Let the Invisible Ones come." *********************************************************** Sharpe, Mulroney, Skinner, and Mulder entered through a window. There were some guards there, but they were so surprised that they didn't prove to be too much of a problem. Sharpe and Mulroney ended up taking all five of the cultists by themselves, efficiently punching their blades into hearts, brains, and lungs. Skinner and Mulder had killed countless men and women in their own careers, but seemed shellshocked by the whole affair. It was one thing to contemplate a raid, but another thing to cold-bloodedly kill men in an unauthorized raid. "Mulder!" whispered Sharpe. "Snap to, man!" He shook Mulder's shoulder, and his eyes refocused. They made their way down a hallway filled with torches, and began to hear sounds of torture: loud thumps, ripping sounds, screaming, and yelling. Mulder's heart jumped, but then he realized it was a man being tortured. He moved towards the sound, and Sharpe tried to stop him. "We're not here to right wrongs!" "Scully may be in there!" Sharpe considered for a moment and nodded. They moved as a group towards the room and waited for a moment. Mulder was able to faintly hear whispering: "You are an Odinsson. You have been an Odinsson for all your life. We have a rich history and a divine mandate. Don't you want to know what that mandate is?" "I'm Martin Smith!" screamed the man. "I'm an electrician--" He screamed aloud as another whacking sound was made. Skinner and Mulder looked at one another. This exchange was very suggestive of something. Sharpe counted on his fingers to three, and Mulroney kicked down the door with two tries. They rushed in with their guns and swords drawn, and found a cultist strapped down on a chair, and several men in white lab coats surrounding him, holding whips, chains, and baseball bats. To Mulder, it was very suggestive of a movie he saw once at 2 AM. "Not now!" yelled an irritated man in white. "What are you doing here?" demanded another. Then they noticed an extra little detail, and their faces turned as white as their lab coats. "You monsters!" yelled Mulroney, uncharacteristically furious. Before anyone could stop him, he started cutting down the men in white, who screamed and ran around the room. If one was watching the scene on a movie, it might have even been hilarious -- but here, nobody was laughing. "I'll kill you for this!" Sharpe tried to stop him, but was brutally slashed for his trouble. "Stop him!" yelled a severely-wounded Sharpe to Skinner and Mulder, who looked at one another with uncertainty. Skinner shot Mulroney in the stomach, and he didn't even notice -- though his whole body was knocked back a foot by the impact. Before Mulroney could get to the last man, Sharpe tackled the Irishman, putting a knife up to his throat, "Hold still, man! He could give us information!" "You don't want to know what he'll have to say!" yelled Mulroney, nearly throwing Sharpe off his body. "You don't know what I know," whispered Sharpe. Sharpe slammed the hilt of his knife into Mulroney's temple, and he blacked out. He stood up and walked towards the last living white coat, and said to him, "The mad Irishman wants to kill you VERY BADLY. Do you want me to let him at you?" "No!!" the man emphatically shook his head. "I'll tell you anything!" The man was just old enough to grow a beard -- he must have been a whiz at college. "What are you doing here?" The young man calmed down enough to sound coherent. "I'm an FBI agent sent to infiltrate the Odinssons. I posed as a psychiatric doctor to gain their trust, and helped 'induct' the new members into the fold." Skinner was skeptical. "I don't remember seeing you OR hearing about any infiltration." "Do you know every FBI agent in the country? Do you know EVERY operation going on?" He wasn't ruffled or nervous at all. Skinner put a gun up to the man's head. "Wrong answer. This IS my official case, and none of us knew about the Odinssons until this evening." Now the man was getting nervous. "Of course you don't! That's what they call themselves! There's no way you could have known!" "Then why was there no word passed to us?" The man began to stutter in fear, and Skinner lowered the gun, shooting the man through both of the feet. "We'll get back to you later." He fell to the floor, flopping in agony as blood squirted out of his feet. Mulder looked at Skinner in shock, not a word said, but his expression speaking volumes. For once Mulroney and Sharpe were shocked as well. "He was a liar," explained Skinner nonchalantly, "and we don't have time for liars." There was some movement at the door. "Hey! What's going on here?" Skinner smoothly spun around and put two shots into the hearts of each of the three cultists who came to investigate what must have been odd noises. His earlier indecision and unease had left him -- he was playing the game as well as the two immortals now. Martin Smith, the guy who was tortured, began to speak, "You guys are FBI?? Thank you!! Thank you!!!" He began to cry uncontrollably, his whole body shaking in relief." Sharpe had recovered enough to take the lead role once more. He went over to the man and let him out of his restraints. "Are you o.k.?" It was an old question, but it worked. The man nodded. "What are these guys? I'm just some electrician from Detroit." Mulder was shocked. "Detroit??? They took you from Detroit??? Why not someone from nearby?" "It would attract too much attention," growled Mulroney. "They take people from all over the world -- Tibet, Columbia... Detroit. They grab as many people as they want, and nobody ever notices. When they do, it's an unsolved case." Skinner shook his head, "This is getting worse and worse. If Cancerman's behind this I'm killing the bastard myself." "Skinner!" yelped a shocked Mulder. "You?!" Skinner nodded, almost embarrassed. "It would be a perfect accident -- something that YOU'VEnever considered!" "We can talk about this later!" snapped Mulroney. He looked at the electrician. "Can you walk?" "Yes." "Good. Then get out of here like the Devil's chasing you!" The man stood with some difficulty, but managed to get moving. "Deeper in!" said Mulroney, taking the lead. "What's that?" asked Mulder sharply. It was the sounds of fighting. "It's time!" barked Sharpe. Everyone sprinted out of there, with Sharpe in the lead. ******************************************************** Nick heard the noise first, once they had reached the top of the stairs. He tilted his head like a confused dog. "There's fighting going on!" Tracy was the only one who might have been concerned for the "captured", as the others had called them. The other three smiled broadly and charged towards the sound. Krycek had somehow changed from being an untrusted prisoner to a fellow comrade somewhere along the way -- except in Tracy's eyes. Now, they were three untrustworthy people -- the fact that Nick had changed as well hurt her, but she stayed with them regardless. ********************************************************* *********************************************************************** ** e-mail: wyckoff@ag.arizona.edu ** homepage: http://ag.arizona.edu/~wyckoff ** My fanfics are now archived in pkzip format on my fanfic page ** at http://ag.arizona/edu/~wyckoff/fanfic.html ** Also: check out the X-files creative archive at Gossamer ******************************************************************* ** ERROR: You just deleted 6 years of work -- MERCY KILL ? ******************************************************************* =========================================================================