Chapter Ten

Lance was in a void. He could barely remember his own name or anything about his life. He is own face was a blur that was quickly becoming forgotten. He was anchored to something which was why he couldn't go anywhere, but with every second that passed, he was moving more freely. Yet, he was not frustrated by this or sad about it. The only emotion he could name for what he was feeling was indifference. He did know that he was someplace where he didn't belong. Though where he did belong was a mystery. He moved and found that he was completely free of his anchor. Carelessly, he began to float away...

The machines beeped loudly, breaking the silence that stretched across the medwing like a blanket. Two nurses and a young doctor ran to the patient's room. The doctor yelled orders, one of which was to fetch Doctor Gorma. One of the nurses ran out while another ran back in to replace her. Working quickly, they moved to save Lance's life.

Mulder raised his head and blinked several times to clear his blurry eyes. His lips were still pursed as if he was still kissing her, but his expression told Scully that his thoughts were far away. She stared up at him curiously from her position on the floor when she too felt something. Something like a chill going down her spine.

"What..." she began.

Her partner rose and held out a hand to help her up. She took it and stood, her legs slightly unsteady as her head swam. She put a hand on his chest to steady herself, and he automatically put an arm around her, but he was looking around the room as if he was searching for something.

"Breathe," Gorma said forcefully. "Breathe !"

The body underneath his ministrations remained unmoving and deathly pale. Fighting back a wave of hopelessness, Gorma fixed a canopy over Lance's body and pushed a button. A surge of electricity ripped through Lance. His body jumped but there was no change in his vital signs. Slowly but surely, he was slipping away from their grasp.

"Get me a hypo of cyranogen," he barked. "FASTER! We're working against time here."

Nanny's eyes opened. She looked across at Allura who was sitting on the floor with her legs crossed, her eyes closed, and her back straight. The Princess didn't appear to have sensed anything out of the ordinary, but Nanny's well-honed senses did. She stood, her skirts rustling and breaking the silence. It was then did Allura open her eyes. She blinked several times to clear her vision and refocus herself.

"Nanny?" she said, her voice low and melodic as if she was still in a trance. "Where are you going?"

"I will be back. Continue."

Allura's first inclination was to get up and follow, but things more important than her curiosity were at stake so she stayed where she was. Her eyes closed again and she tried to lose herself in her thoughts. But something lurked at the edges of her consciousness. Something dark and horrible. Frowning, she struggled to push it back but it stubbornly stayed. She ran through every single relaxation exercise Nanny had taught her but to no avail. Whatever it was, it was not going to let her delve into her inner space. And she had a feeling she knew what it was.

Fighting back her dread and barely holding on to the tranquility she had found, she rose and left her chambers.

The snap of Gorma's medical gloves as he pulled them off was like a crack of thunder. He bit back a curse as the long, endless tone of a flatline reached his ears.

"Someone turn that off," he said impatiently, angry more at himself than anyone else. Taking a few deep breaths, he calmed his frayed nerves and glanced at his chronometer. "Log the time of death; sixteen hundred hours."

Nanny put a hand over her heart and another on the wall to steady herself. She was standing outside Lance's room and had heard Gorma's words. Tears sprang into her eyes.

I'm sorry...

She turned just as Allura came through the entrance. The Princess threw her a questioning look. Nanny didn't say anything.

"Lance?" Allura asked, her voice low.

Nanny nodded.

Allura put a hand over her eyes, her head bowed. A tremor rippled through her body, but afterwards she remained still as a statue. In a split second, her peace shattered. Her friend was gone, and Keith was soon to follow...

No...focus. They need you to focus...He needs you to focus...

When she looked up, her blue eyes were still as clear as a cloudless sky, but a new resolve was in them. She held out her hand and Nanny took it. Without another word, they went back to their work.

Mulder and Scully passed Allura and Nanny in the corridors but the Arusians took no notice of the disheveled agents. They looked like two people on a mission. For their part, the agents didn't take much heed of them either. Mulder walked through the entrance of the medwing, and narrowly missed running right into the doors before they could slide open. Scully walked behind him, her calves beginning to burn as she struggled to keep up with his longer strides.

Doctor Gorma was coming out of Lance's room, his expression stormy. He looked up as he heard their footsteps.

"What happened?" Scully demanded as Mulder pushed past the doctor and into Lance's room.

"We lost him," Gorma said tightly. "I don't know what's going on around here, but I want answers!"

Scully nodded, but didn't give him the answers he wanted. He knew that she knew. For the umpteenth time in his long medical career with the Arusian Royal Family and the Alliance, Gorma wondered why he was working for people who only told him what they thought he needed to know. Shaking his head, he left Scully standing in the corridors.

The doors to Lance's room were still open as the nurses and technicians were cleaning up inside. Scully could see Mulder's lanky form folded in a chair as he sat beside the bed. She watched him. He was leaning forward as he stared into Lance's face, his jumpsuit unzipped and slightly askew. The expression on his face was one she'd seen before. She saw it every time he thought of Samantha, everytime he thought he'd never see her again. It was pure and unbridled loss. And this time it wasn't a sympathetic pain she felt for him..it was an identical one. They had hardly known the young man, but the knowledge that he had come from them, and that they were the reason that he was gone, was a knowledge they could have lived without.

She walked into the room and hugged him from behind, resting her head on his curved back. He didn't move, but she felt his body tense. He took a deep shuddering breath, but no tears fell from his brown eyes.

"It's always my fault," he said. "Looks like someone decided to aim for that bullseye."

"Your fault?"

"First everything that happened to you and now to him. You should get away as quickly as you can, because I think there's a curse on the Mulder family." He sat up, forcing her to stand. "Or on me."

"Do we have to go through this again, Mulder? How many times has it been that you've told me to go, and how many times has it been that I've told you that I'm going to stay?"

He looked at her and she saw the corners of his mouth tug up into a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Don't mind me, Scully. Everytime something catastrophic happens, the megalomaniac in me wants to be acknowledged."

Her arms went around him and she sighed. He pressed his face against her stomach and she could feel the heat of his breath through her clothes. She ran a hand through his tousled hair and for the first time since she went into the room, she looked at Lance. He looked for all the world to be asleep. The long form underneath the hospital sheets reminded her so much of Mulder that it almost hurt to look at Lance. She moved away from her partner and went to the bed. With gentleness she covered Lance's face with the white sheet that was his blanket.

"We're running out of time," said a voice.

Both agents turned and saw Coran standing at the doorway. He looked as if he'd aged decades since the first time they'd seen him.

"The kingdom is falling apart," he continued, walking into the room. "I haven't spoken to Allura because she has bigger things on her mind right now. And without Keith there to replace her, I've had to hold everything together alone. But as we speak, whole villages are disappearing. At first it was just people, but now that Lance...has gone, it has gotten worse. Now things will unravel faster."

As he spoke, a chunk from the ceiling suddenly fell behind Mulder. Scully pulled him up, her heart pumping fast, but it hadn't come close to hitting him though his hair was now sprinkled with white dust. They both looked up and saw the castle was beginning to deteriorate from the top down.

"How much time do we have left?" Mulder asked.

"Not enough..."

Keith could barely hold on. He was faring worse than Lance was at the same stage, because of his use of the stimulants. He only hoped that Nanny's plan would work for he knew he wasn't going to be around to see if it did.

Suddenly, he became aware of a presence in the room. He didn't hear any footsteps so he lifted his head slightly to see who it was.

"Hi."

"You shouldn't be up and around," Keith said.

"You know me." Lance grinned cockily. "Can't stick to the rules."

"Unfortunately. So what's the magic cure? You're not walking around just out of sheer will power."

"How do you know? Don't underestimate my will. Stronger men have bowed down to it."

Keith laughed and found that he felt a little better. He sat up easily and realized that he was feeling a lot better. "You sure know how to make trouble. It's too bad for us you don't do anything halfway."

"Yeah," Lance said sadly. "I'm really sorry about all this, Keith."

"I know."

"So you wanna go for a walk?"

"Walk? In my condition?"

Lance's mouth twisted. "At this point, you have no condition."

"What?"

"Listen."

Keith did and was startled to find that all sorts of noise surrounded him. He looked behind him and nearly fell out of bed. If that was still possible because he found himself looking at...himself. Rather the body that was once himself. He frowned. This was more confusing than the whole time scenario. He turned back to Lance.

"I'm dead?"

"Yup."

"Shit."

"Yup."

"Just when Allura and I..."

"I know." Lance shook his head. "What timing."

Gorma and a team of nurses entered the room just then. A nurse even walked right through Lance. Keith went to stand next to Lance. Silently, they watched the medical team try to revive Keith's body.

"I can't go back?" Keith asked.

"Nope. Trust me, I tried. I just stuck around to wait for you."

"Thanks." They stayed long enough to watch as Gorma's face contracted with frustration and anger when he realized that trying to revive Keith was futile.

"Ready to go?" Lance asked.

"To where exactly?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. But since it looks like we're heading to the same place, I don't think we're going to where most people tell me to go. Is there anything I should know about before I start expecting angels and fluffy white clouds?"

Keith laughed. He felt free. Freer than he ever had before.