Skin

by Ben Mezrich

  Tien looked up, anger flickering across his face. He watched as Julian Kyle strolled into the chamber. Julian was wearing a white lab coat over surgical scrubs. His hands were covered with latex gloves, and there was a heavy cooler under his right arm.

  “Uncle Julian,” Tien spit. “You’re ruining my moment.”

  “He’s an agent with the FBI,” Kyle said, sternly. “It isn’t as simple as that.”

  “It can be,” Tien responded, glancing at the razor’s blade. “This is Thailand, not the U.S.”

  “It doesn’t matter. They’ll send agents. The military will get involved. We can’t risk the interruptions—not so close to the final experiment. And there’s a better way.”

  Kyle raised the plastic cooler. Tien sighed, leaning back from the FBI agent’s body. He knew the real reason for Kyle’s reticence. Julian Kyle was weak. But there was logic in his words. “I guess it’s not for either of us to decide.”

  Tien rose, sliding the straight razor back into his sleeve. In truth, both FBI agents had determined their own fate the minute they had entered Alkut.

  “And the woman?” Kyle asked, setting the cooler down on one of the stretchers. “She’s being dealt with as well?”

  Tien nodded. “I sent a drone. He should be arriving at her room any moment.”

  “And one drone will be enough?”

  Tien laughed. The drones were primitive compared to what was coming—but certainly, a single drone could handle the female agent. Kyle nodded, realizing it was true. It was just a matter of time before Dana Scully’s body was laid out next to her partner’s.

  21

  Scully watched from fifteen feet away as the small green lizard crawled across the perforated metal screen. The lizard had bulging black eyes, dark red spots, and a curved, tapered tail; probably some sort of Asian gecko, she mused, the remnants of some species of dinosaur too primitive to realize it was supposed to be extinct. At the moment, the gecko was doing its best to right evolution’s mistake. Inches beneath the metal screen, a pair of propeller-shaped fan blades whirled by, pushing dense waves of humid air across the cramped hotel bedroom. As the gecko crawled across the circular mesh covering, its tail dangled precariously close to the blades. Any second, the fan would consume the little creature, spreading its bits and pieces across the room.

  Jackson Pollock gone reptilian: In Scully’s opinion, it certainly wouldn’t hurt the hotel’s spartan sense of decor. The squat, antique fan sat atop a teak bed table, next to a pair of twin-sized, water-stained mattresses. There was a loosely woven throw rug on the floor, and a warped wooden dresser by the closet door. A chest-high, rusting metal lamp stood a few feet from the desk where Scully sat, a single bulb flickering behind a goatskin shade as a tangle of exposed wires near the bottom of the base struggled noisily with the current coming out of the wall socket.

  The desk itself was barely larger than the bed table, the chair designed for small Thai bodies. A perfect fit for Scully’s concise frame, but Mulder would have had a hell of a time getting his long legs beneath the drawers.

  Still, there was room in the closet for their bags, a phone jack, and an adaptable socket to plug in Scully’s laptop computer. It was all she needed to link up with the FBI computer banks in Washington.

  Scully rolled her shoulders back against the tight chair, shifting her attention from the doomed little dinosaur to the open laptop on the desk in front of her. The cursor blinked at her impatience, while the processor struggled to download her request to the data banks ten thousand miles away. She had laboriously plugged in the list of names—minus Andrew Paladin. Soon the computer would tell her if the men had indeed served in the Vietnam War. She had also asked for army registration photos, current addresses, and medical records; she knew how Mulder’s mind worked, and she needed to be thorough. She intended to disprove the notion that these men had somehow survived horrific napalm burns.

  Scully simply could not believe that Emile Paladin had invented some sort of miraculous synthetic skin—and had killed to keep its existence a secret. If Perry Stanton had died as the result of an experiment gone bad, it was a recent experiment, perhaps some re-creation of the procedure that had killed the Rikers Island prisoners. It was implausible to think that Stanton’s death was somehow related to a twenty-four-year-old secret cure.

  A series of beeps emanated from the laptop, and Scully sat up in her chair. The list of names began to spill across the screen, followed by concise FBI terminology. Scully furrowed her brow as she quickly interpreted the data. At first glance, the data confirmed her suspicions. The men were listed as casualties of the Vietnam War. But Scully noticed a strange discrepancy. The men were all registered as having been killed in action between 1970 and 1973; none was listed as having been transported to any army MASH unit, let alone the unit in Alkut.

  Scully tapped her lips with her fingers. It didn’t make any sense. She and Mulder had found a list registering dead men as admissions to the Alkut MASH. Either the list was a complete fabrication, or someone had falsified death records and admitted the men unofficially. Of course, the first case seemed more likely. The list was nothing more than a piece of paper—even if it had been found in the house of a viciously murdered couple.

  Scully paused as the laptop screen changed color. Thumbnail pictures materialized along the horizontal—and by midscreen, she realized things were not as simple as they seemed. The photos had been lifted directly from army registration files, and at least three were clearly recognizable. They were the same photos she and Mulder had taken from the Trowbridges’ envelope.

  The photos weren’t proof that the men had been admitted to the MASH unit—but they certainly implied a connection to Alkut. Scully leaned close to the screen, scanning the photos as they appeared, searching for more matches—

  A sudden sound caught her attention, and she looked up from the screen. The sound had come from the other side of the bedroom door. A click of metal against metal, as if someone had tried turning the knob to see if it was locked.

  “Hello?” Scully called, but there was no answer. “Mulder, is that you?”

  Silence. Scully rose from the chair, her heart pounding. Her gun was in its holster, sitting on the bed table behind the propeller fan. She cleared her throat. “If someone’s out there, please identify yourself!”

  The doorknob exploded inward, a rain of wood splinters and mangled steel spiraling into the room. Scully jerked back, stunned, her hips slamming into the desk. A man was standing in the open doorway. Tall, well built, with a crew cut and high, chiseled features. He was wearing a loose white shirt and military green slacks. His eyes seemed strange, his pupils overdilated. The muscles in his cheeks and jaw were slack, and Scully immediately thought of drugs—something depressive, perhaps a tranquilizer or an antipsychotic.

  The man stepped into the room. Scully’s eyes drifted downward, and she watched as he drew something out of the right pocket of his slacks. A hypodermic, with a three-inch-long syringe. Scully’s pulse rocketed as she pressed back against the desk.

  “Stay where you are,” she said in her strongest voice. “I’m a U.S. federal agent.”

  The man didn’t seem to hear her. He took another step forward, his dull eyes trained on her face. Despite his numb expression, his movements were gracefully fluid. Scully thought about her gun fifteen feet away—and realized he would reach her before she was halfway there. She had no way of knowing what was in the syringe, but she had to assume it was something lethal. She needed to disarm the man before going for her gun. She searched the room rapidly—and her gaze settled on the chest-high lamp a few feet past the edge of the desk. It looked heavy enough to cause damage, and close enough to reach. The exposed wires near the bottom of the base were menacing, but if she was careful, she could avoid electrocuting herself.

  The man moved closer. He raised the syringe, shaking it until a droplet of liquid dangled pendulously from the point. Scully kept her eyes on the needle as she slid along the d
esk toward the lamp. She could hear her heart in her chest, and she took deep breaths, chasing the panic away.

  As the man took another step forward, Scully suddenly leapt to the side, grabbing the lamp halfway up its metal base. Without pause, she swung the makeshift weapon in a sweeping arc, aiming for the hypodermic. The goatskin shade toppled away, revealing a naked bulb and more exposed wires. There was a flash of light as the bulb hit the syringe dead on. Then a rainbow of bright sparks burst into the air as the steel needle touched the light socket.

  Scully dropped the lamp and dived for the bed table. She was halfway there when she realized the man wasn’t chasing her. She turned and watched him convulse backward, the still-sparking lamp lying in front of him, smoke rising from the hypodermic in his hand. The man’s knees suddenly went limp, and his body collapsed to the floor.

  Scully stared, surprised. The syringe had only touched the light socket for a few seconds; the electric shock should have been strong enough to stun the man—but not enough to cause him serious harm. Scully grabbed her gun from the bed table and stepped cautiously toward him, the barrel aimed at his head. His arms were twisted unnaturally behind his back, his eyes wide-open. His head was partially to one side, and Scully noticed a red rash on the back of his neck. Her cheeks flushed as she remembered that both Perry Stanton and the John Doe had had similar rashes.

  She stopped a few feet from the collapsed man and lowered herself to one knee. Keeping the gun a careful distance away, she reached forward and checked his pulse.

  Nothing. Scully grabbed the man’s shoulder and rolled him over onto his back. His chest was still, his eyes shifting back in their sockets. Scully made a quick decision and slipped her gun into the back of her waistband. She began CPR, pressing as hard as she could against the man’s muscular chest.

  A few minutes into the CPR she realized it was pointless. The man was dead. As had happened with Perry Stanton, this man had been killed by a relatively small jolt of electricity. Although it was possible for a lamp to draw enough power to cause a cardiac arrest—it was definitely unlikely.

  Scully shifted her gaze to the rash on the nape of the dead man’s neck. She saw that it consisted of thousands of tiny red dots, arranged in a circular pattern. Like Perry Stanton’s and the John Doe’s rashes. And all three men had died after receiving electric shocks. Scully wondered—what would this man’s autopsy show? She needed to get the body to an operating room. She hoped Fielding would let her use the clinic—

  She froze, her gaze shifting to the syringe still clamped in the man’s right hand. The clinic. Mulder was there, searching for the underground tunnels. If they had come for Scully, then they must have gone after Mulder as well.

  A second later, Scully was on her feet and heading for the door.

  22

  Mulder tried to scream, but the beast was too fast. Its enormous black body hurtled toward him through the milky gray air. The monster landed on his chest, its heavy body crushing him back against the stretcher. The wolfish snout was inches from his face, and he stared in terror at the fiery red spirals that were the creature’s eyes. The curved, crisscrossing tusks scraped together like kissing scimitars, while a stream of fetid yellow saliva dribbled against his cheeks.

  Suddenly, the halo of clawed tentacles on top of the beast’s head lashed forward. Mulder felt his skin being flayed away in burning white strips. Again and again the tentacles slashed at him, ruining his face, his neck, his chest. He writhed back and forth, trying to dodge the claws, but the beast was unrelenting. The Skin Eater had been disturbed—and he was hungry. He would tear at Mulder until every ounce of Mulder’s skin had been removed. His tentacles and his tusks and his spiral eyes, slashing, gouging, gorging! Mulder convulsed upward with every ounce of strength, refusing to give in, refusing to let the beast have him so easily. He wasn’t ready to die….

  Mulder’s eyes came open. His vision swirled, a wave of nausea working upward through his throat. He gagged, trying to lift himself to a sitting position—but his arms were pinned at his sides. He blinked rapidly, letting the yellowish light clear away the fog. He was staring at a curved stone ceiling, lined by fluorescent light strips. He shifted his head to the side and saw that he was surrounded by a blue plastic curtain. He realized immediately where he was. The underground chamber.

  His head fell back against the stretcher. He blinked rapidly, fighting away the nausea. He did not know how long he had been unconscious, but from the lack of pain in his muscles, he guessed it was not more than a few hours. There was a black Velcro belt running around his chest and down beneath the stretcher, holding his arms in place. There was a similar restraint around his ankles. He could move his hands a few inches and wiggle his toes—but other than that, he was completely immobilized.

  His thoughts shifted back to the violent attack. The three men had overpowered him without much effort. He had fired two shots—could he have missed at point-blank range? Unlikely, but not impossible. And the circular red rash he had seen on the back of his attacker’s neck? Was it the same rash that had been reported on both Perry Stanton and the John Doe? And how was it connected to the dazed, overdilated look in the man’s eyes?

  Mulder took a deep breath, calming himself. He didn’t want to use up his energy building theories. He remembered the smiling young Amerasian man. There had been violence behind that smile—a sort of violence that Mulder well recognized. The same edge he had seen in dozens of serial killers throughout his career. Controlled psychosis. The Amerasian was a killer. Perhaps he was the young man Trowbridge had spoken about, Emile Paladin’s son. Perhaps he had been responsible for the brutal double murder. Perhaps he was stalking Scully right now….

  Mulder clenched his teeth and slammed his body back against the stretcher. He was helpless, impotent. He couldn’t protect his partner. He couldn’t even protect himself.

  Or could he? He had a strange, sudden thought. He twisted his body a few inches beneath the Velcro strap and felt something hard and cylindrical in his right pocket—just within reach. Slowly, carefully, his fingers crawled toward the object.

  With effort, he managed to get the vial free from his pants. Using his index finger and thumb, he went to work on the cap. It finally came free, and a bitter scent wafted up toward his nose. He remembered what the emaciated teenage monk had said when he had given him the balm: “Makes the skin taste bad.” He thought about the monster in his dream, picturing the crisscrossing tusks. He shivered, gripping the vial tightly in his hand. Then he flicked his wrist upward toward his body.

  He felt the transparent liquid splashing across his chest. A few drops touched his chin and neck, a few more landed on his shoulder and cheeks. The bitter, sulfuric scent burned at his nostrils. He knew Scully would have thought he was insane. He was in an underground research lab—not a monster’s cave. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that, somehow, the Skin Eater was involved. Either way, he wanted his skin to taste as bad as possible—

  He froze, as footsteps reverberated through the stretcher beneath him. Someone was approaching the curtain from the other side. Mulder quickly pushed the empty vial beneath his leg, hiding it from view.

  The curtain whipped back, and Mulder squinted at the apparition standing a few feet away. Over six feet tall, long-limbed, with narrow shoulders. The man was wearing light blue scrubs, latex gloves, and a white surgical mask. His hair was completely covered by a surgical cap. The only features Mulder could make out were the man’s eyes. A flickering, almost transparent blue—like the base of a flame. Mulder swallowed, trying to appear calm. But those eyes were almost as unnerving as never-ending spirals. Mulder wondered—could this be Emile Paladin?

  The man turned and said something in a quiet voice. There were other people in the room, just out of view. Gloved hands held out a thin plastic tray. The blue-eyed man took two objects from the tray and turned back to Mulder.

  Mulder’s gaze dropped to the man’s hands. In the right, he held a steel device shaped like
an oversize stapler. Mulder remembered a conversation from days ago, when he and Scully had questioned Perry Stanton’s plastic surgeon. Something about a stapler used in skin-transplantation procedures. Christ. Mulder’s eyes shifted to the man’s other hand. He saw a long pair of steel tweezers, delicately gripped around a four-inch strip of something thin and yellow. The material looked organic and wet, as if it had just been removed from some sort of preserving solution. Washed and ready for transplantation.

  “Wait,” Mulder whispered. He tried to regain his composure. “You’re making a big mistake. They’ll send people looking for me.”

  The blue-eyed man shook the tweezers, and tiny droplets of liquid splattered toward the floor. “Put him under. Now.”

  Suddenly, strong hands clamped a rubber gas mask over Mulder’s mouth and nose. He stared wildly at the square face leaning over him from the head of the stretcher. The second man was also wearing a surgical mask, but Mulder recognized the cubic shape of his head. Julian Kyle. Here, in Thailand. Mulder held his breath, struggling violently against the old scientist’s grip. But the ex–military man was too strong.

  “Take a deep breath,” Kyle whispered into his ear. “You won’t feel any pain.”

  Mulder arched his back against the Velcro strap. His lungs spasmed, but still he held on. Kyle pressed the mask tighter against his face. “It has to be this way.”

  Mulder saw spots in the corner of his vision, and suddenly he couldn’t fight any longer. He gasped, filling his lungs. A sweet taste touched the back of his tongue, and his eyelids fluttered shut. He heard the material of his slacks tearing, and he felt something touching his left calf. Something cold and wet. My god, my god, my god! But he was helpless, fading fast. As he flirted with consciousness, a faraway voice swirled in his ear.

  “He won’t cause us any more problems.”

  “And his partner?” came the response. There was a brief pause. When the first voice answered, it had a tinny, almost musical quality.