A New World

Series: War of the Worlds, The Equalizer, and The X-Files. Guest appearances in future parts from characters from Due South, The Man from UNCLE, and The Pretender; perhaps from others as the whim takes me.

Standard disclaimers apply. All characters belong to their various creators and the powers that be. Some of these characters belong to Chris Carter, Fox, and 10-13 Productions. I've just invited them over to play for a while, and I promise to send them home when the party's over. Others belong to Universal or Paramount, but it doesn't look like anyone is playing with them at the moment, so I'm going to let them stay as long as they want. Littlehawk belongs to Jan Harley. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jan, for your wonderful story. I hope you don't mind if he comes over to help chaperone the party; of course, he can come home whenever you need him. Tierney, Lainie, and Kira are mine; they live here.

Constructive criticism is welcomed.

By Wesa.

Ironhorse woke to the sound of sobs and looked around to see Harrison comforting both Suzanne and Debi, and Mulder with his arms full of Lainie, while Scully tried to calm Michel. Next to him, Sydney cried softly over Mickey.

"Paul?" Kira quavered softly, and Ironhorse realized that he lay with his head in her lap. "Are you all right?"

He sat up and drew her close without thinking, watching as Mickey woke up and reassured Sydney. "I'm okay," he told her. "She caught you, too," he added, stating the obvious.

"There were more of them than just Katara," Harrison told him. "We couldn't get away from them; they were coming from every direction. I think they killed the last of the Morthren. I heard the sound of the same weapon Katara used when she was here the first time. It seemed to be coming from the Center's buildings."

Ironhorse looked around, counting heads. "Where's Tierney?" he asked.

"They took her," Kira whispered unhappily. "Paul, you said they're carnivores; what if they--" She broke off, unable to continue, and buried her face against his shoulder.

"It wasn't like Katara," Suzanne said. "It was tall, skeletally thin. But it knocked her out the same way and took her, even though Scully, Mulder and Harrison tried to stop it."

"Tierney is alive," Littlehawk told Ironhorse, who looked around reflexively.

"Littlehawk?" Mickey asked.

"He says she's alive," Ironhorse said.

Kira looked up at him in hopeful confusion. "Who--? She's okay?"

"Littlehawk?" Ironhorse asked. There was no response. "Figures. The first time I ask him for information, nothing."

At that moment the skeletal alien-if it was one of the aliens-returned with Tierney unconscious in its arms. It gave her into her cousins' care, then pressed its hand against Lainie's temple. She fell unconscious, and it lifted her and turned, completely unaffected by Kira's screaming attempt to wrest her cousin from its arms. Then it was gone, and Kira collapsed on the floor, sobbing.

While Scully and Sydney checked Tierney over to make certain she was all right, Ironhorse gathered Kira up and tried to soothe her. "When Katara took me before, she never harmed me physically," he murmured. "Tierney's alive. Maybe they mean us no harm."

Harrison turned to him. "Colonel, how can you say that, when we know why, maybe how, they wanted to 'preserve' humanity? The Morthren told us what they are, and your own conversations with your ancestors confirmed what they said."

"Maybe Littlehawk's talking to him again," Mulder suggested hopefully.

Ironhorse frowned at them and shook his head. "No," he said, "but we don't know what they did to Tierney; we shouldn't assume that they hurt her."

"There've been samples taken," Scully said, "and she's been...probed, sexually. Not like she was raped, more like for an examination...or insemination..."

Kira gave a low, distressed cry and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. Ironhorse tightened his arms around her. "It'll be okay, Kira," he assured her.

"But Tierney-Lainie!" she protested.

"I know," he murmured softly. "I hope she's all right, too."

The entire group gathered close together, near where Tierney was beginning to regain consciousness. Ironhorse released his hold on Kira, and she went to her knees beside her cousin, lifting her in her arms protectively as Tierney began to cry.

"Tierney....Tierney," Mulder said insistently. "We need to know what happened."

Tierney looked up at him, her eyes wide with horror, then turned back to Kira and buried her face in her cousin's shoulder. "I can't..." she wailed.

Kira scowled up at Mulder, tightening her arms around Tierney protectively. "Leave her alone!" she growled. "Can't you see she's been traumatized?"

Harrison crouched beside the women. "I'm afraid, too," he told Kira gently, lightly touching her shoulder. "Help us, Kira. We do need to know."

Kira looked from Suzanne to Sydney to Scully, then bit her lip and lowered her head to murmur into Tierney's ear. After a moment, Tierney hiccuped and sniffled, gulped back a sob, and nodded. "I-I'll try," she promised.

"You don't have to talk about anything that's too painful," Kira told her.

"No," Tierney disagreed. "They're right, you do need to know...It's just so..." She gulped back another sob, and settled into a description of waking up on a sort of examining table, naked, already restrained and unable to move, to resist. She told them about the creatures that surrounded her. "There were three kinds," she murmured, barely loudly enough for them to hear her words. "There were big, thin, almost skeletal ones that seemed to be some kind of guards; there were small, slender ones that seemed to be in charge; and then there were the little blue monsters. They seemed to be...doctors or something...They hurt me."

Mulder asked hard questions that occasionally earned him a glare from Kira. Scully and Kostmayer asked gentler ones. Finally Kira tightened her arms around her cousin and said softly, "Tierney, Scully and Sydney said that it looked like they had...probed you....sexually."

Tierney bit her lip and nodded. "I'm not sure exactly what they did. It hurt, a lot worse than an ordinary pelvic exam. They...they put something in me, then chittered a lot. They seemed pleased; one of them petted my hair. Then that big one came back and put its hand against my face again, and I woke up here."

Kira murmured softly and hugged her cousin close. Looking up at Suzanne and Harrison, she wondered, "Are they going to do that to Lainie? Are they going to do that to all of us?"

Her questions were answered all too soon. One by one, each of them was taken by the tall, skeletal alien to the place where the pig-eyed little blue doctors worked under the supervision of the slightly taller, gray-skinned and big-eyed aliens. Kostmayer and Ironhorse tried to fight the big guard, tried to protect the others and themselves, but were swatted away like annoying insects until their turns came, when they were taken as easily as any of the others.

Afterward they huddled singly and in small groups on the floor of the room in which they were held, humiliated by their common experience and unwilling to discuss it more than was necessary. Besides blood, skin, muscle, bone, saliva, urine, and stool samples, all the women, including Debi, had been subjected to invasive pelvic exams, and all the men had had semen samples taken.

Ironhorse sat alone, his knees drawn up close to his chest and his arms wrapped around them protectively. Privately he thought that perhaps his examination had been more thorough than the others, and he didn't blame the Quo'Taarn for being suspicious that he might be another clone. They had, after all, found him in close proximity to the few remaining Morthren, and they had already lost one ship to a clone's subterfuge.

He lifted his head and looked around at his companions. Kostmayer tried vainly to comfort Sydney and Michel. Kira, Tierney, and Lainie huddled close together, comforting and taking comfort from each other. Scully and Mulder held each other protectively. Odd; Ironhorse had thought they were only partners, friends. He had rather thought that Mulder and Lainie would soon be a couple, and he knew that Harrison was fascinated by Dana Scully. Like himself, Harrison sat alone and silent, still staring blankly at nothing. Harrison had been the last of their group to be taken, and had been returned less than an hour before. Ironhorse rose to his feet and went to check on his friend.

"Harrison," he said, squatting down onto his heels next to the scientist, "are you going to be okay?"

"I don't know," Harrison replied without looking at him. "Now what happens?"

"What makes you think I know?" Ironhorse asked.

"What about Littlehawk?"

"He's being unusally quiet," Ironhorse replied. "I'm not certain the spirits can see into alien territory. Even Littlehawk was sort of a surprise to the rest of them, because he was an alien construct." He sat down and crossed his ankles, resting his elbows on his knees. "I think we're on own. For now, at least."

Harrison nodded. "What about the children he promised you? Did he ever tell you who their mother was?"

"No, but she's here," Ironhorse replied, his eyes seeking out Kira across the room. He sighed unhappily. "If we survive, there will be children."

That broke through Harrison's protective shell. "You know who she is?" he asked.

Ironhorse never had a chance to answer, as at that moment the big alien returned, carrying yet another captive, whom it placed on the floor in front of Suzanne. She gasped, and Debi shrieked, "Norton!!"

Suzanne scrambled to examine the man, lifting the blood-stained shirt he wore. "Scar tissue," she announced. "He's not a clone. He's alive, I don't know how or why, but the chest wounds have healed...."

Scully joined her, and together they examined him thoroughly, finishing up just as he regained consciousness. Suzanne helped him to sit up, and he looked around groggily.

"Welcome back, Mr. Drake," Ironhorse greeted him.

Norton regarded him cautiously. "Colonel?" he asked.

Ironhorse nodded. "I'm sorry for what my clone did to you," he said. "If I could have stopped him, I would have. But...uhm, if you don't mind explaining, just how did you survive?"

"Where have you been the last two years?" Harrison asked.

Norton looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. "Two years? Doc, I've been working with you for the last four! Where are we?"

"What's the last thing you remember?" Mulder asked him.

"Him shooting me," Norton replied, hooking his thumb at Ironhorse. "Who are you?"

"It wasn't the Colonel, Norton," Harrison assured him. "It was a clone. In fact the guy who told me that guy was a clone was also a clone. We lost our real Colonel for almost a year."

"A year! But..." His voice trailed off as he got a look at the blonde teenager standing behind Harrison. "Debi?!"

She lunged forward and hugged him. "Oh, Norton, I've missed you!" she exclaimed.

"Hey, Scully," Mulder said. "He was shot in the chest, right? So what's this scar?" He pulled up Norton's shirttail and exposed a fine pink scar right above his lumbar spine.

Scully looked, cocked her head, and asked Norton to roll over onto his stomach. Norton looked to Harrison, who nodded and said, "She's a doctor."

Norton complied, flinching from Scully's touch. "Hey! Your hands are cold."

"Sorry," she replied. "I'm not used to working on live patients."

Norton twisted to look at her. "Excuse me?"

"She's a forensic pathologist," Suzanne told him. "Don't be too picky; she's the only medical doctor we have here."

"Oh. So like I asked before, where's here?"

Harrison and Suzanne looked at each other, but Debi answered. "We've been captured by the Quo'Taarn. We think we're on their ship."

"Captured? I thought they were on our side!" Norton protested, sitting up easily, without thinking about it.

"So did we all, Mr. Drake," Ironhorse told him. "In fact, when the Morthren cloned me a second time in order to send the clone to destroy their ship, I tried very hard to sabotage their plan. And although Malzor had told me so, I didn't understand that the Quo'Taarn represented an even bigger threat to humans than the Morthren did."

"But Katara said she was to preserve humans..."

"Think zoological preserves, Norton," Kostmayer said dryly. "Think hunting preserves. Think strawberry preserves."

Norton looked ill.

"What I want to know," Tierney said, "is how did he get here? Have these Quo'Taarn been following the lot of you for two years? Were they there the night the Cottage exploded, is that how they got hold of Norton between the time he was shot and the time of the explosion? How did they revive him? And I thought you said he was a paraplegic, so how come he moved his legs when he turned over?"

Kira stared at her cousin, and Lainie smacked her lightly on the shoulder. "You're babbling, Tierney," she said.

Scully had moved to Norton's feet and pulled off one shoe. She pinched one of his toes. "Can you feel that?"

"Ouch!" he protested, pulling his foot out of her hands. "Yes!"

"They've fixed his spine, obviously," Mulder observed.

"And the time difference?" Sydney asked. "He has years missing."

"Some kind of temporal suspension, perhaps," Harrison suggested.

Kira moved close to Ironhorse, frowning. "Why would they fix his spine and keep him here in some kind of suspension if they meant to eat us?" she wondered softly.

**********

They were left more or less alone, then, for a period of several days. Occasionally several of the big guards came to bring them food, strange fruits and vegetables, nuts and meats. Even Ironhorse would eat none of the meat, uncertain of what it was, suspicious that their captors might eat humans and might not draw the line at feeding captives the same thing. The rest they reluctantly tried and even learned to like.

Sanitary facilities were primitive, to say the least; just a hole in an alcove of the room in which they were held. Eventually they all had to use it, despite its exposure.

They slept on the floor in small groups, huddled together for warmth as well as for the comfort of human contact. After only a couple of days, they no longer spoke to each other very much and then only listlessly. Even Debi and Michel had given up on their game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Time dragged on.

**********

After what seemed like weeks, one morning-thought of that way only because it came after a time of sleep-Ironhorse was wakened by a gasp of surprise. "Mickey!" Sydney exclaimed. "Mickey, wake up!"

Ironhorse, lying on his back, opened his eyes and at first didn't understand what he was seeing. It had been so long since he'd seen blue sky...and there was that strange opalescent ovoid again, moving away...They were free! He rose to his feet and looked around, checking to be sure that they were all there.

In fact, there were several extras: another red-haired woman, this one dressed in jeans and a sweater, far more practical than the styles that either Scully or Sydney favored; a brunette with a pixyish face, dressed somewhat incongruously in torn jeans and a leather jacket. There was a young blond man with the build of an athlete; a blonde woman lay next to him, and two older men beyond her.

Kostmayer crouched over a man wearing a priest's collar, calling softly, "Nick? Nick?" and Ironhorse remembered he had said that his brother was a priest.

A teenage Indian boy sat up, and Scully gasped, "Eric?" She went quickly to his side.

Mulder held a girl-child in his arms and sobbed aloud. Ironhorse frowned, unable to see any reason for the emotional outburst; the child appeared to be healthy.

"Kincaid!" Harrison exclaimed, and Ironhorse turned to see his friend greeting the man who had kept Harrison, Suzanne, and Debi alive during his incarceration. He watched a moment, then realized that Tierney was anxiously trying to attract Harrison's attention. Instantly worried, his eyes sought Kira.

He found her, standing with Lainie at the crest of the hilltop where they had been left. The two women held onto each other supportively as they looked down into the valley below. He joined them, asking, "What's the matter?" At the same time, he heard Tierney ask Harrison in distress, "Where are we?"

Kira glanced at him and gestured toward the grassy plain below. "Look," she said.

Ironhorse looked, seeing the vast herds of animals that almost covered the plain.

"What are they?" Lainie asked. "I never saw anything like that on 'Wild Kingdom!'"

Ironhorse looked closer, noticing the faintly green color of some of the animals. Some of them were almost pink and had...wings? "What the hell?" he murmured.

"Paul!" Harrison called.

Ironhorse looked around; Harrison was approaching at a trot, followed by Kincaid and Tierney. All three were clearly distressed. "What is it?" he asked.