Skin

by Ben Mezrich

Scully shrugged. She was stunned by the sight of the tank. Now there was no doubt—the enormous mountain cave was the site of some sort of medical research. The long path from New York had led to this place in the mountains of Thailand—through the guidance of a religious cult and an ancient fairy tale. Scully reminded herself—there was logic behind it all. The myth of the Skin Eater was a cover story, much like the outbreak of encephalitis lethargica. “It’s possible synthetic skin was kept in this tank.”

  “Maybe just the family pet,” Mulder commented, reaching into the tank and touching the liquid inside. He took out his hand and shook the droplets toward the ground. Then he started toward the inner entrance. Scully followed, her nerves on edge. As they moved closer to the yellowish light, unnatural, vaguely mechanical sounds drifted into her ears. Soon the sounds reached a recognizable volume. She clearly made out the rhythmic pumping of respiratory ventilators, mingling with the hiss of liquid infusers and the beep of computer processors. She cautioned Mulder with her hand as they reached the entrance, and they spread out to either side, crouching low.

  The inner room was at least four times as large as the initial chamber—massive and naturally domed, nearly the size of a football field. It was the largest underground cavern Scully had ever seen. Soft yellow light poured down from more than a dozen enormous spotlights hanging from steel poles suspended along the walls. And beginning just a few feet in front of Scully, stretching as far as her eyes could see—row after row of empty chrome hospital stretchers. The stretchers seemed to go on forever, parallel rows extending from one end of the cavern to the other.

  “They’re not here,” Mulder whispered, slowly moving between the stretchers. “These stretchers are all empty—”

  He paused midsentence. Then he pointed up ahead. There was a group of stretchers—between twenty and thirty—separated from the chrome sea, situated near the far end of the cavern. Each of the segregated stretchers was covered by a milky white oxygen tank.

  Mulder rushed ahead, Scully a few feet behind. Their pace slowed as they reached the first oxygen tent. At the head of each tent stood a semicircle of medical carts; Scully recognized respirators and cardiac machines—but some of the other devices were foreign to her, and there were numerous infusion pumps attached to vessels full of unidentifiable chemicals. Tubes ran from the carts to valves attached directly to the plastic oxygen tents.

  Scully followed Mulder through the maze of oxygen tents, counting as she went. Her approximation had been accurate; there were twenty-five tented stretchers. She took a deep breath and approached the closest plastic tent. She could hear the rhythm of the oxygen being pumped through the tubing—creating a pristine, sterile environment inside. She searched the outside of the plastic tent—and found a triangular flap held down by a steel zipper. She called Mulder over, and carefully undid the flap.

  “My God,” she whispered, as she stared through the thin transparent plastic viewplate beneath the flap. She was looking at a horribly burned face and upper torso. Nearly every inch of skin had been seared away, and in many places she could see straight through to the muscle and bone beneath. The patient was a patchwork of black, white, and red, with charred regions, exposed subcutaneous fat, and pulsing veins and arteries revealed to the sterile air. Both eyes were burned away, leaving blank sockets, and the patient’s mouth was wide-open—and missing all of its teeth.

  But amazingly—the patient seemed to be still alive. Scully could see the mechanical rise and fall of his chest. She could watch the blood pumping through the body’s circulatory system. Still alive—in a sense. More an organic machine than a human being. Blood pumping, lungs working, but brain function? Doubtful, if not impossible.

  “This one’s in the same condition,” Mulder called to her from a few feet away. He had opened a similar flap on another oxygen tank. As Scully watched, he moved from stretcher to stretcher, carefully unzipping the flaps. “Twenty-five of them, all in similar states. The rest of the two thousand must have been moved, maybe to other holding areas.”

  Scully shifted her eyes to the semicircle of medical carts at the head of the stretcher. She listened to the symphony of life-support machinery. “We don’t know that these twenty-five patients are from the list. And I’m not even sure there’s any way to identify this man. No fingerprints, no teeth.”

  Mulder had paused by one of the stretchers. He peered down, then continued to the next. “None of these men has teeth—for that precise reason. But there’s no doubt in my mind. These are Paladin’s guinea pigs. And the rest are out there, somewhere. Waiting for the next phase.”

  Scully tore herself away from the stretcher and followed Mulder through the chamber. She thought about the man who had accosted her in her hotel bedroom. Had he once been like one of these patients, a skinless vegetable kept alive by tubes? It seemed impossible. The changes in Perry Stanton—in the MRIs she had seen in the basement of the church—these were changes she could fathom. Chemicals affecting brain structure, neurotransmitters affecting behavior, synthetic skin as a method of transmission. But Mulder was suggesting something completely different. The raising of the dead.

  “No,” Scully finally said. “These burns can’t be healed. Not to that degree. Medicine isn’t magic.”

  Suddenly, Mulder grabbed her arm and yanked her to the side. She gasped, nearly losing her footing. Mulder was pointing straight ahead. They were barely twenty yards from the back wall of the enormous chamber. A double door had been cut directly into the stone, and there was a circular viewing window set waist high in one of the doors, a few feet in diameter. Bright light poured through the window, and Scully could see movement on the other side.

  “Over there,” Mulder mouthed, pointing toward a pair of huge machines a few yards from the doors. Scully identified them as autoclaves: enormous steam sterilizers, each about the size of a small closet, with a transparent Plexiglas face. One of the autoclaves was open, its digital display glowing red, indicating that it was set on automatic and ready for operation. The other looked as if it had been recently used; Scully could see traces of the superheated steam on the inside of the glass, and there were racks of syringes and scalpels glistening inside.

  She crouched next to Mulder behind the second autoclave, craning her neck for a better angle through the viewing window.

  “Looks like an operating theater,” she whispered.

  “Theater’s the right word,” Mulder responded. “Do you see the cameras?”

  Scully nodded. From her angle, she could see at least three video cameras on tripods focused on the raised operating table on the other side of the window. A tall, thin man in surgical garb was speaking into one of the cameras, his face covered by a sterile white mask. Another man—squat, square, in similar surgical clothes—was hovering closer to the operating table. In his hands was an oversize plastic cooler, partially opened.

  “Julian Kyle,” Scully commented, snapping the safety off her Smith & Wesson. She didn’t know what sort of surgery was going on in the other room, but she was ready to make an arrest. There were twenty-five burned patients on life support in a cave. She certainly considered that probable cause. “What do you suppose the cameras are for?”

  “It’s a satellite link,” Mulder responded. His fingers had tightened against his automatic rifle. He was also preparing for the confrontation. “I heard them talking about it before I lost consciousness. They’re demonstrating their procedure—probably to interested buyers.”

  “Do-it-yourself drones?” Scully asked. She still found the idea implausible. Nobody would go to this much trouble for mindless drones. Trained soldiers could fight circles around men who couldn’t think. The drone who had accosted her was a perfect example. He had been unable to react to her surprise attack. How much money could an army of drones be worth?

  “As I said before,” Mulder responded, “the drones were just the first step. The procedure has been perfected—and the next stage is in that room.”

  Mulder’s whisper
had changed to an angry hiss. His objectivity was long gone. Looking at the twenty-five oxygen tents clustered together in the room like white ripples in a tormented ocean, Scully felt her own objectivity waver. She wanted answers as badly as her partner.

  She nodded, and Mulder slid forward. Scully followed a step behind, her focus trained on the double doors. Another few seconds, and it would all be over.

  26

  Quo Tien’s face suddenly drained of color as he watched the two agents sweep out from behind the autoclave. He was standing twenty feet away, in the dark entrance to a secondary tunnel leading off from the main chamber. He could not believe the sight in front of him. The male agent—Fox Mulder, whose flesh Tien had almost tasted—had somehow escaped the effects of the transplant procedure. Now he and his partner were here, in Tien’s playground—seconds away from ruining everything.

  Tien’s surprise rapidly turned to rage. This was his home. The agents’ very presence was an abomination. This time, Uncle Julian would not get in the way.

  Tien slid forward, his hands breaking free of his long sleeves. He had just returned from securing the last of the first-stage drones; in his left hand he held a compact stun gun, which had become a requirement since the debacle involving the drone in New York. Better to kill a drone than let it escape. His right hand embraced the hilt of his straight razor. The two agents were heavily armed—but Tien knew the razor and the stun gun would be enough.

  The hunger screamed in his ears as he quickly closed the distance between them.

  27

  Scully saw the sudden flash of movement and jerked her head to the side. The thin young man was sprinting toward them, his lithe body cutting between the oxygen tents with amazing agility. His face was a mask of rage and violence, his eyes narrowed to black points. He looked more snake than human, his hands rising like fangs. Scully saw the sharp razor blade flashing under the yellow spotlights, then the stun gun—pointing right at her. She didn’t have time to get her gun around, didn’t even have time to scream. Instead, she did the only thing she could think of. She reached out and grabbed Mulder’s shoulder.

  The bolt of electricity hit her in the side, and there was an enormous popping in her ears. Her body lifted a few inches off the ground, and her muscles spasmed, sending her careening into Mulder. He jerked beneath her hand as half the electricity transferred to his body. The automatic rifle whirled out of his hands, clattering beneath a stretcher a few feet away. Together, they slammed into the stone wall, just inches from the double doors. Scully’s skin felt as if it was on fire, her head spinning, black spots ricocheting across the plane of her vision. She felt Mulder roll free from beneath her, crawling toward his gun.

  Her cheek touched the floor, and the room turned to liquid in front of her eyes. She blinked rapidly, struggling to remain conscious. She had avoided the full effect of the stun gun by grabbing Mulder—and she had warned him with the same stroke. But she had partially incapacitated them both. She managed to get her hands in front of her, lifting her face off the ground. She saw Mulder a few feet away, his hands inches from the rifle. Then she saw a long dark shape land on top of him, a shadow come to life. The shadow dragged Mulder back from the gun and spun him onto his back.

  Scully shook her head, her vision clearing. The shadow flickered into three dimensions. It was the young man, straddling Mulder around his waist, the razor blade rising above Mulder’s face. Christ. Scully clenched her jaw and launched herself forward. She slammed into the young man’s back, knocking him off Mulder with her weight. Even before they hit the ground, the young man had twisted out of her grip. The back of his left hand caught the side of Scully’s jaw, and she spun across the floor, crashing into a semicircle of medical carts. She tasted blood and felt the sharp pain of a pulled muscle daggering down her right side. She was lying against the legs of one of the occupied stretchers, staring up at the white-plastic oxygen tent. One of the carts had collapsed on top of her, and a cardiac machine was lying shattered next to her shoulder. A long plastic tube had yanked free from the machine, and Scully saw a sharp steel wire sticking out of the end of the tube. A trochar, used to insert an emergency cardiac balloon into a patient. Relief filled her as she realized that the machine had not been attached to the burn victim in the oxygen tent, that it was there in case of an emergency. Then her eyes focused on the trochar. The hollow steel wire was eight inches long, with an extremely sharp point.

  Scully grabbed the trochar, yanking it free from the plastic tube. The sharp pain in her side sent tears to her eyes, as she struggled into a crouch. She spit blood, searching for Mulder and the young man.

  She spotted them directly in front of the two autoclaves. Mulder was on his knees, his hands clenched around the Amerasian’s wrists. There was blood pouring from a gash in Mulder’s cheek, more blood from a deep cut in his left arm. The Amerasian clearly had the upper hand. The bloody razor blade was moving steadily toward Mulder’s throat. The Amerasian’s face was perfectly calm, the surface of a lake right before a storm. His lips twitched upward at the edges, a strangely erotic smile.

  Scully clenched her hand around the trochar and hurtled forward. The Amerasian looked up at the last second, his eyes going wide. He tried to twist his body out of the way, but Mulder held on tight to his wrists, limiting his range of motion. The trochar caught the side of his shoulder and plunged through, ripping deep into his muscle, wounding him severely. A geyser of bright red blood sprayed Mulder’s face, and he reeled back. The Amerasian lurched to his feet, his eyes wild. He staggered back, swinging the razor blade impotently through the air, his face draining as the blood fountained out of his deeply skewered shoulder. His feet tangled together, and he fell, crashing into the open autoclave. His weight sent the machine rocking backward, and the door swung shut.

  There was a mechanical click, followed by a series of loud beeps. Scully’s stomach dropped as she realized the machine was set on automatic. She lurched toward the control panel—but she was too late. She watched in horror as the Amerasian’s body slumped against the transparent door, his knees buckling. Suddenly, a thunderous hiss erupted from the machine. Plumes of superheated steam exploded out of the half dozen sterilizing jets, hitting the young man from all four sides. His skin was instantly flayed from his body, tearing off in long, bloody strips. In less than a second he had been reduced to a skeleton shrouded in white steam.

  Scully stared in shock, unable to turn away. Mulder staggered to his feet next to her, his hand over the wound on his left arm. “Karma,” he said, simply. “Two thousand degrees of pure karma.”

  Scully looked at him. The blood flowed freely down his face from the cut in his cheek. Her own mouth ached, and she realized that one of her lower teeth was loose. “Was that Emile Paladin’s son?”

  Before Mulder could answer, there was the sound of a swinging door behind them. Scully turned, and saw Julian Kyle staring at them from in front of the double doors. He had the plastic cooler in his hands, and there was a shocked look on his face.

  “Stay where you are,” Mulder shouted, but Kyle was already sprinting across the chamber. Mulder ignored him, heading toward the double doors. The other man was presumably still inside the operating theater. “Scully, don’t let him get away. He’s got the skin!”

  Scully thought about going after her gun, but decided she didn’t have time to waste searching the chamber. Kyle was already near the secondary tunnel from where the Amerasian had entered the room. Scully raced after him, ignoring the pain in her side. She heard Mulder hit the double doors behind her, and she knew he was also unarmed.

  She wondered how far they’d get on karma alone.

  28

  Mulder crashed through the twin doors shoulder first, bursting into the bright light. His boots skidded against the floor as he narrowly avoided a video camera set atop a tripod. The raised operating table was ten feet away, surrounded by surgical equipment. Anesthetic tanks stood by the head of the table, next to a respirator pump and two enor
mous canisters of oxygen. On the other side of the table, Mulder recognized the articulated arm and cylindrical housing of a high-powered laser scalpel, similar to the device he had seen used during the tattoo removal in the surgical ward at Jamaica Hospital. Next to the laser apparatus stood a defibrillator cart, next to that a cardiac monitor. Bright green mountains raced across the monitor, the fierce cadence of an overstimulated heart. Each peak sent a high-pitched tone echoing off the walls.

  The blue-eyed man in the surgical mask stood frozen beside the monitor, a serrated steel scalpel in his right hand. Three separate video cameras were trained over his shoulders toward the operating table, and Mulder saw a spaghetti-sea of wires looping behind the cameras to an enormous receiver plugged into a generator by the wall. The cameras whirred in a quiet symphony of invisible gears.

  “Sorry to interrupt the show,” Mulder said, breathing hard in the doorway.

  The blue-eyed man remained still, a strange calm moving across his features. He gently lowered the scalpel. His eyes shifted to the patient on the table in front of him. Mulder followed his gaze.

  The patient was a work in progress. His bare torso was split into two distinct sections; his abdomen was still covered in terrible burns, a mix of white, black, and ruby red. But his upper pectorals, shoulders, neck, and face had been delicately reconstructed. The new, yellowish skin was pulled taut against his muscles and bone, giving off a jaundiced glow. At the edges of each newly transplanted section, Mulder could make out the thin staples—and spread around the staples, tiny flecks of red powder. The Dust—the antibacterial substance that had first connected their investigation to Fibrol, and Emile Paladin.

  Beneath the fresh skin, the patient’s face was unnaturally smooth, the features icily still beneath the anesthesia mask. His eyes were wide-open, the same piercing blue as those of the surgeon by his side.