Collection 9 - The Changeling

by LRH Balzer

  Grayson's lifesigns weren't good. He was already in shock, his skin cold and clammy, his pulse rate had been rapid when Kuryakin had first found him, but now it was irregular and weak. Even the man's breathing was slowing down. It was a matter of time, and Grayson's was running out.

  Kuryakin closed his eyes for a brief second, trying to curb the nausea that threatened. "Let's just say that speed is essential for him." He struggled away from the cabin, off-balance in the shaking helicopter as he moved forward in the craft. "Napoleon, we—"

  "Hang on," Solo called out, using both hands to control the chopper, despite the disapproval of his healing arm wound.

  The helicopter dipped suddenly as Kuryakin slid into the copilot's seat, flipping through the maps. "What do you want to do? Make a run for it?"

  Solo glanced at the controls, at the declining fuel register. "We've got a problem. I think more than the radio was hit. We're out of fuel." The helicopter hovered over the field, already on fumes, stalled from rising further.

  A blur of motion to his right caught Kuryakin's attention. "Napoleon, there's a bogey coming in from the southwest! Looks like a Thrush attack helicopter," Kuryakin barked.

  "Hang on, Illya. Make sure you're strapped in. I'm going to drop her quick and careful. Make it look like we crashed—I've done this before. It'll look worse than it is. Can you get back to Grayson and secure him?"

  "He's dead," Kuryakin shouted back, knowing it was so.

  Beside him, Solo swore, his jaw clenched.

  "Napoleon, just do what you have to," the Russian said, strapping himself in.

  "Hang on, then. I'll do it now."

  The helicopter dipped and swayed as he lowered it, releasing the clutch to rely only on autorotation. The unpowered descent was done by disengaging the engine from the rotors and allowing the blades to rotate by air currents alone. Kuryakin hung on as Solo deliberately shook the craft, then allowed it to drop down to land in a crumpled heap. Even grounded, the chopper still trembled, vibrating as the engine fought to keep going, then with a loud clanking noise, it shuddered to a deathly silence broken only by the groans and hisses of the battered craft and the whish-whish-whish of the gradually slowing blades. Oil, gasoline, and other mechanical fluids spilled out onto the fresh snow and filled the clean mountain air with a harsh stench.

  Kuryakin freed himself from the restraints and pulled his weapon, then glanced across to his partner, relieved to see Solo shifting in his seat. It looked like the senior agent had bumped his head against the top of the control panel. Illya had whacked the side of his head on the copilot window, but he immediately moved out of sight of the aircraft above, leaning towards his partner.

  Gripping his gun in one hand, he exhaled sharply, trying to get his breathing under control, hearing Solo do the same. Both were shaken and had new scrapes and welts, but were alive. "You okay?" he asked, anyway.

  "More or less. You?" Solo whispered, holding his previously injured arm over his chest.

  "Good enough. Don't want to ride with you in a helicopter anymore, though." Kuryakin turned in his seat to see Grayson and swore; the pilot's bloody body had been thrown out by the impact to land a few yards from the wreckage, one arm almost severed by the crash. Surrounding Grayson was debris from the craft - sections and wheels that had broken off at the crash and cargo that had been hurled out when it hit the ground.

  Overhead, the Thrush chopper buzzed low, checking out the situation, the wind from its blades shaking the trees that surrounded the small landing area. Kuryakin had his weapon at ready, listening with closed eyes to the sound of the other aircraft, tracking it as it hovered above them. Both U.N.C.L.E. agents were still well hidden by the angle of the top of the battered helicopter.

  "If we’re lucky, they’ll think he was alone in the chopper and died in the crash." Solo's voice was raspy in the tilted craft.

  "What about the cabin up the hill?" Kuryakin whispered back. "Won’t they come check it out?"

  "Where are they going to land? This was the only place around and we're taking up all of the field. I'm sure they'll send someone to check it out, but it won't be a priority right now. If this is the same craft that was following Karl," Solo faltered on the name of their slain colleague, "they would have known he was alone in the helicopter."

  After hovering for several minutes, the Thrush helicopter left, apparently satisfied that they had taken out the pilot. Only then did Kuryakin lower his weapon and the two agents gave in to the adrenaline rushing their systems.

  Kuryakin moved carefully, checking out his legs for damage. The helicopter reeked of fuel. His headache was worse, and he swallowed, forcing down the bile that threatened. The crash had jarred him, and he'd hit his head again, not enough to black out, but enough to rattle his brains. "Now what?" he asked, his voice deceptively calm.

  "Now we get the hell off this mountain."

  "I'm assuming the helicopter is beyond repair?"

  "Right. We’ll ski out."

  "What about Grayson?" Kuryakin didn’t want to see him. He knew he was lying out there, long past hope, but he didn't want to look at the body again.

  "I hate to say this, but we'll have to leave Karl for now." Solo's voice sounded regretful. Tired. "If they fly by to check the place, he's got to be there, or they'll know someone else was here."

  His partner was right. It was the best thing to do. The only thing they could do. Kuryakin didn't have to like it. "So we get rid of our footprints and get —"

  "Get the hell out of Dodge."

  With a shiver of 'otherness' Kuryakin looked across at him and blinked twice. "I understood that."

  It took Solo a moment to realize what he meant, and the senior agent paused, staring back at him. "You did?"

  "Yeah."

  "Capitalistic, TV-addicted American," Solo said with a smirk, moving out again.

  "Misha Graham's favorite show." Kuryakin looked away, staring out the shattered side window. For a moment, there was a hint of normalness. Of family and friends. Of another world beside this one of death and betrayal, cloned babies and pulsing green laser light. He released the last of the restraints that held him in place and made his way to the twisted door, then stared across the blood-splattered snow to Grayson's broken body. This, unfortunately, was his present reality.

  "We'll make sure he's buried properly later," Solo said, moving past him out of the downed helicopter. "I promise you."

  *****

  An hour later, Illya swept down the mountain, his skis cutting into the surface crust as he wove his way toward the lake two miles from the cabin. Behind him, Napoleon followed smoothly, able to keep up with him as they slowly made their way downhill. It was a fresh morning, the clean air and natural beauty trying to wipe away the stench of blood and a memory of a lifeless, torn body lying sprawled in the snow.

  Another death. Another body.

  Illya was so tired of it all.

  The medication did little to ease the ever-building headache. He had blackened around his eyes, hoping to cut the glare from the sun on the snow, but still his eyes felt pained, knife blades cutting into his brain from the reflected light. The slight rises and moguls he skimmed over, plus the dips and undulating curves as they wound their way downward, added to the growing nausea he was experiencing.

  Road kill. He felt like road kill.

  He felt like he was Grayson, torn and lifeless, but he was too stupid to know he was dead and just stay down. Maybe he was. Maybe he was dead. Or...

  For a brief moment, he forgot who he was.

  His body shifted left, then right, then left, alternating legs, shimmering across the snow, the steady raspy sound reminding him of machine-driven air filling tiny lungs.

  The air was cold around him, the light blinding as he flew down the hill. His body knew what to do, what movement to make. It was his mind that was having problems staying with the present.

  There had been a baby, so long ago. A little baby. He remembered holding him in his arms, ca
reful of wires and tubes, his nose touching the wisps of fine hair on the top of the infant's head, smelling the baby-ness of him beneath the smell of the hospital. He could feel the pulse, the rasp of lungs, the difficulty the baby was having to keep breathing. The Grahams' tiny son died days later, never living to be a week old. Pasha, they had called him.

  The air was cold against his face, his breath trapped beneath the muffler as he plowed through the virgin snow, then up over a short rise, only to schuss downward in an open stretch of hill.

  There had been that other Pasha, too, the one he wondered about. Was he alive now, still? Would they tell him if he wasn't? Illya struggled to remember the baby he had stolen from the Thrush clinic the previous spring. Last night, he had dreamed of him, he was certain, but now he couldn't remember what he had dreamed. Maybe the fire. Or running.

  The baby...

  Was keeping the thought straight really so difficult, or was his mind just clouded from injury, drugs, and exhaustion? Was he unable to think clearly at all, his body handling the simple effort of staying upright while his mind traversed in half-forgotten memories, seeking asylum?

  Pasha. The cloned baby who couldn't possibly exist, and did. At first, Illya had thought of Pasha every day, wondering how he was, what would happen to him, but now, just seven months after he had stood in the darkness at a closed Canadian border and handed the baby over to be taken away in obscurity, he realized he had not thought about him in a long time. Until last night. Maybe even the day before. Napoleon said he had spoken of a baby in the fire.

  Little Pasha. Little Napoleon.

  He laughed, wondering what Napoleon would think if he knew. It was something he had never told his partner, and probably never would tell him. For what did one do with such information? What did one do when faced with the knowledge that a cloned version of themselves was out there, a little baby just now learning to walk?

  The slope levelled somewhat and Illya had to use his ski poles to keep moving forward, then he crested another ramp and once again was winging his way downhill, flying across the white crust of snow.

  The mountain was hollow and filled with serpents, with death, with Thrush. He hated them. Hated what they represented, the beautiful snow-covered mountain with a disgusting, rotten, evil core. He could feel them beneath his feet, feel the vibration of the huge cannon as they dragged it into place, feel the charged static of the death ray hissing fluorescent green tendrils that threatened to reverberate through his skis, through his boots, to rumble up his body and explode within his brain.

  Depressed, are we? the small portion of his sane mind asked.

  Just tired. Too exhausted to care if Thrush blows up this mountain with us on it.

  He kept moving, but the depression stuck with him, the serenity of the landscape lost to his vision of death and decay and corruption. Dimly he reminded himself that he had a concussion and was probably having a severe reaction to the stress they were under and the medication he had taken, but the stubborn part of him ignored the warning and kept going. He was not going to give up until he was, like Grayson, bleeding and torn and lying face down in the snow, blood pouring from his open, maggot-filled wounds.

  "Illya?"

  He had stopped.

  "Illya?" Napoleon called, moving around him.

  Why had he stopped? A baby crying somewhere.

  He closed his eyes and listened. A faint rumbling sound carried on the wind, the ground beneath their feet trembled ever-so-slightly. He glanced over his shoulder, but there was no avalanche descending on them.

  "Illya?"

  Voices. Yes, definitely, he heard male voices. He raised one hand for silence and his partner complied, also listening now. He opened his eyes and met Napoleon's even stare.

  "We're here," he said softly, and they both heard the roar of a truck engine.

  *****

  They froze in place until the sound of the truck passed into the distance and the rumble happened again. They were at the foot of a short rise that hid them from the road below. Solo pointed to a strand of trees to their right, and they shuffled their way to them silently.

  "We need to find the resort first," Solo said quietly. "Regardless of what this is, we have one gun between us and no ammunition." He carefully removed his ski boots one-handed, nodding his thanks to Kuryakin for unsnapping the buckles securing the boot to the ski. From the pack on his back, he removed Grayson's hiking boots that were a size too large but Napoleon put on several pairs of socks to get a better fit. The boots would work better with snow shoes, moving sideways across the mountain.

  He motioned for Kuryakin to remove his own skis and tried to keep the concern off his face at his partner's dazed, lost expression. He had to repeat the gesture before the pale blue eyes focussed on him and Kuryakin bent to his task.

  Solo glanced up at the sky. Morning had moved to afternoon. They needed to take a longer break and eat, build up their strength to make it to the resort. His arm throbbed. The injury had been over a previous one he had received a year before, and he knew it would be slow in healing, especially given the treatment it was receiving right now. His headache had returned, the brilliance of the sun reflected off the snow not helping matters. Leaning back against the closest tree trunk, he rubbed his arm, grimacing from the sharp jabs that radiated from his forearm and shoulder. Yes, Sam Lawrence would have it in a sling for a month after this. He was severely limited in what he could do with it; he would be severely compromised in a fight of any kind.

  Napoleon watched his partner move, seeing the pain and the disorientation still lingering. Illya was only half there, fading in and out, his dilated pupils showing the symptoms of concussion. But resting for long was not an option. There was nothing he could really do for him right now, out here in the open. What they both needed was a refreshing, healing sleep, and Napoleon again indulged himself with thoughts of a hot shower and a comfortable bed.

  He had Kuryakin remain where he was, then went on alone up the slight slope to look down on the road below. The truck had already passed by, but it was clear where it had travelled, the tracks visible through the light dusting of snow. He thought the road looked familiar, but there was nothing really to differentiate it from a thousand other roads winding along mountains throughout the northeast States. From this angle, he couldn't tell if this was the entrance he had slipped through two years ago, or perhaps another entrance to the underground facility. There was no proof; only the gut feeling they both had that this was the same mountain, made him confident. Somehow, it felt like it was the same mountain.

  Of course, neither of them was functioning at one hundred percent. Doc Lawrence would probably have locked them in the infirmary, refusing to listen to their pleas to leave.

  But the good doctor wasn't here, Napoleon thought, grimly smiling.

  So, they would eat, then go east toward the resort. It would take them the rest of the day to do the 'few miles' that Grayson had mentioned, but from there, they would be able to contact an U.N.C.L.E. base and get help. With any luck, they wouldn't meet any Thrush patrols.

  Solo moved back to his partner, smiling at the food Kuryakin had already rescued from their backpacks. "What's all this?" he asked, shocked at the raspiness of his voice. We're thirty feet from a Thrush facility, and Illya wants to have a picnic.

  "I'm hungry. Good sign, right?" Kuryakin said, as he spooned hot tomato soup from the thermos to a cup, then passed it to Napoleon.

  Solo held the mug to his nose, breathing in the fragrant smell. Maybe this would offer him enough energy to go the final lap to the resort.

  "What's out there?" Kuryakin squatted down to drink his soup. After a few initial large swallows of the soup, he paced himself, sipping on the vitamin-enriched stock.

  "A narrow road. One-lane."

  "And the truck?"

  "It had already passed when I got there."

  Illya shrugged, staring off into the distance. "There was an echo. It was empty; it rattled."


  "Which means it's headed away after leaving a delivery, or it's heading out to get a pickup. We're travelling west, though, toward the resort."

  Illya finished eating before he did, and he watched the Russian walk to the top of the ridge, then crouch down and look over the edge at the road below them. He sat there for almost five minutes before standing and returning to Napoleon.

  "What'd you see?"

  Kuryakin remained standing, slowly stretching his legs. "I'm just trying to get an idea of what's happening. Something feels off."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Something's going to happen. Tonight."

  "How do you know?"

  Kuryakin shrugged, staring off into the distance. "Just a feeling. Nothing more."

  "Let's get going. I'd like to get to the resort before dinner."

  "Why?" Kuryakin asked. "Do you feel the same urgency, or is it something else?"

  Solo laughed. "You mean besides the whole idea of requesting backup, getting warm, purchasing some suitable clothes, a good meal, sleeping on a decent bed—all of that?"

  But Kuryakin wasn't smiling. Instead, he crouched down beside his partner, suddenly serious. "Tell me about this area, if we are where we believe we are. What do you remember of the Thrush lodge and the Thrush base in the mountain?”

  Solo thought for a moment, then said, "When we came here before, it was about a twenty minute drive to the resort after leaving the highway. If you keep going east along the same road, there's a turnoff, to your left, which goes to the Thrush lodge, a branch-off road with a 'Private Lodging' sign. I followed that until I reached the lodge."

  "And how did you find the smaller road that led to the mountain base?"

  Solo tried to concentrate on the details of the case. It was all in his report. Trouble was, he hadn't read the report in over two years, and he couldn't just request it from Records. Solo closed his eyes, going back to the memory of his time with Angelique in the lounge, her phone call and sudden departure. He had returned to his car... no, he had left the sports car at the resort and had taken a truck better suited for the roads. There had been a group of Thrush minions who had left from the back of the lodge in two pickup trucks, and he had followed them, stopping when he reached the main road without catching up to them. He knew they must have turned off somewhere.