Disclaimers:  Peskow and Krycek aren't mine and I make no profit off this.  Apparently a prequel, of sorts, to Homecoming, written for an earlier lyric wheel.
Rated:  PG-13 for possibly disturbing content.  No profanity.  No sex.  Plenty of violence, though.

He remembered the silence years later, when he thought about it much at all.  No death rattle, no gurgles of blood pooling in lungs, no desperate clutch at the wound, or a throat that would never take in air again.  Blood spun crimson fibers out from the edges of the entry wound and tinged the snow under his back, but there'd been no real noise after the shot.  A crack of displaced air, a muffled sound as flesh gave way to steel, and the much softer thump of a body landing in snow.

And then silence fell back over the land, more relentless in its grip than before.  Anything living had frozen in place, fearing to attract attention, it seemed.  The crust of the snow crunched and broke under their boots as they walked to the motionless lump.

In his memories, Peskow stood beside him, watching.  "This is what we do, Aleksandr.  This is death.  This is what you give, and avoid.  Do you understand?"

He nodded.  "Yes, sir."  He hadn't looked away yet, but he hadn't paled either.  It worried him, a little, how calm he was.  No nausea.  No overly clinical interest.  Nothing but acceptance, as if some part of him had always known bodies were like this.

"Good."

Peskow made no attempt to move, though, so he kept studying the new corpse.  Three untidy locks of light yellow hair straggled out from under the hat, lying in greater and greater contrast on the paling skin.  The eyes were closed.  One hand lay palm up on the snow; the other lay palm down.  Fingers relaxed, head turned to one side, and yet clearly not asleep.  The tongue stuck out just over the edge of the lower lip, and already the coloring was sliding from dark rose to ash pink, making sleep less likely.  More importantly, though, 'he' had become an 'it.'  Nothing definable, but very sure:  not a person, but the remnant of one.

When he looked back up, Peskow was watching him, thoughts spinning behind that lined, implacable face.  "You will be able to do this again, Aleksandr?"

He nodded again.  "Yes, sir."

Peskow nodded slowly.  "A small thing to kill a man, a bullet.  A bit of lead, a small amount of powder, a copper jacket...."  The old man's gaze was intent, trying to convey some message beyond the words.  Something essential.  Elemental.  "Almost so small a thing to keep a man alive, his heart.  You will remember?"

He nodded for a third time.  "Yes, sir."

Peskow watched him, silent again, then nodded.  "Good."  Finally he turned and they walked away, leaving the body where it lay.  The crunch of their boots and then the diesel rumble of the car's engine were the only noises around.

Peskow had sent him on to other teachers after that, but Aleksandr had taken away several of the lessons the old man meant him to consider.  Size doesn't always determine power.  Timing is important.  Some lines are very, very fine and far too easy to step over... or just scuff.  Some things are more alike than they look.  The finer the balance, the easier to tip it, and the harder to be sure it would stop.  And above all, that dying could be easy and death could be anywhere.

Twenty-one years later, very little about him was the same.  He'd put on thirteen centimeters and twenty kilos, even if he'd lost ten of those again in the last few months.  Dark circles ringed his eyes, hidden only by careful use of cosmetics.  His name had changed slightly, and his family been whittled away inexorably by death.  And Alex Krycek would have paid good money for silence.

No place in Auckland seemed quiet on this 'last night' of the millennium.  It wasn't, actually. Alex smiled a little as he thought of the scathing words his older brother Seriozha would have used on someone who couldn't figure out that the first year of a century ended in '1'.

"Something amusing, Mr. Krycek?  You're enjoying yourself, I hope?"

The odd mixture of polite inquiry and attempted threat didn't blend well, Alex thought, and found himself even more amused that his host's hair was blond.  Not as pale a shade as his first kill, but still....

"An old memory," Alex told him.  "And an odd synchronicity.  They just seemed appropriate somehow."  He adjusted his gloves, lightweight leather that had been just enough out of place in the heat of New Zealand's summer to draw the eye and then dismiss him from people's minds as the one-armed flunky who apparently still served some purpose.

The adjustment allowed Alex to check his watch.  Three minutes to midnight.  Professionally blank-faced servers moved through the room, handing out glasses of champagne or sparkling water.  Somewhere near, Alex knew, a top pyro crew waited to set off twenty-one minutes worth of fireworks after the countdown -- one for each century, supposedly.  The expense, he could care less about, or the status that would come with it.  The cover for his own actions, however, he was grateful for.

"Do you think any of the computer systems will really crash?"  The girl who asked her escort that inane question was slim, all sleek lines and glossy, expensive looks.  She was also, without doubt, far smarter than the breathless question implied.

The man in question smiled at her with the satisfaction of a predator who knew all his needs for the night would be met.  "Just consider it a stock indicator.  Any company whose system crashes needs to be sold out of your portfolio, immediately."

Alex smiled involuntarily as he slid through the crowd to stand by two of his targets.  The men turned in unison to give him the same, skeptical appraising look before turning back to their conversation.  No one in the Consortium was ever entirely sure anymore if Alex Krycek worked for the Americans, or the British, or the Russians.  He found that confusion useful at times.

Then the New Year arrived in a chorus of "Three! Two! One! -- Happy New Year!"  Corks exploded out of champagne bottles, sounding too close to bullet shots to suit Alex... and the two men he'd come to watch doubled over.  Their champagne flutes hit the ground and shattered in a crack of split crystal and splash of spilt wine, and all they could do was clutch their throats.

Black Oil streamed from eyes, nose, ears, mouth -- tried to explode out of the very pores of their skin -- and all of it turned to charcoal grey dust as it tried.  A few people had started to notice something was wrong, but most of them were singing "Auld Lang Syne."

Part of Alex's mind thought it looked like accelerated footage of paint drying.  The rest of him, however, was busy counting down the seconds until the fireworks started, and calculating shots as he moved away from the dying bodies that had housed now-destroyed Oil.  He moved to a potted tree, reached into the planter, and came up with a gun in one hand; with the other hand, he pulled out a holster with a second gun and four speed loaders.  Behind him, color and sound burst across the sky, distracting people even more, and Alex smiled a little.

He took his first shots in the madness of drunken partygoers and fireworks, the constant pop of champagne bottles being opened and voices mangling songs and toasts.  Bullets were small enough for humans, but he'd gone with something much smaller to get the Oil:  nanocytes.  January 1st, 2000, had started in this time zone, as every day did.  But it wasn't the only thing that was going to end here.

His host fell against a retaining wall.  Black tuxedo, red blood on a formerly pristine white shirt, and blond hair ruffled by the breeze or a mistress's hands.  An older woman, grey hair only faintly threaded with brown, slumped in her chair as he moved past her without stopping.  The hollow thud of her head on the table drew attention to her and away from him.  The stocky, swarthy biologist took a long moment to fall, only to fold at last, knees first, in a surprisingly compact heap.

Four steps later, or forty, Krycek's instincts told him it was time to go, and he left.  Through the party-goers just starting to scream.  Through the security just beginning to realize something had gone very wrong.  Past the occasional hissing, fizzing thing that had looked human at 11:59, December 31st of 1999.  His opening gambit was in play, and finally, the end had begun.  The wheel of fortune was turning, and Alex hoped his actions tonight would turn the tide in his favor.

He didn't change his pace as he slid from the lights illuminating the house into the shadows lit only by the ongoing fireworks.  If he lived, he'd worry about what to do for another beginning. Until then, though, the Y2K bug was biting back, and he had people to teach some of Peskow's lessons about timing, and lines, and balance points.

Above all, though, it was time they learned that even Oil could die.

~ ~ ~ finis ~ ~ ~

Written for the Wheel of Fortune X-Files Lyric Wheel.  Lyrics from Dryad provided below.  This takes place 20 days before Homecoming, and while I hadn't intended a prequel, it kind of happened.  Mostly, though, I wanted to play with start and end points on events, and what Krycek was and what he is.  I hope it worked for you.

Wheel of Fortune
Kay Starr

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