The Lambs: Part 3 (2/11) by Lamia (AKA so kiss me goodbye) Rating: PG-13 (violence, strong language) Category: S Spoilers: Seasons 1-9, Fight the Future Keywords: William; Colonization Summary: Liam van de Kamp's life changes the day two FBI agents kidnap him and his parents. Author's Note: The Lambs is a three-part story plus epilogue. The prologue and Parts I (Chapters 1-10) and (Chapters 11-31) were completed between 2008 and 2015, and posted on FFN. Chapter 33 December 21, 2012 New Mexico "Wash, change and come." Liam gaped at the supersoldier standing over him. Her words were the first not his own he had heard in days. The sunrise shining through the transparent wall had winked out and the walls reverted back to gray, leaving them in low light. Liam scrambled to his feet, his hunger for real conversation overcoming his apprehension. Before he could speak, a bundle was shoved into his chest. He wobbled as he overbalanced trying to hold the surprise gift and rub the sleep from his eyes. "What's this?" He didn't wait for any reply. "Two buckets and a facecloth, t-shirt, underwear, jeans. Socks." The compulsion to talk had disappeared when the supersoldier melted through the metal wall, but days of non-stop chatter was habit-forming. He pulled a carton from the empty bucket and read the label. "Choc-2-Go liquid breakfast. Mom would hate this." For the second time in his life, he'd been kidnapped. And for the second time, he was left wondering if his kidnappers knew what they were doing. Liam set the items down with belated thanks. Usually they brought only food. Everything about today was different. The wall at the supersoldier's back rippled and a glowing rectangular rim lit up. "So there *is* a door." How far would he get if he made a dash for it? *Where would I go?* The metallic gray of his room bled into the metallic gray of the corridor - but the corridor had something he hadn't felt in days. Sounds of life. As if the ship knew what he was thinking, the portal snapped shut. *Why show me a door? Why now?* Usually they came, deposited a tray of food, and dissolved back through the wall as though they did not like being in the room with him. This supersoldier stood military straight. He had seen her several times. She always scraped her golden hair back in a severe French braid, exposing the black roots at her scalp. The plait did a good job of concealing the pea-sized nodule on the back of her neck. Liam had seen it only once when she had knelt to give him dinner. Her presence made the sealed room bearable. Alone, the air felt dense. Liam could stand and he could breath, but a weight pressed all around him. And it was too quiet. He couldn't think when he was standing. Most of the time he stayed low, lying or scrambling about on his hands and knees. By himself, this room was filled with dead space, but he refused to believe it. A spider, a bug, bacteria. If he tried hard enough, surely he'd be able to detect something? He pushed and pushed with his mind but the mental exertion was futile. Why did they need a room so sterile? *Why don't* I *make a sound?* It was unlike anything he had ever experienced. He had never truly noticed until now how unsilent the world was. All life made a sound - like background radiation. But the room wasn't silent all the time. It was like his hearing was being switched on and off. Whenever a supersoldier melted through the wall, normal sounds flooded his ears. Like now. The sound of the supersoldier thinking was as loud as her heart beating. If he had wanted to, he could have reached out with his mind and - *And what? Don't go there, Liam.* He had found himself stuck in a supersoldier's mind once. He shuddered at the memory. But they had left him here, by himself, for days, and it hurt. Loneliness hurt. That's why they had put him here. *They* wanted him lonely. To make him desperate enough that he'd have no choice but to test himself. They *wanted* him to reach out with his mind. And if *they* wanted something, it wasn't going to be in his best interests. That's why he had to ignore her thoughts. Besides, supersoldiers had already stolen too much of his time. There was only one he wanted to hear from, but the others crowded his dreams at night. Awake, he was stuck in this prison, but in sleep he moused his way through corridor after corridor, nosing for a way out. Around every corner, a supersoldier would pop up, all talking at him with haunted eyes and voiceless mouths. He rejected them all. The same way he rejected the supersoldier standing in front of him now. She hadn't moved. Wash, change and come, she had said. Liam gulped the liquid breakfast down, then turned his back on her. She was the only one who ever brought him washcloths and towels. Today was the first time she'd brought him fresh clothes. "This would be easier if you just let me use the bathroom." He peeked over his shoulder to see if the supersoldier would react. Her face - smooth and youthful - remained slack. He was quick to splash himself. Then he examined the clothes she had given him, holding up the jeans before stepping into them. "You left the price tag on. Seven bucks." He pulled on the clean socks, luxuriating in the extra layer they gave his feet on the cool burning metal floor. What they feared he would do with his shoes and socks was a mystery. They had forcibly removed them days ago, the same time they had taken his bag. That was right after his first sunrise. They had ignored his water bottle, and only by sheer luck did they miss the Democrat Springs flashlight which he had used to explore his room and which had been tangled in the sheet they had given him the night of his arrival. Hoping the supersoldier wouldn't notice, Liam slipped the flashlight into the pocket of the new jeans. He left his discarded clothes in a heap. The supersoldier glanced at the pile and the corner of her mouth quirked up. Liam held back a laugh. "Where do you get your laundry done around here?" For beings who had years of experience abducting people, the way they treated him seemed clumsy. He could have been their unexpected, difficult guest - not their prisoner. Did all abductees end up in giant chambers like this? If he could move about the ship, would he find Ellie sealed in her own special room? He clung to the hope. "Are there others here, like me? Is that where we're going?" Liam asked, tugging on a sweater, even though he knew the supersoldier wouldn't answer. For five days (if he could trust the number of sunrises) a supersoldier had been coming to his palatial cell three times a day bringing food, water and buckets. He had seen no one else. Gibson and Jeremiah were gone. No sooner had they all stepped through the blue light in the desert and materialized in the chamber than a supersoldier had appeared and led them away. No fuss, no nothing. Liam had been left no time to understand what he was seeing. Alone. It didn't take long for disbelief to set in. He had run his hands along the smooth walls looking for some sign of entry. There was nothing. Walls, floor - ceiling, for all he knew - were one continuous shell. He had known right away the room was strange - but he hadn't been able to put his finger on what made it so. He had pounded his fist against the wall before giving up. For hours he kicked air and ranged the large pie slice-shaped room with the sound of Dr Scully's cry reeling in his head. William. His name. His *old* name. The one still on his birth certificate. It had never sounded like his name before - not when his mom or dad had used it. But when *she* had said it ... An emotion he couldn't name stirred and an old forgotten snippet of a conversation resurfaced - his mother talking to Dr Scully. *"They say a child never forgets the sound of his mother's voice."* Liam had fallen on his back on the floor to stare into the unfathomable dark. Even that ended in failure. The ceiling became transparent, letting in the night light. Stars twinkled on his misery. He'd had everything upside down. Ellie's suggestion months ago that the mysterious Esther might be his mother had seemed like a perfect fit in the puzzle that was his heritage. There was no evidence - Liam knew about the danger of jumping to conclusions - but it had *seemed* so perfect. Now he was seeing clearly for the first time. *Dr Scully is my mother.* The truth went further. *They think I'm the commander.* It was overwhelming to know not just who he was but *what* he was. It didn't matter that he didn't want it to be so. People like Doggett didn't get a choice - why should he? He had a connection with Doggett. He'd been denying it for months. Those flashes in his dreams - he had been seeing through the supersoldier's eyes. And the supersoldier had been seeing through his - Liam was sure of it. *Is that because of who I am? Is that what's going to happen to me?* But knowing the truth wasn't the same as having all the answers. If Dr Scully was his mother, why had she done the things she had done? *Why didn't she give me the vaccine? She knew what I might become but she didn't try to stop it. And where is she now?* Nothing made sense about Dr Scully. He had seen her face as he disappeared behind the force field. Had seen the angry tears. On his first afternoon of confinement, once the first wave of anger had passed, then the conflict of confusion, Liam willed himself into composure. She was going to try to rescue him. He knew it. She was with Doggett and Mulder and they were planning something. Doggett had been there with them - in the vehicle that screamed to a halt just in front of the force field. Somehow - Liam tried to ignore the images of severed limbs in his mind - Doggett had freed himself and was now with Mulder and Dr Scully. Glimpses of Doggett had popped into his dreams since then, but he was always at a distance - and there were always other supersoldiers vying for Liam's attention. Liam refused to let go the hope that rescue was coming, but other worries gnawed at him. Dr Scully had Mulder and Doggett. But who did his parents have? And where were they? Did his dad make it back to the camp? What happened to the shapeshifters heading that way? Where was his mother? Was Sal with her? With these worries lodged in his heart, Liam had pressed against the smooth surface of the floor, feeling the icy ship skin against his skin. Feeling his breath go in and out. Through his fingers he could feel a tiny quiver. His whole body felt heavy. Especially his eyelids. Images had churned in his mind's eye. As if a cauldron boiled and a witch syphoned off the snapshots that bubbled to the surface. Early memories from his life on the farm in Wyoming. Someone (or some*thing*) was dipping into his memories, bringing up images he hadn't thought of in years. Why couldn't they bring up something useful - like a memory of himself when he was a baby? Liam gasped. It had been in *that* moment - still and detached - he had finally worked out what bothered him about the room. Lifeless silence. He had probed the void, pushing his mind into the furthest corners of the eerie quiet. He had felt this before but never as intensely. He was being watched - inside and out - but not by Doggett. That's when he had realized his memories might be dangerous. That's when he had started talking. He talked to anything - his water bottle, his flashlight, the spectacular wall which became a window three or four times a day. The more he could hide his thoughts, the safer he was. Prattle kept his deeper thoughts from surfacing, kept the ones he wished to protect away from prying minds. To feed his chatter, he occupied his time by pacing the room. Light came from a band of glowing metal which ran eye height in a circuit around the room's four walls. It was enough to illuminate the bottom half of the space. The inner wall - the flattened tip - rose so far up the flashlight beam couldn't breach the shadow at the top. He'd have to stand on the shoulders of ten grown men to see up there. But as he walked to the curved, outer rim, the ceiling sloped down so far he had to duck his head. The walls were smooth and carried a rhythm. He couldn't see them move - but he could almost swear energy surged through them. He had mapped them with his hands, looking for any chink, any clue for a door. There were no seams to find, no cracks between metal sheets, no joints. Yet the air stayed fresh and occasionally a cool eddy flowed over his face. It was possible there were ducts hidden in the darkness far above his head. Most of the time the ceiling was dark gray - like the walls. But at certain times of the day and sometimes the night, he would hear a click and then a hum, and the outer wall and ceiling would vanish. As if a can opener had sliced off the top and side of his prison. He could see right through into the desert. The sky and horizon would appear with a bluish cast. The horizon never changed so he assumed he hadn't been whisked away into deep space. It was one of the few things he clung to whenever he felt panic rising in his chest. The ceiling was there - a tender spot on his head still ached from the one time he had run into the invisible barrier thinking escape would be as easy as climbing over the edge and jumping. It was never going to be that easy. If the sunrise could be trusted, they hadn't moved and were still in the desert. He hadn't seen Doggett close up in any of his visions since then, but he and Dr Scully and Mulder could still be out there. Planning a rescue. But where was Gibson? And why had he worked so hard to get Liam on the ship? Thinking of Gibson was enough to set off a tornado of emotions. Gibson had as good as given him answers - but not enough to know what to do. Liam knew why. There were Grays on this ship. And Ellie. And tomorrow was December 22. *And I am the commander.* Five days it had been. Rescue would have been here by now if ... No one was coming. Suddenly he didn't want to leave the room, and when the supersoldier summoned him, he balked. "Where are you taking me?" The portal re-appeared and the supersoldier stepped through it. Liam wavered at the threshold. This was his chance to see more of the ship - and maybe hatch his own escape plan. Or maybe learn his fate. The tunnel on the other side curved away in two directions, illuminated by another stripe of lighting running at eye level. The walls crept high up into darkness, concealing who knew what. He could run ... but to where? The supersoldier's grip on his wrist was chilly as she pulled him through. The portal sealed itself.