Author: Kei

Disclaimer: see Part 1

THE WILDING AFFAIR,  Part 4
 
 

Waiting -it was the most irritating and least glamorous part of an  UNCLE agent's job...and the hardest. Especially when there was no choice. THRUSH Toronto no longer existed -evidence had been gathered, samples collected, bodies removed for further examination, and the clean-up crew in and out with the quick efficiency for which they were known -what a pity that a most inconvenient electrical fire had suddenly razed the old building to the ground, leaving nothing for the local police to examine.

And now, all that was left was to wait...for answers.

The commissary of UNCLE Toronto, the new UNCLE base situated somewhere below the downtown subway system, was curiously quiet this day. Napoleon Solo noted the marked lack of chatter with half an ear, balancing a tray on which sat one cup of coffee, a sweet roll, and a cup of tea -hot and strong with lemon- as he made his way over to the table where April Dancer and Mark Slate, their expressions as grim as he expected his own to be. "Napoleon..." April said by way of greeting, noting the older agent's lack of his usual second shadow. "Isn't Illya coming?"

"Shortly, my dear -the boys and girls in the sciences' section are using him in as an extra hand."

"Ahh...that minor in bio-chemistry of his... Was he conscripted then?" Mark inquired, his morbid curiosity piqued. "To...examine the stiffs?"

Solo's expression twisted into a grimace, the sweet roll suddenly no longer so inviting. "No -he volunteered."

"Oh." The one-worded response was accompanied by a synchronized bob of the younger agents' heads as if Solo's response was no more than either of them could have expected...but after that, conversation fell into silence, a lack of bantering equaled by the general sense of uneasy quietude that had blanketed an area known for the omnipresent hum of voices; sometimes discussions on lesser cases, mostly general talk, but for now, there was almost none, as if an invisible pall had settled upon the people there. Mark toyed with his muffin, gradually reducing it to crumbs, before he looked up and-    "Napoleon...you've ...heard the rumors, haven't you?"

Solo sipped his coffee with a frown of dismay -too bitter. "Such as..?"

April shared a glance with her partner. "It's all over the building - that... something -maybe some `bug'- made the staff at that THRUSH satrap go..."

"...loopy," Mark finished. "They *were* working on biological weapons. "I don't know why, but that lab door of theirs *was* opened - you'd have to already be balmy to do that while working with contagions, right? Maybe something like our `Mad Cow' disease got out an accident maybe- and most of them went on some sort of `wilding' - no nerve gas residue was detected that could have caused it."

"Well..." Napoleon answered, suddenly uncertain that he liked the direction this conversation was taking. Bio-weapons were the latest and ugliest weapons in the news these days and the thought that THRUSH was in the process of adding them to  there arsenal was less than comforting. "I don't know...a `mad human' disease sounds a little too much like something you'd find on `the X-Files' or `Star Trek'."

"Perhaps not, Napoleon." Illya Kuryakin's quiet, slightly accented voice interrupted the hushed discussion. The slight Russian agent sat down beside his partner, his usually pale complexion now just a little darker than the white lab coat that he  still wore. Napoleon pushed the tea towards him -he accepted it with an almost non- existent, weary grin. "Spaceeba."

"So partner o' mine..." Solo prompted a little impatiently. "Why the cryptic utterance?"

Illya stared at his cup for moment longer, curiously uncomfortable about admitting what was no more than scientific  theorem...theories that despite himself were more than a little frightening. "There *may* be the possibility of a biological cause to the mass suicide and murders." He sighed aloud. "Autopsies failed to detect the presence of toxic gases...
*however* despite the fact that we have yet to find the cause of this incident, in each body there was evidence of radical changes in cerebral chemistry make-up to some degree or another, possibly causing anything from hysteria to depression to mania to euphoria..perhaps even to paranoia."

"Like *our* man," April said, flinching at the memory of Gerhardt's distorted ranting.

"Perhaps," Illya concurred.

"And...?" Napoleon prompted, suspecting that there was more as yet unsaid.

Illya met his eyes hesitantly. "There is the unfortunate fact that *if* there *is* a disease at work here, we cannot find evidence of it and however unlikely its escape from the THRUSH base, if we cannot find it, we cannot cure it or truly protect ourselves against it."

"Oh God..!" Everyone at the table reacted with alarm at April Dancer's sudden cry of...horror? One by one, the male agents
followed her apparently mortified stare and realized that they were not alone in their eventual astonishment. Just about everyone in the commissary was staring in the same disbelief as one of the Toronto base's field agents stood up on a table...and calmly relieved himself. The incredulity lasted only a moment, though, as frantically concerned co- workers grabbed the agent and hauled him off to the base's medical section, the man all the while loudly demanding to know what he had done wrong.

Napoleon flashed Illya a sharp, questioning look. "What was that you said about the unlikelihood of escape?"

"Yes... I see what you mean. I think I should get back to the lab." With that, Kuryakin stood up sharply...and felt the floor disappear from beneath him, strong hands suddenly catching him as he began to fall. Bleary, pale blue eyes met eyes of dark brown. "Napoleon, I...I am sorry. This accursed flu -I was dizzy for a moment. Napoleon?"

But it seemed as if the elder agent was not listening, his hands grasping his partner still as though to keep him from falling, but his eyes...in his eyes was the almost ravenous single-minded look that the Russian had seen only when his partner was determined to add yet another paramour to his seemingly ever growing harem. "Napoleon -you can let me go now," he said quietly, his voice belying the pounding of his heart.

"What..?" Napoleon Solo blinked rapidly for a moment as if waking from a deep sleep. A shadow of red slowly crept across Solo's handsome countenance as he slowly, almost reluctantly it seemed, released his grasp. "I, ah, was...distracted for a moment. Sorry."

Solo noted the puzzled look that passed between April and Mark. "Shall I accompany you to the lab?"

"If you wish," came the guarded response.

There was something wrong.

Both agents could feel it as they rounded the bend in the corridor  that led to the sciences' department, a sensation of both deja-vu and dread working within them. There was a smell -a nauseating, somehow antisceptic odor permeating the corridor that grew stronger the closer they came to the ante-room that led to the area where the physical evidence gleaned from the late THRUSH Toronto satrap had been secured.

Illya stopped in his tracks first. "Oh...no..."

Through the thick plexi-glass of the viewing area, Solo and Kuryakin could see that the doors to the inner lab were no longer secure -they had not been breached. They had simply been left open,the men and women within not apparently particularly concerned, the cloth pendants over the vents flapping rapidly as the air within the once secure laboratory flowed outwards...into the common ventilation system.

What madness *was* this..?

Madness.

As Napoleon whipped out his communicator to contact UNCLE headquarters in New York, Illya felt himself compelled to stare through the thick transparent barrier. There on an examination table, like the ever present bad penny, in its open carry case was that broken vial marked "Batch #3"

Illya cursed under his breath in as many languages as he knew. Mark and April had been right. The rumors had been right. Despite all the precautions, despite the fact that they couldn't even see it, *something* had gotten out.

They *were* in trouble.
 
 
 
 

End of Part 4
 
 
 

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"The X-Files" belongs to *Fox*.