FIC: How to Survive a High-Rise Hotel Fire

[very_improbable]

My entry, late though it may be, for the Worst-Case Scenario Survival Challenge.


Title: How to Survive a High-Rise Hotel Fire
Fandom: X-Files
Summary: Krycek and Marita on assignment. Things like this don't happen to normal people.
Rating: PG-13 for language.
Scenario: Guess.
Notes: Thanks to doorrepairgirl for making it better. No real spoilers, since it's pre-series; I think I just picked this plot so that I could write two-armed Krycek. The setting of this story does not correspond to any actual city that I know of. Think of it as one of those X-Files places that serve whatever purpose you want them to.


Somewhere in Eastern Europe, 1993


"This never happens when I work with Jerry Kallenchuk," Marita said as she tested the doorknob. "Ow. Jesus. This never happens with Diana Fowley. I've never been trapped in a burning hotel in a non-English-speaking country with Diana Fowley. Know why?"

"We can't go out the window," Alex said, looking down at the street a dizzying distance away. "Not from here."

"Because Diana Fowley keeps a low profile," Marita continued. "She's never gotten me set on fire."

"You know, this might not be my fault personally. Buildings burn up for a lot of reasons."

"So this is a coincidence." Marita's voice was muffled as she ducked into the closet. "It has nothing to do with things catching on fire wherever you go."

"Can we have this conversation later?"

"Alex." Marita stopped tapping the inside wall of the closet and picked up her suitcase, a small and densely packed affair. "Multitask."

She hauled the case up and smashed through the drywall into the next room. The wood buckled and splintered as they pulled it away. The adjoining room was a full suite, smoke-free and empty; Alex grabbed his backpack and ran in after Marita.

Marita was already testing the outer doorknob. "Shit." She jerked her hand away. "Not promising." Alex checked the window; he thought he might be able to find his way down from here, but Marita would never make it in that outfit.

He headed for the bathroom to get wet towels, but the door opened as he approached. His gun was out before he thought about it, before he saw the room's occupant, some kind of huge animal--

Oh, now, seriously.

He didn't want to believe it. He didn't believe it. But for the sake of his own survival, he was going to have to admit that he knew what a wolf in a suit meant, and he wasn't in the habit of carrying silver bullets.

He shot at the thing anyway as it leapt at him. It staggered and slowed a little, and that was when Marita emptied her sexy little handgun into it, the whole clip, and that sure caught the fucker off guard. It reared up, howled like a damned soul and bounded out the closed window, raining broken glass everywhere.

Marita blew a strand of hair out of her face as she watched the thing fall. "Were we briefed about werewolves?"

"Musta slept through that part."

"You don't think that thing might've--"

"Marita. Twenty. Stories." Smoke was filtering in under the door and through the hole in the closet wall. Alex stuck his gun in the back of his jeans and grabbed the microfilm out of his backpack to stuff in his pocket. "One way down, babe."

"You want me to go out a broken window twenty stories up a burning building after a rabid werewolf."

"Yeah."

"In these shoes."

"You've got sneakers." He waved toward her suitcase.

"Alex," she said in her coolest U.N. voice as she retrieved her other pair of shoes, "I'm going to live through this just so I can kill you."

"That's the spirit, baby doll," Alex said, craning his head outside to figure out how the hell he was going to do this. "Turn that frown upside down."

He tried to open the window frame, but it was, of course, stuck. Well, if he put his gloves on and didn't support his weight on the bottom of the frame, and he could manage that if he could get his first foothold just there--

"I don't do heights or werewolves, Alex." Marita had gotten her sneakers on, but she looked ill and even paler than usual.

"I'll go first, c'mon." She didn't say anything, but glanced at the door. "Don't even think about it, there's too much smoke. Just follow me. You'll do fine. And remember, you're gonna shoot me when we get to the bottom." He flashed her a grin and swung out the window, with no time left to do anything but take it on faith that she would follow.

Foothold there, and he could just reach the next windowsill, and from there down to a balcony. He looked up and saw Marita's face outlined in the window, well out of his reach now. She said something he couldn't make out.

He yelled back up to her. "What?"

"I changed my mind!" she repeated, and Alex got a sick feeling that had nothing to do with heights. "See you at the place."

"Marita! That's a bad idea--" But she was gone.

Well, fuck.

Maybe she was better off on the stairs. She really couldn't climb for shit, after all. She'd get to the meeting place before he made it down to the street, assuming she hadn't died of smoke inhalation in the hallway--

Okay. Focus. Down.

No, down, Alex. He put his left hand, which was clearly not listening and preferred to reach for the balcony just above him, firmly back down on the nearest window ledge and gave it a stern look.

Down, down.

Where the fuck was the fire brigade, anyway? Did they have one? Well, visibility still wasn't great, maybe there was a line of buckets--

And there was the ground five feet below him all of a sudden. He let himself down, hit the cobblestone running. He checked his pockets as he went, oh good, hadn't left his fucking wallet and his--well, "his"--passport behind. His gun was still in his waistband and the plane tickets were in Marita's bag, had she had it when she left? He'd know soon.

This was great. They'd come here to find alien infiltrators and booked a hotel room next to some goddamn old world mythical creature. What little he'd brought besides the contents of his pockets was burning twenty stories above him. And Marita might be dead for a stupid reason, in which case a lot of people were really, really going to die. Which people in particular was not a question that concerned him a lot at the moment.

He got far enough away from the building to be able to see what was happening. Around the front of the hotel rescue workers were pouring in and out, two big trucks were spraying water and foam--it was just like a civilized country, you'd almost think they had money for public services and everything--he scanned the figures looking for Marita, and that was when the roof came down.

Hot ash and burning wood sprayed fucking everywhere, wet foam and sparks and fucking foul smoke, and everyone was moving but he couldn't hear any screaming, which he knew was bad. He stumbled backward, people shoving past him and calling out orders in words that he barely understood, but didn't have to. He let himself be pushed further back and finally squeezed out of the crowd, and made a break for it as soon as the way was clear. Their meeting place was a few minutes away at a good run. He didn't look back at the wreckage.

The winding little streets spilled him out on the south bank of the river, where he saw the raindrops before feeling them, a few advance scouts hitting the water in the reflection of the full moon. The rain continued getting heavier as he headed for the bridge, and he continued ignoring it as it came down in fat cold splashes on his skin. The fucking elements were, as usual, the least of his problems.

She wasn't at the bridge. He leaned back on a pillar, breathing hard, and let his head fall back. Rain pounded his face, ran down his collar and soaked his shirt underneath his jacket. He closed his eyes for just a moment while he caught his breath. When he opened them, she still wasn't there.

The rain let up, came back, let up again. The river, swelled with reinforcements, rushed along with renewed force behind him. He took a look over to the other shore, the scattered lights of the city center, the unmistakable great golden M bathing the old stones in the conquering light of capitalism. He swept his eyes back over the roads leading up to this side of the bridge, across the closed storefronts and scattered pubs. From here he couldn't see anything of the hotel, though the smoke rose high above the buildings and there was a dark smell floating down to the river.

He felt like the rain was getting well into his bones now. Let it come down as long as it wanted to. They didn't fucking call this cold in Siberia.

After about an hour watching the roads, he turned to the river again, holding the cold slick metal of the railing and looking over the choppy water. Soon it would be time to turn around, time to go home.

Well, to go to somebody's home.

Somehow it was almost impossible to get his legs to walk away from the bridge. He moved, he made it the half a block and hauled himself into the nearest pub, but it was like he'd forgotten how to walk, like he was leaving a limb behind. Something was twisting the inside of his chest, something was forcing him down into the nearest chair as his legs seemed to refuse to hold him up. This was going to be a serious problem.

He managed to convince his mouth to order a beer. He took everything out of his pockets and let it dry on the table--except the goddamn microfilm, which was of course in a shatterproof, waterproof case and was not leaving his pocket until they were back in DC.

He rolled that plural pronoun around in his head for a long time as the warmth of the fire permeated his clothes and dried them out. Somewhere along the way he noticed that he'd finished his beer and a second one without really noticing.

When his possessions and his ass were both dry, he stuffed everything back in his pockets, ordered another beer, and the next thing he knew his head was buried in his hands and refusing to budge. He had to get a grip. Christ. He had to arrange for transit, call that cigarette-smoking bastard, and figure out whom he was going to shoot first. He had to find out if anything useful had come of this assignment. He had to at least lift up his head.

He rubbed his eyes and looked up, just as Marita pushed open the front door.

She spotted him in half a second and held his gaze with dark-ringed eyes. She was dripping wet from head to toe, there were leaves and mud and something he couldn't immediately identify in her hair, she had blood--apparently not her own--on her collar, and as she got within a few feet of him he was hit by an overpowering smell of wet dog.

He'd never seen anything so beautiful.

She hoisted up her suitcase--also soaking wet--and set it down heavily on the table, almost knocking over his beer. Her eyes took him in, passed over the fireplace and the beer and looked back to him. "You're dry."

"You're late." He toyed with his glass. "Your mother and I were worried sick."

She took the other chair and his beer, dropping herself heavily into the one and slamming back most of the other. She wiped her mouth before answering. "There was this fight to the death with the fucking werewolf, to start with, and after that things started to get really ugly. What the fuck happened to you?"

"Well, I." He considered possible answers. "I guess I'll be buying the next round."

"You," she said, crossing her legs and smoothing her ludicrous hair, "are buying this round and every round from now on, in perpetuity, until the day I finally get sick of this job and shoot you."

"Well, then." He held up what was left of his beer. "Here's to the next two weeks."

-end-