|
|
10 X 22: SYNERGY Will Mulder, Scully, Doggett, and Reyes put the pieces together in time for a final showdown for future of mankind? |
Scully and Connie White Eagle looked up in shock as the front door banged
against the wall behind them, jamming the rubber doorstop into the cheap
plaster of the third floor walk-up. William, on the carpet, Lego in his tiny
fingers, regarded the men curiously, but the toddler neither cried nor cooed.
“What do you want?” Scully demanded, leaping to her feet. She’d seen one
of them – a grave young man with a black goatee -- flanking Spender a few
times. Both he and his taller, older companion carried Glocks.
“Dr. Scully, you’re to come with us,” the Goateed Man informed her calmly.
“The boy, and, I’m afraid, your guests, too.” He glanced nervously about.
“Where’s the man? The Indian?”
Scully stared directly into his eyes. “He went for some ice.”
The intruder blinked once, impatiently. “We’ve had our eye on the door for
the past two hours. Now, come on. We don’t want to make a scene here, and
if you don’t fuck with us, at least you might make it to morning. Where is
he, Dr. Scully?”
“Dr. Scully?” Connie inquired, glancing oddly at her friend. Scully glanced
back warily, her eye darting momentarily toward the short hallway.
And that’s when Spender’s men heard it, a low, wavering voice behind the
bathroom door.
“Down in the west
“Mike, watch out!”
As his partner’s boot cracked into the wood of the door, Goateed Man leveled
his weapon at Connie.
“What the—“ the taller, older man breathed. Then
a form hurtled from Mulder and Scully’s darkened bedroom and caught him just
below the diaphragm. The Goateed Man’s barrel swept up toward Michael White
Eagle as the barrel of Scully’s nine-millimeter jammed into his windpipe.
“Drop it, now,” Scully barked. “You know I’ll do it. You know it.”
The Glock clattered to the braided area rug as Mike clicked his associate’s
cuffs into place. The Native American sheriff smiled broadly, leaned into
the bathroom, and pulled a small white box from inside.
“Good news, Dana,” he announced. “The door died, but the baby monitor survived.”
Mike pulled a plastic walkie-talkie-like device from his belt and displayed
the monitor transmitter for the Goateed Man. “You oughtta know we’re a crafty
and devious people, friend. Hell, I don’t even like Marty Robbins.”
Doggett nearly collided with a pair of residents as he slammed through the
ICU doors. Skinner and Kersh looked up at the end of the corridor, where
they were in consultation with a female Asian in a lab coat. Skinner peeled
off, and met him halfway up the hall.
“Massive head trauma,” the assistant FBI director informed the disheveled
Doggett, who’d hastily thrown on an NYPD sweatshirt and jeans when Skinner
called. “The doctors have IDed a large hematoma, and Agent Reyes hasn’t regained
consciousness.”
Doggett ran a hand through his uncombed hair. “But she’s
gonna, right?”
Skinner’s face was grave. “She took quite an impact, John. It’s too early.”
“You said she was hit by a car.”
“A cab, John,” Skinner amended. His eyes flicked toward the waiting Deputy
Director Kersh, 20 yards down the corridor. “She was coming out of a place
in Northwest, and a couple of agents she’d been with came out right after
the accident.”
“Accident,” Doggett murmured. It was a question rather than an echo.
“A place in Northwest. You mean a bar.”
Skinner worked his jaw. “They’re doing bloodwork right now. I’d warn you
not to speculate in that direction with the deputy director. Monica’s ‘problem’
already has come to the Bureau’s attention, and there’s even talk of a review
board.”
Doggett’s eyes narrowed. “Look, I’m trying to help her through this. It hasn’t
gotten in the way of her work y—” The agent’s mouth clamped shut.
“Yet,” Skinner finished quietly but with emphasis. “Let’s focus on the immediate,
Doggett nodded grimly and continued down the corridor, Skinner close behind.
“John,” Kersh intoned with official solicitude. “I’m sorry.”
“She was looking into some cold cases at
“John,” Kersh said more emphatically. “There’s no conspiracy here, no X-File.
The cabbie’s green card was barely dry. The passenger was a pub musician
whose only tie to subversive groups is a ballad he wrote about the IRA. Three
highly trained agents on the scene swear no one could have shoved Agent Reyes
into the taxi’s path. The street was completely empty. There was
a distinct possibility Agent Reyes’ alertness and coordination were
impaired.”
Doggett smiled dangerously. “Impaired, huh? That the way this is going to
go down, Kersh?”
“This will ‘go down’ the way the facts indicate,” the deputy director said
calmly. “As an accident. A
simple, tragic accident. A.D. Skinner, I’d appreciate it if you’d arrange
for the hospital to alert us the minute Agent Reyes regains consciousn—”
Kersh’s words were cut off as a trio of doctors crashed through the double
doors and a nurse emerged, breathless, from the monitor station up the hall.
Kersh and Skinner hugged the wall, Doggett remaining dumbly in the center
of the corridor as the doctors flowed around him.
The crew disappeared into a doorway behind Kersh. Doggett shook off his shock
and sprinted to the nurse’s station.
“What’s happened?” he demanded of a stern-faced young woman.
“Are you a rela—” The nurse’s head jerked back as Doggett jammed his ID at
her.
“What happened?” he barked.
“She’s coded,” the woman sputtered. “She’s gone into arrest.”
**
“John?” Monica called out. She was in a place, and not in it. This place
was not white or black or walled or out of doors. It was actually more a
sense of a place. But Monica knew somehow that she was physically, palpably
there. Wherever there was.
“John’s not in right now,” a rough, middle-aged voice responded, sympathetic
but slightly puckish. “Not for another few more years, at least, but you
don’t wanna hear about that. For that matter, what are you doing here?”
Monica caught a fleeting glimpse of the man, in the corner of her field of
vision. A tall man, paunchy and bald, a bit brutish-looking
but wearing a sad smile that approached a congenial grimace. He vanished
as she looked full-on at him.
“Who are you?” Monica inquired, pondering vaguely why she was not frightened.
“Call me
“Reyes. Agent Monica Reyes.”
“Ah, yeah,” he sighed, reappearing in the corner of her eye. “You know, the
way those D.C. hacks drive, you shouldn’t even go outside without an enhanced
life and casualty policy. ‘Course, the booze ain’t gonna help the premium
situation.”
“What?”
“Sorry,”
Monica tried again for a direct look at her new friend. “And just what is
that condition?”
“I’m not sure,” he murmured. “I think it’s either some kind of energy flux
or Purgatory, which if it is, is not at all like you see in the movies.”
Monica was beginning to feel like
“Sure seems that way, either that or I’m in
Monica paused. “And that means…?”
“You are and you’re not. Sorry, don’t mean to be confusing, but I think you
came in the wrong exit. You’re not due for…”
“Due? You know when I’m supposed to die?”
“Aah, it’s just a skill, like impersonating the president or bartending.
Don’t ask.”
“Don’t ask?”
“You really don’t wanna know, trust me. It’s a real buzzkiller. But don’t
sweat it, kiddo – your number ain’t up yet. So, long as you’re hanging out
for a while, why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”
The
The Badlands of the Upper Plains are nearly as primordial and unyielding
a region of the planet as can be found outside the pressure-protected Marianas
Trench and the forbidding heart of the Antarctic continent, where only ancient
thermophilic microorganisms can exist naturally.
The barren, stony reaches also resonate with tens of thousands of years of
lore and superstition kept alive by Native Americans segregated both by culture
and the lingering force of the European-American presence. Every jutting
bluff, every black crevice and crater, seemed to represent or conceal some
animistic or Lovecraftian spirit beyond the ken of anyone but the people
with whom these phantasms purportedly had co-existed for centuries.
In short, the place scared the living shit out of most white people beyond
bikers and druggies too stupid or stoned to know better. Michael White Eagle
thus knew it was the perfect – perhaps the only -- place to take a couple
of hard-case tourists. What Dana Scully understood through years of Mulder’s
behavioral tutelage, Mike understood to be the fear that had fueled the genocide
of his fathers’ grandfathers and the containment of their children.
Mike also grasped very quickly that what Scully feared far more than these
men was a genocide of planetary proportions, where
no women or children would be spared, no old men left to die quietly on reservations.
He had come to know and love Dana and Fox (the name’s irony continued to
amuse the sheriff), and to respect their odd ideas. Hell, odd ideas and
an acceptance of invisible worlds and beings were a part of his tradition.
Although the story Dana had shared during their ride through the cloudless
night had left Mike silent and contemplative for the final 20 miles toward
their destination.
That final 20 miles had taken them off well off the road, over aeons-old
stone and dessicated brush. Small living things evaded the wheels
of Michael’s Cherokee as it kicked up dust and rocks, and Scully saw a coyote
lope into the shadows 40 yards ahead as the Jeep crunched to a halt.
Michael hauled the men from the back seat with an almost reverent gentility.
Their wrists were cuffed, and the lawman took pains to ensure neither gunman
stumbled or fell to the sharp rock. A pair of equally battered jeeps pulled
up behind Michael’s and unloaded a half-dozen men from town – all White Eagle’s
cousins, brothers, and nephews, including one of Mulder’s favorite students,
and all wearing expressions as primordial and unyielding as the promontories
and gulches surrounding them.
Scully nearly grinned at the nearly over-the-top psychological scenario Michael
had set up. If they all survived the night, she thought about his exploring
a career at
Michael shouted something in Sioux to his relatives, and turned to Scully.
“I’m going to take this one over there and ask him a few questions,” he murmured,
jerking his head toward the shorter of the two men. “You take this one, yuh?”
“Mike,” Scully breathed. “I know a lot more about this matter than you. I’ll
come along.”
“No need,” he smiled crookedly, seemingly
amused by this petite woman. “You got your methods, I got mine.”
“Mike,” Scully warned. Michael grabbed the Goateed Man’s arm and turned away.
“Michael! We need these men! Don’t—”
“Don’t sweat it, Little Cousin,” Mike grunted.
“Michael!” Scully shouted as shadows retreated. The men drew closer to her
and their captive.
“What the fuck is this?” Spender’s man rasped, glancing at the stone faces
around him.
“Shut up,” Scully snapped. She turned imploringly to the “braves.” “You don’t
understand what’s at stake here. We need these men, both of them. You can’t
do this.”
A monolithically muscular young man chortled. “ There’s
bodies out here from before the Civil War. The spirits eat the bones
and the winter takes the rest.”
“No, no,” Scully persisted, frustrated. “You—”
The shot sounded sharply in the chilled night. Scully’s head whipped toward
the inky darkness into which White Eagle and her potential assassin had disappeared.
Now, a single shadow emerged. As Michael stepped into the headlights, the
former agent’s eyes widened at the dark, shining, splattered wetness on the
sheriff’s shirtfront.
“Goddamnit, Mike!” Scully shrieked, yanking her own weapon from the waistband
of her jeans. She stepped in front of the second assassin. “We needed him.
Alive!”
“He didn’t know nothin’,” White Eagle said casually.
“Maybe this one’s smarter, yuh?”
“Michael, I mean it,” Scully growled, leveling her gun and spreading her
feet in a solid stance. The men standing alongside her leveled their rifles
without changing expression.
“Don’t fear, Little Cousin,” Mike said soothingly. “If he’s helpful, we’ll
let him have his chance with the wolves. If not, well, then he’s learned
a valuable lesson about Anglo-Native American relations. What do you think,
friend?”
“I have no problem with you or your people,” the gunman grunted. “This is
bigger than this bullshit. This is about survival – all of our survival.”
“And this,” Mike murmured impassively, “is about yours’. C’mon.”
“Mike!” Scully warned, bringing her weapon up a few inches. The men about
her raised their guns correspondingly.
The man’s eyes suddenly darted about, and a gleam of fresh sweat shone in
the moonlight. “You do what you have to, Sheriff. This won’t end with me.”
Mike was silent for a moment, then nodded respectfully.
“OK, Brother. At least you act like a man. I promise I’ll make this quick
and honorable.”
“Mike, I’m warning you…” Scully threatened. “Just leave him. I think I know
how we can find Spender.” Mike regarded her momentarily, seized the gunman
by the elbow, and led him toward the darkness. Scully took aim, and one of
Mike’s friends stepped forward, poking the gunbarrel into her neck. The agent
tightened her grip for a moment as Mike and his captive glanced back,
then lowered her arm, glaring.
The pair disappeared into the shadows, and Jacob Moonrise, Mulder’s pet student
and tribal skeptic, lowered his gun with a grin. “You oughtta win a Tony
for that performance, Profess--, I mean, Ms. Scully.”
Scully smiled back weakly, reminded again of the deception she and Mulder
had perpetuated on people for whom they had come to care. She tried to banish
her anxiety about Mulder’s present well-being .“
Your uncle’s quite the thespian, himself.”
“Ah, Uncle Mike has a few secrets of his own. He worked military intelligence
in the Gulf before he got on the department.”
Scully’s head came up warily, and then she heard a distant noise.
Retching. The men around her were silent statues. Only Jacob smiled.
They emerged from the darkness moments later – the planes of Mike’s stone
face shining in the moonlight, his prisoner’s face stricken, drained of any
color.
“We tanked up, Hank?” Mike asked one of the men, who nodded. The sheriff
turned to Scully. “We’ve got a ride ahead of us.” He handed the gunman off
to Jacob, who pushed him into the lead Jeep. “Your friend Spender is in
Scully inspected him silently. “And he just spilled this?”
“With the last two days’ lunch. Soon as he saw
his friend.” His voice was devoid of mirth.
“What did you do?” Scully asked, feigning a light tone. “Knock him out? Kill
a rabbit or something, spread some blood around? You must’ve been pretty
convinc--”
Mike did not speak. His face was as impassive as ever, but Scully could see
something sharp in his black eyes. Sorrow.
For her.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Dear God. Mike…”
Mike nodded toward the Jeep. “The man said it. If what you’ve told me is
true, this is all about survival. Sorry, Dana. I knew you wouldn’t go along
with this, but its sounds like we don’t have any time left for bluffing. You
OK?”
Scully nodded stiffly, numbly, looking off into the darkness. As the Jeeps
fired into life, she lurched back into this world and climbed into the passenger’s
seat beside Mike.
“Hey, Mulder?”
Mulder looked up from the intertwined bodies on the widescreen set. Skinner’s
former DEA friend may have retreated years ago from the niceties and unpleasantries
of civilized society – if indeed such a thing existed in
Scully had finally gotten through, about
Face reddening, he grinned up at Chaim Silver as he reached for the remote.
“Don’t do that on my account,” the young linguist yawned. “The human body
is a beautiful thing.” He glanced at the screen. “Unless
you’re doing something like that, of course.”
Mulder switched the set off. Chaim flopped onto the couch next to him. He’d
donned a new yarmulke – neat trick, considering they’d fled
“What’s up, Chaim?”
“Well, being dead or whatever, I guess I must’ve been in shock or something
when your weird buddy brought us back.”
“That would probably do it.” Mulder pondered momentarily on Jeremiah Smith’s
cryptic departure after sharing some stunning revelations about the colonization
and the link between mankind and the would-be colonists. “What? You remember
something about Spender’s guys, the guys who shot you?”
“Not about them,” the bearded young man said. “About
Larry.”
Larry Opps was rapidly recovering from his “fatal” gunshot wounds, but he
was still far weaker than Chaim. His chainsaw snores had erupted a few minutes
after his head had hit the pillow upstairs.
Chaim cracked his knuckles. “I little bit before those gonstermachers with
the guns burst in, I went in to check how Larry
was coming alone. He jumped about 10 feet in the air, almost freaked on me.
Then he was like everything was cool. Larry was about to e-mail our data
when I walked in, and he real quick sent the message with the data attachment
and shut his machine down. I just got a brief peek at the message before Larry
got it off, and I he was CC-ing it to somebody else. There were two addresses
on the recipient line. I was gonna tell you when you got back, but then,
well, you know, I got whacked.”
Mulder sat up. “Two? You sure?”
“Why I’m a kickass linguist – I’ve got like a photographic memory.
Didn’t get me laid much.”
“You remember the other address?”
“pnegri@terralink.com,” Chaim recited, then smiled
cryptically.
The agent’s head cocked. “Terralink. That’s a
local server in the D.C. area.” Mulder jumped from his chair and located
the phone next to the cabin’s PC. Skinner’s friend had applied his criminal
and intelligence expertise to building a 99.9 percent secure home communications
system. Mulder wondered just how “retired” this man was.
He answered on the first ring – Mulder knew someone was always awake at The
Lone Gunman’s “editorial office.”
“Hey, wow, Agent Mulder!” Jimmy Bond exclaimed. “You’re alive! I mean, you’re
alive again! I mean--”
“Jimmy, Jimmy,” Mulder interrupted, smiling at the image of the frat-faced
former rich kid who now trafficked with cyberspace outlaws, conspiracy theorists,
and freelance antiterrorists. “I need your help to stay alive.”
“Anything, man.”
“Think you could track an Internet e-mail address for me?
The billing info, too?”
The line was silent for a moment. “Gee, those providers usually are firewalled
eight ways from Sunday,” Jimmy murmured. “Kimmy’ll love the opportunity to
hack in. What’s your number?”
“I’ll get back to you, Jimmy. By the way, I’m sorry about the guys. I wish
I could have been at the funeral…”
“Hey, Agent Mulder, the guys, they would’ve understood,” Jimmy said gently.
“They were like you, always after the truth, no matter what the risks. Like
Agent Doggett…”
“How is the wild man, anyway?”
“Aw, he’s coming along – you just gotta get past that Dennis Franz mentality.
In fact, he called yesterday, asked Yves to do some research.”
“What about?” Mulder queried despite himself. “I mean, if it doesn’t
betray a confidence.”
“Aw, heck, Agent Mulder, Agent Doggett’s always talking about you, how to
think more like you.”
“There’s the key to sustained sanity.”
“Anyway, he wanted to know two things: If there’ve been any suppressed news
stories or reports of alien massacres over the last 60 or 70 years, especially
in the Southwest, and about any UFO sightings or reported abductions in
Mulder leaned back. “You mean massacres by aliens?”
“Naw.Massacres of aliens. Dead aliens,
crashes that looked like foul play. Though if that happened, I’d think the
government would’ve buried it deeper than Jimmy Hoffa.”
“Or maybe
“Will do,” Jimmy said cheerfully.
Maybe Doggett was coming around, Mulder thought as he hung up.
Dead aliens. No, scratch that – alien massacres. The roof of his mouth
tingled in pained recollection as he considered the possibility of anyone
– or anything – capable of besting the “greys,” especially on their own turf.
And why the Southwest,
“Chaim!” Mulder called suddenly, growing excited. The young man popped
in from the kitchen, a grilled cheese sandwich in his hand and crumbs covering
his T-shirtfront.
“’Sup?” Chaim asked.
“You mentioned some stuff you translated from Bales’ glossalaliac banter,
about ‘fathers from the sky?’”
“Sure.”
“Despite variations in details and nuance, religious lore across the planet
includes a number of common themes. Like deities from the sky. Were there
any particularly messianic references in Bales’ babble?”
“Messianic? Jesus-type shit? I’m just a nice Jewish boy, Mulder. You need
a goy boy. Seriously, though, there was something kind of second coming,
if I translated the Aramaic right. Something about a super being who had
the power to overcome the enemy. A criminal, maybe an
evil man himself. Some such shit – I’m translating loosely and melodramatically.
What?”
Mulder was smiling broadly, a look of utter enlightment on his face.
“Mulder, dude.”
The agent blinked and looked up. “Sorry. But I think maybe I’ve found, well,
not Jesus.”
“Hallelujah, bro,” Chaim said, biting into his toast and Velveeta and turning
back toward the kitchen.
**
“FBI agent, huh?”
Monica’s head snapped around. Or at least she perceived the act of snapping
her head around. Or perhaps she merely recognized that such a revelation
would cause her head to snap around.
“Sure. We wound up in bed together. Scully, that is. But not the way you
think. You pals with them?”
“Yes. Are they safe? They’re not….here, are they?”
“Jeez, you think I got time to personally meet everybody here, mano a mano?
All however many billion of ‘em since the beginning of
time? I couldn’t make that many contacts when I was pushing a sales
quota. Sorry, kiddo; that ain’t my talent.”
“What is?” Monica ventured.
“Let’s talk about you for a change,”
“Is this, ah, Heaven?” Monica asked. “Is this Hell?”
“I don’t know, and, as to the second question, I don’t know. You’re the wrong
Monica, and I ain’t Della Reese. All I know is, it’s kind of an exclusive
club here, know what I mean?”
“Exclusive?”
“Hey, gotta go. You see Agent Scully, you tell
her I forgot the dog likes Kibbles and Bits. Ah, what am I talking? I’m sure
the little guy’s just fine.”
“So you don’t have any idea what’s going on down there,
He didn’t answer. Monica’s eyes darted toward the fleeting figure. Her heart
leapt, or at least it seemed that way in the place that may or may not have
been there.
“Well, hey there, Monica,” Calvin Welles drawled.
The trio of Jeeps crunched to the curb a half-block up the street. It was
a rough part of town virtually interchangeable with any rough part of any
medium or large city: A scattering of grim windowless factories grinding
on amid long-abandoned warehouses and dying railyards – the few dinosaurs
that had missed the last blast of cosmic radiation. A few cinderblock bars,
festooned with Pabst and Bud signs, exhibited signs of low-grade life, and
an adult “bookstore” wedged among the factories had a few customers in the
hours before dawn.
Mike’s friends and relatives debarked silently, rifles and small arms in
hand, tugging their prisoner along. Scully stared up ahead, hand on the grip
of her own weapon deep in her parka. Mike patted her shoulder.
To the outside world, the caravan of jeeps on the desolate interstates drew
little attention – a group of Native Americans, heading for some after-hours
thrills in the city, or maybe to the tribal casino. The small redhead was
the most conspicuous element in that picture.
But Scully was rapt in the story Mike and the abortive assassin told in turn.
The “raid” in Oglala had been part of a three-pronged operation, along with
the armed assault in Ft. Lauderdale that Mulder mercifully had averted and
a third offensive here in Cedar Rapids. Spender had not been the instigator;
he was, instead, one of the intended casualties.
Scully had ridden in silence for several moments until she got her head around
it. The last dregs of the cultist group that had kidnapped
William nearly two years before, only to die in inconceivable pain?
She doubted one of those fanatics would have folded as easily as their captive
had.
“The Syndicate?” Scully had ventured. The international cabal of alien
collaborators, concerned for their own survival in the coming human apocalypse,
had gone up in a burst of flame, ostensibly incinerated by extraterrestrial
rebels, as Spender’s father and Mulder’s former partner Fowley fled the hangar/abattoir.
“You’re what, their sons, the ones they were ready to leave here to their
fate?”
Gunbarrel pressed loosely into his side, the sullen man in Mike’s back seat
had opened his mouth, closed it, and then sighed. “Look, maybe we’ve gone
about this in the wrong way. But your partner, you, you have no idea of the
technologies and capabilities these peo-, they possess. You people propose
using slingshots and cherry bombs to kill a T-Rex. Spender is a demented
fool, a child, fueled by revenge. Ours’ is the only way, to be their guides,
their allies. It’s not too late to recognize the future, to be a part of
it.”
Scully’s weapon had come up swiftly into his face; her eyes blazed as the
wind whipped her red locks. “You would have killed my son. He’s my future.
That’s the future I care about.”
The man gazed directly into Scully’s eyes. Eyes locked on the road, left
hand gripping the steering wheel, Mike placed his right hand on Scully’s
shoulder. The fire had left her eyes, and she had pocketed her pistol.
“Strughold?” she asked quietly. “Is he in charge now?”
The man had looked silently toward the mountains and
idled sunflower fields.
Now, the silent throng stood before the former electrical fixtures plant
that served as Spender’s
The front security door hung open; the interior was black. Scully drew her
weapon, Mike activated a halogen lamp, and Jacob prodded Spender’s treacherous
employee along.
As Mike’s torch played along the cavernous operations center, the quartet
caught glimpses of hellish carnage: Wide, dead eyes framed in coagulating
blood; splintered computer screens; folders and printouts and reports blotted
up the spreading, pooled blood of a dozen bodies.
Jacob muttered something in a tribal tongue, his post-adolescent cool gone.
The room blazed into full, gory glory – a cousin of Mike’s was by the far
wall, by the electrical box.
“Any of these people your Spender?” Mike asked calmly with an air of both
urgency and reverence.
Scully tread carefully among the corpses, occasionally kneeling and exploring
a face. Finally, she faced Mike. “He must have escaped. Or they took him.”
“The orders were no prisoners,” the assassin stated.
Scully sidestepped a gray-haired woman huddled fetally on the cold concrete
and brushed past the man.
“I guess you’re the lucky one tonight, huh?” she muttered.
The men gathered up as many documents and files as possible, and they walked,
again silently, along the cracked streets toward the jeeps.
“What is that?” Jacob suddenly asked, stopping dead and aiming his rifle
down the block.
The streetlamps were few and far between in this part of town, and the Jeeps
were parked between the orange spots they cast. The figure beside Mike’s Jeep
was silhouetted against the next spot down, black and featureless. Mike tensed
and signaled the group. Rifles raised, the men
– and one woman – advanced.
“It may be some homeless guy,” Jacob cautioned. “Let’s not blow away some
civilian.”
Scully nearly smiled at Mulder’s student – at both his TV-inspired jargon
and his compassion in the face of potential planetary extinction. It was a
reminder of who she was, what she truly hoped she was.
The figure shifted, and his arm raised. A few
of the men leveled their guns, but the end of the arm erupted in flame, and
a misshapen, incomplete face was illuminated by the glow of the Bic lighter.
Spender did not look up as Scully sprinted to the Jeep. His face, though
gnarled and mutilated, was filled with despair.
“Jeffrey?” Scully prodded.
He glanced at her, eyes somehow old. Spender lifted the cigarette to his
face, regarded it, and laughed bitterly.
“He probably would be pleased, wherever the son-of-a-bitch is now,” Spender
reflected, dropping the Morley and grinding it into the cement.
William Kesey residence
“No, I only met him the once, a few weeks ago,” Doggett informed Camille
Kesey, a matronly, middle-aged woman with piercing gray eyes that contrasted
sharply with her casual widow’s wardrobe. “Seemed like a nice guy, very sharp.”
They were upstairs in what passed for Bill Kesey’s den. It looked more like
Mulder’s cluttered workspace, scattered with clippings, photocopied casefiles,
and a selection of Field and Streams
, covers alive with deer and trout and, most likely, the veteran agent’s
dreams. Downstairs, Camille’s guests were quiet and reflective, sampling
the casseroles friends and family had ritually delivered. Occasionally, brief
laughter broke through the oppressive grief as an anecdote or notable quote
was shared.
The atmosphere was strangely calming for Doggett, whom Skinner had assigned
to assist in the Kesey investigation despite his anxiety over Monica’s condition.
She’d been defibrillated, but Doggett’s partner remained in a deep, unresponsive
coma, her EKG registering what one of the physicians had referred to as some
“highly anomalous rhythms.”He suspected
Skinner had dispatched him to
Camille smiled. “Not much got past Bill. Oh, he was a wonderful husband,
very gentle, and a good father, but the Bureau, that was his obsession in
life.” She glanced up from her hands. “Sorry, I hope that didn’t sound resentful.
But I imagine Bill’s obsession most likely killed him. Do you or your colleagues
have any indication who might’ve done this?”
Doggett shook his head, briefly. “Let me ask you this, Mrs. Kesey. Did your
husband discuss any recent cases with you? Specifically, a pair of multiple
homicide cases in
Camille placed her coffee cup on the table nearby. “I no longer have much
to lose, Agent Doggett. So I’ll just ask you: What is going on here? Are
you really here to investigate my husband’s murder, or do you know something
about it?”
Doggett leaned forward intently. “I want to find out what happened to Agent
Kesey. We were involved in something…unusual…and I want to know if he was
killed because he’d discovered something about it. I want to know the truth.
It may be important. Very important.”
The widow considered, then closed her eyes. When
she opened them, they were clear and calm. “All right.
Bill never kept anything from me, unless it was dangerous for me to know,
and he told me about the flying saucer or whatever it was. It was almost
inconceivable, but Bill is a very pragmatic man, and I believed him.
“They’d put the lid on the murders – both the Cincinnati and the Mockridge
ones – and Bill said they were treating him strangely at the office, like
they were sizing him up, seeing what he would do next. Then he got the call
from the ‘reporter.’”
“Reporter?” Doggett inquired, brows rising.
“Well, she said she was a reporter. She wanted Bill to confirm a report she’d
heard of an alien spacecraft crashing, of a massacre. How she could’ve gotten
through the federal smokescreen, I have no idea. Bill never cared much for
the media, but he was curious, and they talked for a long time.
“The next day, Bill had our number changed, unlisted. That night, she called
again. And again. We started screening with the
answering machine, and Bill wouldn’t tell me anything about what they’d talked
about. Bill would sooner have lopped off his right arm than cheat on me,
but I knew something had spooked him.”
“Did he say anything about who this woman might be?”
Camille considered, then sighed and rose. She pushed aside a folder to reveal
an answering machine, its red message light blinking. “Listen for yourself.
She left this last night – after the explosion.”
Her neatly manicured finger depressed the Message button. The machine beeped.
“Agent Kesey. It’s absolutely essential you answer me. I can’t call
– it’s too dangerous. This is something you can’t turn a blind eye to. Please
answer my next call.” Another beep, and the machine
fell silent.
Camille looked up quizzically, then grew concerned
as she peered at Doggett’s now-pallid expression. “Agent
Doggett? Agent Doggett, what’s wrong?”
Doggett glanced at her and blinked. “Sorry. It’s just…
well, I think I may have heard that voice before.”
Which was a lie. Doggett was sure he’d heard the woman’s refined but
urgent voice before.
At Mulder’s trial.
Mulder and William were playing catch – that quintessential father-and-son
ritual – in a park Mulder had driven past numerous times without ever stopping
to picnic, read, or even doze under a tree. William’s face was split in a
wide grin of pleasure. He didn’t squeal in delight; squealing was not a component
in his son’s genetic makeup.
Scully was seated on a bench several yards away, hands clasped in her lap,
smiling in utter serenity as she watched the comfortingly repetitive play
before her. Mulder glanced her way and smiled in return.
“Mulder?” William called. Mulder turned curiously toward the oddly
mature voice, his son’s oddly mature expression.
“Hey, that any way to talk to your old man?” Mulder demanded lightly.
“Jesus,” William snorted. “Wake up, dude.”
Mulder awoke to find Larry Opps hovering above him, eyes rimmed in red, the
randomly selected T-shirt hanging loosely on his nearly skeletal frame, Mulder’s
nine millimeter in his fingers.
“God,” Mulder yawned, “You guys sure are strict about breakfast around here.”
“Don’t fuck around,” Opps sighed lazily. “You know, don’t you?”
Mulder sat up in the armchair. The soft-core classic he’d been watching had
segued into Babar the Elephant. “That you sold us out, Larry?”
Opps barked emphysemically. “Sold us out? Ship sailed on that when Spender
sent a hit squad after us.”
“I’m not so sure it was Spender, Larry,” Mulder smiled, looking past the
gun. “He went to an awful lot of trouble to translate Bales’ gibberish, to
get to the truth, just to try and kill everybody who could help him find
it. I think it was somebody else, somebody who wants to disarm our side.”
“What? An alien strike force?”
“Or more likely, some people who think they can bargain with the devil. Who
are you pitching for?”
Larry rested one buttock on the arm of the couch. “Let’s just say I figured
Spender for a loose cannon. But his fanaticism
and inside knowledge have made him useful.”
“Two minds are better than one,” Mulder nodded. “You
with the government, with the black ops folks? Ops, Opps, very clever.”
Opps sighed. “That’s my name, dude. You’re ‘way off. Let’s just say I work
for a team with a little more firepower. Spender and his crew of misfits
wouldn’t have known what to do with the shit we found out.”
“Ouch. Misfits. And I thought we were buds. By
the way, where is our roomie?”
“Silver wanted pancakes, so he ran down into town to get some eggs. See what
I mean? Bush league. But I guess it’s what saves
him.”
“So why kill me?” Mulder asked casually. “We would seem to be playing for
the same team, ultimately.”
“We’re going to do what we have to,” Opps explained. “I don’t think you’re
ready to do that yet. We don’t need your ethics hanging around our necks.”
He raised Mulder’s weapon.
“Don’t suppose if I told you to watch out behind you, I could make you peek?”
Opps shook his head. Then he jumped as a cold cylinder jammed into his neck.
“I’d drop it, son,” Walter Skinner suggested. Opps complied.
“Misfit, huh?” Mulder huffed. His cell phone trilled, and he forestalled
his reunion with his former superior. “Mulder.”
“Yeah, it’s me, Jimmy,” Jimmy said. “This a bad time,
Agent Mulder?”
Mulder glanced up at Skinner, who was cuffing Opps. “Naw, it’s good.”
“That e-mail address? Kimmy traced it to a Petra Negri in
Mulder waited. “If that isn’t all, should you have stopped just now?”
“I guess it’s OK to tell you. Yves and I and Director Skinner and Agent
Doggett had a run-in with SynerCom, the company that paid for most of World
Enrichment’s research – they were doing weird genetic research, stuff with
psychics, not fortune tellers or anything. People with
psychic abilities.”
“Genetics,” Mulder echoed, looking at Opps. Opps face opened in surprise.
“Petra Negri, huh? You up
on your romance languages, Jimmy?”
“Heck, I just barely passed Spanish…”
Mulder laughed. “
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Hey, thanks, Jimmy. Maybe I can buy you a beer when I’m
in town next. If I ever get back to town.”
Mulder ended the call and looked up at Skinner. “You always just drop in
like this?”
A smile played at the corner of Skinner’s mouth, then thought better of it.
“I can always come back. Good to see you again, Agent. Where’s Scully?”
“We took separate vacations this year.” Mulder briefly summarized the events
of the last few weeks. It took 35 minutes, and concluded with Scully’s quest
to find Spender. “And Larry here, he’s been moonlighting for an old friend
of ours’,” the agent concluded, turning to the sullen Opps. “What’s Marita
planning on doing with the information? Who’s backing her?”
“Covarrubias?” Skinner murmured.
Mulder nodded. “I’ve heard some deep underground stuff about a corporate
lab up in
“We think Covarrubias, or whoever she’s working for, was researching some
kind of new offensive weapon against the colonists. Some
drug that seemed to enhance individual psychic abilities.” Skinner
paused. “Mulder, she was experimenting on some kidnapped kids. Including Gibson
Praise.”
Gibson, a suspected human-alien hybrid with astonishing psychic abilities,
had sheltered him in the desert while the ex-agent had searched for a defense
against the genetically engineered “supersoldiers” that had been developed
quite possibly as an advance army for the extraterrestrials who planned to
take the planet from the species that according to Jeremiah Smith they had
spawned. Mulder felt a sudden tightness in his chest. Gibson had been his
only friend in the wilderness all those months, the only one who understood
completely Mulder’s feeling of alienation from most of the human race.
“Is he OK?” he barely got out.
Skinner frowned. “He disappeared, apparently during the raid.
Along with one of the other guinea pigs. A man named Calvin Welles.”
Mulder settled back against the cushions. “Lemme guess.
Charles Manson with attitude. A mass murderer, maybe a serial killer,
probably with some limited but acute psychic ability. I’m going to guess
his body count has picked up considerably since his disappearance. And not
just human bodies, right?”
Skinner’s eyes darted to the silent Opps, and the assistant director sighed.
“Agent Doggett and I viewed a multiple murder scene in
Mulder’s eyes glittered in horror and wonder. “And the
other crime scene?”
“I only saw a photo, and the crime scene got cleaned up before anyone could
investigate. It was a crash with no survivors, Mulder, and I think everybody
– everything – on board were dead before their ship hit the ground.”
“My God,” Mulder whispered. He sat back to absorb it all, to process all
the pieces. “You think Welles did all this? He massacres the people in the
diner, for fun, to flex his new psychic muscles, then
he’s abducted. Whatever it is he does, whatever it is he’s learned to channel
into this world, Welles discovered it works on tourists, too. Larry, you
know anything about this guy? Were you one of the scientists who
was studying Welles? C’mon, Larry; you know this is important.”
Opps took a long breath. “He wasn’t just a serial killer, Mulder. Calvin
Welles is a mosaic, a psychopath with maybe a dozen disassociated personalities.
But not just a ‘regular’ mosaic – his DNA’s, well, batshit crazy. Why he
was picked for Covarrubias’ test group – he has chains working that we didn’t
even know worked.”
“Junk DNA,” Mulder looked up at Skinner. “Like Gibson.”
“Yeah,” Larry said impatiently. “Like everyone in the test group. See, maybe
95 percent of the DNA in some human genomes is non-coding – it doesn’t seem
to have any purpose. There has been some research lately with crytomonads
– photosynthetic microorganisms – that shows junk DNA may play a role in
the cell nucleus, but that doesn’t begin to explain things.
“Petrovsky was one of Marita’s network of scientists
and doctors – she’d had some powerful connections through the World Health
Organization. He’d done some studies on psychic tendencies in schizos and
psychos – Mengele-type shit – and he had a DNA workup done on Welles. Marita
already knew about Praise, but she felt Welles might have had as much potential
for the project. You shoulda seen some of Welles’ chains -- weird crap. Like
a mutational anomaly.”
“Or maybe an alien one that expresses selectively in humans,” Mulder suggested.
“Did you look into Welles’ family history? Maybe any
abductions?”
Skinner nodded soberly. “Agent Doggett was looking in a number of directions,
including abductions and reported crashes in the Southwest and the deaths
of what he believes to be Welles’ disassociated personalities.”
Mulder grinned despite himself. “Well, you go, John. Maybe there’s hope for
Sgt. Friday, after all.” He turned back to Larry. “And where’d they get that
Frankenstein drug they shot Welles and the others up with?”
“It wasn’t a drug,” Opps growled. “It was an enzyme. Covarrubias didn’t say
where it came from.”
“I bet I know,” Mulder smiled. “I gotta meet this guy.”
“He’s a homicidal monster,” Skinner advised. “And he may be unstoppable,
at least by us.”
“Actually,” Mulder corrected, “I think he may be a prophecy fulfilled.” He
turned to Opps. “If Jeremiah Smith was right, and Jack Bales is our genetically-engineered
Moses, then Welles…”
“Jesus,” Larry whispered, too stunned to appreciate the irony of his response.
Then, all heads turned as the front door flew open. Skinner pulled his sidearm;
Mulder leveled Opps’ pistol.
“Yikes,” Chaim breathed, dropping his grocery bag. “Hey, I got the Doritos,
you goniffs!”
**
“What do you want, Calvin?” Monica asked calmly of the figure in the corner
of her vision.
There was a smile in Welles’ menacingly friendly
“Girl Scouts,” she supplied without pondering the ludicrous nature of this
small-talk with a madman.
He snorted. “Yeah, guess that’d be about right. Well, I was in 4-H – my old
lady thought’d help us build character, before my old man decided it took
too much time out of our chores and whomped the both of us.”
“That’s where this started, Calvin,” Monica suggested.
“The abuse, the beatings.”
Welles sighed. “Jesus, Girl Scout’s harder to kill than a biker.
Though I cleaned out a whole nest of ‘em a few months ago in
She felt, or perceived feeling, a chill. A homicidal savant with abilities
beyond his human peers, and he talked and acted like a redneck career felon.
“Well, old Mr. Wierhaus – that was his name – he told me about how all these
used-up radio waves bounce around in the air and out into space, how maybe
millions of years from now, some green alien with three eyes and five legs
might just pick up Lynyrd Skynyrd on his saucer stereo. Old Wierhaus thought
he was Albert Weinstein and Tommy Edison all in one. Told me you can’t make
energy and you can’t get shed of it, no matter how you try. It just drifts
around out there, lookin’ for someplace to settle. You read about somebody
pickin’ up spy talk or Russian news shows on their TV durin’ a bad storm
or shit.
“And I’m thinkin’, maybe that’s what I am – a ham radio for all that psychical
energy that’s shootin’ around the atmosphere. Or maybe more like a Sears
Diehard – storin’ up all that energy. What churchgoin’ people’d call the
soul. I been storin’ up the stray energy of the dead, the souls of all these
people, I’m guessin’, and every once in a while, a little electricity leaks
out.”
Monica had to assemble her thoughts, her conceptions, before she could respond.
She believed she knew where Welles was going, and she wasn’t prepared for
it. There was something else, too.
“So you’re saying your multiple personalities, they’re actually the souls
of the dead,” she drawled. “Those names you gave me, they were victims of
heinous, violent crimes. I have…dreams…about being murdered, over and over,
in different places, different times. It seems as if I’m pursuing
whomever ultimately kills me. As if it’s my karma.”
“Karma,” Welles chuckled. “Monica, sweetie, you gotta quit burning candles
and playin’ whale music or whatever. I could sense it about you, first time
I laid eyes on your pretty little face. You’re a Diehard, too, a ham radio.
Way I figure it, this has gotta be in the genes or somethin’, you know? Those
Indian folk, ones in
“Genetic expression,” Monica suggested numbly.
“But a few folks – the few, the proud – pull in a clear signal without havin’
to boost the charge. You only pull in the soul station – I like that, Smokey
Robinson, that kinda shit – when you’re sleepin’, cause you ain’t getting’
interference from your own brainwaves. The good doctor, Petrovsky, had me
thinkin’ I was a candidate for the whacky ward, when all the time I was just
gatherin’ up a strong charge. Then the lovely Marita – sounds like somethin’
out of a Marty Robbins song, don’t it – gave me a dose of battery fluid,
and I started pullin’ in WDED and a half a dozen other stations aside.”
“What do you mean?” Monica thought of John’s description of the victims in
that
“Let you listen in, Sweetcheeks, ‘cept the frequency don’t seem to be too
good for next folks. Or aliens, that matter.”
Monica could hear the grin in his voice. The confession wouldn’t do much
good, her in a coma, Welles drifting around the dimensional divide, and federal
law unclear on extraterrestrial homicide.
“What I don’t get,” she finally said, “is why I only seem to pick up on the
souls of policemen, of those pursuing murderers, pursuing evil. If that energy
out there, free-floating, why would I only pick up those souls? And why would
you only pick up murder victims?”
“AM radio don’t pick up FM, darlin’,” Welles explained,
simply. “I think different folks got different energy, and different folks
pick up different energy. Those folks you see when you’re sleepin’, they
must be on your wavelength. Maybe that’s why you’re
who you are, a lawman. Law woman, pardon me. As for me, I mighta given you
a slight misapprehension. That list I gave you?”
“Yeah?”
“Those weren’t my ‘personalities.’ My souls, they killed those souls. I just
wanted you to ‘verify’ a few things for me, like you folks would say. And
you did, didn’t you? Gotta make sure them voices
in your head ain’t just your own bad wirin’, right?”
“That’s all you wanted from me?” Monica demanded. “For me to confirm those
people were murdered, to verify that those ‘souls’ of yours were the murderers?”
“Not just that, Monica,” Welles said in a suddenly calm, serious tone that
put her on guard. “I gotta feelin’ we might have
somethin’ more in common. All the time I was in that monkeyhouse up in South
Dakota, they kept askin’ me I had any memories about aliens, flyin’ saucers,
if I ever ‘felt’ I’d been taken someplace strange. And the funny thing was
, I had. Always thought it was cause I
was an ‘imaginative’ child, like that fag elementary school counselor told
my ma. But then I think about the time Ma told me my pop disappeared for
near a week, ‘fore I was born. She thought – hell, probably prayed – that
the motherfucker had decided to sleep it off on the railroad tracks somewhere.
But he came back stone cold sober, didn’t remember a thing about what’d happened.
Ma knew she asked where the hell he’d gone to, he’d whomp her somethin’ fierce,
so she let it go. But now, I’m thinking they musta done some science projects
with the sumbitch, maybe tinkered a little with his man juice, you know?”
Monica felt an abrupt chill. Welles’ indistinct figure shifted in her peripheral
vision.
“Them folks down home, they’re Mex, right? You ain’t. You know who your
real kin are?”
Monica’s heart seemed to be pounding. She couldn’t speak, or given her apparent
state, think.
“’Cause you and I, we got a kind a’ kinship, you know? Be interested to know
what kinda juice you got in your Diehard, huh, ‘Sis’?”
“Doctor?” the plump blonde nurse inquired, concerned. “Dr. Rajid? You OK?”
“Yeah, yes,” Rajid coughed, recapturing his professional demeanor. “You’ve
seen these EKGs?”
The nurse glanced at Agent Reyes, who without the monitors, abrasions, and
IV might have been slumbering deeply. She peered at the electrocardiogram
in his hands. “Jesus. What’s going on in this woman’s brain? You think she’s
having an episode?”
“I think she’s having a party,” Rajid said with uncharacteristic irony. “Look
closely at the pattern of impulses – the extreme peaks and valleys, alternating
with more moderate readings. It’s as if there were
someone in there with her.”
“My father,” Spender began, “was fanatically convinced that the only way
to survive the invasion, the colonization, was to join forces with the aliens,
appease them at any cost. Even if that meant offering up my mother, just
as Mulder’s father was forced to offer up Mulder’s sister, as a
means to exploring the hybridization necessary to make the planet their own.”
Michael White Eagle, Jacob Moonrise, and the other men around the scarred
conference table were silent, whether in awe or out of some deep cultural
acceptance of alternate truths, Scully could not know. They were in the back
room of the relatively deserted diner, where some community club met weekly
for Swiss steak and civic pride – Spender had put $100 on the counter and
booked the private room and two pots of coffee, no waitress. If the owner
had speculated on the nature of this meeting between the white couple and
the Indians, he hadn’t exhibited any curiosity or concern.
“When the rebels burned the core Syndicate members and…the others…alive,
I was convinced the movement had been eliminated. But remarks my father made
to me…after…” Spender unconsciously touched his runnelled face, “suggested
the Syndicate might have some hangers-on, those left behind, who went deep
underground to plan the next phase, whatever that might be. Apparently, some
new negotiations have been reached with the colonists, most likely including
destroying us. I can’t reach any of my colleagues. It’s a wonder Mulder,
Opps, and Silver survived.”
Scully had not explained by what wonder they had survived the apocalyptic
attack on the
“The information is gone, the hard drives wiped and destroyed,” Spender said
numbly. “To rebuild, find the right people to reinterpret the data, it’s
nearly inconceivable.”
“I believe survival is the most pressing priority right now,” Scully interrupted.
“I think we need to reconnoiter with Mulder. Skinner was heading to
“She’s a lawman’s wife, remember?” Michael said with customary casualness.
Scully found his unflappable manner simultaneously stabilizing and maddening.
“Naw, maybe the fellas ought to get back to town, but I got nothing better
to do today than sprucing up speed traps.”
“Mike,” Scully implored, taking his rough hand. “I can’t begin to express
how thankful I am – for all of us – and how sorry I am for the lies we’ve
had to tell you and Connie. But you need to be with your family. It’s not…”
“My battle?” Mike asked, amused. “Dana, my grandfathers and their
grandfathers saw their land taken, ripped from them over the bodies of their
brothers and sisters, their wives and children. We have a saying, our people.
‘Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me.’”
“God,” Scully exhaled.