Dilemma: Nothing but Trouble
By Summer
summer@camelot.bradley.edu
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 1995
_The X-Files_: all characters copyright Chris Carter and Ten
Thirteen Productions. They shouldn't have made up something so cool if
they didn't want us to write fan fiction about it. However, i don't
really want to upset them, so no infringement upon their copyrights is
intended.
I love mail. More to the point, i ANSWER mail. All comments to
summer@camelot.bradley.edu, please. I don't care if it's the year 1999
and you're reading this off the archives. Write me!
Nothing happens without help. Vickie Moseley edited
this story as it was written. Ken Ambrose collaborated on the
action sequences. Everyone who sent me mail about "Dilemma"
inspired me to keep writing. Wonderful Saint Susan posted it for
me. Blessings upon them all!
~~~
Dilemma: Nothing But Trouble
An X-Files Story
by Summer
"Agent Mulder, I want to see you in my office right away."
"Sir?"
"Get up here, Mulder."
Special Agent Dana Scully glanced up as her partner
hung up the phone and unrolled his shirtsleeves. "Who was
that?" she asked.
"Skinner," Mulder said, baffled. "He just summoned me
to the throne room. Why would he ask me to come up now, and
without you?"
Scully frowned. "Skinner called you himself? What'd you
do?"
"I didn't do anything!" He smoothed down his short brown
hair and straightened his tie with hurried trepidation.
"Mulder, you must be in trouble or he would have called
me in, too. Even if another section requested your help, Skinner
would've had me come in with you so he could tell us both."
"I didn't do anything," Mulder insisted, shrugging into his
suit jacket. "Honest. I just polished my halo this morning."
Scully raised an eyebrow. "What do you use for that?
Turtle Wax?"
"Pledge." He straightened his collar. "What do YOU use?"
"MY halo doesn't need polishing," she said. "Better get up
there; if you weren't in trouble before, you will be if you keep
Skinner waiting."
"Hold down the fort," Mulder said as he left. "If I have to
beg for mercy, this could take a while."
*
* *
*
"Agent Mulder, have you ever heard of an organization
called the Expatriates?"
Mulder, prepared for the worst, blinked at his supervisor
in confusion. "No, sir, I have not."
Assistant Director Walter Skinner stood, looking
restlessly out the window of his office. "It seems that they've
heard of you." Skinner turned to nail the agent with a stern
glance. "They're apparently a group of militant UFO hunters who
met through the Mutual UFO Network. Still doesn't sound
familiar? Expatriates."
"I'm familiar with MUFON, of course," Mulder replied,
"but--"
"The Expatriates a group of Canadian and U.S. citizens
who have taken it upon themselves to find out what the U.S.
federal government is hiding," Skinner interrupted acerbically.
"They refuse to acknowledge the authority of either the United
States or the Canadian federal governments, and we have
intelligence that they intend to accomplish their goals by using
guerrilla tactics, terrorism."
"What kind of intelligence is that?" Mulder asked with a
trace of suspicion.
"The CIA has an undercover operative inside the group."
Skinner swung back into his chair. "Look, Agent Mulder, this one's
highly charged. CIA's got the case because of the Canadian
angle, the NSA may be involved, I've got reports the State
Department might have an eye on it."
"So you want in on it too?"
"Hell no," Skinner said with the slightest inflection of
humor. "If I had my way, the Bureau wouldn't get within sniffing
distance of this mess."
"But..." Mulder waited expectantly.
"But," the assistant director said with resignation, "CIA's
man inside says these Expatriate characters have mentioned you
as the only person in the government they'd trust. And these
people anticipate that you may find out about their activities
through the X-Files. They almost expect you to show up, and
they want to try to win you over."
"And you want me to, what, go in there give them a pep
talk? Tell them to be good and maybe someday they'll get the
truth?" Mulder's chin lifted, an adversarial note commanding his
voice.
Skinner leaned forward. "Look, Agent Mulder, these are
people with no previous criminal records. All of a sudden they're
organizing information theft, breaking into restricted areas,
building bombs... if there's any way to take them in before they
do any damage, to others or to themselves, I want to take it. CIA
doesn't see it that way. They want something spectacular they
can nail 'em with at trial, and right now the most we can get
them on is a couple of counts of conspiracy and harboring illegal
aliens."
"So to speak," the agent muttered.
"My concern," Skinner continued heedlessly, "is that in
order to get something big for the trial, the Agency might delay
long enough to let these people take drastic action. Now, I have a
request here from the CIA agent in charge of this operation,
Darren Blaise. He wants to bring you in, let the Expatriates think
you're investigating them for the X-Files. Blaise shares my
concerns about Agency grandstanding, and he's hoping that your
involvement might prevent any... rash decisions on the part of
the CIA."
Mulder tilted his head, frowned at his supervisor. "You're
talking about infiltration," he said.
"It gets better." Skinner opened his desk drawer and
produced a thick file folder. "The FBI is not officially part of this
operation. Your involvement would have to be likewise unofficial.
We already have enough press trouble, they're still talking about
the World Trade Center bombing... word from the top is, stay
away from it."
"--That's why you didn't call Scully in," Mulder pounced.
"This is all going to be under the table."
"As far as the Bureau is concerned, you're assisting a
murder investigation in Kentucky, Agent Mulder, trying to
determine if the deceased may be the first victim of a serial
killer."
Mulder nodded carelessly, his eyes fixed on the manila
folder in Skinner's hands. "Where'm I going?"
The older man dropped the file on the edge of the desk.
"Camping site, not far from Arlington Heights in Maryland. Agent
Mulder, no one else is to be privy to this file or to your true
assignment. That includes your partner. Understood?"
"Why can't Scully back me up?" Mulder asked doubtfully.
Skinner shook his head. "It's risky enough putting you in
this scenario, Agent Mulder. No one else. You talk, and you're
out of this one-- and right now, it looks like you could be the
only one who can keep this situation from becoming explosive."
Reluctantly, the younger man agreed, "Understood, sir."
"All right. Take that file home, read it over. You leave for,
ah, `Kentucky' tomorrow afternoon." Skinner stood, signalling for
Mulder to do the same. "And Agent Mulder... coordination in this
manuever is essential. The CIA will brief you once you arrive,
and you are to give them your full cooperation. Clear?"
"Clear." Mulder stepped out. "Very clear."
* *
* *
"I guess you didn't have to beg for mercy," Scully
observed as Mulder returned to the X-Files office.
"Nah, I just genuflected at the desk and he let me off
easy."
Scully waited; finally she asked, "Well?"
"I'm going to Kentucky," Mulder said too quickly. "They
want me to look in on a possible serial killing, which may involve
some sort of ritual activity."
"Really." The low fluorescent light gleamed on her coppery
hair as Scully tilted her head.
Mulder leaned and rested his hands on his desk like a
runner preparing for a sprint; he looked up at his partner. "No.
Not really."
"Then... what, really?"
He shook his head. "Sorry, Scully. Skinner says I have to
go this one alone."
Her full lips parted in speechless protest. At last Scully
managed, "That's ridiculous!"
Mulder nodded. "Look, I know it and you know it, but no
one bothered to tell the man upstairs, and he refused my request
that you back me up. I was supposed to give you this story about
going to Kentucky."
"Oh, so he wanted you to lie to me too?" Scully was
beginning to get that tight pissed-off expression he knew so well,
the one that sent hard-bitten law officers scurrying in terror. "I
can't believe this! What's so important that you can't even tell
ME about it?"
He raised his hands helplessly and drew a line over his
mouth, miming that his lips were sealed.
Scully glared at him in disgust. "And since when are you
so scrupulous about following Skinner's orders?"
"You know I'll tell you everything once I get back. I don't
like it either, but-- trust me on this, okay?" Mulder didn't invoke
the magic word often, but now and then even partners as close
as he and Scully were had to be reminded to have faith in each
other.
She didn't look happy about it, but Scully backed down.
"Okay. Call me if..." she shrugged with frustration.
"I'll call you, I promise," he swore.
Scully's mouth quirked up a little. "Bet you say that to
all the girls."
* *
* *
end of part 1
=========================================
Dilemma: Nothing But Trouble
An X-Files Story
by Summer
part 2
The next day, a commuter flight and a rental car later,
Mulder was on a country road in upstate Maryland. He parked as
he'd been instructed, at a closed-down bait shop just down the
hill from a rickety trailer. The CIA, in the form of on-site senior
agent Darren Blaise, was waiting for him.
Darren Blaise was a man of substance. Looking at him,
Mulder got the feeling that the CIA operative liked his steaks
rare and bloody, his beer imported and often. Blaise offered a
meaty hand and bellowed, "Blaise. Welcome to the front lines,
Agent Mulder. You've read the files?"
Mulder squelched any number of smart-ass replies and
merely said, "Yes sir. Assistant Director Skinner said you'd be
briefing me on the best way to approach these people?"
"Right now the front door is looking pretty damn good,"
Blaise replied, still at top volume. "I guess we'll wanna get you
familiar with our operation here before we send you in, but from
the way these nuts are singing your praises on the inside, we
could send you in there with a Candygram and they'd probably
crown you king."
"Leader," Mulder said.
"Huh?"
"They wouldn't crown me king, they'd appoint me leader.
You know, as in `Take me to your...'?"
Blaise snorted and straightened his tie. "Uh-huh. Yeah.
That's real funny. Okay, when you're ready to WORK, I'll be in the
trailer up here. You'll have to get cleared by the guard first." He
clambered up the crumbling lawn towards the aluminum trailer,
a sorry structure with peeling paint hanging in ribbons from the
sides.
The guard, as it turned out, was a plainclothes CIA man
sitting in a pickup truck to the side of the boarded-up bait shop;
he stomped out of the truck, brushed off his faded jeans, and
sauntered over to Mulder. "See your ID," the man muttered.
Mulder produced his badge. Apparently this little
formality was beneath Blaise to perform himself. The
plainclothesman squinted at the badge and nodded. "Right.
Right. Go on up, then."
"That's quite a fashion statement," Mulder observed,
nodding at the man's plaid shirt and Budweiser baseball cap.
"Bold yet understated. I bet those tobacco stains match your gun
rack exquisitely."
"Just get up to the trailer and keep your mouth shut,
FBI," the agent snarled, scuffling through the lumpy earth back
to his pickup.
"Nice to meet you too," Mulder called back. He shoved his
hands into his jeans pockets and started up towards the CIA's
base of operations. He really wished he'd ignored Skinner's
advice to dress informally; his sweater and Levis put him at a
definite psychological disadvantage. Not that he'd get any better
treatment in a suit, but at least he'd have that professional
armor to deflect the blows.
The trailer was up on blocks, and none too steadily; it
listed to one side, leaning back into the embrace of the
surrounding trees. Mulder trudged up the rough concrete steps
and pulled the door open. Blaise was standing just inside,
pretending to talk about something important to an agent who
was on the telephone and obviously not listening to a word
Blaise said.
Blaise swiveled his head to look over the FBI agent
critically. "How was your flight up, Agent Mulder?"
If the CIA operative hoped to throw Mulder off balance by
running hot and cold, he had picked the wrong battlefield. Fox
Mulder lived by uncertainty, and he could judge ambiguity the
way most people sized up a parking space. Mulder answered
easily, "Fine, thanks." His attention wasn't on Blaise; he was
busy taking in the interior of the shabby trailer.
The place was packed. Folding tables lined the walls,
laden with papers, phones, fax machines, laptop computers and
surveillance equipment. Seven CIA agents were crowded at the
tables; five listened intently with five identical blank stares to
massive headphones, one talked on the phone and another
clacked away on a laptop.
"It's not much, but it's home," Blaise commented as he
sat at one of the tables. He gestured to another chair near it.
Mulder folded into the aluminum chair and nodded to the
men listening to headphones. "What kind of surveillance do you
have?"
"Three units with parabolic mikes stationed around their
cabin," Blaise recited, "one intermittent signal from inside, and
one stationary stashed in a hollowed-out tree on their jogging
path."
His brief stint in FBI surveillance had actually come in
handy for once; Mulder nodded, glad he didn't need any of that
explained to him. "The intermittent, this is your undercover op?"
"Right," Blaise grimaced.
"Skinner told me you've got a man on the inside."
"A man?" chuckled Blaise. "If only. We've got a woman in
there. Swear to god, I didn't pick her. She was sent in before this
team got on the case."
"She's not reliable?" Mulder asked. Great, this entire
exercise was probably going to be a washout based on some
unstable undercover agent's misleading information.
"She's fucking the head spaceman in there!" The CIA
operative tossed his hands uselessly in the air. "How'm I
supposed to trust some chippie who's screwing the other side,
huh?"
Mulder blinked and shook his head. "How much hard
evidence do you have regarding the Expatriates' plans to execute
terrorist activities?" he asked, reflecting that he'd never met
anyone who actually used the word `chippie' before. He was
starting to wish he never had.
"Plenty, all on tape," Blaise shot back. "They've got big
plans, so we gave 'em a nice decoy target to shoot at so we can
grab these nuts before they start bombing the White House for
alien rights or something." He spread out a map on the table and
nodded to a route traced in red. "We've leaked them some
falsified documents about a caravan going from the medical
research center here in Arlington to some secret installation out
in New Mexico. New Mexico's big with these spaceman types. But
I guess you knew that, huh. We gave 'em pictures, memos, real
convincing stuff indicating that these trucks are transporting
extraterrestrial corpses. We got Mr. Spock tied up in the trunk,
come get him, is basically what we told 'em."
"Where in New Mexico?" Mulder inquired.
"Huh? Oh. Just, y'know, someplace. The boys back at HQ
cooked up something convincing for 'em, I'm sure. It's all just a
big scam to draw these guys out and get them to take action."
Mulder leaned back in his chair. "Sort of like
entrapment."
"Gets the job done," Blaise said. "Thing is, it's getting
out of hand. Our girl in there, she's supposed to make sure they
color inside the lines so we can get our convictions. But then we
find out she's down and dirty with Fearless Leader in there, and
she's suggesting they get some explosives to get rid of the trucks
once they get the so-called evidence out of the caravan."
Mulder whistled low in spite of himself. "Think she's
bought into their doctrines?"
"I think she bought into Robert Gorman's dick is what I
think," Blaise snorted. "You got the cast of characters list?
Gorman's the instigator, he brought all the rest of 'em into it.
Him and his sidekick-- Justin Faulkner-- they started it. Our girl's
Sharon Wiltsie, but we're the only ones who know that. Not even
HQ is in on that one. I got orders from the top not to compromise
her cover, but they approved it for you to know, since you're
going in."
"I'd like to look over the transcripts with my name in
them," Mulder requested. "I can put together a better approach if
I know what they've said about me."
"Sure, sure, everybody's got an ego," Blaise dismissed.
"Don't worry, Agent Mulder, they think you're god's gift to Earth
in there. Of course, they also think that god was a little green
man."
"Grey."
"Huh?"
"Little grey man. Most members of MUFON believe there
are two classes of extraterrestrial, blues and greys. And it's
Jesus they think was an alien, not god. Van Daanikan, _Chariots
of the Gods_."
Blaise laughed, clapping Mulder on the shoulder. "Jesus,
huh? That's great. You're okay, Agent Mulder. You just keep
coming up with this bullshit for the Expatriates and everything's
going to work out fine."
*
* *
*
-----------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT: EXP. PAGE 218
GORMAN: No one really knows for sure, guys. Not even the big
guns at Mutual are sure about what happened in Puerto Rico. So
let's not jump to hasty conclusions, okay?
FAULKNER: Agent Mulder knows. I got word he was down in
Arecibo for whatever it was.
WILTSIE: Oh, come on, Justin. As far as the rumor mill's
concerned, Agent Mulder has been anywhere there were UFO
sightings for the past three years. He's only one guy. I
hear more stories about him being involved in exposes and
cover-ups than I hear about those stupid Men In Black
characters.
FAULKNER: What--
GORMAN: Sharon, darling, the man has seen Area 51. You
hacked that file yourself.
WILTSIE: I'm not saying he isn't in deep. I'm saying that Fox
Mulder is not Our Lord and Savior, can we just keep that in
mind?
FAULKNER: What do you mean, stupid Men in Black characters?
You think we make this shit up? I've seen the Men in Black,
okay? What the hell are you even doing here if you don't--
GORMAN: Calm down Justin. Come on, you two. Don't put me in
the middle of this.
WILTSIE: Listen. I know there really are Men in Black, okay, I
just don't think that all the stories about them are true. And
neither are all these, these-- folk tales about Agent Mulder.
FAULKNER: You just think you know so much because you saw
him once.
WILTSIE: Well? So I met him at a conference a couple of years
ago. He's a very pleasant, nice guy who's looking for some
answers. That's it. No arcane secrets, no wild-eyed look, no
insane genius...
FAULKNER: For Chrissakes, Sharon, if you met Ghandi you'd
probably think he was just mellow. Agent Mulder is our best
hope for exposure from the inside. If anyone within the system
can break it open-- damn it, Bobby, I still think we should try
to contact him.
GORMAN: If he finds us, we'll talk to him. But we can't risk
approaching him. Particularly not now.
FAULKNER: I know. I meant afterwards.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT: EXP PAGE 219
WILTSIE: You're talking like we're going to have some kind of
mobility once we do this. Forget it, Justin, we tap him afterwards
and he'll arrest us. No question.
FAULKNER: Not if we have information he wants.
WILTSIE: Bobby--
FAULKNER: Don't you try to drag Bobby into this, you want to
argue with me, argue yourself.
GORMAN: Please, you two.
WILTSIE: I don't want to fight. With either of you. I'm going to
get some work done.
FAULKNER: Why is it every time I try to talk with you, you turn
to Bobby and then you run away? Jesus, Sharon.
WILTSIE: The two of you can sit here and exchange campfire
stories about the great Fox Mulder all you want. You know,
Justin, you can talk about Mulder and hope he'll come save you,
but he's not going to come bringing you your answers. If you
want to know what's in that convoy, we've got to go find out. We
have to do it ourselves. Agent Mulder's not going to do it for us.
(Wiltsie leaves the room, leaving surveillance device in place.)
GORMAN: You know, Justin, she has a point.
FAULKNER: Damn it, Bobby, don't you ever think for yourself
anymore?
------------------------------------------------------------------
Mulder looked up from the transcripts, pulling off his
reading glasses and squinching up his eyes. "Sixty solid pages of
bitching at each other. How do these people ever get anything
done?"
It wasn't until silence greeted his question that Mulder
realized he'd been talking, not to himself, but to Scully. And she
wasn't there to reply, to joke with him or to point out something
he'd missed.
He sighed. This assignment was a joke. The CIA treated
him as though he had personally accused them of killing JFK,
the people he was supposed to talk out of bombing a caravan
were a bunch of militant assholes, and Scully wasn't around to
make the whole thing seem sane and sensible, or at least
feasible. Without his partner, Mulder felt like he was trapped
in a bad episode of Mission: Impossible.
His cellphone was out and ringing almost before he
realized he was calling her. Mulder checked the clock as an
afterthought. It was only ten, considerably earlier than he
usually phoned his partner.
"Hello?"
"Hope I didn't wake you, Scully."
"Mulder! Is everything okay?"
"Yeah, everything's-- well, actually, everything really,
really sucks. But I'm fine. How're you? What am I missing?"
He heard her whoosh a long sigh. "Not much. I'm fine.
Violent Crimes sent down a weird murder they want us to take a
look at, but it's a month old already, so it can wait 'til you get
back."
"What is it?"
"A homeless man in New York, murdered and mutilated."
"In New YORK? Imagine that!"
"Well, there are some strange aspects," Scully admitted.
"From the autopsy report, it sounds as though the man's hands
were... deboned... but there's not enough tissue damage
indicated to allow for such a procedure. And the bones of his
spine and skull were, well, it's described here as `partially
liquefied'."
"He didn't drink his milk, apparently..."
"Mulder," she said reprovingly. "Anyway, I'll probably be
flying to New York to conduct another autopsy. But you can still
get my cellphone, and I should have my hotel number next time
you call."
"Nothing but fun, fun, fun waiting for me back home,
huh?"
"When do you think you'll be back?"
Suddenly exasperated and exhausted, Mulder let his
head flumf onto the transcript, the phone still at his ear. "I don't
know," he growled. "I really hate this, Scully. I hate being sent on
this assignment and I REALLY hate not being able to work with
you."
"What was that noise, it sounded like someone clubbed
you on the head!"
"That was me, banging my head against the wall at the
stupidity of this whole scenario. Scully, when I get to tell you
about this mess, you'll either decapitate Skinner or die laughing.
Or both."
"I'll sharpen my axe. I'm considering lodging a protest,
Mulder, but the more I consider it, the more it seems like I'd be
making a big Kick Me sign for both of us if I did. The
disadvantage of going outside official channels is that we are not
well served by official channels when we need them."
"No, don't raise a fuss, Scully," he said, looking at the
print a mere inch from his nose. The date of the Expatriates'
proposed attack on the caravan was just three days away. "I
should be back next week, no problem."
"Well, I think I can manage to hold things down here for a
week."
"I know you can."
"Hurry back, Mulder, I'm dying to know what this is all
about."
He chuckled ruefully. "So am I, Scully. So am I. G'night."
"'Night, Mulder."
* *
* *
end of part 2
===========================================
Dilemma: Nothing But Trouble
An X-Files Story
by Summer
part 3
Mulder went into the CIA trailer without bothering to
knock. He'd spent a restless night at a lousy motel trying to
piece together what was really going on, and hadn't met with
much success. Now, in the pale light of early morning, two hours
before he was supposed to 'infiltrate the terrorist group', Mulder
found himself with no clear picture of the situation and only the
most tenuous idea of what he was supposed to accomplish.
All he had was a growing suspicion that once again, he
was being used. Mulder was very, very tired of being used.
He shut the door behind him and edged past the tables to
face Darren Blaise. "Why am I here?" he demanded.
The CIA senior agent looked up from the checklist he was
studying. "Can't help you there, buddy. Try Hare Krishna."
"You know what I mean." Mulder dropped the stack of
transcripts on the desk in front of Blaise. "You planned to lure
the Expatriates into attacking this mocked-up convoy of trucks
by use of falsified information and the influence of your
undercover operative. That's entrapment. Skinner told me that
you personally disapproved of this measure and I was coming in
to talk these people out of the attack. Then I read this." Mulder
stabbed the pile of papers he'd thumped onto Blaise's desk with
his index finger. "You don't want me to talk them out of it-- you
want me to go along and make sure they don't bomb the trucks.
Am I right?"
Blaise put his checklist down. "On the money."
"That's not what I'm here for."
"You have that in writing? What did you sign up for,
Agent Mulder?" Blaise shook his head. "You're on our playing
field now, got that? You were loaned to us, just like we'd
requisition a safe house or a letterbox. And you WILL follow our
instructions."
"No."
"What do you mean, no?" Blaise asked incredulously.
"I mean, no. I was assigned to stop the Expatriates from
attacking government property-- whether the government
wanted that property attacked or not. I'm not here to help you
manipulate them."
"You were assigned," Blaise said, his voice rising, "to
prevent these UFO nuts from harming innocent people by
engaging in terrorist activities. I was assured of your FULL
cooperation by your superior, Agent Mulder, regardless of
whether or not you approved of our operation. We didn't bring
you in here to pass judgement. We brought you in here to keep
these idiots from screwing around with high explosives. You
back out, and that basement hole they have you stashed in at
the Bureau is gonna look like Paradise compared to where I'll get
you sent. Am I making myself clear?"
Mulder let his eyes slide shut, bit down on his protests,
and nodded. "Clear," he answered. "Very clear."
Blaise picked up his checklist again. "Good. You'll be
going in tomorrow around noon. The cabin they're based in is just a
hike away." The CIA senior operative fixed Mulder with a wide stare.
"Go in there and do whatever it takes to keep them from bombing
the trucks. If you can find out why our undercover op is touting
explosives, so much the better. But if those trucks go down, I
will see to it, Agent Mulder-- so will you."
* *
* *
"I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder, I work with the FBI."
Mulder flipped out his ID. "I was wondering if I could speak with
you in an... unofficial capacity."
Robert Gorman looked better than the bland picture in
his dossier; his round, cheerful face lit up, his unruly black hair
tossing into his eyes as he nodded, "Believe me, I know who you
are, Agent Mulder. And I think I know why you're here." He
stepped back. "Please. Come in."
"Everyone," he announced as Mulder let the door fall
shut, "this is Agent Mulder. Agent Mulder," Gorman smiled,
"meet the Expatriates."
Activity in the room came to a dead halt. Fifteen people
stared expectantly at the tall FBI agent whose arrival they had
anticipated for weeks. If the transcripts of their conversations
were any indication, they saw Fox Mulder as a demigod of
UFOlogy.
Mulder gave the assemblage a half-grin and said, "The
Expatriates? Yeah, I think I read a comic book about you guys
once."
Another beat of total silence-- and then one man, a rangy
figure with long brown hair, snorted with laughter. As though
given permission, the rest began to respond with nods and
chuckles.
Gorman beamed. "We've been expecting you," he said.
"How'd you find us?" The long-haired, lanky man who had
laughed first strode over to stand next to Gorman.
"This is Justin Faulkner," Gorman introduced hastily,
then clucked. "And I'm Bobby Gorman, sorry, should've said that
earlier I suppose." He put out his hand.
Mulder shook his hand, then Faulkner's. "I've been
keeping tabs on MUFON and NICAP for several years now," he
directed towards Faulkner. "A lot of talking goes on at their
conferences, and some important pieces get put together, but--
there's not a lot of activity. I suppose I'd always hoped that
someone would start taking some initiative..." He looked around
the cabin, at the guns and posters lining the walls. "...though I'm
not sure this is quite what I had in mind," he concluded.
It wasn't until someone began to whisper and was
shushed that Mulder realized they were all listening. He glanced
around, pushed away his self-conciousness, and went on. "I
noticed that a few MUFON members had liquidated their assets.
They-- YOU-- converted everything to cash and seemed to, well,
drop off the face of the planet." This earned a few more scattered
titters. "I started asking some questions a couple of months ago
and... it's led me here." He wandered to a rack of antique rifles,
examining them absently. "What is all this? What do you have
planned?"
"We're going to do something you've already done,"
Faulkner replied. "We're going to stick it to the government and
get some answers."
"You do that and you'll be one up on me," Mulder said
ruefully. "Five years I've been trying to get some answers. All I
have now are more questions than I started with."
"At least you have something," one of the others said
heatedly.
"Ease up, Trev," Gorman frowned. "You were in Puerto
Rico," he implored of Agent Mulder. "You've seen evidence--
made contact."
"I don't know what I saw," Mulder answered fervently. "I
want to believe but I have no proof."
Faulkner leaned against the doorway. "We do."
Mulder's brows shot up. "Here?"
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Justin," Gorman
mediated. "Look, Agent Mulder."
"Just go with Mulder, it's what I'm used to."
"Mulder," Gorman repeated. "We'll be happy to show you
everything we've got. But we need to know what your intentions
are."
"That's a line I haven't heard since high school." Mulder
straightened his shoulders. "I need to know," he said simply. "I
want the truth."
"At what price?" Faulkner interjected, his head at a
challenging angle.
"What's the going rate?" Mulder returned.
Faulkner gave the FBI agent a wintry smile. "We're willing
to risk our lives for solid evidence of extraterrestrial life. That's
not much more than you do every day for the government, I know. The
question is, will you risk it for us."
"Tell me what you've got, and I'll give you an answer."
Mulder let his voice carry to them all. "You seem to know
something about me, who I am, what I do. You know what I've
done, what I'll continue to do, to bring the truth to light.
It's up to you."
Faulkner and Gorman exchanged an unreadable look.
Faulkner gave the slightest nod.
"Okay," Gorman said. "I think it's time Agent Mulder met
Sharon."
A murmur rose and became a babble of conflicting
sounds. Faulkner stepped forward. "That's enough! Come on,
everybody. Bobby'll get Agent Mulder up to speed. We've got
work to do."
"Quite a place," Mulder observed as Gorman led him into
a hallway.
"Isn't it? Justin secured it. Used to be a survivalist
hideaway. There's still a fallout shelter down below." Gorman
indicated other hallways beyond. "Twelve rooms, four bathrooms,
a generator, full stock of emergency supplies in the cellar. We've
got all kinds of solar power collectors, windmills, that kind of
thing, all scattered in these woods. It's a federal preserve. Ironic,
huh. The phone lines were a little more trouble. Trevor set those
up-- it's taken most of a year to get secured lines without setting
off any bells. But Sharon couldn't work with anything else."
"Who's Sharon?" Mulder asked.
"Sharon's our secret weapon," the other man grinned,
pushing his dark hair back. "She's a top computer hacker. They
had her stashed away at Apple for years, until she started...
remembering. You know." Gorman sobered somewhat. "Then she
started coming to the conventions, looking for some answers.
You've met her, actually. Maybe you'll recognize her."
Gorman escorted Mulder enthusiasically into the back of
the cabin, a small room festooned with computer equipment.
Wires and cords hung in bizarre lacework patterns from the
shelves. Only one of the five computers was occupied; a young
woman with light brown hair and thick tortoiseshell-rimmed
glasses was typing diligently. Headphones shrilled music into
her ears loudly enough that Mulder could hear the shriek of the
guitars from the doorway; she was chewing gum, blowing an
enormous bubble that nearly hit the monitor screen before she
sucked it back in.
Mulder froze. He knew that profile.
"Sharon, hon, tear yourself away from coding, would
you?" Gorman massaged her shoulders as she finished a line
and rose from her chair, pulling the headphones from her ears to
let them dangle around her neck.
Mulder barely breathed as she faced him; the thick
glasses couldn't disguise her round brown eyes, and though her
hair was dyed, her skin was the same honeyed gold he
remembered. Special Agent Emily McGraw stood and nodded to
him politely as Gorman beamed, "This is my fiance, Sharon
Wiltsie."
* *
* *
end part three.
=========================================
part 4 of Summer's story--all comments to her at
summer@camelot.bradley.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer in part one. A reminder, R for language and violence;
it's not bad now but, you know, advance warning.
Dilemma: Nothing but Trouble
An X-Files Story
by Summer
part 4
Mulder barely breathed as she faced him; the thick
glasses couldn't disguise her round brown eyes, and though her
hair was dyed, her skin was the same honeyed gold he
remembered. Special Agent Emily McGraw stood and nodded to
him politely as Gorman beamed, "This is my fiance, Sharon
Wiltsie... Sharon, you remember Agent Mulder." Bobby Gorman
smiled genially from one to the other.
"Of course," Emmy said cordially, offering her hand.
"Good to meet you again, Agent Mulder. You've come a long way
from that NICAP convention a few years back."
Gorman frowned as Mulder fumbled in shock, staring.
Finally the FBI agent shook his head. "Of course. I remember
you now." Mulder recovered enough to clasp her hand briefly,
nodding, "You seem to have changed a lot too. But then, I guess
I really didn't know you all that well, did I."
"The circumstances were less than ideal," Emmy
answered.
"Well, you'll have plenty of time to get acquainted,"
Gorman broke in excitedly. "Sharon, we're going to show Mulder
everything."
"That's wonderful," Emmy smiled coolly. "You'll be
working with us, then?"
Mulder cleared his throat. "That depends," he said, "on
what you've got."
Her lips curved in a damnably familiar smirk. "In that
case," she replied smoothly, "I think we can count on you."
"I'll get Justin. He should help us explain." Gorman raced
back into the maze of hallways.
Emmy pulled off the glasses and cleaned the lenses with
the loose tail of her flannel shirt. She gazed at Mulder for a long,
reluctant moment.
"What is this?" he hissed.
She put her finger to her lips. "Not here," she mouthed,
her expression strained. "I'll explain everything later." Emmy
stared at him pleadingly until Mulder reluctantly nodded.
He glanced past her, trying to shake off his surprise. The
monitor screen was filled with strings of complicated
programming that he couldn't hope to decipher. "Pretty
impressive," he noted. "I remember teaching you how to attach a
file to email." He turned to pinion her with an angry look.
Emmy shrugged. "I'm a fast learner." She leaned close to
him. "Later," she said. "I promise."
"...think we need more firepower," Justin Faulkner was
saying as he and Gorman passed through the hall and came into
the room. Emmy dropped into her chair at the computer.
"Sharon," Faulkner said to her, "don't you think we need more
weaponry? I mean, if we're going all out with explosives to cover
our tracks, I think we should reinforce our main assault."
"Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Assault? Explosives?"
Mulder pretended confusion. "Who exactly are you planning to
assault?"
"Jesus, didn't you tell him anything?" Faulkner asked
Emmy in disgust.
"I was waiting for you," she snapped. "And will you please
stop taking the name of the Lord in vain, Justin? At least around
me?"
"Sorry." Faulkner rolled his eyes and added with a
vindictive bite, "How many weeks since your last confession?"
"Justin," Gorman sighed. "Please. Have a seat, Agent
Mulder."
"Yeah, get a ringside chair," Justin said sardonically,
his eyes locked with Emmy's.
"Knock it off," she said. "We have work to do and you
want to fight? Save it."
Mulder assessed the tensions in the room, and the
bickering in the surveillance transcripts took on a new
dimension. He remained quiet, drawn in as always by the
mysterious vagaries of human interaction.
"I'm sorry," Gorman said to him. "They get like this." His
tone was distressed, but indulgent; his eyes travelled fondly over
them both. "Sharon. Justin. Come on. Focus."
Emmy deliberately turned away from Faulkner. "You're
right, Bobby. I apologize, Agent Mulder. I'll get the files."
Faulkner's eyes followed Emmy as she knelt to open a lockbox by
the computer, producing a heavy file folder.
Gorman explained, "About a year ago, Justin and I were
speaking out at a MUFON conference about taking action to
reveal the government's knowledge of alien visitation. A week
later, I got a call from someone who refused to identify himself.
He arranged to meet with us. No one was around when we got
there-- but this was waiting for us."
Emmy handed Mulder the packet of files he'd studied the
night before-- the mocked-up information that the CIA leaked to
the Expatriates in order to trap them into attacking a decoy
target. "What is this?" Mulder asked, playing his part and hating
himself for it.
"Evidence, Agent Mulder," Faulkner proclaimed. "Pictures
of extraterrestrial corpses, fragments of the ship, schematics of
alien technology. Selected specimens from this recovery
operation are being hauled from a State Department warehouse
upstate to Area 51 out in New Mexico."
"Area 51?" Mulder asked sharply; that information hadn't
been in his briefing.
"The destination isn't in the files," Emmy put in quickly.
"Bobby and Justin got that from their informant."
"He told us to just call him Steven," Gorman added
absently, drawing Mulder's attention to the more visceral pages
of the packet.
"Are you still in contact with Steven?" Mulder inquired.
"Sporadically," Emmy replied.
"There's a convoy taking this material to Area 51. It'll
start down this route," Faulkner reached to flip to a map, "and
pass about eight miles from here at around ten PM tomorrow
night."
"Your timing is impeccable," Gorman interjected with a
sunny smile.
Mulder flipped through the photographs, feigning intense
scrutiny. The CIA had drafted him to go along with this
entrapment scheme. Assistant Director Skinner had instructed
him to do whatever the CIA ordered. The senior operative on the
case, Darren Blaise, had personally guaranteed to nail Mulder if
he didn't cooperate completely.
Then again, the presence of a former FBI undercover
trainee tended to alter the situation. Mulder met Emmy's eyes,
still shocked by her unexpected presence here. She looked back
at him from behind her Sharon Wiltsie glasses, her shoulders
twitching up in a helpless apology. He had to conciously stop his
eyes from wandering over her, had to steel himself against
memory.
Faulkner and Gorman were prattling on while Mulder
nodded to them; they spelled out to him all the plans he had
read about in surveillance transcripts during his briefing. They
intended to risk their lives-- the lives of everyone in the
compound-- to uncover what they thought was the truth.
If he lied to them now, Mulder realized, he might as well
shut down the X-Files and abandon his search. There was no way
to justify deceiving people who were, at the heart of it, looking
for the same answers he sought.
He lowered the file. "I don't know how to tell you this,"
Mulder said, "but I've seen Area 51. I've witnessed some of the
things they're hiding-- and this isn't it."
Faulkner gaped at him. Gorman choked, "What?"
"Gentlemen, these pictures are faked." Mulder's eyes
darted again to Emmy. She didn't look surprised-- just wary,
tense, and wound for action, waiting for his next move.
"Everything in my experiences with the X-Files
contradicts what's in these pages. You've been lied to." He
let it sink in, adding with resigned cynicism, "Believe me,
you'll get used to it."
"Just like that?" Faulkner demanded. "None of it's valid?
Come ON, this file's huge, how could they fake it all?"
"Easily," Mulder shot back. "The government has entire
buildings filled with misinformation for use against everyone
from the former Soviet Union to John Q. Anarchist-- this is just a
few suitable pictures pulled out of their archives and cobbled
into a conspiracy that'll get you to strike out so they can
neutralize any potential threat you might pose."
"So everything we've been studying for an entire year
is a complete fabrication?" Gorman asked, paling. He seemed
stricken, his full lower lip trembling as he shook his head. "I
can't believe it," he said. Emmy went to stand behind him, her
hands strong on his shoulders.
"No way," Faulkner contested, growing more agitated as
Gorman's head sank in defeat. "No way. I can't buy this. All the
planning we've done, for a whole year--"
"I'm sorry," Mulder apologized sincerely. "I wish I could
tell you that this is the Holy Grail. I'd be the first to help you
if it was. But--"
"Okay, if they've got all this misinformation," Faulkner
paced across the room, tangling his hands into his long brown
hair, "how do you know that this stuff in your X-Files isn't
misinformation, and this is the genuine article?"
Mulder leaned forward in his chair. "I've seen a corpse,"
he said in a hushed voice, "which I would characterize as
extraterrestrial. I've seen creatures which were represented to
me as human/alien hybrids-- creations that I know for certain
were not entirely human. We've never been able to hang onto the
proof, but I have witnessed these things." He shut the massive
file in his hands. "You're right. They are hiding something, and I
believe it's evidence of extraterrestrial life-- extraterrestrial
visitations. But this," he thumped the file against his knees, "this
isn't it."
Gorman rubbed his face in his cupped hands. "My God,"
he murmured, "what are we going to tell the others?"
"We had this information verified," Faulkner protested,
but his stance was weakening.
"By who?" Mulder asked, his voice level, calm, and
challenging; he recognized the tones with bemusement. He
sounded like Scully. "The same organizations who have every
reason to trap you into just such an incriminating action?"
"I hacked into some classified CIA files," Emmy said, "but
if he's right... Bobby, they could have let me find those things.
Another hacker would know just how I'd get in, and remember, I
told you it'd been easier than I expected. They could have been
smoothing the way to set us up."
Faulkner continued to stalk back and forth, his eyes
roving around the room. "No. There has to be some other
explanation."
"If you can think of one, let me know," Mulder said. "But I
promise you, attacking these trucks will get you nowhere but the
nearest penitentiary."
"My God," Gorman repeated,"how can we tell them?"
Emmy sank to hug Gorman's shoulders. "Bobby. It'll be
okay. They'll understand. We should just thank God we found
out in time." She looked at Mulder. "And thank you, Agent
Mulder," she said quietly, contritely.
He looked away.
Gorman rose unsteadily. "We'll have to let the others
know."
"No!" Faulkner stopped in his circuit of the room. "Not
yet. We may still be able to get something out of this, Bobby.
Don't give up yet."
"We aren't giving up," Emmy frowned, "we're avoiding a
trap. Justin, there's nothing else we can do."
"There has to be something."
"Like?" Mulder invited.
Faulkner looked at Gorman's disconsolate expression and
declared, "We have to strike back. We know this is a trap, we
know they'll be waiting. There has to be some way--"
"Justin, you're crazy!" Emmy shot upright, her stance
combative. "We're lucky they haven't found us here yet!"
"Maybe they have." Faulkner turned on Mulder. "Maybe--"
Mulder's gaze cooled. "So now I'm in on it? Then why
would I warn you? I'm trying to help you, Justin."
"Then help us," Faulkner entreated intensely. "Help us get
our hands on something, anything, for god's sake."
"What do you think I've been DOING for five years?"
Mulder demanded, anger rising despite himself. "Twiddling my
thumbs? I've done everything in my power, and a few things that
weren't, to find evidence. Just one piece of solid proof."
"So that you can turn it over to your bosses?" Faulkner
tossed back. "So you can return it to the source?"
"To find the truth!"
"What comes after that?" Faulkner shook his head. "Once
you know the truth. You gonna share it with the rest of us?"
"I've got to find it first," Mulder replied. "After that, all
bets are off." Emmy's lips tightened; Mulder realized he had said
the wrong thing. Faulkner advanced, sparks striking in his eyes.
"Justin, stop." Emmy interposed herself between them, her
gospel alto weary and deeply compassionate.
Faulkner whirled on her, venom flaring in the curl of his
lip; Gorman stood up abruptly. "Justin, you and I will discuss
this," he said. "Mulder, I don't want you to get the wrong
impression. We aren't primarily concerned with blowing things
up. This was our all-or-nothing gamble, and it looks like it comes
out to nothing. At least we didn't lose the house."
After a drawn-out silence, Emmy volunteered, "Bobby, I
could show Mulder the grounds, let him get his bearings."
"Thank you, Sharon," Gorman said solemnly. "Justin?"
Faulkner seethed. "Right. Whatever."
Emmy tilted her head toward the door. "Care for the ten-
cent tour, Agent Mulder?"
Mulder surveyed them, his options narrowing as he took
in Faulkner's bent angry back, Gorman's firm profile, Emmy's
open hand sweeping out the door. "I'm sorry," he said.
Gorman nodded with elegiac dignity. "Thank you."
* *
* *
The Expatriates' compound was high in the woods of a
Maryland forest preserve, where old-growth trees reached high
overhead, bare limbs black against a thin greyed sky. Emmy led
Mulder out the back way and began chattering, pointing out
telescope sites and satellite equipment, detailing the group's
information network. Mulder followed, mumbling replies when
he had to, aware of the surveillance covering the cabin and its
surroundings. Emmy shot him telling looks when she could,
warning him against speaking out too soon.
Mulder spent the time scrutinizing her mercilessly, taking
in the glasses, the dyed hair, the slumped posture she affected,
the drooping flannel shirt and old jeans disguising the clean
lines of her body. Emily McGraw was honed and fit, tuned for
anything; Sharon Wiltsie was Emmy's idea of a computer hack,
sharp-eyed and wary, slack and unsure of her own grace. The
differences between this persona and the woman he had known
were astonishing.
Finally, after a circuitous walk and an agonizing wait,
Emmy faced him. "Where's Dana?" she asked, brisk and businesslike.
His anger burst past his reserve. "What the hell are you
doing here?" he asked harshly. "Why should I tell you anything?"
"What I'm doing here is my job," she answered inexorably.
"You'll get your turn at interrogating me. Where's Dana? Calling
out the dogs?"
"No," he gritted through his clenched jaw.
"Does she know where you are?"
"Maybe." Mulder shook his head. "I want answers."
"Go for it," she returned, shedding the thick glasses.
Without that barrier, Mulder could see her brown eyes-- and despite
the superficial changes, he saw that this was the same woman
he had known not so very long ago in Washington. Driven, as he
was, compelled towards some deeply personal goal, questing for
her own answers. The problem was finding out what her
questions were.
In the meantime, he had a few questions of his own.
"Who're you working for?" Mulder's bitterness made him add,
"This time."
"Same as you," she said. "Just what I was training for in
Washington. I'm undercover for the FBI."
"Strike one," Mulder replied. "You're with the CIA."
"Not precisely. Originally this was an FBI operation, Fox.
It wasn't til I was on the inside that they found out there were
two Canadians here illegally. The CIA snapped the case up within
the week and booted the Bureau out of it, but they couldn't pull
me out without screwing everything up. Here I am."
"An innocent victim, caught in the crossfire between
government agencies," Mulder said contemptously, not sure if
his ire was directed at Emmy or at himself. "You sold me on that
story before. I'm not buying it again."
"I'm a spy, Fox. You knew that all along." Emmy's matter-
of-fact statement was tinted with sympathy. "But I never lied to
you. You know that, you checked up on everything about me."
"I don't know anything!" Mulder looked up at the lattices
of tree limbs above them, his throat and eyes aching with furious
frustration. "What the hell is this Mrs. Bobby Gorman crap? Do
you make a habit out of screwing the guys you spy on? Does he
know anything about you? Christ, did I?"
"Bobby? Is that what's bothering you?" Emmy huffed a
resigned chuckle. "Look, in this incarnation, I'm a nice little
Catholic girl. White wedding dress. And Bobby's not interested
in me, regardless."
Mulder looked down again, searching her gaze for some
indication. Every instinct told him she was giving him the truth.
And every exposed nerve ending insisted she was lying. "What do
you mean?"
Emmy smiled sadly. "Fox, Bobby Gorman is gay. He's
terrified that the others would never take him seriously if they
knew. He's using me as camouflage. That's how I managed to get
into the group on such short notice. I've only been here a
month."
"I know." Mulder eyed her suspiciously. He had picked up
the impression that Gorman wasn't really attracted to Emmy,
and the relations between Faulkner and Emmy and Gorman
were tangled enough to make her story believable... but not
necessarily true. "I know most of what's gone on in here since
they came," he explained further. "I just didn't know that you
were Sharon Wiltsie."
She nodded. "How did you get past the CIA?"
"I didn't," Mulder answered. He put his back against a
broad tree trunk, relishing the solidity of it against his
shoulders. "I didn't have to."
Emmy's lips parted in astonishment. "No. You couldn't."
"You think you have a corner on the double-agent
market?"
"You're here with Blaise?" Emmy shook back her hair at
his slow nod. "I can't believe this."
He leaned back against the tree trunk. "We might even be
on the same side this time," he said insouciantly. "Imagine that."
"I was on your side back in Washington," she insisted.
Mulder snorted. She repeated, "I was on your side." Emmy toed
the dead leaves under her shoes. "But that was then. And if
you're preventing them from carrying out this attack-- we're not
on the same side any more."
"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked, hackles rising.
She gave him that clear, open stare. "I'm here to make
sure they bomb the convoy."
* *
* *
===========================================
part 5 of Summer's story--all comments to her at
summer@camelot.bradley.edu
---------------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer in part one. Sadism is no fun if no one is suffering,
are these cliffhangers getting to anyone? Or do i need to take lessons
from Livengoo? ;) (well, hell, don't we all.)
Dilemma: Nothing But Trouble
An X-Files Story
by Summer
part 5
Mulder stared at the woman across the forest path.
"You're here to make sure..."
Emmy checked her watch swiftly. "We have about half an
hour before Justin's famous suspicions are engaged. That means
you get twenty more minutes to interrogate me. Better make it
good. Go."
"What's the point of asking questions when I know you're
just going to lie to me?"
"Name one time when I lied to you."
"When you left Washington, you said Skinner was putting
you undercover to protect you. But Skinner told me you made off
with classified information and disappeared. According to him,
the FBI never sent you undercover."
"How freely do you think he can speak in that office,
Fox?" Emmy's answer was steady and controlled. "And where's
the evidence against me?"
"It doesn't make any sense, Emmy." Mulder paced along
the dirt path between the trees. "You joined the CIA right out of
college, then changed your mind and came to the FBI to go
undercover in counter-espionage operations. Now I find you
here, in the middle of a CIA operation. What am I supposed to
think?"
"If Blaise told you anything," Emmy sighed, "he had to
have told you that even his superiors in the CIA don't know
which Expatriate is their undercover op. That's because it's me,
and I'm still FBI. And they'd shit ferrets if they knew it came
down to depending on the FBI on the inside. You know how
much they hate us. And that goes double for me, since I used to
be with the Agency."
"How can they depend on you inside when they don't
even know who you are?"
"One man in the CIA knows. Casey Albright. He used to
be my supervisor; he's one of the three men there who doesn't
want my head on a stick." Emmy chafed her hands together then
stuffed them into her pockets. "He sent down word to Blaise to
work with me on this, no questions asked."
"He's asking," Mulder replied. "Blaise told me he couldn't
trust a word you said because you're sleeping with Gorman. And
to be honest, I have my doubts about that myself."
"I told you. It's all a cover. He's not interested."
"Then why do they think you're sleeping with him?"
"Oh, for godssake," she snapped, "how was I supposed to
get in here and in their good graces in one month without
exploiting some weakness in the group? I played on Bobby's
insecurities to get him to pass me off as his fiance. I'm not
fucking him, okay? We let them think so. Gossip is all that keeps
these guys going sometimes, and letting them wonder whether
Bobby and I were rolling around before the wedding night gave
them something to think about besides aliens and conspiracies."
She shot him a wry glance. "Distracting guys from thoughts of
UFOs seems to have become a recurring theme in my life."
Mulder scowled. "How did you pass off this engagement
so fast? Love at first sight?"
"Love over the wires," Emmy bounced back. "Sharon
Wiltsie has been exchanging regular email with Bobby for
months. The FBI's been preparing this cover for me almost since
the Expatriates started up. Apparently this was always intended
to be my first counter-espionage assignment. That's why they
approved my temporary partnership with Dana so fast... for the
experience of working with someone familiar with UFOlogy." Her
distinctive smirk surfaced. "Little did they know."
He refused to be sidetracked into reminiscence. "Why are
you supposed to make sure the Expatriates bomb the convoy?"
"Those are my orders," Emmy shrugged.
"From who?"
"Charles Garrison. He's the de facto head of the FBI's
counter-espionage programs, and he's real chummy with Casey,
inter-agency rivalry notwithstanding."
"Casey, your former CIA boss," Mulder interpolated.
"Right." She shook her head. "I'm glad you can keep
track. Sometimes even I'm not sure who's who."
"I'm not sure of anything right now," he replied. "Okay,
that's who. Now-- why? Why do they have to bomb the trucks?"
"I didn't ask." For the first time in their confrontation,
Emmy was reluctant to meet his eyes.
"You didn't ask? They want you to convince these people
to destroy a government convoy and you didn't bother to find out
the reason why?" Mulder wheeled to face her, disgust infecting
his words.
Emmy glared at him. "I owe them," she said tightly. "I've
been one step ahead of your cigarette-smoking friend since I left
Washington, and if it weren't for Charles and Casey, he would
have caught up with me by now. Not everyone has their own
pocket senator to protect them, Fox."
He froze. "I never told you about that..."
"No, you didn't," she said. "Now who has secrets?"
"It could have been dangerous for you if I'd told you too
much--"
"And anything I haven't told you, I kept from you for the
same reason."
Mulder resumed pacing. "I have every reason to think you
were spying on me," he said at last.
"You have no reason to think that, and no proof."
Cynicism crept into her voice as she added, "Or is it just easier
for you to believe the worst of me?"
He drew up to his full height and looked down at her.
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"You're the psychologist, you figure it out," she answered
flippantly. She glanced at her watch again. "Five minutes. We
won't get another chance to talk like this until early tomorrow
morning. Why have the plans changed, that's what I need to
know. Why'd they have you tell the Expatriates not to attack the
convoy? Why did they pull the plug on this operation?"
"They didn't," he said. "I did."
Emmy gaped at him for a long time. "You did," she said finally.
Mulder nodded.
"The assembled forces of the CIA and the FBI, all pushing
for this operation to go through, and you--"
"I won't lie for them."
She took a slow breath. "Okay. Okay." Emmy swallowed.
"Just, just don't tell them anything more, Fox. Okay? Try not to
tell them anything else." She checked her watch once more.
"We'll go back, have dinner, get some sleep. Whatever Justin and
Bobby have decided, just go along. Try not to say another word
about any of this if you can avoid it."
"I won't let you convince them to go through with it,"
Mulder warned her.
"What makes you think you have that choice?" she asked,
but there was no fire in the question, and she knew it. "There's
nothing I can say to put them back on track now," Emmy admitted.
"I hope like hell you know what you're doing, Fox. Or that your
friends in high places can take care of you, if you don't."
* *
* *
It was almost dark when Emmy and Mulder returned to
the compound. She had turned her headphones back on, though
she didn't put them over her ears-- he could hear the music
echoing from the foam pads that dangled around her collar like
some kind of weird necklace. Mulder folded his arms around his
leather jacket as a chill wind cut across the trees.
"Come around," she said, leading him to a side door.
"We'll go down to the fallout shelter. Tour's not complete if you
haven't seen that."
Emmy opened up the door with her keys and went inside;
Mulder followed. He'd taken two steps when a firm male voice
commanded, "Hands up."
Mulder whirled to find Justin Faulkner holding a pistol
on him. He raised his hands quickly. "What is this?"
"Justin, put that down!" Emmy commanded. "What the
hell do you think you're doing?"
The rangy man tossed his head. "Sharon, get his gun."
"No! Why are you doing this?"
"Just get his gun!"
Emmy glared from Faulkner to Mulder; her shoulders
sagged. She took Mulder's gun and holster from his belt. "This
had better be good, Justin."
"Okay, Mulder, up against the wall, nice and easy. Hands
on the wall." Faulkner called down the corridor, "BOBBY! SIDE
DOOR, I'VE GOT HIM! Sharon, pat him down. Just like I taught
you, remember?"
"You've got me?" Mulder nearly laughed. "What the hell
do you want to `get' me for?"
"I said up against the wall," Faulkner spat.
The FBI agent slowly complied, pressing his hands against
the beige paint. "You mind telling me what this is about?"
Bobby Gorman trotted down the hall, motioning at a few
Expatriates who trailed behind him. "Everyone get back, get
back, we're handling this," he said. "Got his weapon?"
"What IS this?" Mulder growled. "Bobby, I can't believe
you're going along with this."
"Sharon, c'mon, frisk him, he might have another gun."
Faulkner shifted, holding his pistol steady on Mulder.
"I want an explanation," Emmy said with a frown, turning
to quickly pat down Mulder's clothes. "No other weapons," she
informed them. "Why are you doing this? Bobby--?"
"Okay Mulder, turn to your left, hands on top of your
head, interlock your fingers. Bobby, go ahead and get the doors,
Sharon, get behind me," Faulkner ordered. "We're taking him down
to the fallout shelter. March."
Emmy moved down the hall just enough to obstruct
Faulkner's aim. "Not until you tell me what's going on."
"While you took our paranormal friend here on a walking
tour, I tried to contact our informant," Faulkner told her. "Turned
out, we didn't have to. He followed Mulder up here. And he
brought us a present. Show her, Bobby."
Gorman handed Emmy a sheaf of photographs and
papers. She sifted through pictures of Mulder arriving at a
ramshackle bait shop and standing near a trailer talking with a
man in a suit. The papers, and attached smaller photos,
identified the suited man as Agent Darren Blaise of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
Gorman waved a cassette in the air. "This is most
damning of all."
"What is that stuff?" Mulder craned his head around to
get a look; Faulkner pushed Emmy aside to draw closer to his
target.
"Shut up, Mulder," the man hissed, bringing the pistol in
close. "I don't want to hear another word out of you, you got that,
you lying sack of shit? No more."
"I don't understand what this is supposed to be," Emmy
fumbled. "Who is this other person in the pictures with Agent
Mulder?"
"It's a CIA agent," Faulkner sneered. "He sold us out."
"This tape has a recording of Mulder talking with
the CIA, planning how to fake us out and convince us not to
attack the convoy." Gorman gave Emmy the tape.
"Pop that in your Walkman," Faulkner suggested
impudently. "In the meantime, Agent Mulder-- we're taking you
down to the fallout shelter and putting a lock on you. Once we've
finished our recovery mission tomorrow night, we'll start
planning our next operation."
"Which is what?" Emmy thrust the tape into her pocket.
"Hostage negotiations," Faulkner answered. "Let's go."
* *
* *
end of part 5
===========================================
Dilemma: Nothing but Trouble
An X-Files Story
by Summer
part 6
"Bobby, Justin, will you just listen to me--" Mulder
protested as he was rushed down a flight of stairs and through
a long hall.
"We've wasted enough of our time listening to you,"
Faulkner snarled, still leveling his pistol at the FBI agent.
"Barging in here like the Second Coming and handing down the
gospel. You're just like all the rest of them-- keeping secrets
that we all have a right to know."
"You're not who we thought you were, Agent Mulder,"
Gorman agreed regretfully. He turned a massive lever, unbolted
and opened a huge metal door. "In here."
"No. Listen to me. The CIA is setting you up. I did talk
with them," Mulder confessed desperately. "The documents you
were leaked, the informant, the convoy, all of it-- they're trapping
you into attacking those trucks. I was sent to make sure you
didn't use explosives. Bobby, I put everything on the line
to warn you about this. Everything. You've got to believe me."
"No fucking way," Faulkner grunted. He pushed Mulder
through the door with his free hand. Mulder stumbled into the
small room beyond it, pivoting as the men crowded the doorway.
"What if he's telling the truth?" Emmy asked, peering past
the two Expatriates to send Mulder a fast, fearful look.
"Sharon," Gorman said to her, "we've worked for a year to
make sure this information is for real. We know it's valid. Even if
we had doubts, we can't trust him. We know he lied to us."
"I didn't lie," Mulder insisted. "I didn't tell you the
whole story but dammit, everything I told you is true!"
Gorman shook his head. "Forget it, Mulder. We have
evidence proving you were here to throw us off-- and you don't
have any proof that your story was real."
"They'll be waiting for you," he warned. "Don't you
see, even if you're right about me, that still means that
they know your plans. You can't go through with it."
"They sent you to make sure we didn't get at those
trucks. They won't expect us to make a move counter to the
advice of the great Fox Mulder," Gorman grimaced. "And even
if somehow they know your ploy didn't work-- we'll be ready
for them."
"And then we'll start dealing with you. You just
better hope that whoever sent you doesn't consider you
expendable," Faulkner threatened.
Emmy shoved past the two men in the doorway. "The
cellphone," she said.
"What?" all three men asked.
"You have a cellphone, don't you, Agent Mulder?" Emmy
inquired, holding out her hand. "Give it to me."
Mulder stared at her, then reluctantly pulled the cellular
phone from his jacket pocket and handed it to her.
"Sharon," Gorman asked her, "what difference does it
make? The walls in here are lead-lined."
"If he's working with someone outside, he may have
arranged to call them," Emmy replied. Mulder's head dropped in
disappointment as she continued, "If he doesn't get in touch with
them, maybe they'll try to contact him. Maybe they'll deal."
Faulkner grinned at her. "Good thinking, Sharon." He
snorted, "Think we should get his wallet too? To prove we have
him?"
"That's no proof," Emmy said. "We need his badge." She
went to him again. "Badge too, Agent Mulder."
He slapped his FBI ID into her hand. "You're making a big
mistake."
"Our only mistake was listening to you in the first place,"
Faulkner replied.
"Come on, Sharon," Gorman said. "Let's get out of here."
Emmy backed out of the fallout shelter, holding Mulder's
badge and phone. Her solemn gaze lingered on his face as the
other two ushered her out and slammed the steel door shut with
a heavy clang.
Mulder immedietely sprang to his feet and began going
over the tiny room inch by inch, examining every detail. His
conclusion was not exactly inspiring.
"The good news," he said aloud, "is that fallout shelters
are made to keep people out, not to keep people in." Mulder's
eyes swept over the cramped interior, with its thin pallet of a
bed, cabinets of canned food, safe with a combination lock in
the far wall, and the enormous sealed metal door set in the near
wall. "The bad news is," he sighed, "I'm not MacGyver."
His voice filled the small space; there was, of course, no
response.
"Nevertheless," he murmured, and set to work.
* *
* *
He awoke to the sound of weighty casters rolling over
an oiled metal surface with slow, patient care. Eventually, the
door opened enough to admit a shadow.
"Fox. Wake up."
Mulder sat up groggily, his back aching from sleeping
on the pallet in the fallout shelter. The dim lights along the
floor emitted just enough of a glow to outline a tall feminine
form. He pushed upright warily. "Emmy?"
"You're lucky I'm a hacker in this life. All kinds
of alarms should be going off," she said. "They think I'm
sleeping. We need to talk."
"About what? You set me up."
"When did I have a chance?" she asked him, matching his
hushed tone. "I was with you from the moment you deep-sixed the
CIA's plan of action right up until Justin and Bobby turned on you."
"In the woods," he replied, stretching. "I thought
you were leading us away from surveillance, but you didn't,
did you? They heard every word we said."
"Fox, I have more to hide from the CIA than you do."
"Not if you've been working for them all along, you
don't."
Emmy made an exasperated sound and kicked at the cans
that Mulder had thrown around in his attempts to get out. "You should
just knock me out and use me as a hostage against Bobby. You know
the purpose of my existence is solely to make your life difficult."
"I doubt I could successfully render you unconcious,
Agent McGraw. Even if I could, your terrorist buddies wouldn't
be that concerned. What would I do if they didn't cooperate,
beat you to death with a can of creamed corn?"
"You actually thought about it, didn't you?" she asked
incredulously. "Unbelievable. And you think I'M devious."
"I've had plenty of time to think about a lot of things,"
he answered sullenly.
"Think about this." She tossed something at him.
Mulder picked the cellphone up off his chest. "What about it?"
"CIA needs only one thing to tap a cellular line-- the
phone number. If you made any calls while you were working with
them, they can access the phone and turn it into a transmitter.
They could have been listening the whole time."
"I called Scully from the hotel," he said.
"I know. I've already hacked your phone records. There
are traces of calls being received from ghost callers, numbers
that don't exist. Tell-tale sign of CIA surveillance." Emmy took
a printout from inside her jacket and showed him the pages.
He barely glanced at them. "You could just as easily have
fabricated this."
"Dammit, Fox, what does it take?" She crouched next to the
bed as he swung his legs over and sat up. "I have nothing to gain
by telling you this. It doesn't matter now if you trust me or not.
They're back on track, playing right into my agenda. I can carry
out my assignment no matter what you think."
"Then why are you here?"
Emmy bit her lip. "You were sent by Blaise to keep them
from bombing the trucks. I was specifically ordered to help them
build the bombs and make sure they used them. I want to know
what Blaise told you, Fox. I need to know."
Mulder regarded her with bleary eyes. "You gonna help me
get out of here?"
"Not now. I could get you past the alarm systems, but they
sleep in shifts and they have monitor cameras and sentries all
over. With a week's planning maybe I could smuggle you out under
those conditions, but... anyway. They'll all go out to take part in
the attack tonight. I've convinced Bobby to let me stay here in case
someone tries to come for you. I'll get you out of here then."
"You know, for some strange reason, I'm not inclined to
believe you."
"Fox--" she began. He winced. Emmy drew back. "What,"
she asked, stung into sarcasm, "now my Fox license has been
revoked?"
Mulder glared at her without answering.
"Look at it this way," she said, her tone becoming practical.
"What are your other options? You can let me know what's going
on and hope I'll get you out of here-- which I will. What else can
you do? Sit around and play hostage until Blaise comes for you?"
"My prospects aren't thrilling any way I look at it." Mulder
leaned forward, his elbows digging into his knees. "I blew
everything to try to steer them clear, and it didn't even work.
Blaise'll bring me up on charges. Scully-- I should've known by
now not to take on anything without my partner."
"Yeah," she said plainly, "you probably should've known.
But you're here now. The question now is, what are you going to
do about it?"
"What CAN I do?" he demanded.
"Help me," she answered quickly. "Tell me what they're
saying out there. I can get you out of here, away from the CIA.
There's no official record of your involvement and I'll pressure
Casey to keep Blaise from taking any action against you."
"Even if I get away from here--"
"Once you're back with the Bureau, they won't be able to
touch you," she promised. "Possession is nine-tenths of the law."
He chortled humorlessly. "And you'll deliver me unto my
salvation-- IF you get the information you want."
Emmy closed her eyes, her mouth a tight line. Finally she
looked up at him again. "No. I'll help you whether you tell me or
not, Fox. You know I will."
"Do I?" he asked acerbically.
"Don't you?"
Mulder started to deal out another cutting remark, but his
usual knack for defensive witticisms failed him. Instead he folded
his arms and returned her open, pleading gaze. "What happened to us?"
he asked quietly. "How did we end up like this?"
She shook her head. "You weren't ready to run into me
again," she sighed. "And I have a job to do, with no time for your
conscience or your doubts."
"Emmy, if I know you at all, you've got to have doubts of
your own. You'll let them put these men in prison-- for what? For
looking for answers? How is it different from what I do, from what
YOU do?"
"I don't want them to go to jail. But I'd rather they
were in prison than dead," she explained earnestly. "These guys
have no idea what they're up against and for all their paranoia,
they're hopelessly naive. They have no idea what's really going
on..."
"And we do?" Mulder tossed back.
"Maybe not," she conceded. "And if someone puts me away
for my own good, I don't suppose I'll be in line to shake their hand.
But I can only do what seems right to me, Fox. They do intend to
break the law."
"They're victims of entrapment," he held out stubbornly.
"But if we hadn't given them this false situation, they would
have done something else. Christ, they're holding you hostage
down here and you're still going to argue that they're innocents?"
"You've manipulated them into believing that they're
playing for high stakes," he said. "And the CIA's phony informant
gave me away. I may not understand why they'd believe him over me--"
"He was telling them what they wanted to hear, you
weren't, it's that simple," Emmy said tiredly.
Mulder nodded. "Under those circumstances I don't blame
them for keeping me down here. Blaise and his men out there
would probably just shoot me as a security risk, under similar
conditions."
"Probably." She leaned against the wall, crossing her legs.
"Blaise told me to come in here and keep them from
bombing the convoy," Mulder revealed, rubbing his eyes. "He
thinks you're sleeping with Bobby, in love with him, whatever, and
you've turned on the CIA. Apparently your puppet masters haven't
been pulling Blaise's strings."
"I don't understand why Garrison would tell me to use
explosives without anyone informing Blaise's team."
"If you don't know why the orders were given, how can you
be sure it's right to follow them?" Mulder inquired. "I know you
blame me for getting you into this--"
"No, Fox, I do NOT blame you. Not for this, not for anything."
"Look, you said you owe Garrison and Albright for
protecting you from Cancer Man. That cigarette-sucking son of
a bitch wouldn't be chasing you down if it weren't for me."
"How do you know?" Emmy replied. "I never lied to you, but
I didn't tell you the whole story, either. Cancer Man's reasons for
hunting me down have very little to do with you."
"Why then, why is he after you?" Mulder asked.
She only shook her head, her dyed brown hair catching a
dull gleam from the low lights.
"Something else I'm not ready to know?" His tone was
brusque and sardonic again. "Why are you letting me off the hook?
My enemies targeted you. Unless you were working for them all
along--"
"Dammit, Fox!" Emmy untangled from her sitting position
and rolled to her feet. "It's always your enemies, your allies,
your turf. Not everything in the US government has to do with
the X-Files! Not everything revolves around you!"
He recoiled for a moment, asking with strange stillness, "Is
that what you think this is about?"
"Don't give me those psychologist questions. You know I'm
right, Fox. It's been so long since you even thought of anything
outside your own little realm--"
"I'm trying to uncover what could be the biggest conspiracy
in the history of--"
"Fuck that. Just to hell with that, okay? You think big, I'll
grant you that. You may even think big enough to encompass your
vaunted truth. But you only think big on your own terms
and I want to know why." Emmy slid against the opposing wall,
sinking to sit again on the floor. "You think of me and I'm either
the two-bit villainess who did you wrong, or else I'm some
helpless damsel pursued by your enemies. It isn't possible, is it,
that I'm my own person and that what happens to me has damn
near nothing to do with you." She wrapped her arms around her
knees and continued sourly, "You thought I was a chapter of
your life that was closed now, something you put away and now
it's done. But I'm not an extra in your story, Fox. I'm the star of
my own show. And my life goes on whether you're in it or not."
Mulder stared at her, through her, for a long time. "You...
may be right," he said finally. She glanced up at him with an
unreadable tumult of emotions mixing in her face. Mulder
lowered himself from the bed to the floor to face her. "Sometimes,
the things they're hiding, they seem so big, Emmy, they fill up
the whole world. Sometimes I look around and all I see are the
things that are keeping me from the truth. I forget there's more
to life than this."
"I'm not talking about taking the time to smell the fucking
roses, Fox," she said, sounding exhausted. "Do you understand
what I mean? Every single person on this planet is the star of her
own show. Your enemies think they're doing the right thing,
don't they? I don't know," she admitted, voice breaking, "I don't
know if I'm a traitor for letting the men upstairs get arrested
tomorrow. They'll think so. My bosses, they'll think I've done a
great job, and to them I'll be a patriot, a hero. I don't know if I
believe that anymore."
"What do you believe?" he asked softly.
Her answer was almost too low to be heard. "I don't."
"Emmy..."
She stood abruptly. "Look. I have my doubts. Obviously.
But even if," she collected her thoughts, "even if I decided you
were right, that we should convince them to call off the attack, I
can't."
"You can," Mulder argued, keeping his tone level. "We can
tell them the truth. The whole truth."
She half-laughed, half-hiccuped. "And nothing but the
truth?"
"Yes!" He rose to his feet. "Emmy, if you tell them why you
were sent here, and I tell them exactly what the CIA is doing out
there, they would HAVE to believe us. We have to try. There's
something wrong about this, can't you feel it? There's more going
on with it than even you and I know, there are too many
questions. Why are the bombs so important, why doesn't Blaise
know about them if it's so vital that the bombs go off?"
"Stop, stop," she said. "I see where you're going with this
and I might even do it, compromise my cover, blow my career--
hell with it, right? But Fox," she began to giggle a little, "I don't
have any proof that I'm not who I say I am!"
"I have this." Mulder slipped his wallet from his pocket and
opened it to his credit cards, winnowing a square from behind the
plastic windows. He displayed it to her.
Emmy took the paper from his fingers and looked at it for a
few moments, drawing a sigh. It was a small photograph of a young
couple, a blond woman and a dark-haired man smiling together in a
photobooth. The man had a camera in front of his face, aimed at
the photobooth lens. Her own face laughed up at her from the
picture, and the man was recognizable as Fox Mulder... but the
light-hearted people in the photo were strangers.
"Seems like such a long time ago," she murmured, tracing
the torn bottom edge of the picture. "That day we went to the
National Zoo... it hasn't been long at all, has it."
He looked down at it over her shoulder. "No. Not long at
all." He closed his eyes, ordered his thoughts. "We can show them
this-- tell them the whole truth--"
"Is that all this is to you now?" she asked, returning the
picture to him. "Evidence?"
"No," he said, drawing away. "No, that's not all it is."
"Wait, let me see it again." Emmy took the picture back.
"They won't believe it," she said, digging in her pockets. "They've
been lied to so much that they wouldn't know the truth if we told
them." She came up with a ballpoint pen from her jeans pocket.
"What are you doing?" Mulder asked.
She flipped the photograph over and trailed the pen over
the slick backing surface. "It's a secure phone number," she said.
"I will get you out of this, Fox. But just in case something happens
once you're back in DC, call this number. You know, we--" she
tucked the pen away. "We never did manage to have our laundry-
and-Elvis-Costello marathon, did we."
"No," he answered, as she gave him the picture again. "No,
we never had the chance."
"That's a shame," she said. "Tragic. Shakespearan, even."
He nearly laughed. "Do they give you classes in this stuff at
the CIA?"
"Call me if you need to," Emmy replied with a fragment of a
smile. "I'll come for you as soon as they leave-- eight tonight."
"You're leaving?"
"I have to. Sharon Wiltsie has a full day ahead of her. I'll
be back for you, Fox. I promise. Here now, I need your cellphone
again, all your things are in Bobby's desk drawer." She tugged at a
string around her neck; keys jingled under her shirt. "I'll get you
out of here tonight. And then it'll all be over."
* *
* *
==============================================
Dilemma: Nothing but Trouble
An X-Files Story
by Summer
part 7
Mulder didn't consider himself the sort of person who got
bored. As far as he was concerned, only incredibly dull people were
so devoid of inner resources that they couldn't even manage to keep
_themselves_ entertained.
After twelve hours of pacing around in a fallout shelter,
though, Mulder was starting to think that he was a very dull
person indeed. He'd been getting some of the most sound,
peaceful, uninterrupted sleep of the past year while locked up in
the basement of the Expatriate's compound, but eventually he
could no longer take refuge in unconciousness. There was
nothing to do in the shelter but pry open various cans of semi-
inedible foods, drink stale water from canteens, experiment with
some early 60's designer's idea of post-apocalyptic plumbing,
and redesign the place mentally. In Mulder's version, the ideal
fallout shelter would have a huge television screen, a well-
stocked video collection, and a basketball hoop.
His watch read 8:15 PM when the bolts outside the
shelter door were thrown, the wheel turned, the steel mass
gliding open. Mulder squeezed out the door as soon as it would
permit him exit. "They're gone?" he asked of the woman on the
other side.
Emmy nodded quickly and grabbed at his sleeve, pulling
him up the stairs. "We have to stop them."
"What?"
"We have to stop them, Fox. You were right. Something
more is going on here. They're being set up for more than just a
trial." She wound through the halls of the cabin. "I can get us to
the site. We can still get there in time..."
"How do I know you won't lead me off in the wrong
direction completely?" Mulder asked, stopping dead.
Emmy faced him, exasperated. "Fox, come ON, we don't
have TIME for this--"
"I always have time for paranoia," Mulder replied. "Why
the sudden change of heart?"
"Their informant, that Steven guy, he modified the bombs
I helped them make. I didn't get a chance to see what all he
did, but it looked like he added charges. If you were right
before... they might let them detonate the bombs, someone could
get hurt--"
Mulder hesitated. "You couldn't tell them about the
bombs?"
She shook her head frantically. "They wouldn't listen to
me! We have to stop them, they could get killed--"
"Yeah, that COULD be what's going on," Mulder
answered heatedly. "Or maybe you're leading me off somewhere
else while they attack the convoy, so those spooks in the trailer
follow us instead of the Expatriates. How can I be sure whose
side you're on, Emmy?"
"Fox!" Her voice was panicked, desperate. "Blaise and his
men are already at the site, they're waiting. I'm on your side,
you've got to trust me, please-- we have to stop them!" Emmy
seized his hands. "I need your help!"
He looked up. "Okay," he whispered at last.
She nodded, gulped a quick breath and led him up from
the fallout shelter. She darted into a bedroom and went to
Gorman's desk, the keys jangling as she pulled the string out
from under her sweatshirt and unlocked the top drawer. She
thrust his ID, his cellphone and the Glock into his hands. "You
drove up to the trailer?"
"I parked at that bait shop down the hill," Mulder replied,
checking his weapon swiftly.
Emmy nodded, ransacking another drawer and pulling
out another gun. She looked it over and stuffed it into the
waistband of her jeans. "Have your keys?"
Mulder held them up, turning to the door. Emmy grabbed
the keyring from his fingers-- he had to stop himself from
snatching them back as she rushed out, calling, "I'll drive. Run!"
He ran.
* *
* *
Emmy drove the rented Taurus as capably as she'd
handled her own monstrous sports car back in Washington,
navigating expertly through hairpin curves and winding roads.
"It'll be about twenty minutes," she said, catching her breath.
Mulder heaved a couple of quick gasps and regained
himself. "What makes you think Blaise and his men won't just
take the Expatriates into custody the second they show up?"
"He might try. But then again, he might not."
Mulder held onto the car door with one hand and the gun
with the other, warily scanning the road ahead of them. "If you
were right, if the CIA does intend to let them blow up this decoy
caravan, he'd lessen the explosives so none of the agents got hurt.
So why--?"
"I don't KNOW. Why do you think I'm so fucking scared?"
Emmy demanded, her voice wavering high up the scale. "Maybe
this informant they've got is for real. They might really get away
with this, Fox. Blaise's men don't know about the extra charges.
I just saw it while they were packing up. And the Expatriates,
they don't have any idea how powerful the bombs are. The
original explosives I showed them how to make, those were
token bombs, you could stand twenty feet off and not get hurt--
they thought each bomb could take out a truck, one bomb on
each vehicle, nice and neat. They think they'll be safe at maybe a
hundred feet off. I don't know how powerful they are now. Why
would their informant modify the bombs?"
"The informant is definitely not for real. I've SEEN the
real thing, Emmy, those pictures weren't even close. He's just
been giving them what they expect."
"Seemed to work better than your approach," Emmy
mumbled, checking the rearview mirror.
Mulder glared at her in the dim car interior. "Truth
hurts," he muttered.
She banked left; the tires bit into gravel as she took a
back road. "Show and tell," she said. "The Expatriates have three
bombs, of unknown power. They have fifteen devoted people who
say they're willing to die for what's in that truck. All of them
have handguns, and five have semi-automatic machine guns, too.
They have the convoy's travel schedule, and they've set up an
obstacle along the way already, a crashed car in the middle of
the road on the route. Three additional men are already at the
site armed with assault rifles, for a total of eighteen people, all
armed, eight of them heavily armed."
"Blaise has thirteen trained agents in full riot gear,"
Mulder listed. "The truck has two armed escort vehicles, each
with three soldiers. They know what weapons the Expatriates
have, they know their plans and positions. They have the
advantage of surprise on their side. Nineteen men, all heavily
armed, six of them equipped with grenades, smoke bombs, tear
gas, and whatever else the army put on those trucks."
"If they let them bomb the empty semi," Emmy said after
a moment, "those extra charges could kill some of the
Expatriates and still leave enough for a nice, big, spectacular
trial."
But after toting up the resources involved, Mulder was
beginning to feel another idea twisting into his thoughts. "What
if it isn't empty," he breathed.
"What?"
"What if it isn't empty? What if this convoy really is
carrying evidence of extraterrestrial life to Area 51?"
"Why would the CIA let the Expatriates blow up--"
"Think about it, Emmy, two birds with one stone. They're
using this whole sorry mess to dispose of the evidence, and
using it to discredit the Expatriates and by extension MUFON
and NICAP. That's why their informant upped the explosives, to
make sure all the evidence is destroyed!"
"What makes you think there's something in that truck?"
"Why else would you have strict orders to make sure they
blow it up?" Mulder gripped the dashboard as the road got
rockier. "Are you sure of where those orders are coming from?"
Emmy glanced at him, pained. "Which orders? The old
ones from the FBI that told me to keep them from taking action,
the orders from Blaise to convince them to attack the caravan, or
the orders from Garrison to make sure they plant explosives on
it?"
"Garrison's. Look, Skinner told me that other agencies
were looking in on this. Are you sure you buy this guy's de facto
leadership? If you don't know for sure who's pulling your strings--"
"Oh, god." She crouched over the steering wheel,
huddling against the idea. "Who's sending the evidence to Area
51?"
"Blind guess? State Department."
"And who wants it destroyed?"
"Another guess-- National Security Agency."
"So what the fuck is the CIA doing?"
"Getting in the way," Mulder replied, a cold clench of fear
gripping his throat. "And so are we."
* *
* *
==========================================
Dilemma: Nothing but Trouble
An X-Files Story
by Summer
part 8
Agent Mulder shifted his Glock to his left hand long
enough to wipe his sweaty palm on his jeans. He settled the
weapon's grip back into his right hand, flexing his fingers
restlessly along the trigger guard.
The woman next to him looked askance at his readied
posture. "Not long now," Emmy said, shifting in the driver's seat
to lean over the steering wheel. The car climbed another rise,
then dipped into the low hammock of the road only to surmount
another hill.
Mulder let his head rest against the window. Every nerve
and muscle was readied and alert, but no matter how much
danger they were in, Mulder knew he couldn't sustain this level
of tension indefinitely. He wanted this ordeal to be over, or he
wanted it to be happening right then, or he wanted never to have
heard of the Expatriates or, for that matter, the CIA. Anything
but this driving and looking ahead and waiting.
"Last time I talked to Scully, she was on her way to New
York to start a new case without me," Mulder ruminated, more to
himself than to Emmy. "She probably tried to call today with her
hotel number. She must have been worried when my cell phone
was off and I didn't answer." He looked to Emmy briefly. "Think
she'd be right to worry?"
"What are you really asking?" Emmy replied evenly.
Mulder's hand contracted and relaxed around the Glock,
the metal dense and sinister against his skin. "Any way you look
at it, we're caught in the crossfire. You know the odds better
than I do. What are our chances?"
Emmy glanced at him, her brown eyes dark and deep in
the low lights from the dash. "Keep your head down, Fox."
"Yeah," he muttered, sitting back with his right hand full
of steel and his left hand on the door handle, "that's what I
thought."
"If we can just--" Emmy cut off as they reached the
summit of another rise and nearly collided with the smoldering
wreck of a military truck; she slammed on the brakes and
deliberately twisted into a vicious skid as the Taurus's tires
screamed mercy on the rocky asphalt. Mulder was yanking open
the car door in mid-tire-screech, swinging his legs into open air
while they were still moving, gritting his teeth against the wind
and choking the gun with all his strength.
"Not yet!" he thought he heard Emmy calling through all
the other noise, but the eighteen-wheeler was just down the hill;
it looked like it had jackknifed in the middle of the road, and the
trailer was gaping open. Mulder could see the figures of the
Expatriates down there, and the CIA's SWAT team swarming
around them and all over the area; he could see Justin Faulkner
coming out of the back of the semi with something shiny in his
hands and hear his far-off voice as Faulkner yelled, "Jesus!
Bobby, this thing is--"
Mulder could hear the glass shatter as one of the CIA
agents swiveled in a panic and gunned Faulkner down.
He heard Emmy's gasped "NO!" that stretched on and on
and drew out forever and it was all happening, every move at
once while the car continued its leisurely 80-mph-spin, and they
had barely described the arc of a half-circle when the brakes
finally took and the Taurus ground to a stop; Mulder used the
last of its momentum to propel himself down towards the
confrontation below, running hard, feet pounding with his gun
hand clenched hard as his jaw for one two three steps--
The briefest flare of light flickered in the semi trailer;
the aluminum sides swelled infinitesimally.
He hit the pavement hard as the eighteen-wheeler
ballooned in flames; he rolled across the rocks, coughing against
the expanding ball of smoke that spread in a black cloud around
him. Mulder felt the grit under his hands and then the sting of
abrasions across his hands and knees, and it was the sweetest
sensation he could imagine at that moment-- pain that let him
know that he was still alive after that enormous sound and the
open-mouthed roar of fire. He was clinging to the ground,
tremors racking his frame, the useless gun still clutched in his
right hand.
"Fox!" Emmy dropped to her knees beside him, gagging
on the smoke. "Fox, are you okay?"
"How bad," he managed, motioning downhill.
Her breath caught in a strangled sob; she couldn't
answer. Mulder refused to give in to the blind fear that made him
want to crawl back from the explosion and run. He pushed
himself up from the road and turned to Emmy, barely able to
make her out through the billows of smoke around them.
"Someone might have made it," he shouted, and turned towards
the source of the destruction, resolute.
"I'll find them. We've got to get to the rest of Blaise's men
and warn them, there's still the bomb in the first truck. Go!"
Mulder started off at a dead run through the spreading
clouds of thick, black smoke and ash. He spared one look back
as Emmy charged into the heart of that darkness, then left the
road to duck through the woods.
The military escort truck was far ahead of the remains of
the eighteen-wheeler; Mulder closed in, hearing the shouts of
Blaise's men layering over the cacophony. He wrapped his hands
around his Glock again, as though it would do any good in this
chaos.
He paused, still barely in earshot, as Darren Blaise
screamed "GET THOSE MEN DOWN NOWNOWNOW! I WANT EVERY ONE OF
THOSE FUCKERS PINNED DOWN! MOVE!"
The few surviving Expatriates, corralled by CIA agents,
were thrust to the ground, kicked and struck until they were flat
on the road. Except for Bobby Gorman. Mulder saw him
struggling with a man who tried to force him to his knees. The
two soldiers from the escort were standing by, ready with tear
gas, rows of grenades down their vests; the driver, coming
around from the cab, cradled a submachine gun.
One of the CIA agents wrestling down an Expatriate was
stooped at the back of the escort truck; he swayed to his feet.
"Everybody," he called out hoarsely, "everybody clear the area,
run, there's another--"
Blaise thundered over to him, dropped to look again, then
raised his gun to the sky and began firing. "MOVE!" he bellowed,
pushing his men ahead of him and running.
The men scattered, the Expatriates staggering to their
feet as the government agents fled in a panicked sprawl. Mulder
felt icy sweat rolling off his skin as his mind raced. There was
nothing he could do; his worst fears of his own cowardice didn't
compare to the reality of this absolute helplessness.
There was a terrifying heroism in Darren Blaise as he ran
after his men, shooting into the stars and screaming wordlessly;
there was an unspeakable nobility in Bobby Gorman as he
dragged one of the wounded Expatriates away from the truck.
And there was an inhuman futility in the blossom of blue
fire that burst from the escort truck and reached out to devour
them all.
Mulder's throat closed as he sank against a tree trunk in
horror. His eyes were dried and scorched; he couldn't look away.
The men closest to the blast were silhouetted for one fatal
instant; the soldiers shook as flaming sharpnel pummeled them
and punctured their weaponry. A series of smaller, deadlier
explosions popped from their suspended bodies, sprays of fire
and blood gouting forth. They crunched against the ground,
instantly dead. Blaise caught it in the back and fell, twitching
lifelessly. The agents around him followed.
The men just ahead weren't so lucky. CIA and Expatriate
alike were showered with the fountain from the soldiers' bodies
even as the blast from the bomb threw them down.
They were on fire.
Mulder's breath locked in his chest, every muscle
convulsing. They were on fire, a bluish surface flame that licked
at clothing, then brightened into yellow plumes fed by the
human fuel of skin and fat and blood. The heat pounded in
waves against Mulder even at this distance; he gripped his gun
in futility, brought it to his mouth close enough to smell the
metal, let it drop again. And gagged. The rolling heat brought the
carrion stench of boiling blood and burning flesh, burning hair,
acrid, putrid in his nostrils. Mulder choked and trembled at the
smell of his fear.
This was a scene from his worst nightmares: burning
figures capering madly, spinning in place, wailing banshee cries.
Only the animation of instinct kept them on their feet. Their
bodies contorted in autonomic response to the stimulus of
unbearable pain, the survival urge turning them into mindless
darkened puppets dancing in the golden sheen of the fires all
around them.
Gorman had, in a burst of adrenaline, heaved himself and
the wounded man he carried to the edges of the bomb's effect,
but both were blazing. Gorman screeched, tossing the other
man's body away from him, pawing at the fire across his back
and chest. He tumbled across the pavement, still shrieking.
Mulder broke out of his terror and rushed for Gorman,
tearing off his coat and tackling him with it. He beat at the
flames across the smaller man's chest frantically, covered the fire
with the leather jacket until the coat was fragments and ashes,
and still Gorman burned... his eyes rolled up, flickering in their
sockets; his entire body spasmed with agony. His frame bowed
up with the force of his pain, every muscle tensed beyond
reckoning, strained beyond endurance.
The jacket was cinders in Mulder's blistered hands. The
flames consuming Gorman had only spread. Mulder looked from
the seizing body of Bobby Gorman to the useless gun still
clenched in his right hand and brought the barrel up.
The body went rigid, then collapsed in on itself.
The shot was a small sound against the other noise, but
its echo faded everything else from Mulder's perceptions. The
charnal odor of the horror around him, the stones and sand
underneath his reddened skin, the acid tracking up his throat,
the dead weight of his Glock in his right hand, all evened out
into a static weave of silence.
Slow fade of dreamless grey stretching into a quiet place
of rest, I cannot be human and see the things that I have seen...
His senses returned with the uneven shuffle of footsteps
across the gravel. Mulder looked up.
Emmy stumbled out of the black clouds. She was grimed
with soot, dark as the night that delivered her into destruction.
Her eyes roved over Mulder, unseeing, and settled on Bobby
Gorman's corpse. The body was its own pyre. Only the legs had
yet to be eaten by the flames.
She fell beside Mulder, staring at the shoes, at Bobby's
amiable, normal, mundane tennis shoes. Emmy reached to cup
her hands over the laces, caressing the frayed socks. Sobs
wracked her shoulders; she knelt, bent over Bobby's shoes, and
cried. Mulder blundered and reached out for her; she leaned
against him, wringing his shirt in her hands as she grieved.
"How could we let this happen?" she whispered.
He wrapped his arms around her, unable to answer. The
ruin around them seemed too big for crying, too big for words.
The crush of this recrimination was too much of a burden to
bear.
"How could we, how," the tears cramped her words, "how
could we let this happen! How did we let it get this way, how
could we let it happen, how... my god, we did this! We let them do
this to us. How could we let this happen?"
Thunder rumbled in the distance and chopped at the air,
thum thum thum thum in Mulder's bones, the bass vibration
thrumming the marrow.
Lights pierced the horizon.
Mulder and Emmy rose together as the beams
crisscrossed over the smoke and flames. Mulder raised his hands
to shield his eyes as he gazed up into the white glare,
mesmerized by the clean brightness. The air shuddered around
him as the helicopter flew overhead.
There was a slam, the growl of a taxed engine, and a
screech; Mulder looked back. Far off at the top of the last hill,
the car was gone.
He stood alone in desolation.
Above him, the helicopter howled its descent; his knees
buckled and Mulder was forced down again by the violent weight
of the winds announcing its arrival. It was still ten feet from the
ground when a team of black-clad men, inhuman in night
goggles and jackboots, rolled out of the chopper and spread like
pestilence over the ruined landscape, prodding corpses and
brandishing guns. The helicopter skids clawed for purchase on
the rocks, grating across the blackened asphalt.
"Drop your weapon! Hands in the air!"
Mulder let the gun slide from his fingers and lifted his
hands in surrender.
* *
* *
==============================================
The conclusion of...
Dilemma: Nothing but Trouble
An X-Files Story
by Summer
Special Agent Dana Scully walked toward the basement
office toting her satchel and a sack stuffed with breakfast. She
had brought enough for two on the off chance that her partner
would be back that morning. It was silly and pointless, she
chided herself, just as it was pointless to worry about him
because she had been unable to reach his cellphone the day
before. Her partner would let her know when he would return.
The office door was slightly open; Scully stepped inside.
Fox Mulder stood by his desk, digging into a drawer in
the file cabinets, his back to her. Scully suppressed her angry
first response to demand information. She arranged her things
on her own desk, and hung up her coat.
"So," she said presently. "What happened?"
"I... uh, I don't know," he answered quietly, "I don't
know where to start."
Scully frowned, her temper becoming concern. "Mulder,
what is it? Turn around."
"Okay. Just don't-- it's not as bad as it looks--" He faced
her; his skin was pale, left eye blackened, bruises spreading
along that side of his face. His gaze was lowered; his hands were
unsteady as he pulled his chair out and dropped into it
bonelessly. "I don't know," he repeated.
"Mulder! Are you okay?" The question seemed foolish;
it was clear that whether or not he was seriously injured, Mulder
was definitely not okay.
"I'm fine," he said regardless. "Like I said. Not as bad
as it looks."
His partner felt her lips trembing; she returned to her
side of the office and gave them both a little time. Then she
rolled her chair over to his desk. Scully sat down n