TITLE: The Night He Fell Away From Me
AUTHOR: Brittany "Thespis" Frederick
E-MAIL: baltimorelt@yahoo.com
SPOILERS: This Is Not Happening
RATING: PG for language
CATEGORY: Case File, Doggett/Other partnership
SUMMARY: "I'm the last person who would believe," she
said, "but everything that I look at is telling me the
same thing. My partner - Agent Doggett - I think he's
been abducted by some sort of alien life form, and
I'll do anything you ask of me to get him back."
DISCLAIMER: All nonoriginal content belongs to Chris
Carter, 1013, and FOX. Agent Stark Patrick and all new
content/ideas et cetera belong to me and I'm proud of
it. Archive's okay, with my permission.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I was particularly inspired by TINH,
and the question rang in my head, if the tables had
been reversed, how far would Mulder go to rescue
Doggett? And of course it would change Doggett
totally. I couldn't resist.
This story takes place before Doggett joins the
X-Files, in his fourth year of work in Criminal
Investigations with Agent Patrick. I am therefore
assuming that neither of them have heard of or
interacted with the X-Files to any true extent ... but
that's the fun in it right?
This ain't about the things I've done, where I've been
Lose what I've got, keep what I found
It's about you
This ain't about the things you said, or how you make
me feel this way
Lose what I've got, keep what I found
It's about you
When I get this feeling
It's hard for me to come back down
With everyone who sees me telling me to come back home
It never could be easy
- Train
The picture could not have been more wrong.
"You see anything, Travis?" Special Agent Stark
Patrick called as she descended the hill into the
field. What the hell was John Doggett doing in a
fucking field at eleven a.m. on a work day with
pending warrants out on three of their cases? Or the
prime question: where the hell was John, period? She
continued down the slope, walking faster now. The
truth was she wanted to find him, but she was afraid
to find him, too. She always feared the worst. The
truth was that she had come to depend on him, and he
had never done anything like this, and she knew he
never would. John Doggett never left her without
notice, never on a busy work day and not for some
goddamned field in the middle of Virginia. He was in
trouble and the partner's unspoken mandate was that
she get him out of it. But first she would have to
know what "it" was. And what "it" was was rapidly
scaring the hell out of her.
The other agent, a friend she'd borrowed from the
office, shook his head. "Not a thing, Stark. You sure
he's out here?"
"Yeah, I'm sure," she said. "His truck's parked on
the shoulder about a quarter mile back."
"He can't just disappear," Agent Travis Jones
groused, then continued to soldier forth. His answer
did wonders for her discontent. She paused in the
empty field, hands on her hips, slowing her breathing,
looking out at absolutely nothing. "Shit," she
muttered, looking down.
Let's review the facts, she told herself. John's
truck was indeed parked a quarter mile back on the
shoulder of the road, which she knew was his usual
work route. That's how she'd found him, backtracking
until she'd spotted the Chevy here, maybe almost
halfway to the Virginia border. The doors were locked
and there was no evidence the Silverado had been
tampered with, much less broken into. She could spot
the case files they were supposed to be serving
warrants for on the passenger seat, one of them still
open. Using the spare key that John had given her for
emergencies - he'd had no real reason why she might
need it, only that she might, and now she knew why -
her first impulse was to look in the glove box where
he usually kept his gun until he got to work. It was
empty. All evidence pointed to that her partner had
seen something he didn't like, pulled over, grabbed
his gun, gotten out of the car after locking it, then
headed off into this field and simply vanished from
the known world. But that was impossible - and what
exactly had set off his alarm?
"We got something," Travis's voice rang clear in the
distance, and Stark snapped back to the present and
took off at a dead run, the desperate run of a partner
whose partner is imperiled beyond their own belief.
She met him off in a clearing obscured by a rare tree,
where he was kneeling. Even from a distance the
reflections of the sun said he'd found something. She
joined him and all she could say, looking down, was to
mutter "God damn it."
"There's his pager and his cell phone," explained
Travis. "His gun's over here."
"No wonder why I couldn't reach him when I called,"
she muttered. "So whoever did this really doesn't want
anyone to contact him."
"That's not as bad as this," he said, then pointed
out the gun. "Take a look at this, Stark. He can't be
okay."
His words were true and she knew it as soon as she
looked at the gun. There was blood all over its front.
"Freshly fired, one round, maybe two," he diagnosed
and she nodded grimly. Somehow, if John had gotten
shots off or not, that gun had gone off. And it had
hit someone - but had it hit him? Was he now bleeding
of multiple gunshot wounds while someone had him in
their clutches? Terrified, she finally looked up at
Travis. "Get that thing to Agent Crane at the crime
lab. Tell him I want that blood typed and matched
against John's medical records. And for him to run a
Type A battery on the gun, too. I'll call it in."
Travis nodded, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I'm
sorry," he said quietly, and she nodded silently as he
bagged John's service weapon in a separate bag from
the electronic devices, then headed back to the car
they had driven to the site. Stark kneeled a moment
longer. This wasn't like John. If he'd known he was in
trouble, he would have left a sign. The question was,
where was that sign? And where would it lead her? Head
hung, the questions cycling through her mind, she
walked the short distance back to the car, where she
keyed the radio and said the words she had hoped she'd
never have to say.
"This is Agent Stark Patrick, off Preston Road,
outside Falls Church, Virginia ... I have a missing
agent with possible shots fired and related injuries.
This is his last known location. I am requesting a
full team and crime lab complement. Initial evidence
is on its way."
There was silence as she wiped mist from her eyes.
"10-4, Agent Patrick. Do you know the identity of the
agent?"
She paused, his name caught in her throat. The name
that always came so easily wouldn't come.
"Agent Patrick, do you..."
"Yes. I know him." She let out a choked cry, fighting
it back with every ounce of stoicism she could spare.
Not in front of the others. Later when she was alone,
maybe. But to cry now was an act of weakness which she
could not show. Which she could not have if she were
to find him. Hell, she couldn't believe he was gone.
She keyed the radio again. "He's my partner. John
Doggett. Special Agent John Doggett."
The radio handset collided with the steering column
when she let it fall from her hands. She simply could
not contain herself. There was no way she could face
that he was missing without crying, without suffering
for him, without wanting to trade places with him if
that would bring him back. She turned into the car and
let herself cry into the roof for a brief moment, then
stepped back and looked at herself. Not now. She had
to find him. She had to close the case, think like an
agent, not clouded with all those emotions. There
would be time for those and it was not now. She backed
away, then slammed a fist hard into the space above
where the door would have been. "Son of a bitch!" she
exclaimed, her hand stinging with the impact of flesh
and bone against reinforced metal. "They can't take
him away from me, this ... this can't happen, not to him
... not to him."
"Stark?"
She rubbed her red knuckles and looked at Travis.
"I'm fine."
He leaned against the federal sedan's hood, "Like
hell you are."
"Don't start with me," she cautioned, "don't goddamn
start with me."
"You always swear when you're screwed up," he
replied. "We'll find him. Don't put yourself through
this. We will find him."
She glared hotly at him. "You're the one who said he
can't be okay." Then she turned away, out to the
field, speaking deliberately. Speaking to him,
wherever he was. "He is my partner, and I will be here
and anywhere else, and I will find him."
Wherever John was, she hoped - no, she knew - he knew
she was coming for him.
END PART 1
It was like this: she may have put the picture in the
frame, but it was as if somebody had come along and
hit it with a hammer in that bizarre little way that
causes the glass of the frame to crack in God knows
how many pieces while still remaining in place, a
grotesque portrait of chaos frozen in time.
Twenty minutes after she made the call, the field off
Preston Road was swarming with fellow agents, some of
whom had been assigned to take the missing agent call
that the dispatcher had immediately red-flagged, some
of whom had come on their own once they had heard
exactly who it was that had gone missing - to some a
friend, to others a co-worker, to all of them someone
who they were more than willing to help locate. But
Stark Patrick knew well the Latonya Wallace probe of
1988 - she herself had opened the case again and
failed - and so she took appropriate cautions. A small
contingent of agents, those who knew John best and
those who she most trusted, worked the actual area
where the evidence had been found, the last place they
could tie her partner to. The others fanned out,
searching the massive field for any other sign. The
sign that Stark knew was out there. By the unspoken
rule, she had complete command, unquestioned and
unchallenged, of what was developing in that field off
Preston Road. When one of their own went missing, his
or her partner was always in charge. There could be no
better person, after all, and every agent knew the
feeling of revenge and desperation that came with
being the partner of a missing person. However, Agent
Stark Patrick, aside from occasional instructions and
directing of traffic, chose for the most part not to
assume the privilege.
She sat in the passenger seat of the gold sedan that
she had driven up to the scene, paperwork about her.
Open files lay on the driver's seat, across her lap,
on the dashboard; others were stacked neatly in the
back seat. They were the ones that had been lifted
from the Silverado, as well as anything Stark could
think of back at their office at the Hoover Building
that may have been relevant. Watching her go through
those meticulously kept, extensive file cabinets was
an exercise in sympathy, as she moved with a
calculated but frustrated motion, yanking out file
after file in the hope that one of them, somewhere in
the detailed reports, photographs, notations,
documents and so on and so forth that she and John had
always kept, would yield some sort of answer. It was
the only time she ever left that field off Preston
Road, and to those who knew her, it was not
surprising.
Now she paged again the one that had been open on the
passenger seat of her partner's truck, the Devane
case, on which they were supposed to be serving a
search warrant that very day in an attempt to close
the grand larceny case. Grand larcenies were never
hard to track with large numbers involved and Stark
had been sure that the case would close with the
warrant. John seemed to share that feeling. But there
would be none of the slight adrenaline rush of
breaking doors and hunting for the penultimate clue,
not in that case. Not with him.
Not with him. The words seemed impossible.
"What are you looking at?" Travis Jones asked as he
opened the driver's side door and leaned on it. As a
friend of both partners, he was point on the
contingent searching John's last pinpointed location,
along with his partner, who he'd grabbed from the CID
office, but hadn't really needed to. They were both
more than willing to help out, and they were the
closest friends in the office that Stark had. They
sincerely cared, and that was why Travis had the look
on his face that he did.
She glanced up after a moment. "Devane case. We were
serving the warrant today."
He nodded, then looked over his shoulder and back.
"Listen, I think there's something you're going to
want to see."
Stark was out of the car and circling it in a
heartbeat, falling into step with him. "What? What is
it?" she demanded impatiently, with the desperation
that had become commonplace in her voice, even if it
was carefully masked. Travis lead her down the hill
and back into the valley, towards where his group was
clustered, the spot that Stark knew well. The spot
where there was still blood on the grass.
Travis caught up with his partner, and said in a
quiet voice, "Show her, Gary."
Agent Gary Edson, who was Travis Jones' partner and
one of the best known agents for profiling, didn't say
anything that moment, simply stepped out of the way to
let Stark take a look at what his team had run across.
She stood there, hands on hips, as she had so often
done today, and stared. "What? What am I looking at?"
she asked Edson, who pointed down at the grass, which
was slightly singed. "It's been exposed to fire," he
explained, "but it didn't burn. As if something really
hot had landed on it. For example, a flashlight."
Travis handed Stark a pair of photos of another field
and Edson came over to join them to explain exactly
what it was she was looking at. "This is Bellefleur,
Oregon," Edson explained. "A while back, two guys
think they see something in this field, so they head
down there. One of them's carrying a flashlight. So
they head down there. Reports are that flashlight gets
really hot, starts glowing red, the one guy drops it
where it is. They start moving, but before they get
too far, God knows what happens and the guy who had
that flashlight disappears."
Stark looked down at the grass, then the photos. "The
gun." She glanced at the two agents. "You think it was
the gun?"
"We think so, yeah," Travis said. "They're both metal
objects."
She glanced back down at the photos, "Do they know
how or why this man disappeared?"
Edson didn't explain much but he didn't have to.
"It's an X-File." Seeing the wide-eyed look on her
face, he continued as if to soften her skepticism,
"There's a living witness. A guy named Billy Miles."
Stark paused. "So what you're saying is the best
theory that we have is that my partner is randomly
wandering out here because he saw something and he
wandered into, what, an alien spaceship? That my
partner was abducted by goddamn aliens?" Her voice
rose with incredulity by the end of the sentence and
she sighed. "No frickin' way."
"We're not saying that," Travis replied. "We're
saying it's a chance."
Stark hung her head. It all seemed so cyclical to
her. She'd heard from John the long, agonizing ordeal
of trying to find his missing son, and how it all
ended with a body in a field. John had chased Luke to
the ends of the earth - or at least to the end. And
now here she was, in a field chasing John possibly
beyond that. We'd better get one damn thing straight,
she told herself, this time it's not going to end with
any body in a field. Except for the people who did
this to him.
"Results from the crime lab are back," said another
agent in the distance.
Stark, Travis and Edson all looked in the direction
of the vehicles parked on the side of the road, where
the agent had the radio at the ready. Listening as
well were all the agents, who had stopped their
ministrations to hear the news that might make them or
break them. The agent exhaled. "Crane ran a blood
test. Part of that blood belongs to Agent Doggett."
Her eyes widened. "God," she said, not wanting to
think of the implication.
Travis interjected into her thoughts. "Part? What
about the rest?"
The agent shook his head. "They can't identify it."
The three agents looked from the photos to each other
as the facts slowly began to paint a picture that was
hard to believe. Aliens and flashlights and towns in
Oregon. This was not supposed to happen. One of the
best agents the Bureau had known in recent years could
not be snatched by little green men. And yet, there it
was.
Edson looked up at the sky. "He must have hit it."
Travis glanced at him. "The question is what it is."
"And where it is." Stark glanced up at the agent by
the vehicles, "Tell Agent Crane I want to talk to
him."
Edson and Travis, after putting the team with whom
they shared an office in charge for the moment,
pursued her back to the sedan. She set the photos on
the roof and continued to stare at them as she took
the radio from the agent and spoke exhaustedly to
Agent Gene Crane, who had been Doggett's go-to guy in
the crime lab. Is, she corrected herself. Present
tense. Nothing says we're going to find a body in a
field. Absolutely nothing. We've just got fucking
aliens, but no signs of a body anywhere.
She didn't add the known 'yet'.
She keyed the radio.
"Tell me that you're sure, Gene," she told him. "I
need to know that you're sure."
"I triple-checked it personally," Crane replied, his
voice earmarked with the same emotions and the
sympathy that she had been getting from everyone all
day. "There's no doubt in my mind. He fired two
rounds. Part of that blood is his, and the rest ... I
don't know what it is."
Stark sighed. "All right. Keep trying. The guys will
send stuff when they find it. I want you to take care
of it and contact me if you find anything."
"You know I will," Crane said, then paused. "We'll
find him, Stark."
"Yeah, we will." She hung up the radio back on its
holster in the sedan, then moved the files out of the
driver's seat and slid into their place, reaching for
her keys in her pants pocket. Travis and Edson, still
standing by the car, looked at her with questioning
glances. She moved the rest of the files off of the
front of the car and tossed the photos they had given
her onto the dashboard, then glanced up at them as if
to ask what they were waiting for.
"Get in the car," she commanded.
Travis popped open the back door as Edson circled
around. "Where are we going?"
Stark gunned the engine. "The basement."
Everything in the car flared to life. The engine, the
lights, everything came alive, much like the woman at
the wheel, who cleanly backed out with a rapid and
forceful turning of the wheel (she drove like a stunt
driver, John had remarked, like he was much better),
and then ground the gas pedal into the floor and got
away from Preston Road as fast as the federal vehicle
would allow. The question was not where she was
headed, but what she might be running from in that
desire for that burst of speed.
Of course, or at least until they winced and leaned
back in the seats, Travis and Edson forgot about the
CD player, and were greeted with a burst of Incubus at
an unholy volume.
A decade ago I never thought I would be
On the verge of spontaneous combustion
But I guess it comes with the territory
Exploding seems like an evident possibility to me
So pardon me while I burst into flames
I've had enough of the world and its people's mindless
games
So pardon me while I burn and rise above the flame
Pardon me ... I'll never be the same
"What a freakin' coincidence," was Travis's comment
from the back seat.
Edson looked at him unconvinced. "I don't believe in
coincidence."
For a moment, at least, the basement was not just for
the FBI's Most Unwanted. It was for them and a very
angry, very emotionally scattered, truly driven young
agent whose escorts had let her do the delving into
the infamous world of aliens and the unexplained. And
she bore that acquiesence well, moving with the same
deliberate swiftness she had since this whole thing
went down right before her eyes, the eyes now haunted
with having to be the first person to see it all. His
body may as well have been there; the effect was the
same. She didn't want to think about it as she opened
the door to the basement office.
Fox Mulder and Dana Scully looked to the woman in the
doorway simultaneously, but gave her their attention.
Mulder swiveled in his chair to face her and put down
the file he was reading. Scully, unobstructed, simply
waited. It was not often that they had visitors, and
everyone - even underground as they were - had heard
the news that something big involving one of their own
had broken this morning.
"Agent Mulder, Agent Scully," Stark said by way of
introduction as she stepped into their office and
closed the door.
"Can we help you with something?" Mulder asked,
"Agent..."
"Patrick, Stark," she said, her voice still worn and
perhaps tense. "The evidence seems to think that you
can. You investigated an X-File in Bellefleur, Oregon,
right?" she continued, laying the photos she had been
given on Mulder's desk.
He glanced at them. "Yeah. Billy Miles."
"So I've been told," she said.
"Agent Patrick," Scully cut in, "is there some sort of
connection between this and something that you're
working on? Is that why you need to know?"
Patrick nodded, turning to her. "Yes. My partner has
gone missing, and ... one of the agents at the scene
spotted similar burns on the grass in that field as in
the one in this photo." She sighed. "I'm the last
person who would believe," she said, "but everything
that I look at is telling me the same thing. My
partner - Agent Doggett - I think he's been abducted
by some sort of alien life form, and I'll do anything
you ask of me to get him back."
There was silence in the room for a moment until
Mulder spoke.
"Your partner's John Doggett?" he asked.
Stark glanced at him, "Yes. You know him?"
Mulder stood from behind his desk. "I heard this
morning that there had been a missing agent case. I
didn't expect that it would be him. We've never met,
but I heard he's high on the list of possible future
Directors of the FBI."
She shook her head. "I wouldn't know anything about
that."
Scully examined the photos, including the one Travis
had taken from the Preston Road scene, "She's right,
Mulder, I see a resemblance to Bellefleur in these
photos."
Mulder nodded. "Let's do what they pay us for,
Scully." Then he said the comment that he'd apparently
been waiting to say. "It's good to meet you, Agent
Patrick. I only wish it could be under better
circumstances."
Stark nodded soberly. "I think we all do, Agent
Mulder."
"Walk us through it, Agent Patrick," Mulder directed
as the five agents climbed out of the vehicle, which
had this time parked a distance back down the road
from what was quickly becoming a federal parking lot.
Stark did as she was instructed, taking point in the
procession and attempting to explain the dizzying
events of only the last few hours but what seemed like
days.
"John - Agent Doggett was due in by five. We were
serving several warrants today, one of which was going
to be in the early morning, maybe six-thirty. He
always calls when he's late, so when he didn't call or
show up, I tried both his cell phone and pager. I
couldn't reach him. I know the route he takes to
work," she continued, catching the weird look from
Mulder, "because I do, so I backtracked it until I
came across his truck. I looked around for maybe
twenty minutes, then I called Agent Jones. We started
the search."
They descended the hill into the field. Many agents
recognized Spooky Mulder and his partner on sight, but
their reactions were well under control, distracted by
the paramount task at hand. The detail team parted as
Stark lead Mulder and Scully to the location where
Travis had shown her previously, taking care to stay
far away from the blood.
"After a while of wandering around, Agent Jones found
Agent Doggett's cell phone and pager over here," she
pointed as she spoke, "and we found his gun over here.
It was freshly fired and fairly coated in blood on its
front end. Sending it down to the crime lab, we found
two rounds had been fired. Part of the blood was typed
against Agent Doggett's medical records and matched.
The other part of it, the crime lab can't identify."
Mulder and Scully looked at each other.
"His truck hasn't been broken into or tampered with,"
Stark continued. "I have a key to the vehicle so I
lifted the case files he'd been reading from the
passenger seat and into my car. The gun was of course
out of the glove box, but the vehicle was locked when
I arrived and it doesn't appear he left in a hurry.
Our theory is he saw something that demanded his
attention, made a U-turn - that would explain why it's
parked on this side of the road - got out of the truck
with his gun, locked the vehicle and proceeded into
the field where he..." She couldn't say the word, but
looked away. "I'm going to go back to the car."
Edson and Travis went back to managing the detail,
herding it away so that the two new agents could do
their jobs. Scully knelt by the spot of grass
indicated by the photo and began to take a sample for
comparison against what they had seen in Bellefleur.
"What do you think, Mulder?" she asked of her partner.
"Blood they can't identify, similar burns, another
field in the middle of nowhere..." Mulder looked up at
the sky. "It's a similar case, Scully. We've got to
give them that. And agents as highly touted as John
Doggett don't turn their vehicles around on their way
to work, leap out with their service weapons and lock
the doors on the way out on a lark. He saw something,
and my guess is it got him, but not before he got it."
Scully lifted several pieces of grass, some burnt but
not bloodied, some both, placing them into separate
small evidence bags. "It's an X-File, then."
"Yeah, much to the dismay of Agent Patrick out there,"
Mulder replied, looking at the agent who was speaking
briefly with another agent before she turned and
headed back toward the gold sedan.
"She does seem a little uncomfortable with it," Scully
observed.
"A little? I don't think she's ever heard the word
paranormal, or if she did she wasn't really
listening." Mulder sighed. "See what else you can
find. I'm going to talk to her."
"Mulder..."
Mulder looked back. "What?"
"Don't try and scare her the first time out."
He simply shrugged and headed off back up the hill,
leaving Scully to watch him go and shake her head. The
Bureau would simply love that the disappearance of one
of their agents tagged to make it all the way to the
top was entangled with something as tawdry as an
X-File. And she for one wasn't looking forward to the
hunting season that would occur when Mulder, or Agent
Patrick, or any of these other agents, turned in the
final report on their preliminary evaluation of just
what John Doggett was doing, where he might be and
what might be happening to him.
She turned back to the grass. There were times she
wished she had listened to her father.
But not many.
Mulder approached Agent Patrick, who was standing with
the driver's side door open either knowingly or
unknowingly, clearly interested in something she was
reading. He knew the feeling, he reflected with
sadness. He had been the same way for all those years
he'd been hunting for Samantha. She looked like she
had so much more ahead of her.
"You're hurting, aren't you?" he said.
She glanced up. "Excuse me?"
"For your partner. You'd do anything to take his pain
away from him." Mulder stepped over to her and said
with some stinging suffering of his own, "I know the
feeling."
She shook her head. "Not like this."
"No, I think I do." Mulder sighed. "Let me guess.
You've worked with him for a while."
"This is our fourth year."
"And he's always there when you need him, and before
you know it the two of you are the best of friends,
and you know everything that you need to know about
him, and you always swore that you would catch him
when he fell, because he always catches you, but this
time it's your turn and you don't really know what to
think because you never expected it would happen."
Stark clapped the file shut and looked hard at him.
"What are you trying to say, Agent Mulder?"
Mulder pointed down into the field, where Scully was
clearly visible, a small figure in the distance
identifiable by her height and distinctive hair color.
"Seven years now I've been working with Agent Scully.
We didn't trust each other at first, but now ... now I
don't know what I'd do without her. We've survived so
much together. She is, without a doubt, my life. And I
know that you have that same feeling. I can see it in
your eyes." He paused. "I understand that about you. I
understand the desperate chase of trying to find
someone who means so much to you. It's happened to me.
With Scully and with my sister. That's why you're so
determined to find him. You can't think about what
happens if you don't."
Now she got defensive. "No, no, no. There is no don't.
I'll find him." She shook her head. "Listen, Agent
Mulder, I know that people can be a little cutthroat
when it comes to talking about the X-Files, but I'll
let you know that I don't care if this involves aliens
or alien spaceships or aliens that transmogrify into
God knows what. All I care about is getting my partner
back."
Mulder watched her as she took a few steps away from
the car, away from him, with that irritated,
frustrated, down-on-her-everything look on her face,
looking out into the distance. Stark sucked in a
breath, then winced briefly as she felt a sharp pain
in her head. Her right hand went to her right temple
and she didn't know why. Then all of a sudden, it all
became clear.
Somewhere ... out in the middle of nowhere, much like
this moment ... was a place. A vision flashed across her
eyes. Somehow familiar, somehow not. Of a man she'd
never met in a place she'd never been to. But somehow,
she knew him, and she knew that place, and she knew
what she had to do.
"Agent Patrick?"
She turned, startled, to face Mulder. "What?"
"Are you okay?" he inquired, voice concerned.
She walked back towards him, shaking off the
telepathic vision she'd just seen. "Yeah, yeah, I'm
fine. I need you ... I need you to get Agent Jones and
Agent Edson and Agent Scully back in the car. Tell
them to put Agent Webb in charge. We need to get out
of here."
"To where?"
"Somewhere. I don't know. I saw it." She sighed. "Tell
Edson to get me a direct link to the NCIC Morpho."
Mulder paused. "Wait, you saw what?"
She looked back at where she'd been standing. "I just
saw something. It's like I went out of my mind, to, to
somewhere else. I saw this man at this place in the
middle of nowhere, and I just think I need to trust my
instincts and that's where we need to go."
Mulder nodded, in no mood to question. "I don't think
Scully's the only one that's psychic anymore," he
muttered to himself as he walked away and did as he
was told. Agent Jones, Agent Edson and Scully all
obediently came running at his call, leaving their
backup man, Agent Derrick Webb, in charge of the field
off Preston Road while what was quickly becoming known
as 'the Spooky caravan' piled themselves back into the
vehicle. Edson punched a few buttons on the computer
terminal in the front of the sedan, then got out of
the way so Mulder could sit in the passenger seat.
Stark turned the vehicle on, and this time everyone
got an earful of Psykosonic's "Panik Kontrol" much to
Travis and Edson's renewed discomfort. She didn't
notice, however, her fingers flying across the
keyboard as she input everything she had seen into the
search engine. Pictures flew across the screen as the
computer narrowed them down, then finally, it came to
a stop.
The man was in his late thirties, early forties,
haunted eyes and blond hair, with that crazy look like
you didn't know if he was going to go postal or not.
Stark let out a small gasp and Mulder glanced at her.
"What?" he said.
She was still speechless, wild-eyed, definitely
shocked. And frightened. Which considering that she
had kept up a wall of stoicism and a
never-let-them-see-you-sweat approach all day,
therefore scared Mulder.
"Do you know this guy?" he asked her.
Stark really didn't know what to say. "Not really.
I've never met him but for some reason, I just ... I saw
him in that vision. Who the hell is he and what the
fuck does he have to do with this?"
Mulder looked down at the printout. "Why don't we go
ask Mister," he looked down at the information portion
of the screen which was organized just enough as to
confuse him from finding the information he wanted.
Scully cut in impatiently, "What's his name, Mulder?"
"Absalom."
END PART 2
If the frame had already been shattered, it was a
matter of time before the picture followed suit. Stark
Patrick reflected on this as she stood in a whole
other field, far away from Preston Road, near the
Virginia border. Mulder, Scully, Edson and Travis all
stood beside her. Only Mulder had the ability to say
anything as they glanced around at where this
desperate chase had lead them.
"What are we looking for?"
Their 'leader' shook her head. "I don't know."
"Are we in the right place?"
"Yes."
"So what do we do?"
"Damn it, Agent Mulder, I don't know!" Her voice
reached a new volume there, a volume of frenzied
self-anger and self-hatred and disbelief and paranoia,
all emotions raging inside of her without her loyal
partner to keep her in check. The sound of her voice,
the force behind it, stunned them all into renewed
silence in the moments before she regained control of
herself, speaking then in a distraught tone. "While
you were rounding up the troops, I called a friend of
Agent Doggett's that may be able to help us find out
something. She should be here any minute."
Another voice then, as if on cue: "Agent Patrick?"
Stark's head jerked up at the woman coming down the
embankment to join them, and she mustered a weak
smile. "Agent Reyes. Thank you for making it."
Reyes held her comment until she was face to face
with the younger agent. She flashed a smile, but her
eyes were haunted with the same cognizance of the news
that Stark had given her over the phone. "I was able
to get an immediate flight. When you said that this
was about Agent Doggett ... I didn't see it as an
option."
"I appreciate that." Stark turned to her companions.
"Agent Reyes, I'd like you to meet Agents Mulder and
Scully of the X-Files section, and Agents Jones and
Edson of Criminal Investigations. This is Agent Monica
Reyes. She worked a case with Agent Doggett," she
explained, omitting exactly which case. They didn't
need to know about that. It was far too personal and
it was irrelevant this moment.
Reyes took over before Stark had to struggle with
finding more words. "Agent Patrick filled me in on
what you have so far, what got you here, this
connection to this man Absalom. I took the liberty of
seeing what the NCIC knows about him." She paused for
effect. "He was the former leader of a cult in Idaho
based around his idea that the aliens would take over
the world at Y2K," she ignored Mulder's smirk at that
statement. "When the little green men failed to
appear, he disappeared from there and he mostly does
credit card fraud these days. His last known location
was somewhere in Oregon."
Scully spoke what everyone was thinking.
"Bellefleur."
"I wouldn't rule it out," Reyes allowed for the
possibility. She glanced up as she formulated her next
sentence. "I searched all federal, state and
correctional databases in the state of Virginia within
a ten-mile radius of Preston Road for the last week.
Absalom was arrested for credit card fraud and grand
larceny three days ago. He's currently being held at
the state correctional facility pending his
arraignment which is scheduled for the day after
tomorrow. It's some eight miles from Preston Road."
Edson paused. "So our theory is what, this mystery man
escapes a state prison and is randomly wandering
around this field and abducts Agent Doggett?"
Scully shook her head. "No. It doesn't make sense.
Absalom is human. The crime lab would have gotten a
hit on his blood. He would have been in the system by
today."
Mulder thought this through, "What if he was after the
same thing that Agent Doggett was after?" He glanced
at Reyes, "Is he accounted for at the facility?"
She nodded. "I had the warden check personally."
"Then how did he escape?" Travis posed. "If we know
how he made it, it might be a clue to finding out how
to beat this thing."
"He escaped because it wanted him to," Stark spoke up
finally. She glanced firmly at Reyes. "What if - what
if Absalom was baiting John on purpose? To get him
into the hands of this ... this thing. And that's why it
didn't take him. And then he knows where John is."
Reyes nodded. "That's one hell of a theory."
"It's the best one I've got." She sighed. "What do
they want with him?"
Reyes put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't think about
it."
"I have to. It's the solution." Stark stepped back and
started up the embankment. "I want to talk to this
guy. I want to know what connection he has to this. I
want the answer and I think he's got it."
Mulder paused. "All lies lead to the truth?"
Scully had the rejoinder for that one. "The spirit is
the truth, Mulder."
"Something you put on your tombstone." Mulder let out
a dry chuckle. "Excuse me if that's not confidence
inspiring." He looked up at Agent Patrick, headed for
their vehicle. "We will find him, Agent Patrick. I
promise you that."
"Thank you, Agent Mulder," she said sadly. "I hope
that that's true."
The Virginia State Central Correctional Facility was
nowhere that Stark had ever personally been. She had
been to Crystal City and the Federal Statistics Center
there once or twice when she'd been assigned
administrative duties for the Assistant Director, but
she had never been involved with the Department of
Corrections. She wished that she had, however. It
would have taken the edge off walking into an
interrogation room and resisting the urge to fly
across the table and strangle the man looking at her
with vacant eyes.
"Where the hell is my partner?"
Absalom still looked dazed. "I don't know what you're
talking about."
"Preston Road. This morning. You had my partner
abducted," she said tersely, throwing down a handful
of photos in front of him, including copies of the
snapshots that she had shown the others, and another
of Doggett's current ID photo. Absalom made no move to
examine them.
"Did I?" He almost seemed amused. "They say that I've
done lots of things. Not all of them are true."
"Don't play this with me," she said, leaning across
the table, getting into his face, restraining herself
with everything that took. "You believe that the
aliens are coming. You baited them with my partner.
You baited my partner and they have him and you know
how I can end this. Tell me what happened. Tell me how
to stop it."
"I don't know what happens beyond the fields." He
sighed as if he was trying to be helpful. "They tell
me who. They get them there. I make sure that the
people are there when they arrive. Then they complete
the transfer."
Stark was quickly losing patience. "They told you to
take my partner. You're telling me they somehow made
it that he would have to see you out there. You
distracted him long enough for them to take him and
now you don't know?" She let out a bitter laugh but
inside she was scared. If this were true, then these
people ... these things ... whatever that had snatched
John from her had to know more about him than they
should. That he had to pass Preston Road in the
morning. And they were waiting for him. But 'why'
still bit at the back of her mind. She had the
middleman. She wanted the enterprise.
"Tell me how to find him."
Absalom paused. "When they are through ... sometimes
people return. Those who do not have their place in
the grand plan. Or those that do."
"Don't doublespeak when you're talking to me." She
reached over and grabbed him by the collar. "Where do
they go? When? How the hell will I know when it's his
time? Tell me the answer!"
"A week previously it was a woman. They returned her
the day before I arrived here. To their compound."
"Shit." She paused. "Four days ago. That means that
John has three days left. Where the hell is this
place?"
"You were there."
"The second field." Stark shook her head. "God damn
it!"
Red flashed before her eyes. Blood red. And she pulled
back a fist and let go, colliding with Absalom's
forehead, sending him tumbling back, to the concrete
floor with a sickening sound. Almost instantly she was
over him again, ready to end it all, not caring what
might happen. But Mulder burst through the door and
grabbed her, holding her back, pulling her away before
she had a chance to strike the killing blow. She
almost thought it was unnecessary. Only the eventual
opening of Absalom's eyes told her that she hadn't
already killed him.
"What do you think you're doing?" Mulder demanded.
She bit her lip to control her anger. "It's justice."
"For who?"
"For John. For me. For all of us." She couldn't look
away from Absalom. "He set John up. He's set them all
up. He's responsible. Him and his alien masters. This
is about justice."
Mulder shook his head. "If he's right ... in three days
your partner's going to come back to that second
field, to that building. Let's find it. Let's be ready
for him. Don't waste your time on this."
"It's not a waste of time."
She broke out of Mulder's hold and stormed out of the
interrogation room, where she collapsed against the
wall and closed her eyes. This made no sense. If
Absalom was correct, this wasn't just about her
partner anymore. It was about God knew how many other
people and whatever was wanted with them. Which posed
the question: what did they want with John? And how
far were they willing to go to get it? How far were
she and her own willing to go to get him back?
There was no decision.
As far as it took.
Three days and it might all be over.
Or it could just be beginning.
"Stark..."
"Damn it, not now, Jones." She turned and started
walking back down the corridor, even though she knew
he would follow. It had almost been simpler, easier,
when it was just a missing persons case. But if this
was all about some huge abduction conspiracy, it was
out of proportion. And perhaps more frightening, out
of her hands. She finally turned and stopped when they
were out of the earshot of all the others, catching
Travis's concerned gaze one more time.
"What did he tell you?"
"That if John's abduction follows the pattern of the
one before..." Her voice started to crack. "If it does ...
then in three days they'll put him back at this
compound back in that field I saw."
"How'd you see it anyway?"
"I don't know. Maybe it was panic. Maybe John's
communicating to me. Maybe they want me next." She
sighed. "I can't wait three days, Jones. I need him
with me now."
"The warrants can wait."
"It's not about the warrants. It's about having my
partner back. About doing all the things we usually
do. Having those drinks after work to celebrate
closing those cases. Filing those reports exactly in
the right order. Driving over the speed limit. Having
actual conversations that don't always have to be
about work. Hell, just the sound of his voice..." She
was starting to cry now, and she hated it. She was not
supposed to show weakness in front of fellow agents.
John was the only one she felt comfortable letting her
wall down around. And remembering that only made this
sudden fit of separation anxiety worse. "I need him
back, Travis. Not as my partner. As my friend." She
echoed Mulder, knowing he was right. "As my world."
Travis nodded. "Maybe you should go home."
"I'm not going home," she said, perhaps a bit
harshly. "I'm not going home. I can't sleep anyway and
it's not even the evening yet. I'm going to find this
compound and I'm going to wait for him."
"It's three days, Stark. There's time."
"Time to screw things up, you mean." She shook her
head. "Let's go. We're done."
"Let's find this place," he echoed her. "Then promise
me you'll go home and try to get some sleep."
"What if it's not my apartment?"
He looked at her, confused. "Where else would it be?"
She fingered another key on her key ring. "Falls
Church."
"Damn it, don't do that to yourself," he said, knowing
what she meant.
"Don't do what? As much as I hate to admit it - he's
the one man that I need in my life. And he's not here.
It's the only place I know left to me where I can
turn."
Except, she said silently to herself, another field
near the Virginia border.
Where somewhere out in its distance was a compound.
A compound that belonged to forces beyond her
understanding.
Who in three days would come there again.
And in doing so return her partner to this earth.
And make everything clear.
And give her a chance for revenge.
END PART 3
The first day had been a nightmare, which, after more
questioning of their only living lead, became a rush
from one place to another in an attempt to put it all
together. Traveling back out to that second field at
the Virginia border to scout a so-called compound,
which when they looked at it appeared to be no more
than an abandoned structure. Stark almost couldn't
believe this was her key to finding John again. Then
she returned to the Preston Road site to get a
heads-up with Derrick Webb, and she had left Edson and
Jones there to go back to securing that scene while
Derrick took her back to meet with Gene Crane and go
over the new findings and the exhaustive batteries of
tests that they had run on everything that came back.
After that she had sat in her - their - office and
gone over more case files until Derrick had gotten a
hold of her and personally insisted that she go home.
And she had, for maybe an hour or two, enough to
answer more phone messages with condolences from those
just now hearing about her desperate manhunt and to
pack some of her things, and then she drove out to
Falls Church, being careful not to pass the site where
work was still going on in the early evening before
she arrived at the last place anyone thought she
should be. She hadn't slept there, either.
Day two didn't get much better. She had come in late,
spending her morning on John's couch going over case
file after case file and her rapidly expanding file
from his disappearance, putting all the pieces into
place in a whirlwind of papers, photographs, reports,
statements and even maps. While the facts began to
gel, the truth remained that she was playing her whole
hand on an unexpected vision and an unreliable
explanation, and that none of it really made sense.
However, the compound in the Virginia border field was
the best that she had, and she was going to take the
leap, she decided as she headed back into the Hoover
Building's maelstrom. There she got a full briefing
from Derrick, Travis and Edson, who had done the same
thing she had on a larger scale. They compared notes
in the FBI's huge main conference room with a
half-dozen white boards and the two dozen agents
involved in the probe, reconstructing John's last
hours, what they knew about the abduction cases, and
what in one matched with something in the other. That
took a few more hours. Then Derrick and the guys had
insisted on taking Stark out to a local club, where
she had her share of drinks but couldn't shake the
feeling that her partner had two more days before he
was coming home to her. If he was at all. No, she
corrected, he was coming home.
But it wasn't easy for her to think that. Even she
had begun to doubt, even in her blind rage. It wasn't
like he was coming home from a vacation he'd forgotten
to tell her about. He had been purposefully abducted.
Things were different now. And she had failed to
consider what might happen when he came back. Would he
be different? He had to be. Yet she didn't want to ask
questions she couldn't answer. She had enough of
those.
Day three went in slow motion, an agonizing reminder
that if all went well, the next day they would end
this whole roller coaster of suffering. There was
another six-hour morning planning session in the
conference room, then they had walked through John's
last hours as best as they were able to put them
together, trying to reenact the events, trying to find
therein the answer. That evening Mulder and Scully
returned from a brief sojourn back to Bellefleur,
where they had gone over details of the abductions
there with details of Doggett's, and reported with
more than a little regret how for the most part they
had found nothing of any real use in finding her
partner. Everyone returned to the conference room to
develop their plan for the next day. Absalom and
common sense dictated everything would come down at
night, but they wanted to be ready for any moment, any
happening. They had come too far - and perhaps too
fast - to let this slip out of their hands now. None
of them slept that night.
But the day had finally arrived. Day four. The day
when, with all luck, John Doggett would be coming back
to them. And watching Stark in his Falls Church home,
Monica Reyes was grateful for that on more than one
account - and especially on the account of the woman
she'd been assigned to watch over, the woman who
needed him most.
"Why are you still here?" she'd prompted.
"Hey, I'm cleaning."
Monica glanced around. "I thought the place was
pretty clean to begin with."
"It is."
"I didn't think you cleaned."
"I don't."
Monica crossed from the kitchen to the couch where
Stark had finally taken a rest. "I'm feeling a lot of
frustration from you."
"With good reason."
"Stark, we have everything planned out. Trust us."
Stark nodded. "But see, here's the thing: plans go
wrong. The unexpected happens. Weapons jam. Vehicles
die. People screw up. And I need this case to go down.
I need my partner back." She sighed. "He's been the
only partner I have ever known. I don't have family.
My sister's dead, my father's dead, and my mother and
I aren't on speaking terms. John has watched my back
for four years and that says a lot in this world. I
can't take the chance to trust in anything until I see
it with my own eyes. I won't lose him on a
technicality."
Monica could only return the gesture in
understanding. "I know."
"I know you do." She paused, her brain changing gears
as her wall came up once again. "When's the preflight
meeting?"
"Six o'clock in the field."
"Damn it. It's only two."
And so the rest of the day went, counting down the
hours, counting down the minutes, until finally it was
time to leave and Stark and her chaperone headed from
Falls Church toward the border. There was no music
this time, no discussion, only contemplative silence.
Desperate silence. Double-checking, triple-checking,
it-has-to-be-right silence. It was an operation of
risk to begin with and the circumstances didn't help.
Mulder had argued against bringing the entire task
force to bear on the border field compound, reminding
them that extraterrestrials were not stupid, and if
they noticed the extreme manpower, which they would,
the team put their chances of getting Doggett back in
jeopardy. With that idea shot down, the statistics
were not pretty. Three days of planning lead to seven
agents - Stark, Mulder, Scully, Reyes, Edson, Jones
and Webb - in this field waiting for the appearance of
extraterrestrial life with only their service weapons,
Kevlar vests, handheld radios and whatever else they
could requisition from the FBI's vaults - which,
considering the nature of the investigation, was
anything they wanted, provided it didn't make a scene.
"Are we good to go?" Stark demanded as she stopped
the car by the side of the road and walked over to
meet the rest of the assemblage.
Travis handed her a vest and a radio. "As good as
we're going to be."
"I'll take those chances." Stark checked her Ehrlich
400 for darts, micromissiles, gas pellets and the
working laser, then put it back in its holster. She
clipped the radio to her belt and continued to suit
up, including the Kevlar vest and two arm bracers that
fit under her jacket which contained some suitably
sharp knives.
Around her, the others did the same. There seemed to
be no thing as too much preparation. The radio test
worked and Edson seemed to be comfortable toting
around a suitably decent-sized assault pistol. They
were all on edge. The more power they could possibly
have at their disposal, the better they felt, and
Stark had no problem with that. Over the days her
perception had colored: she didn't just want her
partner back, she also now hungered for revenge.
"How long are we going to have to wait?"
Derrick checked his watch. "According to your man,
anywhere from an hour to four or five."
"Yeah, well let's hope it's not that long," Mulder
said as he began to lead the agents down the
embankment into the field.
It was a fifteen or twenty-minute trip from the
roadside to the middle of nowhere in which the
compound was situated. It remained largely as they had
seen it before: devoid of activity, empty, silent, yet
somehow ominous. As if it, too, were waiting. But the
wait was longer. Not as long as Absalom had suggested
it might be, but long enough to set everyone on edge,
plant doubt in everyone's minds. It was pitch black
and nine-something when the sky was suddenly
illuminated by the brightest of lights that made
everyone recoil, and simultaneously know this was the
moment they were waiting for. They stood from their
vantage point as the sky became one blinding whiteness
and took their last chance.
Stark began issuing orders over the volume of the
quivering earth that had begun. No one knew what
precisely they were after, as the light obscured the
ship, but no one needed to see it to know it was here.
They had precious little time before UFO hunters and
other tabloid types would notice and seize upon the
scene, and by then it would be too late.
"Watch your weapons, you know what happens with metal
objects! Travis, Gary, take the back! Derrick, Agent
Reyes, take the left side, Agent Mulder, Agent Scully,
the right side!"
Mulder glanced at her. "What about you?"
"I'm going in the polite way. The front door."
And she bolted down the hill, simultaneously
unsheathing the Ehrlich, which shined bright silver in
the blinding light. It began to grow warm, but she
ignored the feeling, breaking in the front door of the
compound and seeing just what the hell Absalom was
talking about.
The building was illuminated, warmed by the arrival,
and the people that were suddenly there - she hadn't
remembered seeing them before, at least - were barely
awake. There were people that just happened to be
there. It didn't make sense. But one of them had to be
her partner. She heard the back door break in,
followed by movement on both the right and left sides
of the building as timbers around gaping holes in the
walls gave way and clattered uselessly to the floor.
It was time to storm the place. The others would take
care of these people. She had but one man on her mind.
Stark began with the room where Absalom had said he
had found the woman, Teresa Hoese. She took a deep
breath and kicked in the door.
There was no one there.
"Damn it!" she swore, looking up at the ceiling, at
that light, with hatred in her eyes. What were they
playing? Or did they even - No. They had to have him.
But how could she tell?
Then it hit her. The light seemed to be, rather than
one light, several specific beams, overilluminated by
the massive spotlight that always seemed to come with
these things in every photo she'd been shown over the
past few days. All she had to do was find which one of
those beams had her partner's location broadcast.
A gunshot rang out and somebody shouted something.
She didn't care. She'd find out later.
It was on the fifth of eight that she let out a
breath she'd been holding far too long and started
crying.
"John!" she'd yelled when she saw him, then back out
the door, to the others, "I've got him!"
He looked like hell, she reflected as she went to her
knees beside him. He looked dead. But he couldn't be
dead. That was not possible. He wasn't even conscious,
but he was there. He was pale and he felt somewhat
cold to the touch as if he'd been out in harsh
conditions way too long. Stark bit her lip. He could
not die here. This could not end this way. She covered
her partner with her jacket, the fabric catching the
tears she was crying. Reaching over, she put her
fingers against his neck. He could not die. This was
not happening.
"I've got a pulse!"
-------------
Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever going to make it home
again
It seems so far and out of sight
I really need someone to talk to and nobody else
Knows how to comfort me tonight
Snow is cold, rain is wet
Chills my soul right to the marrow
I won't be happy 'til I see you alone again
Till I'm home again and feeling right
I want to be home again and feeling right...
- "Home Again," Vonda Shepard
END
TO BE CONTINUED...
=====
"Oh, for God's sake, please be somebody else."
- Lewis Black
Natalie: Two guys have ascended 5 miles into the sky. They
walked up a wall of ice and are preparing to knock on the
door of heaven itself. There's really no end to what we can
do. You know what the trick is?
Dan: What?
Natalie: Get in the game!
- "The Quality of Mercy at 29K", "Sports Night"
AUTHOR: Brittany "Thespis" Frederick
E-MAIL: baltimorelt@yahoo.com
SPOILERS: This Is Not Happening
RATING: PG for language
CATEGORY: Case File, Doggett/Other partnership
SUMMARY: "I'm the last person who would believe," she
said, "but everything that I look at is telling me the
same thing. My partner - Agent Doggett - I think he's
been abducted by some sort of alien life form, and
I'll do anything you ask of me to get him back."
DISCLAIMER: All nonoriginal content belongs to Chris
Carter, 1013, and FOX. Agent Stark Patrick and all new
content/ideas et cetera belong to me and I'm proud of
it. Archive's okay, with my permission.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I was particularly inspired by TINH,
and the question rang in my head, if the tables had
been reversed, how far would Mulder go to rescue
Doggett? And of course it would change Doggett
totally. I couldn't resist.
This story takes place before Doggett joins the
X-Files, in his fourth year of work in Criminal
Investigations with Agent Patrick. I am therefore
assuming that neither of them have heard of or
interacted with the X-Files to any true extent ... but
that's the fun in it right?
This ain't about the things I've done, where I've been
Lose what I've got, keep what I found
It's about you
This ain't about the things you said, or how you make
me feel this way
Lose what I've got, keep what I found
It's about you
When I get this feeling
It's hard for me to come back down
With everyone who sees me telling me to come back home
It never could be easy
- Train
The picture could not have been more wrong.
"You see anything, Travis?" Special Agent Stark
Patrick called as she descended the hill into the
field. What the hell was John Doggett doing in a
fucking field at eleven a.m. on a work day with
pending warrants out on three of their cases? Or the
prime question: where the hell was John, period? She
continued down the slope, walking faster now. The
truth was she wanted to find him, but she was afraid
to find him, too. She always feared the worst. The
truth was that she had come to depend on him, and he
had never done anything like this, and she knew he
never would. John Doggett never left her without
notice, never on a busy work day and not for some
goddamned field in the middle of Virginia. He was in
trouble and the partner's unspoken mandate was that
she get him out of it. But first she would have to
know what "it" was. And what "it" was was rapidly
scaring the hell out of her.
The other agent, a friend she'd borrowed from the
office, shook his head. "Not a thing, Stark. You sure
he's out here?"
"Yeah, I'm sure," she said. "His truck's parked on
the shoulder about a quarter mile back."
"He can't just disappear," Agent Travis Jones
groused, then continued to soldier forth. His answer
did wonders for her discontent. She paused in the
empty field, hands on her hips, slowing her breathing,
looking out at absolutely nothing. "Shit," she
muttered, looking down.
Let's review the facts, she told herself. John's
truck was indeed parked a quarter mile back on the
shoulder of the road, which she knew was his usual
work route. That's how she'd found him, backtracking
until she'd spotted the Chevy here, maybe almost
halfway to the Virginia border. The doors were locked
and there was no evidence the Silverado had been
tampered with, much less broken into. She could spot
the case files they were supposed to be serving
warrants for on the passenger seat, one of them still
open. Using the spare key that John had given her for
emergencies - he'd had no real reason why she might
need it, only that she might, and now she knew why -
her first impulse was to look in the glove box where
he usually kept his gun until he got to work. It was
empty. All evidence pointed to that her partner had
seen something he didn't like, pulled over, grabbed
his gun, gotten out of the car after locking it, then
headed off into this field and simply vanished from
the known world. But that was impossible - and what
exactly had set off his alarm?
"We got something," Travis's voice rang clear in the
distance, and Stark snapped back to the present and
took off at a dead run, the desperate run of a partner
whose partner is imperiled beyond their own belief.
She met him off in a clearing obscured by a rare tree,
where he was kneeling. Even from a distance the
reflections of the sun said he'd found something. She
joined him and all she could say, looking down, was to
mutter "God damn it."
"There's his pager and his cell phone," explained
Travis. "His gun's over here."
"No wonder why I couldn't reach him when I called,"
she muttered. "So whoever did this really doesn't want
anyone to contact him."
"That's not as bad as this," he said, then pointed
out the gun. "Take a look at this, Stark. He can't be
okay."
His words were true and she knew it as soon as she
looked at the gun. There was blood all over its front.
"Freshly fired, one round, maybe two," he diagnosed
and she nodded grimly. Somehow, if John had gotten
shots off or not, that gun had gone off. And it had
hit someone - but had it hit him? Was he now bleeding
of multiple gunshot wounds while someone had him in
their clutches? Terrified, she finally looked up at
Travis. "Get that thing to Agent Crane at the crime
lab. Tell him I want that blood typed and matched
against John's medical records. And for him to run a
Type A battery on the gun, too. I'll call it in."
Travis nodded, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I'm
sorry," he said quietly, and she nodded silently as he
bagged John's service weapon in a separate bag from
the electronic devices, then headed back to the car
they had driven to the site. Stark kneeled a moment
longer. This wasn't like John. If he'd known he was in
trouble, he would have left a sign. The question was,
where was that sign? And where would it lead her? Head
hung, the questions cycling through her mind, she
walked the short distance back to the car, where she
keyed the radio and said the words she had hoped she'd
never have to say.
"This is Agent Stark Patrick, off Preston Road,
outside Falls Church, Virginia ... I have a missing
agent with possible shots fired and related injuries.
This is his last known location. I am requesting a
full team and crime lab complement. Initial evidence
is on its way."
There was silence as she wiped mist from her eyes.
"10-4, Agent Patrick. Do you know the identity of the
agent?"
She paused, his name caught in her throat. The name
that always came so easily wouldn't come.
"Agent Patrick, do you..."
"Yes. I know him." She let out a choked cry, fighting
it back with every ounce of stoicism she could spare.
Not in front of the others. Later when she was alone,
maybe. But to cry now was an act of weakness which she
could not show. Which she could not have if she were
to find him. Hell, she couldn't believe he was gone.
She keyed the radio again. "He's my partner. John
Doggett. Special Agent John Doggett."
The radio handset collided with the steering column
when she let it fall from her hands. She simply could
not contain herself. There was no way she could face
that he was missing without crying, without suffering
for him, without wanting to trade places with him if
that would bring him back. She turned into the car and
let herself cry into the roof for a brief moment, then
stepped back and looked at herself. Not now. She had
to find him. She had to close the case, think like an
agent, not clouded with all those emotions. There
would be time for those and it was not now. She backed
away, then slammed a fist hard into the space above
where the door would have been. "Son of a bitch!" she
exclaimed, her hand stinging with the impact of flesh
and bone against reinforced metal. "They can't take
him away from me, this ... this can't happen, not to him
... not to him."
"Stark?"
She rubbed her red knuckles and looked at Travis.
"I'm fine."
He leaned against the federal sedan's hood, "Like
hell you are."
"Don't start with me," she cautioned, "don't goddamn
start with me."
"You always swear when you're screwed up," he
replied. "We'll find him. Don't put yourself through
this. We will find him."
She glared hotly at him. "You're the one who said he
can't be okay." Then she turned away, out to the
field, speaking deliberately. Speaking to him,
wherever he was. "He is my partner, and I will be here
and anywhere else, and I will find him."
Wherever John was, she hoped - no, she knew - he knew
she was coming for him.
END PART 1
It was like this: she may have put the picture in the
frame, but it was as if somebody had come along and
hit it with a hammer in that bizarre little way that
causes the glass of the frame to crack in God knows
how many pieces while still remaining in place, a
grotesque portrait of chaos frozen in time.
Twenty minutes after she made the call, the field off
Preston Road was swarming with fellow agents, some of
whom had been assigned to take the missing agent call
that the dispatcher had immediately red-flagged, some
of whom had come on their own once they had heard
exactly who it was that had gone missing - to some a
friend, to others a co-worker, to all of them someone
who they were more than willing to help locate. But
Stark Patrick knew well the Latonya Wallace probe of
1988 - she herself had opened the case again and
failed - and so she took appropriate cautions. A small
contingent of agents, those who knew John best and
those who she most trusted, worked the actual area
where the evidence had been found, the last place they
could tie her partner to. The others fanned out,
searching the massive field for any other sign. The
sign that Stark knew was out there. By the unspoken
rule, she had complete command, unquestioned and
unchallenged, of what was developing in that field off
Preston Road. When one of their own went missing, his
or her partner was always in charge. There could be no
better person, after all, and every agent knew the
feeling of revenge and desperation that came with
being the partner of a missing person. However, Agent
Stark Patrick, aside from occasional instructions and
directing of traffic, chose for the most part not to
assume the privilege.
She sat in the passenger seat of the gold sedan that
she had driven up to the scene, paperwork about her.
Open files lay on the driver's seat, across her lap,
on the dashboard; others were stacked neatly in the
back seat. They were the ones that had been lifted
from the Silverado, as well as anything Stark could
think of back at their office at the Hoover Building
that may have been relevant. Watching her go through
those meticulously kept, extensive file cabinets was
an exercise in sympathy, as she moved with a
calculated but frustrated motion, yanking out file
after file in the hope that one of them, somewhere in
the detailed reports, photographs, notations,
documents and so on and so forth that she and John had
always kept, would yield some sort of answer. It was
the only time she ever left that field off Preston
Road, and to those who knew her, it was not
surprising.
Now she paged again the one that had been open on the
passenger seat of her partner's truck, the Devane
case, on which they were supposed to be serving a
search warrant that very day in an attempt to close
the grand larceny case. Grand larcenies were never
hard to track with large numbers involved and Stark
had been sure that the case would close with the
warrant. John seemed to share that feeling. But there
would be none of the slight adrenaline rush of
breaking doors and hunting for the penultimate clue,
not in that case. Not with him.
Not with him. The words seemed impossible.
"What are you looking at?" Travis Jones asked as he
opened the driver's side door and leaned on it. As a
friend of both partners, he was point on the
contingent searching John's last pinpointed location,
along with his partner, who he'd grabbed from the CID
office, but hadn't really needed to. They were both
more than willing to help out, and they were the
closest friends in the office that Stark had. They
sincerely cared, and that was why Travis had the look
on his face that he did.
She glanced up after a moment. "Devane case. We were
serving the warrant today."
He nodded, then looked over his shoulder and back.
"Listen, I think there's something you're going to
want to see."
Stark was out of the car and circling it in a
heartbeat, falling into step with him. "What? What is
it?" she demanded impatiently, with the desperation
that had become commonplace in her voice, even if it
was carefully masked. Travis lead her down the hill
and back into the valley, towards where his group was
clustered, the spot that Stark knew well. The spot
where there was still blood on the grass.
Travis caught up with his partner, and said in a
quiet voice, "Show her, Gary."
Agent Gary Edson, who was Travis Jones' partner and
one of the best known agents for profiling, didn't say
anything that moment, simply stepped out of the way to
let Stark take a look at what his team had run across.
She stood there, hands on hips, as she had so often
done today, and stared. "What? What am I looking at?"
she asked Edson, who pointed down at the grass, which
was slightly singed. "It's been exposed to fire," he
explained, "but it didn't burn. As if something really
hot had landed on it. For example, a flashlight."
Travis handed Stark a pair of photos of another field
and Edson came over to join them to explain exactly
what it was she was looking at. "This is Bellefleur,
Oregon," Edson explained. "A while back, two guys
think they see something in this field, so they head
down there. One of them's carrying a flashlight. So
they head down there. Reports are that flashlight gets
really hot, starts glowing red, the one guy drops it
where it is. They start moving, but before they get
too far, God knows what happens and the guy who had
that flashlight disappears."
Stark looked down at the grass, then the photos. "The
gun." She glanced at the two agents. "You think it was
the gun?"
"We think so, yeah," Travis said. "They're both metal
objects."
She glanced back down at the photos, "Do they know
how or why this man disappeared?"
Edson didn't explain much but he didn't have to.
"It's an X-File." Seeing the wide-eyed look on her
face, he continued as if to soften her skepticism,
"There's a living witness. A guy named Billy Miles."
Stark paused. "So what you're saying is the best
theory that we have is that my partner is randomly
wandering out here because he saw something and he
wandered into, what, an alien spaceship? That my
partner was abducted by goddamn aliens?" Her voice
rose with incredulity by the end of the sentence and
she sighed. "No frickin' way."
"We're not saying that," Travis replied. "We're
saying it's a chance."
Stark hung her head. It all seemed so cyclical to
her. She'd heard from John the long, agonizing ordeal
of trying to find his missing son, and how it all
ended with a body in a field. John had chased Luke to
the ends of the earth - or at least to the end. And
now here she was, in a field chasing John possibly
beyond that. We'd better get one damn thing straight,
she told herself, this time it's not going to end with
any body in a field. Except for the people who did
this to him.
"Results from the crime lab are back," said another
agent in the distance.
Stark, Travis and Edson all looked in the direction
of the vehicles parked on the side of the road, where
the agent had the radio at the ready. Listening as
well were all the agents, who had stopped their
ministrations to hear the news that might make them or
break them. The agent exhaled. "Crane ran a blood
test. Part of that blood belongs to Agent Doggett."
Her eyes widened. "God," she said, not wanting to
think of the implication.
Travis interjected into her thoughts. "Part? What
about the rest?"
The agent shook his head. "They can't identify it."
The three agents looked from the photos to each other
as the facts slowly began to paint a picture that was
hard to believe. Aliens and flashlights and towns in
Oregon. This was not supposed to happen. One of the
best agents the Bureau had known in recent years could
not be snatched by little green men. And yet, there it
was.
Edson looked up at the sky. "He must have hit it."
Travis glanced at him. "The question is what it is."
"And where it is." Stark glanced up at the agent by
the vehicles, "Tell Agent Crane I want to talk to
him."
Edson and Travis, after putting the team with whom
they shared an office in charge for the moment,
pursued her back to the sedan. She set the photos on
the roof and continued to stare at them as she took
the radio from the agent and spoke exhaustedly to
Agent Gene Crane, who had been Doggett's go-to guy in
the crime lab. Is, she corrected herself. Present
tense. Nothing says we're going to find a body in a
field. Absolutely nothing. We've just got fucking
aliens, but no signs of a body anywhere.
She didn't add the known 'yet'.
She keyed the radio.
"Tell me that you're sure, Gene," she told him. "I
need to know that you're sure."
"I triple-checked it personally," Crane replied, his
voice earmarked with the same emotions and the
sympathy that she had been getting from everyone all
day. "There's no doubt in my mind. He fired two
rounds. Part of that blood is his, and the rest ... I
don't know what it is."
Stark sighed. "All right. Keep trying. The guys will
send stuff when they find it. I want you to take care
of it and contact me if you find anything."
"You know I will," Crane said, then paused. "We'll
find him, Stark."
"Yeah, we will." She hung up the radio back on its
holster in the sedan, then moved the files out of the
driver's seat and slid into their place, reaching for
her keys in her pants pocket. Travis and Edson, still
standing by the car, looked at her with questioning
glances. She moved the rest of the files off of the
front of the car and tossed the photos they had given
her onto the dashboard, then glanced up at them as if
to ask what they were waiting for.
"Get in the car," she commanded.
Travis popped open the back door as Edson circled
around. "Where are we going?"
Stark gunned the engine. "The basement."
Everything in the car flared to life. The engine, the
lights, everything came alive, much like the woman at
the wheel, who cleanly backed out with a rapid and
forceful turning of the wheel (she drove like a stunt
driver, John had remarked, like he was much better),
and then ground the gas pedal into the floor and got
away from Preston Road as fast as the federal vehicle
would allow. The question was not where she was
headed, but what she might be running from in that
desire for that burst of speed.
Of course, or at least until they winced and leaned
back in the seats, Travis and Edson forgot about the
CD player, and were greeted with a burst of Incubus at
an unholy volume.
A decade ago I never thought I would be
On the verge of spontaneous combustion
But I guess it comes with the territory
Exploding seems like an evident possibility to me
So pardon me while I burst into flames
I've had enough of the world and its people's mindless
games
So pardon me while I burn and rise above the flame
Pardon me ... I'll never be the same
"What a freakin' coincidence," was Travis's comment
from the back seat.
Edson looked at him unconvinced. "I don't believe in
coincidence."
For a moment, at least, the basement was not just for
the FBI's Most Unwanted. It was for them and a very
angry, very emotionally scattered, truly driven young
agent whose escorts had let her do the delving into
the infamous world of aliens and the unexplained. And
she bore that acquiesence well, moving with the same
deliberate swiftness she had since this whole thing
went down right before her eyes, the eyes now haunted
with having to be the first person to see it all. His
body may as well have been there; the effect was the
same. She didn't want to think about it as she opened
the door to the basement office.
Fox Mulder and Dana Scully looked to the woman in the
doorway simultaneously, but gave her their attention.
Mulder swiveled in his chair to face her and put down
the file he was reading. Scully, unobstructed, simply
waited. It was not often that they had visitors, and
everyone - even underground as they were - had heard
the news that something big involving one of their own
had broken this morning.
"Agent Mulder, Agent Scully," Stark said by way of
introduction as she stepped into their office and
closed the door.
"Can we help you with something?" Mulder asked,
"Agent..."
"Patrick, Stark," she said, her voice still worn and
perhaps tense. "The evidence seems to think that you
can. You investigated an X-File in Bellefleur, Oregon,
right?" she continued, laying the photos she had been
given on Mulder's desk.
He glanced at them. "Yeah. Billy Miles."
"So I've been told," she said.
"Agent Patrick," Scully cut in, "is there some sort of
connection between this and something that you're
working on? Is that why you need to know?"
Patrick nodded, turning to her. "Yes. My partner has
gone missing, and ... one of the agents at the scene
spotted similar burns on the grass in that field as in
the one in this photo." She sighed. "I'm the last
person who would believe," she said, "but everything
that I look at is telling me the same thing. My
partner - Agent Doggett - I think he's been abducted
by some sort of alien life form, and I'll do anything
you ask of me to get him back."
There was silence in the room for a moment until
Mulder spoke.
"Your partner's John Doggett?" he asked.
Stark glanced at him, "Yes. You know him?"
Mulder stood from behind his desk. "I heard this
morning that there had been a missing agent case. I
didn't expect that it would be him. We've never met,
but I heard he's high on the list of possible future
Directors of the FBI."
She shook her head. "I wouldn't know anything about
that."
Scully examined the photos, including the one Travis
had taken from the Preston Road scene, "She's right,
Mulder, I see a resemblance to Bellefleur in these
photos."
Mulder nodded. "Let's do what they pay us for,
Scully." Then he said the comment that he'd apparently
been waiting to say. "It's good to meet you, Agent
Patrick. I only wish it could be under better
circumstances."
Stark nodded soberly. "I think we all do, Agent
Mulder."
"Walk us through it, Agent Patrick," Mulder directed
as the five agents climbed out of the vehicle, which
had this time parked a distance back down the road
from what was quickly becoming a federal parking lot.
Stark did as she was instructed, taking point in the
procession and attempting to explain the dizzying
events of only the last few hours but what seemed like
days.
"John - Agent Doggett was due in by five. We were
serving several warrants today, one of which was going
to be in the early morning, maybe six-thirty. He
always calls when he's late, so when he didn't call or
show up, I tried both his cell phone and pager. I
couldn't reach him. I know the route he takes to
work," she continued, catching the weird look from
Mulder, "because I do, so I backtracked it until I
came across his truck. I looked around for maybe
twenty minutes, then I called Agent Jones. We started
the search."
They descended the hill into the field. Many agents
recognized Spooky Mulder and his partner on sight, but
their reactions were well under control, distracted by
the paramount task at hand. The detail team parted as
Stark lead Mulder and Scully to the location where
Travis had shown her previously, taking care to stay
far away from the blood.
"After a while of wandering around, Agent Jones found
Agent Doggett's cell phone and pager over here," she
pointed as she spoke, "and we found his gun over here.
It was freshly fired and fairly coated in blood on its
front end. Sending it down to the crime lab, we found
two rounds had been fired. Part of the blood was typed
against Agent Doggett's medical records and matched.
The other part of it, the crime lab can't identify."
Mulder and Scully looked at each other.
"His truck hasn't been broken into or tampered with,"
Stark continued. "I have a key to the vehicle so I
lifted the case files he'd been reading from the
passenger seat and into my car. The gun was of course
out of the glove box, but the vehicle was locked when
I arrived and it doesn't appear he left in a hurry.
Our theory is he saw something that demanded his
attention, made a U-turn - that would explain why it's
parked on this side of the road - got out of the truck
with his gun, locked the vehicle and proceeded into
the field where he..." She couldn't say the word, but
looked away. "I'm going to go back to the car."
Edson and Travis went back to managing the detail,
herding it away so that the two new agents could do
their jobs. Scully knelt by the spot of grass
indicated by the photo and began to take a sample for
comparison against what they had seen in Bellefleur.
"What do you think, Mulder?" she asked of her partner.
"Blood they can't identify, similar burns, another
field in the middle of nowhere..." Mulder looked up at
the sky. "It's a similar case, Scully. We've got to
give them that. And agents as highly touted as John
Doggett don't turn their vehicles around on their way
to work, leap out with their service weapons and lock
the doors on the way out on a lark. He saw something,
and my guess is it got him, but not before he got it."
Scully lifted several pieces of grass, some burnt but
not bloodied, some both, placing them into separate
small evidence bags. "It's an X-File, then."
"Yeah, much to the dismay of Agent Patrick out there,"
Mulder replied, looking at the agent who was speaking
briefly with another agent before she turned and
headed back toward the gold sedan.
"She does seem a little uncomfortable with it," Scully
observed.
"A little? I don't think she's ever heard the word
paranormal, or if she did she wasn't really
listening." Mulder sighed. "See what else you can
find. I'm going to talk to her."
"Mulder..."
Mulder looked back. "What?"
"Don't try and scare her the first time out."
He simply shrugged and headed off back up the hill,
leaving Scully to watch him go and shake her head. The
Bureau would simply love that the disappearance of one
of their agents tagged to make it all the way to the
top was entangled with something as tawdry as an
X-File. And she for one wasn't looking forward to the
hunting season that would occur when Mulder, or Agent
Patrick, or any of these other agents, turned in the
final report on their preliminary evaluation of just
what John Doggett was doing, where he might be and
what might be happening to him.
She turned back to the grass. There were times she
wished she had listened to her father.
But not many.
Mulder approached Agent Patrick, who was standing with
the driver's side door open either knowingly or
unknowingly, clearly interested in something she was
reading. He knew the feeling, he reflected with
sadness. He had been the same way for all those years
he'd been hunting for Samantha. She looked like she
had so much more ahead of her.
"You're hurting, aren't you?" he said.
She glanced up. "Excuse me?"
"For your partner. You'd do anything to take his pain
away from him." Mulder stepped over to her and said
with some stinging suffering of his own, "I know the
feeling."
She shook her head. "Not like this."
"No, I think I do." Mulder sighed. "Let me guess.
You've worked with him for a while."
"This is our fourth year."
"And he's always there when you need him, and before
you know it the two of you are the best of friends,
and you know everything that you need to know about
him, and you always swore that you would catch him
when he fell, because he always catches you, but this
time it's your turn and you don't really know what to
think because you never expected it would happen."
Stark clapped the file shut and looked hard at him.
"What are you trying to say, Agent Mulder?"
Mulder pointed down into the field, where Scully was
clearly visible, a small figure in the distance
identifiable by her height and distinctive hair color.
"Seven years now I've been working with Agent Scully.
We didn't trust each other at first, but now ... now I
don't know what I'd do without her. We've survived so
much together. She is, without a doubt, my life. And I
know that you have that same feeling. I can see it in
your eyes." He paused. "I understand that about you. I
understand the desperate chase of trying to find
someone who means so much to you. It's happened to me.
With Scully and with my sister. That's why you're so
determined to find him. You can't think about what
happens if you don't."
Now she got defensive. "No, no, no. There is no don't.
I'll find him." She shook her head. "Listen, Agent
Mulder, I know that people can be a little cutthroat
when it comes to talking about the X-Files, but I'll
let you know that I don't care if this involves aliens
or alien spaceships or aliens that transmogrify into
God knows what. All I care about is getting my partner
back."
Mulder watched her as she took a few steps away from
the car, away from him, with that irritated,
frustrated, down-on-her-everything look on her face,
looking out into the distance. Stark sucked in a
breath, then winced briefly as she felt a sharp pain
in her head. Her right hand went to her right temple
and she didn't know why. Then all of a sudden, it all
became clear.
Somewhere ... out in the middle of nowhere, much like
this moment ... was a place. A vision flashed across her
eyes. Somehow familiar, somehow not. Of a man she'd
never met in a place she'd never been to. But somehow,
she knew him, and she knew that place, and she knew
what she had to do.
"Agent Patrick?"
She turned, startled, to face Mulder. "What?"
"Are you okay?" he inquired, voice concerned.
She walked back towards him, shaking off the
telepathic vision she'd just seen. "Yeah, yeah, I'm
fine. I need you ... I need you to get Agent Jones and
Agent Edson and Agent Scully back in the car. Tell
them to put Agent Webb in charge. We need to get out
of here."
"To where?"
"Somewhere. I don't know. I saw it." She sighed. "Tell
Edson to get me a direct link to the NCIC Morpho."
Mulder paused. "Wait, you saw what?"
She looked back at where she'd been standing. "I just
saw something. It's like I went out of my mind, to, to
somewhere else. I saw this man at this place in the
middle of nowhere, and I just think I need to trust my
instincts and that's where we need to go."
Mulder nodded, in no mood to question. "I don't think
Scully's the only one that's psychic anymore," he
muttered to himself as he walked away and did as he
was told. Agent Jones, Agent Edson and Scully all
obediently came running at his call, leaving their
backup man, Agent Derrick Webb, in charge of the field
off Preston Road while what was quickly becoming known
as 'the Spooky caravan' piled themselves back into the
vehicle. Edson punched a few buttons on the computer
terminal in the front of the sedan, then got out of
the way so Mulder could sit in the passenger seat.
Stark turned the vehicle on, and this time everyone
got an earful of Psykosonic's "Panik Kontrol" much to
Travis and Edson's renewed discomfort. She didn't
notice, however, her fingers flying across the
keyboard as she input everything she had seen into the
search engine. Pictures flew across the screen as the
computer narrowed them down, then finally, it came to
a stop.
The man was in his late thirties, early forties,
haunted eyes and blond hair, with that crazy look like
you didn't know if he was going to go postal or not.
Stark let out a small gasp and Mulder glanced at her.
"What?" he said.
She was still speechless, wild-eyed, definitely
shocked. And frightened. Which considering that she
had kept up a wall of stoicism and a
never-let-them-see-you-sweat approach all day,
therefore scared Mulder.
"Do you know this guy?" he asked her.
Stark really didn't know what to say. "Not really.
I've never met him but for some reason, I just ... I saw
him in that vision. Who the hell is he and what the
fuck does he have to do with this?"
Mulder looked down at the printout. "Why don't we go
ask Mister," he looked down at the information portion
of the screen which was organized just enough as to
confuse him from finding the information he wanted.
Scully cut in impatiently, "What's his name, Mulder?"
"Absalom."
END PART 2
If the frame had already been shattered, it was a
matter of time before the picture followed suit. Stark
Patrick reflected on this as she stood in a whole
other field, far away from Preston Road, near the
Virginia border. Mulder, Scully, Edson and Travis all
stood beside her. Only Mulder had the ability to say
anything as they glanced around at where this
desperate chase had lead them.
"What are we looking for?"
Their 'leader' shook her head. "I don't know."
"Are we in the right place?"
"Yes."
"So what do we do?"
"Damn it, Agent Mulder, I don't know!" Her voice
reached a new volume there, a volume of frenzied
self-anger and self-hatred and disbelief and paranoia,
all emotions raging inside of her without her loyal
partner to keep her in check. The sound of her voice,
the force behind it, stunned them all into renewed
silence in the moments before she regained control of
herself, speaking then in a distraught tone. "While
you were rounding up the troops, I called a friend of
Agent Doggett's that may be able to help us find out
something. She should be here any minute."
Another voice then, as if on cue: "Agent Patrick?"
Stark's head jerked up at the woman coming down the
embankment to join them, and she mustered a weak
smile. "Agent Reyes. Thank you for making it."
Reyes held her comment until she was face to face
with the younger agent. She flashed a smile, but her
eyes were haunted with the same cognizance of the news
that Stark had given her over the phone. "I was able
to get an immediate flight. When you said that this
was about Agent Doggett ... I didn't see it as an
option."
"I appreciate that." Stark turned to her companions.
"Agent Reyes, I'd like you to meet Agents Mulder and
Scully of the X-Files section, and Agents Jones and
Edson of Criminal Investigations. This is Agent Monica
Reyes. She worked a case with Agent Doggett," she
explained, omitting exactly which case. They didn't
need to know about that. It was far too personal and
it was irrelevant this moment.
Reyes took over before Stark had to struggle with
finding more words. "Agent Patrick filled me in on
what you have so far, what got you here, this
connection to this man Absalom. I took the liberty of
seeing what the NCIC knows about him." She paused for
effect. "He was the former leader of a cult in Idaho
based around his idea that the aliens would take over
the world at Y2K," she ignored Mulder's smirk at that
statement. "When the little green men failed to
appear, he disappeared from there and he mostly does
credit card fraud these days. His last known location
was somewhere in Oregon."
Scully spoke what everyone was thinking.
"Bellefleur."
"I wouldn't rule it out," Reyes allowed for the
possibility. She glanced up as she formulated her next
sentence. "I searched all federal, state and
correctional databases in the state of Virginia within
a ten-mile radius of Preston Road for the last week.
Absalom was arrested for credit card fraud and grand
larceny three days ago. He's currently being held at
the state correctional facility pending his
arraignment which is scheduled for the day after
tomorrow. It's some eight miles from Preston Road."
Edson paused. "So our theory is what, this mystery man
escapes a state prison and is randomly wandering
around this field and abducts Agent Doggett?"
Scully shook her head. "No. It doesn't make sense.
Absalom is human. The crime lab would have gotten a
hit on his blood. He would have been in the system by
today."
Mulder thought this through, "What if he was after the
same thing that Agent Doggett was after?" He glanced
at Reyes, "Is he accounted for at the facility?"
She nodded. "I had the warden check personally."
"Then how did he escape?" Travis posed. "If we know
how he made it, it might be a clue to finding out how
to beat this thing."
"He escaped because it wanted him to," Stark spoke up
finally. She glanced firmly at Reyes. "What if - what
if Absalom was baiting John on purpose? To get him
into the hands of this ... this thing. And that's why it
didn't take him. And then he knows where John is."
Reyes nodded. "That's one hell of a theory."
"It's the best one I've got." She sighed. "What do
they want with him?"
Reyes put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't think about
it."
"I have to. It's the solution." Stark stepped back and
started up the embankment. "I want to talk to this
guy. I want to know what connection he has to this. I
want the answer and I think he's got it."
Mulder paused. "All lies lead to the truth?"
Scully had the rejoinder for that one. "The spirit is
the truth, Mulder."
"Something you put on your tombstone." Mulder let out
a dry chuckle. "Excuse me if that's not confidence
inspiring." He looked up at Agent Patrick, headed for
their vehicle. "We will find him, Agent Patrick. I
promise you that."
"Thank you, Agent Mulder," she said sadly. "I hope
that that's true."
The Virginia State Central Correctional Facility was
nowhere that Stark had ever personally been. She had
been to Crystal City and the Federal Statistics Center
there once or twice when she'd been assigned
administrative duties for the Assistant Director, but
she had never been involved with the Department of
Corrections. She wished that she had, however. It
would have taken the edge off walking into an
interrogation room and resisting the urge to fly
across the table and strangle the man looking at her
with vacant eyes.
"Where the hell is my partner?"
Absalom still looked dazed. "I don't know what you're
talking about."
"Preston Road. This morning. You had my partner
abducted," she said tersely, throwing down a handful
of photos in front of him, including copies of the
snapshots that she had shown the others, and another
of Doggett's current ID photo. Absalom made no move to
examine them.
"Did I?" He almost seemed amused. "They say that I've
done lots of things. Not all of them are true."
"Don't play this with me," she said, leaning across
the table, getting into his face, restraining herself
with everything that took. "You believe that the
aliens are coming. You baited them with my partner.
You baited my partner and they have him and you know
how I can end this. Tell me what happened. Tell me how
to stop it."
"I don't know what happens beyond the fields." He
sighed as if he was trying to be helpful. "They tell
me who. They get them there. I make sure that the
people are there when they arrive. Then they complete
the transfer."
Stark was quickly losing patience. "They told you to
take my partner. You're telling me they somehow made
it that he would have to see you out there. You
distracted him long enough for them to take him and
now you don't know?" She let out a bitter laugh but
inside she was scared. If this were true, then these
people ... these things ... whatever that had snatched
John from her had to know more about him than they
should. That he had to pass Preston Road in the
morning. And they were waiting for him. But 'why'
still bit at the back of her mind. She had the
middleman. She wanted the enterprise.
"Tell me how to find him."
Absalom paused. "When they are through ... sometimes
people return. Those who do not have their place in
the grand plan. Or those that do."
"Don't doublespeak when you're talking to me." She
reached over and grabbed him by the collar. "Where do
they go? When? How the hell will I know when it's his
time? Tell me the answer!"
"A week previously it was a woman. They returned her
the day before I arrived here. To their compound."
"Shit." She paused. "Four days ago. That means that
John has three days left. Where the hell is this
place?"
"You were there."
"The second field." Stark shook her head. "God damn
it!"
Red flashed before her eyes. Blood red. And she pulled
back a fist and let go, colliding with Absalom's
forehead, sending him tumbling back, to the concrete
floor with a sickening sound. Almost instantly she was
over him again, ready to end it all, not caring what
might happen. But Mulder burst through the door and
grabbed her, holding her back, pulling her away before
she had a chance to strike the killing blow. She
almost thought it was unnecessary. Only the eventual
opening of Absalom's eyes told her that she hadn't
already killed him.
"What do you think you're doing?" Mulder demanded.
She bit her lip to control her anger. "It's justice."
"For who?"
"For John. For me. For all of us." She couldn't look
away from Absalom. "He set John up. He's set them all
up. He's responsible. Him and his alien masters. This
is about justice."
Mulder shook his head. "If he's right ... in three days
your partner's going to come back to that second
field, to that building. Let's find it. Let's be ready
for him. Don't waste your time on this."
"It's not a waste of time."
She broke out of Mulder's hold and stormed out of the
interrogation room, where she collapsed against the
wall and closed her eyes. This made no sense. If
Absalom was correct, this wasn't just about her
partner anymore. It was about God knew how many other
people and whatever was wanted with them. Which posed
the question: what did they want with John? And how
far were they willing to go to get it? How far were
she and her own willing to go to get him back?
There was no decision.
As far as it took.
Three days and it might all be over.
Or it could just be beginning.
"Stark..."
"Damn it, not now, Jones." She turned and started
walking back down the corridor, even though she knew
he would follow. It had almost been simpler, easier,
when it was just a missing persons case. But if this
was all about some huge abduction conspiracy, it was
out of proportion. And perhaps more frightening, out
of her hands. She finally turned and stopped when they
were out of the earshot of all the others, catching
Travis's concerned gaze one more time.
"What did he tell you?"
"That if John's abduction follows the pattern of the
one before..." Her voice started to crack. "If it does ...
then in three days they'll put him back at this
compound back in that field I saw."
"How'd you see it anyway?"
"I don't know. Maybe it was panic. Maybe John's
communicating to me. Maybe they want me next." She
sighed. "I can't wait three days, Jones. I need him
with me now."
"The warrants can wait."
"It's not about the warrants. It's about having my
partner back. About doing all the things we usually
do. Having those drinks after work to celebrate
closing those cases. Filing those reports exactly in
the right order. Driving over the speed limit. Having
actual conversations that don't always have to be
about work. Hell, just the sound of his voice..." She
was starting to cry now, and she hated it. She was not
supposed to show weakness in front of fellow agents.
John was the only one she felt comfortable letting her
wall down around. And remembering that only made this
sudden fit of separation anxiety worse. "I need him
back, Travis. Not as my partner. As my friend." She
echoed Mulder, knowing he was right. "As my world."
Travis nodded. "Maybe you should go home."
"I'm not going home," she said, perhaps a bit
harshly. "I'm not going home. I can't sleep anyway and
it's not even the evening yet. I'm going to find this
compound and I'm going to wait for him."
"It's three days, Stark. There's time."
"Time to screw things up, you mean." She shook her
head. "Let's go. We're done."
"Let's find this place," he echoed her. "Then promise
me you'll go home and try to get some sleep."
"What if it's not my apartment?"
He looked at her, confused. "Where else would it be?"
She fingered another key on her key ring. "Falls
Church."
"Damn it, don't do that to yourself," he said, knowing
what she meant.
"Don't do what? As much as I hate to admit it - he's
the one man that I need in my life. And he's not here.
It's the only place I know left to me where I can
turn."
Except, she said silently to herself, another field
near the Virginia border.
Where somewhere out in its distance was a compound.
A compound that belonged to forces beyond her
understanding.
Who in three days would come there again.
And in doing so return her partner to this earth.
And make everything clear.
And give her a chance for revenge.
END PART 3
The first day had been a nightmare, which, after more
questioning of their only living lead, became a rush
from one place to another in an attempt to put it all
together. Traveling back out to that second field at
the Virginia border to scout a so-called compound,
which when they looked at it appeared to be no more
than an abandoned structure. Stark almost couldn't
believe this was her key to finding John again. Then
she returned to the Preston Road site to get a
heads-up with Derrick Webb, and she had left Edson and
Jones there to go back to securing that scene while
Derrick took her back to meet with Gene Crane and go
over the new findings and the exhaustive batteries of
tests that they had run on everything that came back.
After that she had sat in her - their - office and
gone over more case files until Derrick had gotten a
hold of her and personally insisted that she go home.
And she had, for maybe an hour or two, enough to
answer more phone messages with condolences from those
just now hearing about her desperate manhunt and to
pack some of her things, and then she drove out to
Falls Church, being careful not to pass the site where
work was still going on in the early evening before
she arrived at the last place anyone thought she
should be. She hadn't slept there, either.
Day two didn't get much better. She had come in late,
spending her morning on John's couch going over case
file after case file and her rapidly expanding file
from his disappearance, putting all the pieces into
place in a whirlwind of papers, photographs, reports,
statements and even maps. While the facts began to
gel, the truth remained that she was playing her whole
hand on an unexpected vision and an unreliable
explanation, and that none of it really made sense.
However, the compound in the Virginia border field was
the best that she had, and she was going to take the
leap, she decided as she headed back into the Hoover
Building's maelstrom. There she got a full briefing
from Derrick, Travis and Edson, who had done the same
thing she had on a larger scale. They compared notes
in the FBI's huge main conference room with a
half-dozen white boards and the two dozen agents
involved in the probe, reconstructing John's last
hours, what they knew about the abduction cases, and
what in one matched with something in the other. That
took a few more hours. Then Derrick and the guys had
insisted on taking Stark out to a local club, where
she had her share of drinks but couldn't shake the
feeling that her partner had two more days before he
was coming home to her. If he was at all. No, she
corrected, he was coming home.
But it wasn't easy for her to think that. Even she
had begun to doubt, even in her blind rage. It wasn't
like he was coming home from a vacation he'd forgotten
to tell her about. He had been purposefully abducted.
Things were different now. And she had failed to
consider what might happen when he came back. Would he
be different? He had to be. Yet she didn't want to ask
questions she couldn't answer. She had enough of
those.
Day three went in slow motion, an agonizing reminder
that if all went well, the next day they would end
this whole roller coaster of suffering. There was
another six-hour morning planning session in the
conference room, then they had walked through John's
last hours as best as they were able to put them
together, trying to reenact the events, trying to find
therein the answer. That evening Mulder and Scully
returned from a brief sojourn back to Bellefleur,
where they had gone over details of the abductions
there with details of Doggett's, and reported with
more than a little regret how for the most part they
had found nothing of any real use in finding her
partner. Everyone returned to the conference room to
develop their plan for the next day. Absalom and
common sense dictated everything would come down at
night, but they wanted to be ready for any moment, any
happening. They had come too far - and perhaps too
fast - to let this slip out of their hands now. None
of them slept that night.
But the day had finally arrived. Day four. The day
when, with all luck, John Doggett would be coming back
to them. And watching Stark in his Falls Church home,
Monica Reyes was grateful for that on more than one
account - and especially on the account of the woman
she'd been assigned to watch over, the woman who
needed him most.
"Why are you still here?" she'd prompted.
"Hey, I'm cleaning."
Monica glanced around. "I thought the place was
pretty clean to begin with."
"It is."
"I didn't think you cleaned."
"I don't."
Monica crossed from the kitchen to the couch where
Stark had finally taken a rest. "I'm feeling a lot of
frustration from you."
"With good reason."
"Stark, we have everything planned out. Trust us."
Stark nodded. "But see, here's the thing: plans go
wrong. The unexpected happens. Weapons jam. Vehicles
die. People screw up. And I need this case to go down.
I need my partner back." She sighed. "He's been the
only partner I have ever known. I don't have family.
My sister's dead, my father's dead, and my mother and
I aren't on speaking terms. John has watched my back
for four years and that says a lot in this world. I
can't take the chance to trust in anything until I see
it with my own eyes. I won't lose him on a
technicality."
Monica could only return the gesture in
understanding. "I know."
"I know you do." She paused, her brain changing gears
as her wall came up once again. "When's the preflight
meeting?"
"Six o'clock in the field."
"Damn it. It's only two."
And so the rest of the day went, counting down the
hours, counting down the minutes, until finally it was
time to leave and Stark and her chaperone headed from
Falls Church toward the border. There was no music
this time, no discussion, only contemplative silence.
Desperate silence. Double-checking, triple-checking,
it-has-to-be-right silence. It was an operation of
risk to begin with and the circumstances didn't help.
Mulder had argued against bringing the entire task
force to bear on the border field compound, reminding
them that extraterrestrials were not stupid, and if
they noticed the extreme manpower, which they would,
the team put their chances of getting Doggett back in
jeopardy. With that idea shot down, the statistics
were not pretty. Three days of planning lead to seven
agents - Stark, Mulder, Scully, Reyes, Edson, Jones
and Webb - in this field waiting for the appearance of
extraterrestrial life with only their service weapons,
Kevlar vests, handheld radios and whatever else they
could requisition from the FBI's vaults - which,
considering the nature of the investigation, was
anything they wanted, provided it didn't make a scene.
"Are we good to go?" Stark demanded as she stopped
the car by the side of the road and walked over to
meet the rest of the assemblage.
Travis handed her a vest and a radio. "As good as
we're going to be."
"I'll take those chances." Stark checked her Ehrlich
400 for darts, micromissiles, gas pellets and the
working laser, then put it back in its holster. She
clipped the radio to her belt and continued to suit
up, including the Kevlar vest and two arm bracers that
fit under her jacket which contained some suitably
sharp knives.
Around her, the others did the same. There seemed to
be no thing as too much preparation. The radio test
worked and Edson seemed to be comfortable toting
around a suitably decent-sized assault pistol. They
were all on edge. The more power they could possibly
have at their disposal, the better they felt, and
Stark had no problem with that. Over the days her
perception had colored: she didn't just want her
partner back, she also now hungered for revenge.
"How long are we going to have to wait?"
Derrick checked his watch. "According to your man,
anywhere from an hour to four or five."
"Yeah, well let's hope it's not that long," Mulder
said as he began to lead the agents down the
embankment into the field.
It was a fifteen or twenty-minute trip from the
roadside to the middle of nowhere in which the
compound was situated. It remained largely as they had
seen it before: devoid of activity, empty, silent, yet
somehow ominous. As if it, too, were waiting. But the
wait was longer. Not as long as Absalom had suggested
it might be, but long enough to set everyone on edge,
plant doubt in everyone's minds. It was pitch black
and nine-something when the sky was suddenly
illuminated by the brightest of lights that made
everyone recoil, and simultaneously know this was the
moment they were waiting for. They stood from their
vantage point as the sky became one blinding whiteness
and took their last chance.
Stark began issuing orders over the volume of the
quivering earth that had begun. No one knew what
precisely they were after, as the light obscured the
ship, but no one needed to see it to know it was here.
They had precious little time before UFO hunters and
other tabloid types would notice and seize upon the
scene, and by then it would be too late.
"Watch your weapons, you know what happens with metal
objects! Travis, Gary, take the back! Derrick, Agent
Reyes, take the left side, Agent Mulder, Agent Scully,
the right side!"
Mulder glanced at her. "What about you?"
"I'm going in the polite way. The front door."
And she bolted down the hill, simultaneously
unsheathing the Ehrlich, which shined bright silver in
the blinding light. It began to grow warm, but she
ignored the feeling, breaking in the front door of the
compound and seeing just what the hell Absalom was
talking about.
The building was illuminated, warmed by the arrival,
and the people that were suddenly there - she hadn't
remembered seeing them before, at least - were barely
awake. There were people that just happened to be
there. It didn't make sense. But one of them had to be
her partner. She heard the back door break in,
followed by movement on both the right and left sides
of the building as timbers around gaping holes in the
walls gave way and clattered uselessly to the floor.
It was time to storm the place. The others would take
care of these people. She had but one man on her mind.
Stark began with the room where Absalom had said he
had found the woman, Teresa Hoese. She took a deep
breath and kicked in the door.
There was no one there.
"Damn it!" she swore, looking up at the ceiling, at
that light, with hatred in her eyes. What were they
playing? Or did they even - No. They had to have him.
But how could she tell?
Then it hit her. The light seemed to be, rather than
one light, several specific beams, overilluminated by
the massive spotlight that always seemed to come with
these things in every photo she'd been shown over the
past few days. All she had to do was find which one of
those beams had her partner's location broadcast.
A gunshot rang out and somebody shouted something.
She didn't care. She'd find out later.
It was on the fifth of eight that she let out a
breath she'd been holding far too long and started
crying.
"John!" she'd yelled when she saw him, then back out
the door, to the others, "I've got him!"
He looked like hell, she reflected as she went to her
knees beside him. He looked dead. But he couldn't be
dead. That was not possible. He wasn't even conscious,
but he was there. He was pale and he felt somewhat
cold to the touch as if he'd been out in harsh
conditions way too long. Stark bit her lip. He could
not die here. This could not end this way. She covered
her partner with her jacket, the fabric catching the
tears she was crying. Reaching over, she put her
fingers against his neck. He could not die. This was
not happening.
"I've got a pulse!"
-------------
Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever going to make it home
again
It seems so far and out of sight
I really need someone to talk to and nobody else
Knows how to comfort me tonight
Snow is cold, rain is wet
Chills my soul right to the marrow
I won't be happy 'til I see you alone again
Till I'm home again and feeling right
I want to be home again and feeling right...
- "Home Again," Vonda Shepard
END
TO BE CONTINUED...
=====
"Oh, for God's sake, please be somebody else."
- Lewis Black
Natalie: Two guys have ascended 5 miles into the sky. They
walked up a wall of ice and are preparing to knock on the
door of heaven itself. There's really no end to what we can
do. You know what the trick is?
Dan: What?
Natalie: Get in the game!
- "The Quality of Mercy at 29K", "Sports Night"
