Good luck -CJ
Pilot
Coworkers at the FBI always told her pant suits are out dated and women had to wear skirts now. She didn't have enough ways to say "fuck off". So, she walked through the halls, shoulders squared and eyebrows cinched, to the head of the department. She had gotten a call two or three weeks ago about reassignment, and had a sneaking suspicion that she would be transferred to Criminal Profiling. She didn't mind a whole lot, especially since Archive had gotten so boring. She knocks on the office door with purpose.
A muffled 'come in' is heard, she let's herself in. "Ah, Agent Albarn, I trust they are treating you well where you work." Sid Barrett smoothly says over his newspaper. A strange, tall blonde haired woman in a well-tailored suit and skirt combo stalks in the corner of the room. The room wreeks of cigarette smoke.
She nods, carefully eyeing the visitor in the room. "Don't worry about her, she's a friend of the department." Sid assures, "Anywho, I came here to offer you a new position."
She smiles, "I figured that's what this was about."
"Have you heard of Agent Evans, Maka?"
"I have," she says, taken aback.
"And how is that?"
"Well, when I went through the academy, there were rumors. He was the one who wrote the psychologic profile that caught the Kishinev killer, I always admired that." She says, "They called him The Soul Eater when he was brought up, though."
"Are you aware what he has been working on as of late?" The woman in the back of the room asks.
"No, I am not." She turns around in the chair. She stares at the woman for sometime, she has greasy looking hair is a smug face that is just pissing her off.
"The X-Files." Sid supplies.
"The X-Files? Meaning all the files that are unsolved?" She's confused at this point.
"Those are the ones. He's going through them, relating them to unexplained phenomenon that are recent. We're assigning you to work to with him." Sid leans into his desk towards her.
"Am I to believe you want me to debunk these X-Files?"
"We trust you will use your analytic expertise, you'll know what to do." Sid smiles at her.
"Where is this department?" Maka asks.
"The basement."
Maka sighs, but doesn't say anything. She's gets up and heads for the door without a word. Of course he's in the basement.
"We look forward to your field reports, Agent Albarn." The strange woman adds while lighting up a cigarette.
She nods and makes her way to the office of one Solomon Evans.
She opens the door and already she can tell she has her work cut out for her, the place is a slew of papers and old take out boxes. Does he live down here? Before she even spots him in the corner, flipping through files erratically, she hears a voice like it hadn't spoken in ages.
"'Fraid you've got the wrong room, this is where the loons and dated photocopiers dwell."
"Maka Albarn, I was sent to help you with your work." She strides over to him and extends her hand.
He sighs, obviously pissy about something and quits the paperwork he's doing then spins around. He looks at her hand in disgust. "Evans."
"I know." She puts her hand back to her side, "Do you have any work you'd like me to start on?"
Evans hands her a file from the top of his very cluttered desk, it says something about recent killings in Oregon, strange killings that are going unnoticed and almost covered up.
"What's this about?"
"'S suspicious and I wanted to see the cliffs down there." He shrugs
"You're kidding, right?"
All he does is flash her a grin, almost manic looking.
"You're a medical doctor, right Albarn?" He pulls up a projector and turns it on.
The image is of the small of a woman's back, two inflamed circles lay off to the right, but they're too big to be any insect.
"Can you tell me what these look like?" He's trying to choke back his grin.
She studies the photo for a beat, "Maybe.. Needle entries, burns possibly? They're too big to be anything from an animal." She squints.
"And how's your chemistry?" He changes the picture, "This is the residue that was left on the wound."
"It's organic in nature.. But I've never seen anything like this." She turns to him, puzzled.
"Eight people from this girls graduating class have been found dead or gone missing in the past three months."
"And you plan to investigate?" Maka looks at him, incredulous.
"Get your sleep, Albarn, we leave for the rainy state of Oregon at eight in the morning."
She doesn't sleep.
It's not like she ever really does, She runs off coffee and sheer will-power. She's busy doing paperwork most of the night because department transfer forums don't write themselves. By the time she's done, she has to pack. She doesn't believe that there is a such thing as too many jackets, especially for a place that rains for weeks on end, so she mostly packs sweaters and wind breakers.
On the cab ride over to the airport, she reads the case file total of six times. By the second, she realizes she's been duped but decides rather to than being angry, she should really analyze this Solomon character before she trusts him anymore. He lead her to believe that these kids have all died the same way, but only three of them had been connected to the case, maybe. That was still enough, but why lie?
What's this guy's' angle?
They have seats next to each other and she pulls out a book to pass the time on the flight. Quantico is a little over five hours from Portland on the plane.
Checking into a motel was the easiest part of the whole trip and even that was a nightmare. It's been no less than two hours since they landed and he has already dragged her to the last known crime scene. It's a clearing in a heavily wooded forest on the outskirts of Eibon, which has a not-so-beautiful coastline of jagged rocks and crashing waves. She is so out of her element. She watches Agent Evans look for tracks and any amount of evidence that was overlooked by the local PD.
"Are you going to help me or just stand there and look pretty?" He says over his shoulder.
"Maybe if you tell me what you're looking for I could be of assistance."
"Foreign substances." He chuckles and sifts through some dirt where the body was found.
They spend quite a bit of time there, through two small showers of rain. She thinks that with all this rain, there's no way any great evidence could survive. Just as she's about to call it quits, she finds what can only be described as a thinly lined trail that goes over the mound of dirt and stops. At the end, she finds fine, white powder and calls over her partner.
"Evans, you better see this."
"I sent it to the lab, I don't know what you want me to do otherwise." She pinches the bridge of her nose and tries to get back to her book.
"I want to figure this out! Why can't it go any faster?" He whines and falls back onto her bed.
"Why can't you throw a fit in your room?"
"Because no one will listen to me if I'm alone, Albarn." He flops over and looks at her, "No that this is much different."
"What can I say? My book is more interesting than the same thing you've been saying for six hours."
"No," he plucks her book out of her hands, "come on, let's go back to the scene, I'm sure we've missed something."
She glares up at him and where he holds the book, "Excuse me, but it is eleven o'clock at night and I still have my field report to write."
"Albarn, please? Enlighten me. You can tell me you told me so if nothing happens."
There's a long beat of silence, he's pleading and she's really regretting taking this job. She likes to be exhausted by herself, thank you.
"Fine" she stands and grabs one of the rather large windbreakers she had brought along out of her suit case.
"You're an angel." He grins wildly at her, "You won't regret it."
"I'm holding you to that."
The fact that they argued who was going to drive in the thunderstorm should've clued her into how grueling the whole endeavor was going to be. She's driving, thank god, because he's a maniac and goes far, far too fast. He reminds her of her father in the way, a man who can't admit when he's wrong and who has one hell of a drive to finish what he started. She hopes Agent Evans doesn't end up as useless as her father did, though. She hopes she can trust him.
"Wait, slow down!" He says from the passenger seat, "Stop the car! Did you see that?" He leans and peers up at the sky and looks horrified and exhausted and excited at the same time.
"What are you talking about?" She slows the car to a stop and shifts it to park.
"Look up, I could've sworn I saw some-"
White. Everything went from extremely dark and cold to a white hot bright light. She thinks she hears him, but he sounds so far away, where is he? It's bright like this for only a second, or maybe it's hours. She doesn't know. She remembers the clock reading twelve twenty six before this all happened, and she half expects it to be eight hours later when she gets back. When will she get back? Where is Agent Evans? She calls for him and he doesn't respond.
The darkness bleed back into her vision slowly, but she hasn't stopped calling for her partner. Her hearing comes back with the steady beat of rain on the windshield, but she still can't hear him.
"Solomon?!" She is frantic and patting the seat next to her, eyes still adjusting to the darkness of the car.
"Huh, "he pats her hand, "I'm here, I'm here, don't call me that."
"Pardon me for abandoning honorifics after something like that." She quips.
"Yeah, what happened?" He rubs his scalp, "My head is killing me."
"Mine too," She looks at the clock, "What?"
"What?" he mimicks, unsure of why she sounds so terrified.
"I- the time? That doesn't make any sense, " She looks to him as if he could save her from how her gut is wrenching, "It was, I mean, it's been fourteen minutes, Evans."
His eyes grow in size and she thinks he's as scared as she is, that is until he grins at her more widely than she's ever seen.
"We're missing time?" He opens the car door and steps to the rain as it empowers him more than saps his heat away.
"Evans, what the hell?" She steps out too, glaring through sheets of rain.
"Maka, do you know what almost every single person who has said they had contact with extraterrestrial life forms swore?" He's still grinning.
"Lost time.," she whispers and feels her heart almost cave in.
He laughs into the night, ecstatic and soaked to his bones.
"Get in the car, Solomon, we're going back." She says and he whips around. He wants to correct her again but knows it won't help any. She's scared and he's not setting her at ease at does as she asks and slips into the car, soaking the fabric seats.
The ride back is dead quiet, the sound of his partners breathing pattern and random drips of water from their hair falling. She's schooled her emotions into a more professional outlook, and as they pull up to the motel she says, "Go shower and get a dry pair of clothes then come to my room, we need to talk about it."
He says nothing and obeys, how do you talk about something you can't even explain to yourself?