Author's Note: Well, all this stuff belongs to the appropriate owners and
all that, except for Kathryn who belongs to me. Thanks to all my fanfic
readers out there who like my Harry Potter stories and enjoyed this one.
Read the sequel if you like Looking Glass. ;-)
The X-Files:
Through the Looking Glass
Chamberlain High, Bar Harbor Maine
The ninth grade class continued to work in silence with only the occasional giggles and laughs from some of the students. The teacher, Ms. Warner, was not, after all, a teacher to be reckoned with. The class outcast quietly sat by herself, the nearest class member three computers away from her. It didn't bother her that everyone else was whispering and looking in her general direction, and she continued to diligently work at her computer, hacking into the school's main computer. Suddenly one of the students got up and sat down next to her. He pretended to work at his newly acquired computer, but hissed at her between gritted teeth, "You think you're cool because you can change your grades by hacking, don't you?" The girl continued to ignore him and kept on typing just as furiously as ever. "So now you think you're too cool to answer me? Why don't you take this." He reached behind her monitor and yanked out the power cords leading to her station. The entire class stifled their own individual laughs, desperate not to be caught. As her monitor slowly hummed down to silence, she turned to look at him. "Do you like computer games?" she asked. "I kick at computers," he said, "I'd beat you no contest at any game. Girls are just stupid little things anyway, and they're easy to beat, in games or out."
She fired up her station again, and she poured several lines of code into the computer using her fingers, "You can beat any game?" she asked. "Just try me," he snapped, leaning in close to her. "I'm more than willing to try," she said, "and I'll see you inside." She pressed enter and executed all the lines of code. Electricity exploded from his monitor, and seemed to wrap its' deadly coils around his head, and his eyes appeared glued to the monitor, and his body shuddered. She continued to stare into her own monitor as the class screamed in horror and several boys tried to free their friend, but to no avail and several shocks. His skin bubbled and blistered, pus erupting from several pockets in his face. The power surging through his computer melted the mouse to the pad and the speakers screamed in their highest frequency and blew out their sockets. The glass of the monitor imploded, and smoke poured from it. The keyboard began to melt and the white wiring leading it to his tower glowed red-hot. Then, as suddenly as it had started, his station fell silent and his head bashed lifelessly into his keyboard, and he did not move. She remained at her station, staring at the monitor, listening to the screams behind her, and silently, unnoticed to the rest of the class, she smiled.
Washington D.C., FBI
"Kathryn Anne Williams," Mulder said to Scully, handing her the file. Scully leafed through it casually as Mulder continued on. "She was sitting right next to a boy named William James Forrester, when he was electrocuted by his computer in the middle of their keyboarding class. Witnesses are saying that she didn't do anything to try and help him, nor did she even scream or run from her seat when it happened. A little strange isn't it? I mean just for her to watch as a fellow classmate had his face bubbled off and his eyeballs roasted." "She could have been too traumatized to want to move Mulder. She could have been too scared," Scully replied as they got into a Bureau car. "Yeah, I suppose I could see that but the fact that she simply asked the teacher once he was finished being charbroiled, 'Is class dismissed and if so may I go home?' is a little disturbing for a junior high student, don't you think?" Scully didn't say anything as they began to drive to Bar Harbor, Maine.
"Mrs. Williams? Hello I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder and this is my partner Special Agent Dana Scully," he said both of them casually pulling out their I.D.'s while they stood on the front stoop of the Williams home. "Oh," she said slowly, "you must be here to ask her about the Forrester boy. It was so horrible when I heard about it on the news…" "So Kathryn didn't tell you about it when she got home?" he asked. "No, she didn't. Please come in, and I'll go get her." They quickly stepped into the living room as she went to go get Kathryn. "That's a little unusual don't you think?" Mulder asked, "So sweetie what did you do today? Oh nothing much just saw a kid get his skin roasted off. Don't you think that would be the top priority to tell mom over your science homework?" Scully ignored him as she casually scouted out the living room, looking at a few family pictures on the mantelpiece. In every one, the girl that she could assume was Kathryn was wearing black. Just then, Mrs. Williams came out, her daughter Kathryn following behind her. "Kathryn, this is Agent Mulder and Agent Scully," she said, gesturing to them. They both smiled at Kathryn, who did not return it. "You think I killed him, don't you?" she said as she sat down on the family couch. Mulder sat down next to her, "No, we don't think that you killed that boy. But you were sitting right next to him, and we were wondering if there was anything that you saw that the rest of the class didn't see."
"How about a black heart and a pus brain?" she retorted as she folded her arms across her chest. "Kathryn!" Mrs. Williams snapped at her. "It's okay ma'am," Mulder replied, holding up a hand. She kneaded her hands angrily, "I'll be in the kitchen if anybody needs me." "Kathryn," Scully began, "we would appreciate your cooperation in our investigation as best as you can, okay? We understand how hard it must have been to see something as bad as what happened to William Forrester." "Ha!" she laughed, "Bill was an idiot anyway, and he didn't have a brain as far as I could tell. That boy was gonna add up to a big pile of nothin' if he ever grew up." Mulder ignored her angry remark but filed it for later use, "Kathryn, did you see anything unusual while Bill was electrocuted?" "Other than his skin boiling off?" she said sarcastically. She sat back in the couch and said, "I just saw a bunch of electricity wrapping itself around his head and then he hit the keyboard." Scully opened her mouth to say something but Mulder said, "I think we've troubled Miss Williams for long enough Scully. Let's go."
"I think we could have asked her a bit more than just that Mulder," Scully said as they drove to the school. "I don't think so. I don't think that she wants to talk because she's involved with it one way or another. I think that both of us could tell that she clearly did not like Will Forrester, and that she's probably an outcast." "Mulder," she said in her usual frustrated tone, "you can't possibly tell that much from one short conversation." "Scully everybody has them in their school. You had them at yours and I had them at mine. They dressed in black and everybody either ignored them or teased them. I think perhaps she just got a little too much from the Forrester boy and she fried him." "Are you saying that Kathryn Williams can control electricity?" Scully said incredulously. "I don't know about electricity," he said as they pulled into the school parking lot, "but she has some sort of control over something. Electricity or, or…something."
* * *
"Well she's not what anybody around here would call adjusted," the counselor said. "She doesn't talk to anyone with the exception of one person, and all the teachers simply can't get along with her. She plays with her Palm Pilot all day long, and when we take it away from her she goes out and buys a new one. We've tried suspending her several times but the records always end up disappearing." "Two questions," Mulder said. "Why do you try to suspend her and where do her records go to?" "We suspend her because she's nothing but a waste of time and she's always screwing off in her classes or skipping them. The teachers try to get her to cooperate but somehow she always finds a way. She'll write or sleep all period long, or she'll play with her Palm Pilot, and it's getting ridiculous. As for her records…they seem to mysteriously disappear while they're in the computer. We think she's eliminating them by hacking into the computers. Did I tell you how good she is with them? Kathryn is an absolute genius with computers, but if maybe she would demonstrate some of that in her other classes, she would make better grades." "She makes straight A's as it is," Scully said, "how can she make them better?" "I'm sorry, but you can't be talking about her transcript, because I put her grades into the system myself, and she's barely passing any of her classes." "I see," Mulder said, "we must have gotten a copy of the wrong transcript. Let's head down to the computer lab, shall we?"
As the counselor lead them down the hall, Scully whispered, "We did not get the wrong transcript Mulder. You and I both know that." "Isn't it obvious Scully? She's just changing the grades right before quarter and midterm so it appears that she's making A's. So far she's never been in trouble at home, because the suspensions and bad grades have never made it home. That takes some brains to pull off Scully. You really have to know your way around computers to eliminate files like that." "This is the lab," the counselor said, stepping aside to allow them in. A white sheet was covering a body crumpled over a computer console, and several police officers were taking pictures. Mulder and Scully stepped under the yellow tape that was crossed over the door, and Mulder headed for the body as Scully pulled on a pair of latex gloves. He peeked under the sheet, "Ugh. How do you like your hamburger cooked Scully?" he asked as he held up the sheet for her to see. "I can't believe how badly he's been burned by this computer," she said as she gently prodded several depleting pus pockets and examined his head and what was remaining of his facial tissue. "Normally you wouldn't see burns like this, would you?" Mulder asked as he checked out the back of the deceased computer. "Especially from something like this Mulder. It's far too bad for an electrocution from something like a computer." "Well what would these burns fit under then?" he asked, prodding at some of the charred wiring in the tower. "Somewhere on the lines of lightning strike meets flame thrower to the face," she replied. He straightened, "What do you say we go have another talk with our counselor friend?"
"The last thing anybody heard from Kathryn before young Bill's electrocution was, 'I'll see you inside.' Even then, it could have been misheard. The nearest person was three stations across, you know." "Did anyone hear any other part of the conversation before the electrocution?" She shuffled through the paperwork, "Just that Bill wanted to beat her at a game. They were talking about computer games. Bill apparently said that he was better at those stupid games than her, but that was all the kids heard." Mulder cleared his throat, "Thank you for the help. If you could possibly tell us who Kathryn's best friend is, we'll be on our way." The counselor rolled her eyes, "That stupid boy Adam Bergerin. He's another waste like Kathryn. It's no wonder they're best friends. Here's his address and phone number if you'd like to get a hold of him." She handed Mulder a slip of paper and he nodded his thanks.
* * *
"Do you think we'll find out anything from Bergerin other than personal information about Kathryn? He wasn't even in the classroom when Forrester was electrocuted." "Well let's just hope for something more," Mulder said as he pulled the car into the Bergerin driveway. A minute after the doorbell had rung, a boy appeared. "Hello, are you Adam?" Scully said. "Yeah, that's me," he replied. Mulder and Scully held up their I.D., "We're with the FBI Adam, and if it's all right with you we'd like to ask you some questions," said Mulder. He seemed to eye them suspiciously, "Can I have one of your badges for a minute?" Scully gave Mulder a look that seemed to say, 'You've got to be kidding me,' but Mulder handed him his badge. The door slammed shut and two minutes later the boy reappeared and handed him back his badge, "You check out okay. Gotta be cautious, you know. Come on in, we'll go upstairs to my room." As they trudged up the stairs after Adam, Mulder asked, "Aren't your parents home?" "Dad lives in Texas and my mom works late," he replied as he opened the door to his room, allowing the agents to step inside. "Out of curiosity, how did you check out my partner's badge?" Scully asked. "I looked him up on the FBI's computer, duh," he said, sitting down in front of his computer. "Well would you look at that," Mulder said, leaning in to look at the monitor. His picture, badge number, and personal information was displayed on it from the FBI database. "It's not all that hard," Adam said, folding his arms across his chest and looking at the monitor with some satisfaction. "For the computer inhibited, yes it is," Scully said.
"Oh God, more of that technologically stupid crap," he groaned. "Everybody who's never owned a computer before thinks they're the hardest contraptions in existence to work, but there's nothing to them. I tell you, I've heard the worst stories about people trying to wash keyboards to get dust off of them, or people using the mouse as a foot pedal because they've never seen a computer close up. People like those need to be wiped out of the gene pool. Too low on the Darwinian scale of evolution for my taste." Mulder raised his eyebrows, "Impressive thoughts from a ninth grader. Does Kathryn Williams share your opinion on that?" Adam frowned, "What does Kathryn have to do with this?" he said, his voice deepening slightly in what seemed like a slowly growing agitation. "Adam, you know about the Forrester boy, don't you?" Scully asked. He laughed nastily, "If only it had come sooner. Bill was such a fool, and he was way too arrogant to have lasted in the system for all that long. And I'll tell you what, he bragged about how he was at the top of the nets in games, but as it turned out he's no good at them at all! Kathryn beat him no contest!" "When did Kathryn ever play him?" Mulder asked.
"She hasn't played him," he snapped quickly. "You just said that he did," he replied. "No I didn't, I said that she WOULD beat him no contest. Oh please, she'd never go through the trouble of playing him. He's a waste of time." Mulder shifted his weight to his left foot, leaning against Adam's doorway. "And uh, would you say that Kathryn has an almost unnatural talent for playing computer games?" Adam nodded, "Oh yeah, she's got stats that are way above normal on the nets. You know how they have little Internet setups for different games so you can fight other people online? Well, she's on the top of every one of the games. You know, Starcraft, Warcraft, Dune, Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, Civilization, she's got it all down to an art. If you wanna see a computer goddess in action, you go to her for the stuff. Hack, play, design, she does it all," Adam replied smugly, leaning back in his large black office chair in front of his computer. "So did you learn what you already know from her?" Scully asked. He shrugged, "Ahh, I knew SOME stuff, but Kathryn taught me everything that I didn't and," he laughed, "didn't want to know about comps. I swear, if I didn't know better, I'd say she's got some sort of simpatico going on with computers. It's like she can just think it and it'll happen. Whatever she wants, and it'll happen."
"Is she this good with game systems like N64 or Playstations?" asked Mulder. "Nah, she sucks at those, but she's got you nailed in the comp. You come up with one person that can beat her and I'll eat my hat," he said, squeezing the bill of his Mets baseball cap on his head. "Is she on the net a lot?" Mulder asked. "Oh yeah, all the time. She's usually hitting the Blizzard Company sites in the early afternoon, and then jumping around between Westwood and a few others later on at night." "Hmm, so if I come up with someone to beat her…well, what's her handle?" Adam folded his arms, "Now that is something I'd like to see. The best the FBI could come up with versus Kathryn…boy, that'd be something to watch." "It'd be a tough match?" Mulder asked. "Nope," he said with a grin, "it'd be a slaughter."
* * *
"Her handle is Kathegreat," Mulder said, talking on his hotel phone. "Yeah," said Langley, scribbling it down, "We'll take out this little punk without a problem. Frohike, Byers, and I are experts at these combat games you know." Mulder heard a few clicking noises over the phone on their end, "Okay Mulder! We're set up for live feed at our end!" Mulder began to plug in several cords to his laptop and soon a chat room appeared on the screen. Even though Mulder could not type anything in, he was still hooked up to the Lone Gunmen and could therefore watch the game in progress as though he were right alongside Langley, watching him play the game. "Well, it's all good over on this end," Mulder said. They watched names pop up and disappear for a few minutes, and then they saw their target. "There she is," Mulder said. Kathryn did not type anything in, just waited. Then a whisper came through. "Hello my lovely and soon to be slaughtered opponent," was whispered through to the Lone Gunmen. "What the hell?!" Frohike exclaimed. "What's going on?" Mulder said. "She traced us!! That's not possible! We're completely coded and debugged!" Langley cried.
"Hello Agent Mulder," suddenly whispered across to the Lone Gunmen. "I can't type can I?" Mulder asked. "Uh, just a second," Langley replied, the rapid punching of keys in the background. "There! Now you can chat." Mulder typed in, "Hello Kathryn. Very clever, I must admit." An emoticon of a smiley face appeared instantaneously, supernaturally fast with the retort of, "Hey, I'm just too good for you and your Lone Gunmen goon squad." "GOON SQUAD?!?" Langley squeaked. "We'll see who's the goon when we play," Langley typed in. "Bring it on fellas," came back in a once again unnatural speed. "What map are we playing?" she asked. "It's all up to you," typed in Langley. Her name disappeared and then reappeared quickly, "I think that Triumvirate is a good map to play," she typed. "I thought that Triumvirate was designed for three players and not four," Langley replied. "It is, but I just finished redesigning it for our taste. Agent Mulder may also join in if he would like to." "I don't know about that Kathryn. I'm no good at computer games," he whispered. "Then you'll be on my team, and I'll teach you. Lone Dorkmen and Agent Mulder, go into the game and type in "Kathryn Triumvirate," and then we'll be in our private chat room. See you there." Her name disappeared, and the Lone Gunmen talked the procedures to Mulder on what to do next via phone. A soft blue chat room with Kathryn's handle was waiting for them when the four got inside. "Took you long enough," instantly appeared. "It was Mulder's fault," Langley typed. "Whatever, let's just get going. I'm getting bored already." A timer began to tick down the time to game start on the right side of the screen and when the last seconds ticked down Kathryn began to type.
…Three…
…Two…
…One…
…Zero, initiation…
'Whoa!' Mulder thought. 'What the hell am I supposed to do with this?' he thought, looking at the tiny figures on the screen. Suddenly the words "Kathegreat has set game for Extra High Latency," and Langley, Byers, and Frohike followed suit. "Uhh," Mulder said, "what do I do now?" he said aloud. "Mulder," whispered across the screen from Kathryn, "Go into Menu and get options, then click on the box for Extra High Latency so the game moves faster." Mulder followed her orders, then asked, "What now?" She ran him through the game at such a quick speed that he was sure his head might burst from all the information flooding him at once.
The game ended ten minutes later with Kathryn and a very confused Mulder winning the game.
Mulder heard Langley scream, "THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE! NO ONE CAN MOVE THAT FAST!!!" When they met up in the main chat room, Kathryn typed in, once more at her incredible speed, "That game was fun boys. But I'm afraid you've been beaten. It was a great game and I'm surprised it took that long as my games usually only last five minutes. Well done." Then another sentence was whispered, but only to Mulder. "Agent Mulder, that was a good effort for a beginner. I'll see you tomorrow, perhaps?" and then she was gone.
"I don't believe it," Mulder said, mocking Langley. "You guys got your butts whipped." "But there's no way that you can move a game through that quickly!!" Frohike yelped through the phone at Mulder. "He's right," added Byers, "we're talking a mind-boggling speed here. It's almost like, like…like her brain is hooked up to the computer. You can't move a mouse that quickly and control a game as well as that. Not unless you were a military strategist who was somehow hooked up by brain to the computer. Because it's theoretically IMPOSSIBLE to move that quickly! And like I said, the only real way to do that is via brain, because the brain is the only thing in the human body that can send and receive signals as fast as a computer. The only reason that we as humans are so slow at it is because we can't hook up brains with computers. We need to use our fingers to type, command, and do other things with a computer, so she simply couldn't have moved so fast. Mulder, this kid has got some gift." Mulder switched the laptop over to live video feed, and saw the Lone Gunmen staring back at him on his screen. "I don't know guys," he said, "but I think I'm start to get a hint on what Kathryn controls."
* * *
"Counselor, I know that this is a bad time to get in contact with Kathryn Williams, but I figured that since she's got bad enough grades as it is it would make no difference," Mulder said to the counselor. She sighed, "It makes no difference and she's a distraction anyway. I'll go pull her out of class. Come along with me." They walked down the hall, and the counselor stepped inside a classroom for a moment. "Ahh, Agent Mulder, what a surprise," Kathryn said as she followed the counselor out of the classroom. "Good morning Kathryn," he said, smiling at her slightly as they walked down the hall toward an empty classroom. "Always a pleasure," Kathryn said, "but it's even more fun when I'm kicking your friends'…" He put a hand over Kathryn's mouth as they followed the counselor. "In a minute, okay?" he said softly. She pushed off his hand, "Yeah, whatever. I'm invincible to trouble." He smiled to himself, then the counselor said, "You can use the old Safety Zone room," she said, "but Kathryn has to be back before the end of class in half an hour." She left, and they both sat down facing each other.
Kathryn leaned back, propping her feet up on the table, "Ah, the stupid idea of the 'Safety Zone' room. I wonder if I can count the number of times this room hasn't worked." "So I take it you have a violent school then?" Mulder inquired. "No," she said with a sigh, "but when was the last time that you saw a fight resolved just because you put the two quarrelers in a room called the 'Safety Zone'?" He almost laughed, because it made perfect sense, but instead he said, "You're hooked up to computers aren't you?" She frowned, "You mean I'm hooked on them?" He leaned forward, "Don't play dumb Kathryn. You were playing with an unnatural speed last night. It's theoretically impossible to move a computer mouse that quickly or to type that fast.
"But, I've come up with my own theory; the brain is the only organ that can send and receive signals as fast as a computer. If there were a person that had that ability, they could do anything with computers. Hack, play, type, and do it all at unnatural speeds. I think you can do it." She took in a deep breath and eyed him in silence. "Then what brought me to your attention? Just because Bill got himself killed, you think I can do whatever with computers? Tisk-tisk-tisk, sketchy details Mr. Mulder." He grinned, "I think that not only can you control computers, but you can control the electricity that runs inside of them. After all, to control all that computer circuitry you also have a certain grasp over the power that is constantly surging through it. There were several accounts from others in the class that witnessed Bill's death, and most of them say that electricity shot out of the monitor and wrapped around his head like fingers. A computer doesn't normally deliver a shock like that, does it Kathryn?" Her face was slowly becoming angrier and angrier, the expression darkening. "No," she whispered, "it doesn't." "Kathryn," he said in a lowered voice, "you killed him didn't you?"
She folded her arms across her chest. Mulder was awaiting an insult, or for her to just get up and leave, but instead she smiled. "You're pretty clever for an FBI chap. And I'll tell you what; I'll answer your question if you play me a game on the computer." He shook his head, "No, because you'll kill me, and I mean it in the literal sense." She laughed uproariously, "Oh a very clever fellow. Too bad you aren't my age, because if you were we'd have been like this," she said, entwining her first and middle fingers on her left hand. "You would have been the brother I never had and never wanted." He smirked lightly, "Sure Kathryn. But you still haven't answered my question." She closed her eyes and seemed to think for a long, long minute. She slowly opened them and stared at Mulder, then finally she spoke. "Mr. Mulder, I know a lot about you and I think it's unfair that you don't know anything about me. For instance, I know that you work on the X-Files with your partner Agent Scully, and that you started the X-Files mostly because of your belief in aliens and that they abducted your sister Samantha. And do you know how I know that?" He shrugged, "Hacked into the FBI database?"
She smiled, "No, because Mr. Mulder, not only am I linked up with computers, I maintain a certain simpatico with them at all times. My brain signals are constantly flowing with the computer systems, so I decided to pick and choose my way through the nets real quickly just after our little tiff last night, long after my computer had been shut off. All I have to do is think about what I want, and it pops up in my brain. Can you imagine that eh? If I really wanted to I could make all A's in class, because everything is accessible inside my brain. But, I simply change the transcripts at quarter and semester, as you already guessed earlier. Because you see, computer signals aren't the only thing my mind can respond to. No, I can intercept other brain signals, for instance…yours. At this moment you think I'm a little nuts, but hey, I was born with this weird ability." Mulder noticed that throughout her entire soliloquy, she was beginning to tremble and her face was taking on the appearance of a person who is on the verge of tears. "It's not my fault," she said, hugging her arms around her. "I just…I just try and get by, and it's…it's hard when everybody hates your guts. And people like Bill…the bullies, they just push you and push you and push you and then one day…you just snap. I try to keep my powers in check all the time but there's not much that you can do when the power of brain waves and computer systems is so, so imposing." Tears silently streaked down her cheeks and she hastened to wipe them away. "And it sucks so bad when nobody else can know what you can do. Adam doesn't know, because he's jealous as it is of my real-life talent on computers anyway, so he doesn't need to know about my brain capabilities. And then mom…well, mom wouldn't get it as it is, since she hates computers. There's nobody left for me here. I don't ever feel like I belong, with all these people hating me and not listening to what I want them to hear."
She buried her head in her lap, "I suppose you'll arrest me now Agent. Well, go ahead, I'm ready to go," she said, holding out her wrists in a waiting position for handcuffs. But Mulder was thinking otherwise. "Kathryn, you know better than that. If you can read my mind than read this." She didn't move for a minute, but then finally retracted her wrists and folded her arms across her chest again, "You're not going to arrest me?" He sat back, "No, I'm going to let you go free. Besides, even if I wanted to prove you guilty I'd need evidence, and there is none. But I want to meet up with you or talk to you sometime later online about something very, very important." She smiled grimly, "Well sir, I can most certainly arrange that."
* * *
"Mulder are you serious?" Byers asked him when he had explained the conversation between he and Kathryn earlier that day. "Well it kind of makes sense doesn't it? It's no wonder that she can play with lightning speed because she basically plays with electricity and computers like tinker toys," said Langley, tapping into the chat room that Kathryn had named. "Hey, what's this?" Langley said when the screen popped up. "Huh. Don't see chat rooms like this every day," he said, "it's got one weird design program, that's for sure." "And we're the only name on the list," said Frohike, peering over his shoulder. "Hello," popped up on the screen out of the blue and they couldn't possibly have guessed who it would have been…yeah right. "Good evening Kathryn," Mulder typed in from a computer terminal next to Langley's. "Ahh, and a pleasant evening to you Agent Mulder…and also to your Lone Gunmen friends there. Hullo Mr. Langley, why don't you move over and let Mr. Frohike type? You haven't let him do that in a while."
"What the hell?!?" Langley exclaimed. "Do it," Mulder said, watching Langley slowly get up from his chair to allow Frohike to sit down. "That's better," came the typed response, "oh, and hello to Mr. Byers standing behind you." "This is unbelievable," Byers muttered, checking the equipment as if to make sure that someone wasn't playing a foul prank on them. "Enough talk Kathryn, let's get down to our deal," Mulder typed. "Of course, of course, I'll get into the government database," she replied. "Oh my God…" Frohike said slowly, "she really can read off of brain signals can't she?" he said. "Of course I can, did you think I was lying?" she asked with an emoticon of a smile next to the question. "But Agent, I think it'd be better if we talked in person, even though this chat room is perfectly safe. How about meeting me somewhere far out of town?" "Can you manage that" was what Mulder was going to type as a response but quickly erased it. "When can we meet?" he asked instead. "How about tomorrow at midnight? You'll get a phone call from me four hours before we meet. Goodbye, sir." And she was gone.
* * *
At six that evening Mulder received a phone call, as promised. "Go to the Delta ticket counter and get your ticket to Boston," she said. "I don't know if I'll even be able to get one," he said, "especially this soon." "Don't worry about that, just ask for a ticket to Boston under the name of Scott Williams, and it'll be all taken care of from there." She hung up.
* * *
"Fancy meeting you here," Kathryn said, swallowing a large mouthful of coffee. "Yeah, I didn't expect to see you here in a million years," Mulder replied, sitting down next to her on a park bench at midnight. She tossed the now empty coffee cup into a nearby smelly trashcan. "A little dangerous to be out here, isn't it?" he asked. "No, not really," she replied with a sigh, "I would know if anybody wanting to harm us were coming. Brain waves remember? That and you've got your gun. I'll be safe and so will you, mostly because one way or the other we're protecting each other. But that's beside the point," she patted a laptop perched precariously across her knees, "I've got what I need, but the question is…will you be able to get me close enough?" He shrugged, "I think so, but let's get going first." They both got inside his car and headed to a remote destination. "I thought you said you didn't need that thing to hack," he said, nodding to her laptop as he drove. "I don't really, but it's become my security blanket in a way, in case for some weird reason I suddenly lose my ability to hack through the mind. Which I doubt would happen," she said hastily, "I mean, I've been able to read minds and steal information from the internet since I was a kid, or at least until the internet was really up and running. It was a hunk of junk when I was a baby, but I learned enough." "You were a bright kid, I take it then, when you were a baby?"
She shrugged, "Well, I knew about a lot of stuff that kids don't normally have a complete grasp over by the time they're two. Like arithmetic, some simpler science concepts like Newtonian physics, spelling, reading, and the like. Unfortunately I didn't learn as much as I would have liked to, considering all that my parents ever thought of around me were things like, 'Does wittle Kathryn want a cooookie?' and dopey stuff like that. And of course, I learned a few of life's lessons that you normally don't learn till the hormones kick in. That was a little interesting, since I wasn't allowed out of a playpen for a while and that was all I had to think about. It got a little nasty after a while. Sometimes I envy the kids who learned via the old, 'When mommy and daddy love each other very much…' talk. I had to learn against my will, and boy was it a shocker when I found out I didn't come from a stork!" she said with a laugh. "Oh," Mulder said slowly, "that sounds pleasant." "Only to porn fans, Agent, only to them," she replied. He smiled knowingly. Suddenly she laughed uproariously, "Ha! I had forgotten about that sir, sorry," she said, still chuckling. The smile immediately fell off his face and he seemed to concentrate harder on driving. She grinned at him, "Oh don't pretend like you know something that I don't, because that's very, very, not true. I know everything about you Agent, and I do mean everything, as disquieting as you may find that. But hey, it's really not my fault now is it? Sometimes it even makes for an interesting day at school to listen to what the teachers think of their students, especially me. Ohhh, how that has provided for hours of laughs."
Mulder frowned, "I think that it would be terrible to be you. I suppose there are some advantages to knowing what people are thinking but most of the time it just bites you in the ass, doesn't it?" She shrugged, "Thank you very little, but I guess the fun you can have sometimes is worth the trouble. If the principal knew half the things that some of the teachers think during class half our staff would be gone." Mulder cringed, "People like that make me sick," he said, taking a leap into what the obvious ideas would be. "Aren't you a bit of one to talk?" she asked, "I mean I hardly think that a person who watches…" "We're here," Mulder snapped in immediately. "Let's do it," he murmured quietly as he pulled up to the guard shack. "ID please," the guard said in an annoyed tone, as if he'd just been interrupted from some much more important business. "Jack Myers," he said, handing over his fake ID. The guard came back a minute later, "All right, but who's the other one?" he said, pointing his flashlight at Kathryn. "My daughter Lydia," he said. "And what's she doing with you in the middle of the night at a government installation?" the guard snapped nastily. Kathryn started to cry and buried her face in Mulder's shoulder. "Please!" he said, patting her on the shoulder gently, "You're upsetting her!" He leaned in close to the guard, "My wife died a week ago," he whispered to the guard quietly. "She's been very upset, and any time I leave the house she's afraid I won't come back, and I figured it'd be all right if I…" "Go through," the guard said hastily, clearly not wanting to make a scene. Kathryn waited until the shack was far behind them before pulling her head back, her fake sobs quickly turning into laughter, "Sucker!" she chortled.
"Yeah," Mulder said, more concentrated on the task at hand, "great acting." She flicked an invisible speck of dust off her jacket, "I'm a natural," she said. "And so modest," he replied, pulling into the parking lot. "Very funny Agent, but we'll see how great your acting skills are when we get inside." "Why? You plan on getting caught?" he asked. "No," she said, letting out a sigh, "but I don't think that this place will be completely unguarded, so we'll just have to stick to the dead mother routine, cool?" she asked. "Yeah, we're cool," he grumbled as they got out of the car, Kathryn positioning the laptop in her jacket better so that it still looked as if nothing were underneath it. The guard at the door passed them through, and Mulder figured that the guard thought that if he'd gotten by the first gate, he was clear to go through the second. They walked through the dim halls quietly, until they reached a small computer lab with glass doors and a card lock on it. "So how do we get past this one?" he asked. "Like this," she said, staring hard at the lock. The light blinked from red to green and the doors opened quietly. "Let me guess," Mulder said as they walked in. "That's hooked up to a computer and you just messed around with the signals until you unlocked it right?" Suddenly she grabbed by the shoulder and jerked him back, "Watch out!" she whispered. "What?" he asked. She pointed down at the floor and pulled a tiny squirt bottle out of her pocket, "That," she said, gently misting right above the floor. Sure enough, there was a red laser beam laid out across the floor. "Just a second," she said, and it flicked off lifelessly. "Is that the only one?" he asked. "Yeah," she said, "but that's funny…why didn't it turn off with the lock?"
"I don't know," Mulder said, "and we don't have time, now let's get into one of these terminals." She flipped on the terminal using her brain and soon it was up and running and Kathryn quickly downloaded all the information into her brain. Just then, they heard a noise from down the hall. "But sir he checked out!" the guard from the gate was saying frantically to someone else. "You idiot! Why didn't you bring up a visual reference! That's not Jack Myers!" a voice said. "That son of a bitch," Mulder growled, almost tempted to walk toward the door and start firing bullets down the hall. "Krycek," Kathryn said quietly as she continued to download. "How did you…" Mulder started, and Kathryn gave him a, 'You know why I know,' look, and he left his question hanging in midair. "Kathryn there's no more time!" he hissed. She looked at the door and it suddenly flew shut again, the card lock turning red again. "Oh yeah, that'll hold them," he said depressedly.
"Got any better ideas?" she snapped. He looked around for an escape route, but found that there was only one way out and it was through where Krycek was coming from. "Don't bother, we're gonna have to use the vents," she said. He popped a tile up and pushed a nearby table underneath it to make it easier to climb into. "Go put a bar or something through the door handles," she said, still linked to the computer. He searched frantically, and then finally ripped out some computer wires and wrapped them around the large door handles, preventing anyone from opening it from the outside. "Mulder!" someone cried from the outside. "Uhh, Kathryn we're running out of time," he said, pulling out his gun and running back to her. "Almost finished…" she said. Krycek slid the card through and the light went green, but then he saw the computer cords wrapped around the handles and he cursed loudly.
"Language, tut tut tut," Kathryn said. Krycek and the guard suddenly pulled out their own guns and began firing at the doors. "Kathryn! Get out now! We've gotta leave!" he shouted, yanking hard on her shoulders. "No! Just a few more seconds…" a bullet blasted off most of the glass door, and the guard reached a hand through to jerk off the cord. "Kathryn NOW!" Mulder screamed at her. Krycek and the guard were running toward them, and they would be there in only seconds because of the size of the computer lab. Mulder, not knowing what else to do ripped out the cord that plugged in the computer. "You idiot! You've unplugged me!" she screamed in terror, and suddenly Kathryn was sucked into the monitor. Krycek and the guard stopped in mid run, and Mulder stumbled backward in horror. Then he seemed to regain his mind, realizing there was nothing left to do, and leapt upward into the ceiling and crawled as fast as he could before the guard or Krycek could realize what had happened.
* * *
"I don't believe it Mulder! You actually got away when they were that close?" Frohike said. He nodded slowly, "I don't even know why, but Krycek let me go." Mulder seemed to be seething with anger, "Kathryn's gone, I wasn't even supposed to be with her, Krycek knows I was there, and a lot of government information got stolen and I don't know where it went to. Sounds like next week will be a lot of fun at the Bureau." Langley shrugged, "Well, nobody knew you and Kathryn were hacking, Krycek let you go so chances are he won't come after you, and they won't be able to trace where the information went to because Kathryn's got it if she's still alive. Sounds like you're actually home free Mulder." He frowned silently, "Yeah, but at what cost?"
* * *
Mulder sat down at his desk again, staring at the keyboard. He had just come back from a meeting with AD Skinner, filing a report about their latest X-File with the dead Forrester kid, even though that was the last thing on Mulder's mind at the moment. It took him a full minute to realize that his monitor had a "1 Message Received" notice on it. He looked up gloomily at it. Mulder pressed enter, wondering what it was and expecting it to be some sort of bad news. Much to his surprise, it was the best he'd heard all day.
TO MY FAVORITE AGENT:
THANK YOU FOR A WONDERFUL NIGHT MR. MULDER.
PERHAPS WE'LL MEET AGAIN SOMEWHERE.
I'M NOT STUCK HERE, YOU KNOW, NOT I.
I CAN LEAVE WHENEVER I PLEASE, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT?
I'VE FINALLY FOUND A PLACE WHERE I CAN BE HAPPY.
ALSO, I'VE MADE SURE THAT ALL EVIDENCE IS CLEARED OF ANY IMPLICATIONS THAT YOU WERE INVOLVED IN MY MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE.
I WOULD NEVER GET SOMEONE AS NICE AND UNDERSTANDING AS YOU IN TROUBLE WITH THE BUREAU.
AFTER ALL, WE OUTCASTS HAVE TO STICK TOGETHER, EH SPOOKY?
ANY TIME YOU NEED HELP AGAIN, THINK AND I'LL BE THERE.
I HOPE YOU ENJOY THE CD I MADE FOR YOU.
Then, to Mulder's surprise, the CD-ROM drive in his computer slid open, and there was a CD with all the information that had disappeared along with Kathryn when he'd pulled the plug. He also noticed that on top of his computer tower was a clear jewel case with a small slip of paper on the inside.
With love to everybody's favorite Agent,
Kathryn
P.S. See you soon! (
He smiled silently to himself. After meeting someone like Kathryn, he hoped he would.
The X-Files:
Through the Looking Glass
Chamberlain High, Bar Harbor Maine
The ninth grade class continued to work in silence with only the occasional giggles and laughs from some of the students. The teacher, Ms. Warner, was not, after all, a teacher to be reckoned with. The class outcast quietly sat by herself, the nearest class member three computers away from her. It didn't bother her that everyone else was whispering and looking in her general direction, and she continued to diligently work at her computer, hacking into the school's main computer. Suddenly one of the students got up and sat down next to her. He pretended to work at his newly acquired computer, but hissed at her between gritted teeth, "You think you're cool because you can change your grades by hacking, don't you?" The girl continued to ignore him and kept on typing just as furiously as ever. "So now you think you're too cool to answer me? Why don't you take this." He reached behind her monitor and yanked out the power cords leading to her station. The entire class stifled their own individual laughs, desperate not to be caught. As her monitor slowly hummed down to silence, she turned to look at him. "Do you like computer games?" she asked. "I kick at computers," he said, "I'd beat you no contest at any game. Girls are just stupid little things anyway, and they're easy to beat, in games or out."
She fired up her station again, and she poured several lines of code into the computer using her fingers, "You can beat any game?" she asked. "Just try me," he snapped, leaning in close to her. "I'm more than willing to try," she said, "and I'll see you inside." She pressed enter and executed all the lines of code. Electricity exploded from his monitor, and seemed to wrap its' deadly coils around his head, and his eyes appeared glued to the monitor, and his body shuddered. She continued to stare into her own monitor as the class screamed in horror and several boys tried to free their friend, but to no avail and several shocks. His skin bubbled and blistered, pus erupting from several pockets in his face. The power surging through his computer melted the mouse to the pad and the speakers screamed in their highest frequency and blew out their sockets. The glass of the monitor imploded, and smoke poured from it. The keyboard began to melt and the white wiring leading it to his tower glowed red-hot. Then, as suddenly as it had started, his station fell silent and his head bashed lifelessly into his keyboard, and he did not move. She remained at her station, staring at the monitor, listening to the screams behind her, and silently, unnoticed to the rest of the class, she smiled.
Washington D.C., FBI
"Kathryn Anne Williams," Mulder said to Scully, handing her the file. Scully leafed through it casually as Mulder continued on. "She was sitting right next to a boy named William James Forrester, when he was electrocuted by his computer in the middle of their keyboarding class. Witnesses are saying that she didn't do anything to try and help him, nor did she even scream or run from her seat when it happened. A little strange isn't it? I mean just for her to watch as a fellow classmate had his face bubbled off and his eyeballs roasted." "She could have been too traumatized to want to move Mulder. She could have been too scared," Scully replied as they got into a Bureau car. "Yeah, I suppose I could see that but the fact that she simply asked the teacher once he was finished being charbroiled, 'Is class dismissed and if so may I go home?' is a little disturbing for a junior high student, don't you think?" Scully didn't say anything as they began to drive to Bar Harbor, Maine.
"Mrs. Williams? Hello I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder and this is my partner Special Agent Dana Scully," he said both of them casually pulling out their I.D.'s while they stood on the front stoop of the Williams home. "Oh," she said slowly, "you must be here to ask her about the Forrester boy. It was so horrible when I heard about it on the news…" "So Kathryn didn't tell you about it when she got home?" he asked. "No, she didn't. Please come in, and I'll go get her." They quickly stepped into the living room as she went to go get Kathryn. "That's a little unusual don't you think?" Mulder asked, "So sweetie what did you do today? Oh nothing much just saw a kid get his skin roasted off. Don't you think that would be the top priority to tell mom over your science homework?" Scully ignored him as she casually scouted out the living room, looking at a few family pictures on the mantelpiece. In every one, the girl that she could assume was Kathryn was wearing black. Just then, Mrs. Williams came out, her daughter Kathryn following behind her. "Kathryn, this is Agent Mulder and Agent Scully," she said, gesturing to them. They both smiled at Kathryn, who did not return it. "You think I killed him, don't you?" she said as she sat down on the family couch. Mulder sat down next to her, "No, we don't think that you killed that boy. But you were sitting right next to him, and we were wondering if there was anything that you saw that the rest of the class didn't see."
"How about a black heart and a pus brain?" she retorted as she folded her arms across her chest. "Kathryn!" Mrs. Williams snapped at her. "It's okay ma'am," Mulder replied, holding up a hand. She kneaded her hands angrily, "I'll be in the kitchen if anybody needs me." "Kathryn," Scully began, "we would appreciate your cooperation in our investigation as best as you can, okay? We understand how hard it must have been to see something as bad as what happened to William Forrester." "Ha!" she laughed, "Bill was an idiot anyway, and he didn't have a brain as far as I could tell. That boy was gonna add up to a big pile of nothin' if he ever grew up." Mulder ignored her angry remark but filed it for later use, "Kathryn, did you see anything unusual while Bill was electrocuted?" "Other than his skin boiling off?" she said sarcastically. She sat back in the couch and said, "I just saw a bunch of electricity wrapping itself around his head and then he hit the keyboard." Scully opened her mouth to say something but Mulder said, "I think we've troubled Miss Williams for long enough Scully. Let's go."
"I think we could have asked her a bit more than just that Mulder," Scully said as they drove to the school. "I don't think so. I don't think that she wants to talk because she's involved with it one way or another. I think that both of us could tell that she clearly did not like Will Forrester, and that she's probably an outcast." "Mulder," she said in her usual frustrated tone, "you can't possibly tell that much from one short conversation." "Scully everybody has them in their school. You had them at yours and I had them at mine. They dressed in black and everybody either ignored them or teased them. I think perhaps she just got a little too much from the Forrester boy and she fried him." "Are you saying that Kathryn Williams can control electricity?" Scully said incredulously. "I don't know about electricity," he said as they pulled into the school parking lot, "but she has some sort of control over something. Electricity or, or…something."
* * *
"Well she's not what anybody around here would call adjusted," the counselor said. "She doesn't talk to anyone with the exception of one person, and all the teachers simply can't get along with her. She plays with her Palm Pilot all day long, and when we take it away from her she goes out and buys a new one. We've tried suspending her several times but the records always end up disappearing." "Two questions," Mulder said. "Why do you try to suspend her and where do her records go to?" "We suspend her because she's nothing but a waste of time and she's always screwing off in her classes or skipping them. The teachers try to get her to cooperate but somehow she always finds a way. She'll write or sleep all period long, or she'll play with her Palm Pilot, and it's getting ridiculous. As for her records…they seem to mysteriously disappear while they're in the computer. We think she's eliminating them by hacking into the computers. Did I tell you how good she is with them? Kathryn is an absolute genius with computers, but if maybe she would demonstrate some of that in her other classes, she would make better grades." "She makes straight A's as it is," Scully said, "how can she make them better?" "I'm sorry, but you can't be talking about her transcript, because I put her grades into the system myself, and she's barely passing any of her classes." "I see," Mulder said, "we must have gotten a copy of the wrong transcript. Let's head down to the computer lab, shall we?"
As the counselor lead them down the hall, Scully whispered, "We did not get the wrong transcript Mulder. You and I both know that." "Isn't it obvious Scully? She's just changing the grades right before quarter and midterm so it appears that she's making A's. So far she's never been in trouble at home, because the suspensions and bad grades have never made it home. That takes some brains to pull off Scully. You really have to know your way around computers to eliminate files like that." "This is the lab," the counselor said, stepping aside to allow them in. A white sheet was covering a body crumpled over a computer console, and several police officers were taking pictures. Mulder and Scully stepped under the yellow tape that was crossed over the door, and Mulder headed for the body as Scully pulled on a pair of latex gloves. He peeked under the sheet, "Ugh. How do you like your hamburger cooked Scully?" he asked as he held up the sheet for her to see. "I can't believe how badly he's been burned by this computer," she said as she gently prodded several depleting pus pockets and examined his head and what was remaining of his facial tissue. "Normally you wouldn't see burns like this, would you?" Mulder asked as he checked out the back of the deceased computer. "Especially from something like this Mulder. It's far too bad for an electrocution from something like a computer." "Well what would these burns fit under then?" he asked, prodding at some of the charred wiring in the tower. "Somewhere on the lines of lightning strike meets flame thrower to the face," she replied. He straightened, "What do you say we go have another talk with our counselor friend?"
"The last thing anybody heard from Kathryn before young Bill's electrocution was, 'I'll see you inside.' Even then, it could have been misheard. The nearest person was three stations across, you know." "Did anyone hear any other part of the conversation before the electrocution?" She shuffled through the paperwork, "Just that Bill wanted to beat her at a game. They were talking about computer games. Bill apparently said that he was better at those stupid games than her, but that was all the kids heard." Mulder cleared his throat, "Thank you for the help. If you could possibly tell us who Kathryn's best friend is, we'll be on our way." The counselor rolled her eyes, "That stupid boy Adam Bergerin. He's another waste like Kathryn. It's no wonder they're best friends. Here's his address and phone number if you'd like to get a hold of him." She handed Mulder a slip of paper and he nodded his thanks.
* * *
"Do you think we'll find out anything from Bergerin other than personal information about Kathryn? He wasn't even in the classroom when Forrester was electrocuted." "Well let's just hope for something more," Mulder said as he pulled the car into the Bergerin driveway. A minute after the doorbell had rung, a boy appeared. "Hello, are you Adam?" Scully said. "Yeah, that's me," he replied. Mulder and Scully held up their I.D., "We're with the FBI Adam, and if it's all right with you we'd like to ask you some questions," said Mulder. He seemed to eye them suspiciously, "Can I have one of your badges for a minute?" Scully gave Mulder a look that seemed to say, 'You've got to be kidding me,' but Mulder handed him his badge. The door slammed shut and two minutes later the boy reappeared and handed him back his badge, "You check out okay. Gotta be cautious, you know. Come on in, we'll go upstairs to my room." As they trudged up the stairs after Adam, Mulder asked, "Aren't your parents home?" "Dad lives in Texas and my mom works late," he replied as he opened the door to his room, allowing the agents to step inside. "Out of curiosity, how did you check out my partner's badge?" Scully asked. "I looked him up on the FBI's computer, duh," he said, sitting down in front of his computer. "Well would you look at that," Mulder said, leaning in to look at the monitor. His picture, badge number, and personal information was displayed on it from the FBI database. "It's not all that hard," Adam said, folding his arms across his chest and looking at the monitor with some satisfaction. "For the computer inhibited, yes it is," Scully said.
"Oh God, more of that technologically stupid crap," he groaned. "Everybody who's never owned a computer before thinks they're the hardest contraptions in existence to work, but there's nothing to them. I tell you, I've heard the worst stories about people trying to wash keyboards to get dust off of them, or people using the mouse as a foot pedal because they've never seen a computer close up. People like those need to be wiped out of the gene pool. Too low on the Darwinian scale of evolution for my taste." Mulder raised his eyebrows, "Impressive thoughts from a ninth grader. Does Kathryn Williams share your opinion on that?" Adam frowned, "What does Kathryn have to do with this?" he said, his voice deepening slightly in what seemed like a slowly growing agitation. "Adam, you know about the Forrester boy, don't you?" Scully asked. He laughed nastily, "If only it had come sooner. Bill was such a fool, and he was way too arrogant to have lasted in the system for all that long. And I'll tell you what, he bragged about how he was at the top of the nets in games, but as it turned out he's no good at them at all! Kathryn beat him no contest!" "When did Kathryn ever play him?" Mulder asked.
"She hasn't played him," he snapped quickly. "You just said that he did," he replied. "No I didn't, I said that she WOULD beat him no contest. Oh please, she'd never go through the trouble of playing him. He's a waste of time." Mulder shifted his weight to his left foot, leaning against Adam's doorway. "And uh, would you say that Kathryn has an almost unnatural talent for playing computer games?" Adam nodded, "Oh yeah, she's got stats that are way above normal on the nets. You know how they have little Internet setups for different games so you can fight other people online? Well, she's on the top of every one of the games. You know, Starcraft, Warcraft, Dune, Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, Civilization, she's got it all down to an art. If you wanna see a computer goddess in action, you go to her for the stuff. Hack, play, design, she does it all," Adam replied smugly, leaning back in his large black office chair in front of his computer. "So did you learn what you already know from her?" Scully asked. He shrugged, "Ahh, I knew SOME stuff, but Kathryn taught me everything that I didn't and," he laughed, "didn't want to know about comps. I swear, if I didn't know better, I'd say she's got some sort of simpatico going on with computers. It's like she can just think it and it'll happen. Whatever she wants, and it'll happen."
"Is she this good with game systems like N64 or Playstations?" asked Mulder. "Nah, she sucks at those, but she's got you nailed in the comp. You come up with one person that can beat her and I'll eat my hat," he said, squeezing the bill of his Mets baseball cap on his head. "Is she on the net a lot?" Mulder asked. "Oh yeah, all the time. She's usually hitting the Blizzard Company sites in the early afternoon, and then jumping around between Westwood and a few others later on at night." "Hmm, so if I come up with someone to beat her…well, what's her handle?" Adam folded his arms, "Now that is something I'd like to see. The best the FBI could come up with versus Kathryn…boy, that'd be something to watch." "It'd be a tough match?" Mulder asked. "Nope," he said with a grin, "it'd be a slaughter."
* * *
"Her handle is Kathegreat," Mulder said, talking on his hotel phone. "Yeah," said Langley, scribbling it down, "We'll take out this little punk without a problem. Frohike, Byers, and I are experts at these combat games you know." Mulder heard a few clicking noises over the phone on their end, "Okay Mulder! We're set up for live feed at our end!" Mulder began to plug in several cords to his laptop and soon a chat room appeared on the screen. Even though Mulder could not type anything in, he was still hooked up to the Lone Gunmen and could therefore watch the game in progress as though he were right alongside Langley, watching him play the game. "Well, it's all good over on this end," Mulder said. They watched names pop up and disappear for a few minutes, and then they saw their target. "There she is," Mulder said. Kathryn did not type anything in, just waited. Then a whisper came through. "Hello my lovely and soon to be slaughtered opponent," was whispered through to the Lone Gunmen. "What the hell?!" Frohike exclaimed. "What's going on?" Mulder said. "She traced us!! That's not possible! We're completely coded and debugged!" Langley cried.
"Hello Agent Mulder," suddenly whispered across to the Lone Gunmen. "I can't type can I?" Mulder asked. "Uh, just a second," Langley replied, the rapid punching of keys in the background. "There! Now you can chat." Mulder typed in, "Hello Kathryn. Very clever, I must admit." An emoticon of a smiley face appeared instantaneously, supernaturally fast with the retort of, "Hey, I'm just too good for you and your Lone Gunmen goon squad." "GOON SQUAD?!?" Langley squeaked. "We'll see who's the goon when we play," Langley typed in. "Bring it on fellas," came back in a once again unnatural speed. "What map are we playing?" she asked. "It's all up to you," typed in Langley. Her name disappeared and then reappeared quickly, "I think that Triumvirate is a good map to play," she typed. "I thought that Triumvirate was designed for three players and not four," Langley replied. "It is, but I just finished redesigning it for our taste. Agent Mulder may also join in if he would like to." "I don't know about that Kathryn. I'm no good at computer games," he whispered. "Then you'll be on my team, and I'll teach you. Lone Dorkmen and Agent Mulder, go into the game and type in "Kathryn Triumvirate," and then we'll be in our private chat room. See you there." Her name disappeared, and the Lone Gunmen talked the procedures to Mulder on what to do next via phone. A soft blue chat room with Kathryn's handle was waiting for them when the four got inside. "Took you long enough," instantly appeared. "It was Mulder's fault," Langley typed. "Whatever, let's just get going. I'm getting bored already." A timer began to tick down the time to game start on the right side of the screen and when the last seconds ticked down Kathryn began to type.
…Three…
…Two…
…One…
…Zero, initiation…
'Whoa!' Mulder thought. 'What the hell am I supposed to do with this?' he thought, looking at the tiny figures on the screen. Suddenly the words "Kathegreat has set game for Extra High Latency," and Langley, Byers, and Frohike followed suit. "Uhh," Mulder said, "what do I do now?" he said aloud. "Mulder," whispered across the screen from Kathryn, "Go into Menu and get options, then click on the box for Extra High Latency so the game moves faster." Mulder followed her orders, then asked, "What now?" She ran him through the game at such a quick speed that he was sure his head might burst from all the information flooding him at once.
The game ended ten minutes later with Kathryn and a very confused Mulder winning the game.
Mulder heard Langley scream, "THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE! NO ONE CAN MOVE THAT FAST!!!" When they met up in the main chat room, Kathryn typed in, once more at her incredible speed, "That game was fun boys. But I'm afraid you've been beaten. It was a great game and I'm surprised it took that long as my games usually only last five minutes. Well done." Then another sentence was whispered, but only to Mulder. "Agent Mulder, that was a good effort for a beginner. I'll see you tomorrow, perhaps?" and then she was gone.
"I don't believe it," Mulder said, mocking Langley. "You guys got your butts whipped." "But there's no way that you can move a game through that quickly!!" Frohike yelped through the phone at Mulder. "He's right," added Byers, "we're talking a mind-boggling speed here. It's almost like, like…like her brain is hooked up to the computer. You can't move a mouse that quickly and control a game as well as that. Not unless you were a military strategist who was somehow hooked up by brain to the computer. Because it's theoretically IMPOSSIBLE to move that quickly! And like I said, the only real way to do that is via brain, because the brain is the only thing in the human body that can send and receive signals as fast as a computer. The only reason that we as humans are so slow at it is because we can't hook up brains with computers. We need to use our fingers to type, command, and do other things with a computer, so she simply couldn't have moved so fast. Mulder, this kid has got some gift." Mulder switched the laptop over to live video feed, and saw the Lone Gunmen staring back at him on his screen. "I don't know guys," he said, "but I think I'm start to get a hint on what Kathryn controls."
* * *
"Counselor, I know that this is a bad time to get in contact with Kathryn Williams, but I figured that since she's got bad enough grades as it is it would make no difference," Mulder said to the counselor. She sighed, "It makes no difference and she's a distraction anyway. I'll go pull her out of class. Come along with me." They walked down the hall, and the counselor stepped inside a classroom for a moment. "Ahh, Agent Mulder, what a surprise," Kathryn said as she followed the counselor out of the classroom. "Good morning Kathryn," he said, smiling at her slightly as they walked down the hall toward an empty classroom. "Always a pleasure," Kathryn said, "but it's even more fun when I'm kicking your friends'…" He put a hand over Kathryn's mouth as they followed the counselor. "In a minute, okay?" he said softly. She pushed off his hand, "Yeah, whatever. I'm invincible to trouble." He smiled to himself, then the counselor said, "You can use the old Safety Zone room," she said, "but Kathryn has to be back before the end of class in half an hour." She left, and they both sat down facing each other.
Kathryn leaned back, propping her feet up on the table, "Ah, the stupid idea of the 'Safety Zone' room. I wonder if I can count the number of times this room hasn't worked." "So I take it you have a violent school then?" Mulder inquired. "No," she said with a sigh, "but when was the last time that you saw a fight resolved just because you put the two quarrelers in a room called the 'Safety Zone'?" He almost laughed, because it made perfect sense, but instead he said, "You're hooked up to computers aren't you?" She frowned, "You mean I'm hooked on them?" He leaned forward, "Don't play dumb Kathryn. You were playing with an unnatural speed last night. It's theoretically impossible to move a computer mouse that quickly or to type that fast.
"But, I've come up with my own theory; the brain is the only organ that can send and receive signals as fast as a computer. If there were a person that had that ability, they could do anything with computers. Hack, play, type, and do it all at unnatural speeds. I think you can do it." She took in a deep breath and eyed him in silence. "Then what brought me to your attention? Just because Bill got himself killed, you think I can do whatever with computers? Tisk-tisk-tisk, sketchy details Mr. Mulder." He grinned, "I think that not only can you control computers, but you can control the electricity that runs inside of them. After all, to control all that computer circuitry you also have a certain grasp over the power that is constantly surging through it. There were several accounts from others in the class that witnessed Bill's death, and most of them say that electricity shot out of the monitor and wrapped around his head like fingers. A computer doesn't normally deliver a shock like that, does it Kathryn?" Her face was slowly becoming angrier and angrier, the expression darkening. "No," she whispered, "it doesn't." "Kathryn," he said in a lowered voice, "you killed him didn't you?"
She folded her arms across her chest. Mulder was awaiting an insult, or for her to just get up and leave, but instead she smiled. "You're pretty clever for an FBI chap. And I'll tell you what; I'll answer your question if you play me a game on the computer." He shook his head, "No, because you'll kill me, and I mean it in the literal sense." She laughed uproariously, "Oh a very clever fellow. Too bad you aren't my age, because if you were we'd have been like this," she said, entwining her first and middle fingers on her left hand. "You would have been the brother I never had and never wanted." He smirked lightly, "Sure Kathryn. But you still haven't answered my question." She closed her eyes and seemed to think for a long, long minute. She slowly opened them and stared at Mulder, then finally she spoke. "Mr. Mulder, I know a lot about you and I think it's unfair that you don't know anything about me. For instance, I know that you work on the X-Files with your partner Agent Scully, and that you started the X-Files mostly because of your belief in aliens and that they abducted your sister Samantha. And do you know how I know that?" He shrugged, "Hacked into the FBI database?"
She smiled, "No, because Mr. Mulder, not only am I linked up with computers, I maintain a certain simpatico with them at all times. My brain signals are constantly flowing with the computer systems, so I decided to pick and choose my way through the nets real quickly just after our little tiff last night, long after my computer had been shut off. All I have to do is think about what I want, and it pops up in my brain. Can you imagine that eh? If I really wanted to I could make all A's in class, because everything is accessible inside my brain. But, I simply change the transcripts at quarter and semester, as you already guessed earlier. Because you see, computer signals aren't the only thing my mind can respond to. No, I can intercept other brain signals, for instance…yours. At this moment you think I'm a little nuts, but hey, I was born with this weird ability." Mulder noticed that throughout her entire soliloquy, she was beginning to tremble and her face was taking on the appearance of a person who is on the verge of tears. "It's not my fault," she said, hugging her arms around her. "I just…I just try and get by, and it's…it's hard when everybody hates your guts. And people like Bill…the bullies, they just push you and push you and push you and then one day…you just snap. I try to keep my powers in check all the time but there's not much that you can do when the power of brain waves and computer systems is so, so imposing." Tears silently streaked down her cheeks and she hastened to wipe them away. "And it sucks so bad when nobody else can know what you can do. Adam doesn't know, because he's jealous as it is of my real-life talent on computers anyway, so he doesn't need to know about my brain capabilities. And then mom…well, mom wouldn't get it as it is, since she hates computers. There's nobody left for me here. I don't ever feel like I belong, with all these people hating me and not listening to what I want them to hear."
She buried her head in her lap, "I suppose you'll arrest me now Agent. Well, go ahead, I'm ready to go," she said, holding out her wrists in a waiting position for handcuffs. But Mulder was thinking otherwise. "Kathryn, you know better than that. If you can read my mind than read this." She didn't move for a minute, but then finally retracted her wrists and folded her arms across her chest again, "You're not going to arrest me?" He sat back, "No, I'm going to let you go free. Besides, even if I wanted to prove you guilty I'd need evidence, and there is none. But I want to meet up with you or talk to you sometime later online about something very, very important." She smiled grimly, "Well sir, I can most certainly arrange that."
* * *
"Mulder are you serious?" Byers asked him when he had explained the conversation between he and Kathryn earlier that day. "Well it kind of makes sense doesn't it? It's no wonder that she can play with lightning speed because she basically plays with electricity and computers like tinker toys," said Langley, tapping into the chat room that Kathryn had named. "Hey, what's this?" Langley said when the screen popped up. "Huh. Don't see chat rooms like this every day," he said, "it's got one weird design program, that's for sure." "And we're the only name on the list," said Frohike, peering over his shoulder. "Hello," popped up on the screen out of the blue and they couldn't possibly have guessed who it would have been…yeah right. "Good evening Kathryn," Mulder typed in from a computer terminal next to Langley's. "Ahh, and a pleasant evening to you Agent Mulder…and also to your Lone Gunmen friends there. Hullo Mr. Langley, why don't you move over and let Mr. Frohike type? You haven't let him do that in a while."
"What the hell?!?" Langley exclaimed. "Do it," Mulder said, watching Langley slowly get up from his chair to allow Frohike to sit down. "That's better," came the typed response, "oh, and hello to Mr. Byers standing behind you." "This is unbelievable," Byers muttered, checking the equipment as if to make sure that someone wasn't playing a foul prank on them. "Enough talk Kathryn, let's get down to our deal," Mulder typed. "Of course, of course, I'll get into the government database," she replied. "Oh my God…" Frohike said slowly, "she really can read off of brain signals can't she?" he said. "Of course I can, did you think I was lying?" she asked with an emoticon of a smile next to the question. "But Agent, I think it'd be better if we talked in person, even though this chat room is perfectly safe. How about meeting me somewhere far out of town?" "Can you manage that" was what Mulder was going to type as a response but quickly erased it. "When can we meet?" he asked instead. "How about tomorrow at midnight? You'll get a phone call from me four hours before we meet. Goodbye, sir." And she was gone.
* * *
At six that evening Mulder received a phone call, as promised. "Go to the Delta ticket counter and get your ticket to Boston," she said. "I don't know if I'll even be able to get one," he said, "especially this soon." "Don't worry about that, just ask for a ticket to Boston under the name of Scott Williams, and it'll be all taken care of from there." She hung up.
* * *
"Fancy meeting you here," Kathryn said, swallowing a large mouthful of coffee. "Yeah, I didn't expect to see you here in a million years," Mulder replied, sitting down next to her on a park bench at midnight. She tossed the now empty coffee cup into a nearby smelly trashcan. "A little dangerous to be out here, isn't it?" he asked. "No, not really," she replied with a sigh, "I would know if anybody wanting to harm us were coming. Brain waves remember? That and you've got your gun. I'll be safe and so will you, mostly because one way or the other we're protecting each other. But that's beside the point," she patted a laptop perched precariously across her knees, "I've got what I need, but the question is…will you be able to get me close enough?" He shrugged, "I think so, but let's get going first." They both got inside his car and headed to a remote destination. "I thought you said you didn't need that thing to hack," he said, nodding to her laptop as he drove. "I don't really, but it's become my security blanket in a way, in case for some weird reason I suddenly lose my ability to hack through the mind. Which I doubt would happen," she said hastily, "I mean, I've been able to read minds and steal information from the internet since I was a kid, or at least until the internet was really up and running. It was a hunk of junk when I was a baby, but I learned enough." "You were a bright kid, I take it then, when you were a baby?"
She shrugged, "Well, I knew about a lot of stuff that kids don't normally have a complete grasp over by the time they're two. Like arithmetic, some simpler science concepts like Newtonian physics, spelling, reading, and the like. Unfortunately I didn't learn as much as I would have liked to, considering all that my parents ever thought of around me were things like, 'Does wittle Kathryn want a cooookie?' and dopey stuff like that. And of course, I learned a few of life's lessons that you normally don't learn till the hormones kick in. That was a little interesting, since I wasn't allowed out of a playpen for a while and that was all I had to think about. It got a little nasty after a while. Sometimes I envy the kids who learned via the old, 'When mommy and daddy love each other very much…' talk. I had to learn against my will, and boy was it a shocker when I found out I didn't come from a stork!" she said with a laugh. "Oh," Mulder said slowly, "that sounds pleasant." "Only to porn fans, Agent, only to them," she replied. He smiled knowingly. Suddenly she laughed uproariously, "Ha! I had forgotten about that sir, sorry," she said, still chuckling. The smile immediately fell off his face and he seemed to concentrate harder on driving. She grinned at him, "Oh don't pretend like you know something that I don't, because that's very, very, not true. I know everything about you Agent, and I do mean everything, as disquieting as you may find that. But hey, it's really not my fault now is it? Sometimes it even makes for an interesting day at school to listen to what the teachers think of their students, especially me. Ohhh, how that has provided for hours of laughs."
Mulder frowned, "I think that it would be terrible to be you. I suppose there are some advantages to knowing what people are thinking but most of the time it just bites you in the ass, doesn't it?" She shrugged, "Thank you very little, but I guess the fun you can have sometimes is worth the trouble. If the principal knew half the things that some of the teachers think during class half our staff would be gone." Mulder cringed, "People like that make me sick," he said, taking a leap into what the obvious ideas would be. "Aren't you a bit of one to talk?" she asked, "I mean I hardly think that a person who watches…" "We're here," Mulder snapped in immediately. "Let's do it," he murmured quietly as he pulled up to the guard shack. "ID please," the guard said in an annoyed tone, as if he'd just been interrupted from some much more important business. "Jack Myers," he said, handing over his fake ID. The guard came back a minute later, "All right, but who's the other one?" he said, pointing his flashlight at Kathryn. "My daughter Lydia," he said. "And what's she doing with you in the middle of the night at a government installation?" the guard snapped nastily. Kathryn started to cry and buried her face in Mulder's shoulder. "Please!" he said, patting her on the shoulder gently, "You're upsetting her!" He leaned in close to the guard, "My wife died a week ago," he whispered to the guard quietly. "She's been very upset, and any time I leave the house she's afraid I won't come back, and I figured it'd be all right if I…" "Go through," the guard said hastily, clearly not wanting to make a scene. Kathryn waited until the shack was far behind them before pulling her head back, her fake sobs quickly turning into laughter, "Sucker!" she chortled.
"Yeah," Mulder said, more concentrated on the task at hand, "great acting." She flicked an invisible speck of dust off her jacket, "I'm a natural," she said. "And so modest," he replied, pulling into the parking lot. "Very funny Agent, but we'll see how great your acting skills are when we get inside." "Why? You plan on getting caught?" he asked. "No," she said, letting out a sigh, "but I don't think that this place will be completely unguarded, so we'll just have to stick to the dead mother routine, cool?" she asked. "Yeah, we're cool," he grumbled as they got out of the car, Kathryn positioning the laptop in her jacket better so that it still looked as if nothing were underneath it. The guard at the door passed them through, and Mulder figured that the guard thought that if he'd gotten by the first gate, he was clear to go through the second. They walked through the dim halls quietly, until they reached a small computer lab with glass doors and a card lock on it. "So how do we get past this one?" he asked. "Like this," she said, staring hard at the lock. The light blinked from red to green and the doors opened quietly. "Let me guess," Mulder said as they walked in. "That's hooked up to a computer and you just messed around with the signals until you unlocked it right?" Suddenly she grabbed by the shoulder and jerked him back, "Watch out!" she whispered. "What?" he asked. She pointed down at the floor and pulled a tiny squirt bottle out of her pocket, "That," she said, gently misting right above the floor. Sure enough, there was a red laser beam laid out across the floor. "Just a second," she said, and it flicked off lifelessly. "Is that the only one?" he asked. "Yeah," she said, "but that's funny…why didn't it turn off with the lock?"
"I don't know," Mulder said, "and we don't have time, now let's get into one of these terminals." She flipped on the terminal using her brain and soon it was up and running and Kathryn quickly downloaded all the information into her brain. Just then, they heard a noise from down the hall. "But sir he checked out!" the guard from the gate was saying frantically to someone else. "You idiot! Why didn't you bring up a visual reference! That's not Jack Myers!" a voice said. "That son of a bitch," Mulder growled, almost tempted to walk toward the door and start firing bullets down the hall. "Krycek," Kathryn said quietly as she continued to download. "How did you…" Mulder started, and Kathryn gave him a, 'You know why I know,' look, and he left his question hanging in midair. "Kathryn there's no more time!" he hissed. She looked at the door and it suddenly flew shut again, the card lock turning red again. "Oh yeah, that'll hold them," he said depressedly.
"Got any better ideas?" she snapped. He looked around for an escape route, but found that there was only one way out and it was through where Krycek was coming from. "Don't bother, we're gonna have to use the vents," she said. He popped a tile up and pushed a nearby table underneath it to make it easier to climb into. "Go put a bar or something through the door handles," she said, still linked to the computer. He searched frantically, and then finally ripped out some computer wires and wrapped them around the large door handles, preventing anyone from opening it from the outside. "Mulder!" someone cried from the outside. "Uhh, Kathryn we're running out of time," he said, pulling out his gun and running back to her. "Almost finished…" she said. Krycek slid the card through and the light went green, but then he saw the computer cords wrapped around the handles and he cursed loudly.
"Language, tut tut tut," Kathryn said. Krycek and the guard suddenly pulled out their own guns and began firing at the doors. "Kathryn! Get out now! We've gotta leave!" he shouted, yanking hard on her shoulders. "No! Just a few more seconds…" a bullet blasted off most of the glass door, and the guard reached a hand through to jerk off the cord. "Kathryn NOW!" Mulder screamed at her. Krycek and the guard were running toward them, and they would be there in only seconds because of the size of the computer lab. Mulder, not knowing what else to do ripped out the cord that plugged in the computer. "You idiot! You've unplugged me!" she screamed in terror, and suddenly Kathryn was sucked into the monitor. Krycek and the guard stopped in mid run, and Mulder stumbled backward in horror. Then he seemed to regain his mind, realizing there was nothing left to do, and leapt upward into the ceiling and crawled as fast as he could before the guard or Krycek could realize what had happened.
* * *
"I don't believe it Mulder! You actually got away when they were that close?" Frohike said. He nodded slowly, "I don't even know why, but Krycek let me go." Mulder seemed to be seething with anger, "Kathryn's gone, I wasn't even supposed to be with her, Krycek knows I was there, and a lot of government information got stolen and I don't know where it went to. Sounds like next week will be a lot of fun at the Bureau." Langley shrugged, "Well, nobody knew you and Kathryn were hacking, Krycek let you go so chances are he won't come after you, and they won't be able to trace where the information went to because Kathryn's got it if she's still alive. Sounds like you're actually home free Mulder." He frowned silently, "Yeah, but at what cost?"
* * *
Mulder sat down at his desk again, staring at the keyboard. He had just come back from a meeting with AD Skinner, filing a report about their latest X-File with the dead Forrester kid, even though that was the last thing on Mulder's mind at the moment. It took him a full minute to realize that his monitor had a "1 Message Received" notice on it. He looked up gloomily at it. Mulder pressed enter, wondering what it was and expecting it to be some sort of bad news. Much to his surprise, it was the best he'd heard all day.
TO MY FAVORITE AGENT:
THANK YOU FOR A WONDERFUL NIGHT MR. MULDER.
PERHAPS WE'LL MEET AGAIN SOMEWHERE.
I'M NOT STUCK HERE, YOU KNOW, NOT I.
I CAN LEAVE WHENEVER I PLEASE, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT?
I'VE FINALLY FOUND A PLACE WHERE I CAN BE HAPPY.
ALSO, I'VE MADE SURE THAT ALL EVIDENCE IS CLEARED OF ANY IMPLICATIONS THAT YOU WERE INVOLVED IN MY MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE.
I WOULD NEVER GET SOMEONE AS NICE AND UNDERSTANDING AS YOU IN TROUBLE WITH THE BUREAU.
AFTER ALL, WE OUTCASTS HAVE TO STICK TOGETHER, EH SPOOKY?
ANY TIME YOU NEED HELP AGAIN, THINK AND I'LL BE THERE.
I HOPE YOU ENJOY THE CD I MADE FOR YOU.
Then, to Mulder's surprise, the CD-ROM drive in his computer slid open, and there was a CD with all the information that had disappeared along with Kathryn when he'd pulled the plug. He also noticed that on top of his computer tower was a clear jewel case with a small slip of paper on the inside.
With love to everybody's favorite Agent,
Kathryn
P.S. See you soon! (
He smiled silently to himself. After meeting someone like Kathryn, he hoped he would.