TITLE: Comperio
AUTHOR: Brittany "Thespis" Frederick
E-MAIL: baltimorelt@yahoo.com
SPOILERS: Existence
RATING: PG for language
CATEGORY: Case File, new character, Doggett, Mulder
and Krycek-heavy (definitely WIP)
SUMMARY: The second of three standalones which
interconnect. If you haven't read "Conloquor," I
recommend you do, or you'll miss the case file part of
this. While in the midst of accepting possibilities
they don't want to admit, everyone looks at the
implications, and begins the bitter task of trying to
sort the whole sordid affair out. Sometimes, there is
a pause before the storm, but there is still thunder
before the lightning.
DISCLAIMER: All nonoriginal content belongs to Chris
Carter, 1013, and FOX. Agent Stark Patrick and all new
content/ideas et cetera belong to me and I'm proud of
it. Archive's okay, with my permission.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: In case you don't speak Latin,
Comperio is Latin for "to learn." And I borrowed from
the upcoming feature film "Swordfish" for parts of the
plot (I'm a self-admitted Hugh Jackman fan). No, I
don't spoil the movie's plot, in fact, I think I
butchered the general premise rather badly. But it's
good to recognize your influences.
Some other thought it's thinking
This illumination visited upon the whole land
The demon was an idea
The demon is awake
A scratch mark left across the surface of your mind
This hour now upon us
The hour has now arrived
I heard what they said
I know the truth...
- Soul Coughing, "Unmarked Helicopters"
In that state between sleeping and waking, the mind
is wont to make situations more realistic than they
could ever possibly be, if that makes any sense. A
person can experience much more than they thought they
could when floating in this limbo of consciousness,
especially when high levels of stress or other
emotions cause a mind to develop certain neuroses. It
is thus, then, that a single gunshot imagined in this
state of being could sound like a thousand, tearing
through human flesh and bone with rivers of blood and
an agonizing pain that feels as if there is
deconstruction atom by atom in a neverending suffering
that can only be stopped by a sudden return to the
land of the living with wide-eyed fear, a pounding
heart, and a suitably decent scream.
Special Agent Stark Patrick rolled over onto her
back, trying to still her rapid heartbeat as she took
desperate breaths. Her pulse continued to pound in her
ears, and she fought to shove the memory out of her
mind. She sat up in bed, bent over, arms wrapped
tightly around her chest, trying to come to terms with
herself, trying to come to terms with how someone who
had faced liquid metal killing machines from the
future and almost anything the X-Files could throw at
her could be haunted by one deceptively simple shot.
"Christ," she muttered to herself as her bedroom door
slowly opened.
"I thought I heard..." her partner started.
"You did," she admitted, running a hand through her
short dark hair in frustration. "It happened again."
Special Agent John Doggett gave an almost
imperceptible nod, taking this in from his position in
the doorway. He did empathize with his partner; he had
told her all about Anthony Tipet and the third eye and
his return from the dead and the other cases that had
come to be his baptism by fire into the X-Files. He
had known when she had transferred in, and he had told
her so, that it was no easy place, no safe place, for
any agent. Everything that would happen after that
moment would pass through the filter of the abstract,
abnormal, sometimes frightening experiences that came
as a result of being assigned to the X-Files section.
It had happened to Scully, it had happened to him, it
had happened to Stark. Despite this, she still
displayed the tenacity he had known of her in Criminal
Investigations, tackling anything and everything when
no one else had the strength to. She'd been nearly
strangled by a liquid metal cyborg, been briefly
telepathic, hunted a woman who claimed to speak with
the voices of murder victims, investigated the
resurgence of the Andromeda Strain, and entered
hypervirtual reality, among other things, and yet she
survived. This time, however, the implications of one
shooting had caught with her.
It was not, he surmised, the actual shooting that
bothered her. She had healed nicely, even if it had
been arduous and unexpected, and she was in fighting
condition. Rather, it was the idea that a dead man had
handed her a minidisc less than a day ago and forced
her to consider that when the Assistant Director they
all answered to and respected shot that same man, that
he may have done so in a negligent manner, for
possibly personal reasons. That was what terrified
her. Accusing a friend. The resurgence of the dead.
Cryptic languages and late-night meetings and the
things that happened when crime flirted with agendas.
She was a superb investigator; she was not prepared
for the intricate levels to which cases such as the
one that had appeared to her in the parking garage of
the Hoover Building could rise, and in this case, had
risen.
He closed the door behind himself and sat on the edge
of her bed, looking into her eyes, which displayed a
mixture of confusion, fear, attempted endurance, and
fatigue. "We'll make it through this," he insisted
quietly. "You, me, Agent Scully, Mulder ... we'll
survive this. That's what we do."
She glanced up at him, "And what if we're wrong? If
it's all wrong?"
He let out a tense sigh. "Then we get up off the mat,
we find our next case, and we try it again."
There was silence in the room for a moment as the
partners of seven years studied each other. They'd
worked together four years in C.I.D., then when he had
been transferred, they had spent one difficult year
apart before she had followed him to the basement of
her own volition. If there was anything to be said
about their partnership, and the friendship that had
evolved with it, it was that they walked through fire
together. There was never a moment when their loyalty
to each other could be questioned. Not even in
difficult times such as these.
"I guess you're right," she admitted. "I just want an
answer. The truth."
"It's what we all want," he reminded her needlessly.
"Sometimes, it just takes a while to find it."
"And sometimes we don't find it at all," she added
caustically.
"But we have to take that chance," he finished the
statement, squeezing her hand firmly. "C'mon. We're
meeting the Gunmen and Mulder over at Scully's place
in," he looked past her at the digital clock on her
nightstand, "a little over an hour."
She looked over her shoulder; the clock read 8:14.
"We were supposed to be at work an hour ago," she said
incredulously, then looked back at him for an
explanation.
"You needed your sleep. We all did." Doggett
shrugged. "We're all just coincidentally taking a sick
day."
"And A.D. Skinner obviously won't notice that the
basement is strangely empty." Stark rolled her eyes,
climbing out of bed, "I'll be in the shower."
"I'll be in the kitchen," he told her as they walked
out of the room, noticing the subsequent look she gave
him. "Hey, breakfast is the most important meal of the
day. And given all the stuff that's been happening, I
think we'll need all the nutrients we can get."
"You may have a point," was all she said before she
walked away, hoping for once that maybe, just maybe,
he might be wrong on that count.
********
She had never wanted to believe. In fact, she had not
gone into that basement office almost three years ago
with expectations of experiencing what she had. She
had chosen her actions with the single intent of
following her partner, the one person she needed with
her above all else. Of finding him and fixing whatever
had been screwed up in her life that one year they'd
been apart. She hadn't come in because she believed,
because she even cared. But slowly, as she had seen it
all, she grew to understand.
Understand what it was Fox Mulder was after and how
it went so much deeper and had so much more meaning
than some of the cynical aboveground agents assigned
to it. Understand that there are possibilities beyond
that which everyone expects. Understand that there are
other explanations, and that sometimes there aren't
explanations at all. It was this thinking which lead
Stark down the path that she had to pursue whatever
had been thrown at her, even if she didn't like the
outcome. The cops in Baltimore homicide had taught her
that you put down a case, no matter if it's your
grandmother that pulled the trigger. Once a case went
up in red under your name, you did everything you
could to put it in black, no matter what. This same
mentality, along with the infinite possibilities which
she knew were possible, made her chase what Alex
Krycek had allowed her to see. And she hated him for
it.
Her fist collided with the punching bag in the other
bedroom hard, a result of all this emotion, so hard
that her knuckles stung with the contact. She didn't
really care. After all the B.S. the X-Files had thrown
at her, she had a high threshold of pain. She took
another shot, and even through the glove she felt the
burning sensation. For a brief, fleeting moment, she
wished it was Krycek, simply so she could let him
experience what she was experiencing inside herself.
But she couldn't fault him as much as she wanted to.
It was her and her alone who'd sat on her couch mere
hours ago and given John all the reasons why she
should do this when he'd told her simply to say the
hell with it and walk away. She didn't listen to him
enough, she decided.
"Watch it. You're gonna hurt yourself," he said from
behind her.
"I don't think it makes a difference," she replied as
her fist hit the bag again.
"I think it does," he shot back, and she took a few
more needless punches before she threw down the gloves
and examined her hands, which were in places somewhat
red. For once in her life, she didn't have the courage
to say something in reply, and walked past him. It was
not a day of conversation. It was a day of war.
********
"Déjà vu," remarked Fox Mulder as he let the two
Special Agents in the door of his ex-partner's
apartment later in the morning. Stark and John gave
him one of those 'it's not terribly funny but thanks
for trying' consolation-prize glances, and waited for
him to close the door and give them whatever news had
passed in the hours since they'd last spoken somewhere
around 4:10 in the morning. He did, and nodded toward
where Lone Gunmen Frohike, Langly and Byers sat
clustered around Scully's computer. "They've opened
some of these files," he explained, "and they say they
seem to be Syndicate documents."
"No surprise there," cut in John. "What kind of
documents?"
"All kinds of documents," Mulder elaborated. "Things
having to do with the nanoprobes in Assistant Director
Skinner's blood. Things that seem to point toward the
Syndicate trying to manipulate us, trying to force a
course of action so that, inevitably, the Assistant
Director would shoot down Alex Krycek."
"Sort of like 'All roads lead to Rome?'" Doggett
half-quipped.
"Or 'All lies lead to the truth,'" replied his
partner, walking between the two men and over to the
computer. "You want to fill me in?" she asked none of
the three Gunmen in particular.
"It's frighteningly simple, actually," Byers said.
"The documents here are showing that the Syndicate
engineered events so that Krycek would be shot by the
Assistant Director. For what reasons, we still don't
know. But if this is true... a good many things we've
learned over the past year, solutions to things,
answers to things, could all be ... I don't quite know
how to say this ... a lie."
Stark nodded in acceptance, though her mind was far
from it. "Can we authenticate those as being from the
Syndicate?"
"Yeah," her partner agreed, "I wouldn't count Krycek
above forging all this to scare the living hell out of
you and Covarrubias."
"So we're talking about the unraveling of a scheme ...
or a scheme," Mulder deduced simplistically. Stark
nodded. "Unfortunately, I can't say which one," she
admitted. "But it could be Swordfish," she added
abruptly.
Mulder and Doggett exchanged glances. All three of
the Gunmen looked at Stark. "You know about
Swordfish?" was Byers' rejoinder, followed shortly
thereafter by Frohike's "But that's just a speculation
... a speculatory system, it's never been confirmed."
The conversation would have gone on longer, but
Doggett cut in, "Okay, you guys want to tell me what
you're talking about here?"
Stark started to explain, "Swordfish is the password
- and, by default, the codename - of a rumored
computer hacking project. It's been a pet case of mine
almost since I joined the Bureau."
Langly helpfully assisted with the background, "There
were - are - rumors going around that Swordfish is
masterminded by a former, or current, member of the
CIA, to steal billions of dollars allocated to a DEA
project using some computer and phone technology, not
to mention a crack team of hackers."
"It could be possible," she took over again, "that
Krycek is, or was, involved with Swordfish. This data
would, when exposed, collapse the Syndicate, and a
majority of government moles. The entire system of
intelligence would go down, and then that would..."
"Leave room for Swordfish to steal more than
billions," Mulder finished. "I think you may be
reaching, but at this point, no alley's too blind to
run down," he assented. "Where would we start?"
"With me," Stark said quickly, "I've got stuff on
this project going about eight years back over at my
apartment."
"Okay." Mulder paused. "Langly, Byers, Frohike - keep
after that data, and see what you can tap into on
Swordfish. Agent Patrick - would you mind if you had
some company?"
Stark smirked, "No problem, Mulder."
END PART 1
=====
PART 2
You're no longer my story
Someone should tell you
I'm balancing the curve
So unafraid
I'm not falling too rough
I'm measuring your words
Don't hesitate
How cleverly you ramble
When it's too late...
- Jan Johnston, "Unafraid"
"How come I didn't notice this before?" was Doggett's
remark when Stark opened her hall closet to reveal
stacks of boxes, all carefully labeled "Swordfish"
with various years and subsequent months within those
years. As Stark selected the most recent - that
particular month - and dropped it on her living room
table, she shrugged. "You're mellowing, John," she
said. He smirked. "That must be it," he replied as
Mulder opened the box, sifting through various
clippings, computer printouts, photographs and
spiral-bound notebooks full of notes. When Stark had
said she was into Swordfish, he hadn't estimated just
how much.
But before he could say anything, she walked past
him. "I need to make a phone call," she told him, and
picked up her cordless phone and walked into her
bedroom, leaving the two men to look at her years of
research.
She dialed the number of the Bureau's L.A. field
office. "This is Agent Patrick with the D.C. office,"
she told the person on the other end of the line, "I
need to speak with Agent Roberts."
"Just a second." There was a click; Special Agent
J.T. Roberts picked up a moment later. "Roberts."
"J.T., it's Stark Patrick. Got a moment?"
"Agent Patrick, hadn't expected to hear from you
again," Roberts said, dryly amused. His voice sounded
overstressed, though, and as John had taught her, she
picked up on it.
"Something up, J.T.?"
Roberts sighed. "We've just got some weirdass shit
that just went down. What d'you need?"
"I need to get in touch with Stanley Jobson," she
explained. "Know where I can find him?"
Roberts swore. "Yeah, I know," he said after a
moment. "He's out of Texas. I think he's in Arizona
with his daughter."
"He got Holly back?" Stark was momentarily surprised.
She'd caught this guy once before, and knew his life
story. She didn't expect that a felon would have his
kid. Stanley was a hell of a lot cleaner and ethical
than many felons she'd met, but with his reputation
and the fact that he'd tried a dozen times to win
custody, she hadn't thought one of these days he'd
actually win.
"Yeah," Roberts said. "He was the major player in
this thing that just went down. Blew a fucking
helicopter right out of the sky, took down this
terrorist who was using human hostage bombs."
Stark looked out her open bedroom door at John and
Mulder. "What the hell's going on out there, J.T.?"
"Swordfish," Roberts said. "That's what's going on."
She sighed. "Funny you should say that, J.T., 'cause
that's just what I need to talk to Stanley about.
We've got our hands on some stuff up here that we
think is connected to the whole thing and we need to
find out fast. Some data. I can't tell you much more
until I know it. Could you send all your stuff?"
"No problem," Roberts said. "Official or unofficial?"
"Unofficial," she said. "Tell Stanley no harm, no
foul, but I need his help on this one. And ask him how
the jaw is."
Roberts chuckled, remembering the punch she'd used to
take out the computer felon two years prior. "I think
it's fine," he said, "I'll set something up between
the two of you. We can fly his ass out there. I can
disguise it on my travel account."
"I owe you, J.T.," she told him, then hung up the
phone and walked back out to her expectant company.
"I'm not calling it much," she confessed, "but I've
got a friend setting up a meeting with a guy I helped
bust two years ago. He might help us put the pieces
into place."
"What the hell did you get into while I was gone?"
Doggett quipped. He'd heard pieces and parts of the
story, and he put it together. "Is this that thing you
were in Texas for?"
She nodded. "Stanley Jobson, computer felon. He's
forbidden to go within sixty feet of a computer. He
blew up the Carnivore program. Since I was a member of
Cyber Crimes Task Force, they called me out on it. I
hooked up with J.T. Roberts from L.A. and we put the
case down."
"Carnivore? That thing that reads people's e-mail?"
Mulder said incredulously. "I would have given the guy
a medal."
"So would I," Stark said, shrugging as if to say it
had been out of her hands. "So if this has anything to
do with computers, Stanley's our guy. If he'll come
anywhere near me," she admitted sheepishly. "But
anyway, I talked to J.T. and he says - get this - he's
got some Swordfish stuff going down in L.A., too. He
says he'll send the stuff and fly Stanley out here.
But this is definitely big game."
"Obviously," Mulder said. "But the question remains..."
"What does Krycek have to do with it," Doggett
answered it for him.
Mulder nodded. "Exactly." He turned to Stark. "How
soon can you meet this source of yours?"
********
"You're sure that this is down?" John asked Stark for
the fifth time as Mulder swung the car around into the
back parking lot of the Blue Light Diner, which had
been selected by Roberts as the place where Stark
would once again come face-to-face with Stanley. It
had taken three days to persuade him and get him to
D.C., during which there had been virtually no
progress, but the show was now in motion.
"Stanley doesn't bite unless you make him," Stark
said tiredly as they exited the vehicle and began
crossing the parking lot. She checked for her gun
inside her baseball jacket, then turned and looked at
her two compatriots. "I told him I wouldn't be alone,
but for once," she said slowly, "trust me." They
nodded and turned, heading for the front entrance. She
waited another few minutes and went in through the
back.
The diner was nearly deserted, but not enough to make
anything noticeable; there were still a few people.
John and Mulder were toward the back, and she could
tell her partner was nervous - all his muscles were
tense. She spotted Stanley instantly. He was taller
than she was, with dark hair and eyes, and she would
have thought him attractive if she'd been a few years
older. He didn't appear like the prototypical
convicted felon. He'd cleaned himself up from last
time she'd seen him, and she knew he was waiting for
her. He had an acceptance on his face as she slid into
the booth. "Just like old times, huh, Stan?" she said
quietly. He smirked. "I don't know, you want to punch
me again?"
"Not really," she said. "I talked to Agent Roberts.
Congratulations on everything."
"Thanks," he replied. "I was kind of hoping L.A.
would be the end of all this."
"So was I. But like I said, I need your help on this
one." Stark sighed. "Here's the situation. My partner
and my co-worker are by the front door. They're not
going to bite unless I tell them to. I'm carrying a
gun and I'll use it if I have to. I'm not here to bust
you, but I do need you to work with me. Can you do
that?"
Stanley looked over his shoulder, presumably at
Mulder and Doggett, and nodded. "Yeah," he said after
a moment. "Talk to me."
She explained the whole situation with Krycek and the
Syndicate and the minidiscs and the data they thought
was on them and what she thought was the connection to
Swordfish as quickly and as easily as she could. She
explained how Krycek had broken into her apartment,
how he had gone after Marita Covarrubias, how her
shooting had gone down, and all the other things that
she'd learned in the last five days since the whole
thing started. There was silence for a moment as he
thought over everything. "I know what you're thinking
of," he said, "but Swordfish went down in L.A."
"I've read J.T.'s reports," she said, "I know that
you blew a helicopter out of the sky and shot down
Gabriel Shear."
"First of all, Shear's not dead. That's not his body.
I saw that body in his basement long before it turned
up in the coroner's office. Second, the reports don't
tell you everything you'll need to know, because
Roberts doesn't know the whole story." He saw the
intrigued look on her face, and continued. "I was
hired to do the Swordfish operation - literally build
the hydra, drop it in, steal the money, okay, which I
did..." He put up a hand to forestall her from saying
that it was a crime to do so and she should send him
back to prison for it, as he knew she would. "But I
engineered a clock timer when I did. Thousand and
twenty-eight bit cypher, even I can't crack it. The
money jumps every sixty seconds to a new series of
accounts. Shear can't touch it. He thought I had it
disabled, but what he didn't know was that I built a
secondary timer that activates as soon as he tries to
touch the money."
"Has he?"
"No, but his associate has," Stanley explained. "I
logged into the World Bank's mainframe, and someone
matching the description of his right-hand woman
Ginger withdrew the entire mass of it into nine
different accounts. We're talking nine billion dollars
and change here."
Stark sighed at the sheer amount of it. "But if
Shear's got the money, why would Krycek try to
collapse the government's moles so that he could take
it?"
"He doesn't technically *have* the money," Stanley
corrected her again. "And a few days before he got it,
we found the body of a minor U.S. senator in Oregon.
Understandably, the public will never hear of his
death, but that makes me think that Shear has his
connections. Which could lead to your Syndicate."
She nodded, then paused. "How the hell do you know so
much, Stanley? You trying to get that world's most
dangerous hacker title back from the Finnish guy,
what's his name?"
"Axel Torvalds. And he's dead. Has been since the
beginning of L.A. Shear's guys got him in the
interrogation room shortly after he was caught at
customs and dragged into Roberts' claws." Stanley
paused. "I should ask you what you think you're
getting into here."
Stark smiled. "I'm just trying to figure out how dead
men seem not to be, Stanley. Just doing my job."
"And if you can do it," he said with his own smile,
"then you're one hell of a federal officer."
She paused, looking past him, past John and Mulder,
out into the darkened D.C. street, then she flashed
John a particular signal before turning back to
Stanley, who seemed vaguely amused. "What?" he said.
"You're going to tell your partner to kick my ass
because I've offended you?"
"No," she said as she felt for the handle of her gun,
"I just told my partner to go find out who's watching
us." Pulling the weapon, she signaled to Mulder, who
approached the hacker as Doggett slipped out the front
door. "Stay here," she told Stanley.
"Fat chance of that," he said, rising to follow her.
At her questioning eyebrow, he said, "We're both on
the same side here, Agent Patrick." She didn't have
time to argue. She started toward the back door,
letting the hacker and Mulder follow her out with a
quiet expediency.
She had her hand on the back door when a single
gunshot split the night, then another, and two more.
They ran out the door and rounded the corner of the
parking lot. She kept a firm grip on her weapon, her
eyes searching the night for John. But there was too
much haze in that D.C. night to see. She once again
passed her charge into the custody of Mulder. "I'm
going to find him," she told them both, starting
towards the front lot where the scene had gone down.
"What the hell are you thinking?" Stanley bit back.
"That's my *partner* out there," she replied tersely.
"Don't you understand?" he said. "It's you they're
after. He didn't call on your partner, he went after
you. Gabriel went after me, not Roberts. It's only by
chance I'm still alive. This isn't about any of the
people you think it's about. It's about you. You're
walking into their hands."
"Yeah, well, I'm full of surprises," she said,
cocking the weapon. Before Stanley Jobson could say
anything else that might prevent Stark Patrick from
certain suicide, another shot sounded, and she
disappeared into the haze of the night, accepting
whatever fate hers might be.
END PART 2
=====
PART 3
This was such a go, take it all right
Taste it all right
Tell me what you know, you'll take it all right
Gotta take it slow, you'll make it all right
Like a stranger and a friend
Sea crashed in and the swordfish goes
Not too lonely, no
Get out of my life
- Paul Oakenfold & Planet Perfecto, "Get Out of My
Life Now"
It was the last thought she expected to have as she
entered the fire.
What do you expect me to think, John? What do you
expect me to feel? Do you want to blame this on me,
all of this, the shooting and the break-in and all of
this, because I alone decided to pursue this? Are you
going to lose respect for me because I decided to
question what everyone else is telling me is the
truth? No, I know you wouldn't. But I know there's
part of you that is.
It was simple facts, cold and cruel. She knew that
her partner was highly defensive of the shooting of
Alex Krycek, which the books called clean. Her
decision to question it - the choice which had landed
them in all of this, including the shootout now taking
place between her partner and unknown assailants in
the front parking lot of the Blue Light Diner - struck
a chord somewhere in him, she knew it. That was why he
hadn't wanted to get involved, but he'd become
involved. He didn't want to think of questioning other
officers. He would, if that was the honest truth, but
until he was sure, he wouldn't even think that. She
had no such problems, especially since Agent Gene
Crane had gone missing and she had nine billion
dollars floating in cyberspace as a result of
Swordfish, the secret theft operation which had
apparently now gone bi-coastal.
All that she cared about, though, were the bullets
flying in the distance.
She held her breath for a second against the wall of
the diner, then filled her lungs with fear and
exhaled, coming around the corner with gun leveled to
fire.
Her partner had taken cover behind a parked vehicle,
and she saw him fire another shot. Maybe ten feet
away, a sharp-looking black Mercedes provided similar
protection for two other people, one of whom she saw
through a shattered backseat window, the other who
took another shot. She dove for cover before he could
notice her, her back slamming hard against the front
passenger-side door of the Acura that her partner was
leaning against. He glanced at her as she looked at
their assailants. "Welcome to the party," he quipped,
but she was in no mood to laugh. "What the hell
happened?" she asked him as she observed the other
car.
"I walk out here and start heading for the car, and
they started shooting," Doggett explained. "Like they
knew who I was."
"I bet they do," she said. "I bet they know all about
us."
He nodded with a grim acceptance. "What do you want
to do?"
She paused. "I don't think they're going to run out
of bullets any time soon. These are probably Shear's
people. We take them down."
"That's what I do best," he said with a smirk.
She smiled briefly. "I'll draw their fire from this
side. Can you circle around and get the jump on them?"
He didn't say anything, but she moved around the
front of the car to between it and the car parked next
to it, firing two more shots. It was all the jump he
needed to break away and find the cover of the diner
building. She made brief eye contact with him; behind
him she could see Mulder, doing his job holding back
Stanley, who surprisingly wasn't fighting as much as
she'd thought he would. But she could see the look on
his face: he still thought she was crazy, but he was
ready to pull her from the fire if need be. She didn't
understand it; she had, after all, put him in prison.
But she nodded to John, and he in turn enlisted the
aid of their two compatriots. They weren't much use
standing around; he would put them to use.
All she had to do was wait. Stark fired again, and as
she dropped back behind the vehicle she heard the
sound of a window blowing out. She looked up and
realized that whoever drove the Toyota she was hiding
behind would need some body work done shortly. These
guys were professionals, she realized. Shear or
whoever had called the hounds on her had sent not
cheap street assassins, but professional hitmen, to
take her number. Problem: she wasn't ready to die yet.
She brushed the glass off of herself and took a second
to line up her shot before she fired; even as the
blood sprayed off the shoulder of one of her
assailants, the other fired a shot that barely missed
her. She fired her remaining three bullets just
because she could.
She knew she was outnumbered. Her aim had never been
that sharp, despite John's tutelage. But she just had
to kill time before they killed her.
Come on, guys, she said silently as she loaded
another clip, thankful that she'd been paranoid enough
to carry extra ammunition. I can't do this forever.
More gunfire sounded, but it sounded away from her,
not in her general direction. The sound of people
hitting the pavement confirmed that the cavalry had
indeed arrived. Standing with her weapon, she raced
across to the battered Mercedes where John had one man
on the ground and Stanley had a gun to the wounded
man's head. She let out the breath she had been
holding, her heart pounding, her chest heaving,
shimmering slightly in the moonlight and haze because
of pieces of glass still left on her jacket. "Verify,"
she said to Stanley, knowing he knew the phrase well.
He glanced up at her, still holding the gun. "Clear,"
he said, still breathing hard. "You all right?"
She nodded. "Except for being under a shattered
window." Even so, she didn't put the gun away. "What
do you want to do with these guys?" she said to no one
in particular.
Mulder answered her. "Let's find out what they know."
Stark produced her set of handcuffs and tossed them
to him, shaking her head. "It's going to be a long
night."
"No shit," Stanley said, hauling his charge to his
feet. "What was your first clue?"
"Maybe the bullet that barely missed my head." She
watched Mulder and Doggett secure their two new
hostages. "We need to talk."
********
"You know those two?" she asked Stanley as they
walked back to the car that the federal officers had
driven in. "You seen them before?"
"Never," he said.
"I have," she told him. "They were at the airport
when you and Torvalds showed up in L.A. Roberts got a
screen capture of them both. He knows they're
connected to the death of Torvalds and the Finnish
lawyer."
"Doesn't bode well for me, does it?" he said
rhetorically as she opened the car door and found the
Swordfish file that Roberts had sent her. She found
the screen captures and showed them both to him. He
examined them both, then looked back over his shoulder
at the Mercedes. "They probably work for Shear," he
stated the obvious for her.
"I need to know who this guy is, Stanley," she said,
closing the car door and locking it. "You need to tell
me who I'm up against."
He sighed. "I don't know that much."
"Tell me what you do know."
"He had Ginger pick me up from the airport and meet
him in some club. Then he holds a gun to my head and
gives me sixty seconds to crack the DOD system.
Anything he can't get out of you, he puts a gun to
your head or some explosives on some innocent victim
and that solves the problem. The guy gets you, takes
what he wants when he wants it, and disappears."
She rubbed tiredly at the bridge of her nose as she
took this in. "Torvalds described him as 'a cold,
unflinching, calculating machine.'"
"That's about right," he said. "You want my advice,
walk away now. It's not worth it. It wasn't worth it
for me, it wasn't worth it for Roberts, it wasn't
worth it for that woman who exploded like the world's
largest living Claymore mine in the middle of the
street outside the World Bank. Don't put yourself
through this."
Her gaze turned hard around the edges. First John,
now this. "The truth may not set you free," she told
him firmly, "but it is always the truth."
Then she gave John another signal, popped out her car
keys, and circled the vehicle. "Get in the car," she
ordered Stanley sharply. He eyed her cautiously. "What
are you thinking?" he asked her.
"He contacted Marita hours after he found me," she
repeated for him. "If they're after me, she's in
danger, too. Now get in the car. We need to get to the
U.N. yesterday."
He did as he was told. She pulled the vehicle out of
the diner parking lot, stepped on the gas and sped
down the street at ninety miles an hour listening to
Paul Oakenfold, hoping she wasn't too late to get
where she needed to go, trying to forget where she'd
just been. And silently cursing Alex Krycek.
********
Grinding the gas pedal into the floor of the car,
Stark reached for her cell phone, pulling out the card
that Marita Covarrubias had given her and dialing the
number as she turned the music up another notch. She
wanted to drown out the sounds of gunfire in her head,
drown out her memories of another time, another
bullet. She listened to the phone ring. Finally, there
was an answer.
"Marita? Are you okay?" she asked immediately.
"I'm fine," the U.N. agent said, concerned. "Agent
Patrick, what's going on?"
"I'm on my way. I'll explain when I get there," Stark
said quickly, "but I've just been shot at by people
sent by someone who may be working with Krycek. You're
in danger. Do you have a weapon?"
"Under my desk."
"I want you to get it, and I want you to get out of
your office and somewhere safe. That's the first place
they'll look for you. Find somewhere and stay there
until I get there. Can you do that?"
Stanley tapped her on the shoulder. She glanced over
and followed his gaze.
"Do it now, Marita," she said, and hung up the phone.
Slamming the phone down with one hand, with the other
she swung the vehicle hard right, turning it entirely
around in the intersection. The black vehicle not
unlike that which had been following them slammed on
the brakes. Stark didn't wait for them to start
driving again. She looked over her shoulder, swung her
car into reverse, and backed the vehicle through the
intersection, where she quickly turned it hard around
again, with the scream of agonized tires her reward.
She stepped on the gas and continued to drive
one-handed, looking behind her as their pursuers
righted themselves and started to drive again.
"How many of these people are there?" she asked
Stanley.
"As many as it takes," he told her.
She nodded, reaching for her gun. "Can you drive?"
she said, unbuckling her seat belt.
"The last person who told me that was Gabriel, before
he murdered eight people in the street firing an
assault rifle while I drove," Stanley said, his voice
full of bitterness and edge, but he unbuckled anyway
and she quickly climbed from the convertible's
driver's seat to its backseat. The vehicle slid
without anyone to control its wild flight, but Stanley
quickly regained control and Stark uncocked her
sidearm. If it were up to her, she wouldn't murder
anyone tonight, but she was fast realizing things
weren't in her control anymore, if they ever had been.
She set up a shot and fired, grazing one of the
vehicle's front tires. The car briefly lost control
for a second, enough to throw off the driver but not
to total the vehicle. Before she could try for two,
however, her own vehicle swung hard around a corner.
"Hold on," Stanley told her without looking back
before he ran a red light in a highly crowded
intersection. She was thrown back against the back of
the driver's seat as he swung to avoid a Hyundai that
slammed on its brakes in the nick of time, then turned
hard in the other direction to miss a Saturn and
grazed a Ford Explorer in the turn lane on his way
out. The turn was a violent whiplash which briefly
disoriented Stark's vision, but it paid off when she
saw her pursuers trying to break through the resulting
traffic jam. The distance between them continued to
grow. Despite this, she didn't let herself relax. She
never could.
She didn't want that to be mistaken for weakness.
She had to find Marita.
Then, maybe, just maybe, she could breathe, period.
********
Stark didn't wait for the car to stop before she
jumped out of its backseat and went running for the
doors of the U.N. building. Stanley stopped the car
and was seconds behind her. She didn't look back,
didn't think twice. She knew she was being chased and
every second counted. Marita Covarrubias, her only
connection to Alex Krycek, was in danger. Or she could
already be in hot water. Stark couldn't take that
chance. She sped up the stairwell she'd mounted three
days ago, taking it in double-time with a desperation
she'd never known before. Stanley covered her with her
own weapon, and they made it to the landing in record
time. Every muscle in her body screamed pain, every
particle of her sixth sense screamed danger, but she
did not allow herself to stop.
There was, after all, one law: fight or die.
No room for middle ground.
"Where the hell is she?" she growled as she opened
the stairwell door with her shoulder and burst onto
the landing, Stanley following behind her. Marita's
office door was wide open, the light still on. Stark
rushed to the door, her mind fearing the worst.
"Damn it!" she yelled at the sight.
Covarrubias's office was a ruin, the desk broken, the
papers all over the place, all of it strewn in pieces
and parts all over the place. Someone had gotten here
first, looking for something that she didn't know if
they'd found. They were not alone. She turned then and
headed down the corridor towards where she'd met
Marita earlier, yelling the United Nations' special
representative's name. The only answer she heard was
the shattering of glass.
At the sound, Stanley turned and followed, but Stark
was already around the corner.
Two gunshots reached the hacker's ears.
Marita Covarrubias fired a third shot before Stark
could stop her or help her. A shadow crumpled against
the wall of the U.N.'s computer office, and a backwash
of red accompanied the motion. Stark kicked open the
shattered door, looking down on yet another black-clad
corpse she didn't know. Marita's hands were shaking
and she slowly put down the weapon, unable to take her
eyes from the man she'd just killed.
Stark pursed her lips to say something, but couldn't
find the words.
Stanley stepped into the room, took one look at the
body and the two women, and shook his head, dropping
Stark's weapon to his side.
He watched Stark cover her eyes with her hand in
abject disgust, then slam her fist blindly into the
wall. She walked out of the room before either of them
could say anything, out onto the landing, past Doggett
and Mulder, who arrived on the scene in time to
witness the tepid silence. She stopped only to ask one
question.
"Where are they?"
Doggett paused. "Six feet under."
"When?"
"Not too long after you left."
Stark nodded soberly. "Fine."
"Are you okay?" her partner asked quietly.
She shook her head, her eyes flashing with a bitter
cognizance. "No, John, I'm most decidedly not okay."
She exhaled. "Shear wants a war, he's got one. I'll
kick in every door, I'll break every head, but I'm not
sleeping until the bodies stop falling. I started
this, I'm going to finish it. Whether you're with me
or not, that's your choice."
He didn't have to think twice. Or at all.
"You know your answer."
"Not yet," she said, "but I will. After all," she
soberly admitted, "It's all I have left."
END
=====
"Oh, for God's sake, please be somebody else."
- Lewis Black
Natalie: Two guys have ascended 5 miles into the sky. They
walked up a wall of ice and are preparing to knock on the
door of heaven itself. There's really no end to what we
can do. You know what the trick is?
Dan: What?
Natalie: Get in the game!
- "The Quality of Mercy at 29K", "Sports Night"
AUTHOR: Brittany "Thespis" Frederick
E-MAIL: baltimorelt@yahoo.com
SPOILERS: Existence
RATING: PG for language
CATEGORY: Case File, new character, Doggett, Mulder
and Krycek-heavy (definitely WIP)
SUMMARY: The second of three standalones which
interconnect. If you haven't read "Conloquor," I
recommend you do, or you'll miss the case file part of
this. While in the midst of accepting possibilities
they don't want to admit, everyone looks at the
implications, and begins the bitter task of trying to
sort the whole sordid affair out. Sometimes, there is
a pause before the storm, but there is still thunder
before the lightning.
DISCLAIMER: All nonoriginal content belongs to Chris
Carter, 1013, and FOX. Agent Stark Patrick and all new
content/ideas et cetera belong to me and I'm proud of
it. Archive's okay, with my permission.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: In case you don't speak Latin,
Comperio is Latin for "to learn." And I borrowed from
the upcoming feature film "Swordfish" for parts of the
plot (I'm a self-admitted Hugh Jackman fan). No, I
don't spoil the movie's plot, in fact, I think I
butchered the general premise rather badly. But it's
good to recognize your influences.
Some other thought it's thinking
This illumination visited upon the whole land
The demon was an idea
The demon is awake
A scratch mark left across the surface of your mind
This hour now upon us
The hour has now arrived
I heard what they said
I know the truth...
- Soul Coughing, "Unmarked Helicopters"
In that state between sleeping and waking, the mind
is wont to make situations more realistic than they
could ever possibly be, if that makes any sense. A
person can experience much more than they thought they
could when floating in this limbo of consciousness,
especially when high levels of stress or other
emotions cause a mind to develop certain neuroses. It
is thus, then, that a single gunshot imagined in this
state of being could sound like a thousand, tearing
through human flesh and bone with rivers of blood and
an agonizing pain that feels as if there is
deconstruction atom by atom in a neverending suffering
that can only be stopped by a sudden return to the
land of the living with wide-eyed fear, a pounding
heart, and a suitably decent scream.
Special Agent Stark Patrick rolled over onto her
back, trying to still her rapid heartbeat as she took
desperate breaths. Her pulse continued to pound in her
ears, and she fought to shove the memory out of her
mind. She sat up in bed, bent over, arms wrapped
tightly around her chest, trying to come to terms with
herself, trying to come to terms with how someone who
had faced liquid metal killing machines from the
future and almost anything the X-Files could throw at
her could be haunted by one deceptively simple shot.
"Christ," she muttered to herself as her bedroom door
slowly opened.
"I thought I heard..." her partner started.
"You did," she admitted, running a hand through her
short dark hair in frustration. "It happened again."
Special Agent John Doggett gave an almost
imperceptible nod, taking this in from his position in
the doorway. He did empathize with his partner; he had
told her all about Anthony Tipet and the third eye and
his return from the dead and the other cases that had
come to be his baptism by fire into the X-Files. He
had known when she had transferred in, and he had told
her so, that it was no easy place, no safe place, for
any agent. Everything that would happen after that
moment would pass through the filter of the abstract,
abnormal, sometimes frightening experiences that came
as a result of being assigned to the X-Files section.
It had happened to Scully, it had happened to him, it
had happened to Stark. Despite this, she still
displayed the tenacity he had known of her in Criminal
Investigations, tackling anything and everything when
no one else had the strength to. She'd been nearly
strangled by a liquid metal cyborg, been briefly
telepathic, hunted a woman who claimed to speak with
the voices of murder victims, investigated the
resurgence of the Andromeda Strain, and entered
hypervirtual reality, among other things, and yet she
survived. This time, however, the implications of one
shooting had caught with her.
It was not, he surmised, the actual shooting that
bothered her. She had healed nicely, even if it had
been arduous and unexpected, and she was in fighting
condition. Rather, it was the idea that a dead man had
handed her a minidisc less than a day ago and forced
her to consider that when the Assistant Director they
all answered to and respected shot that same man, that
he may have done so in a negligent manner, for
possibly personal reasons. That was what terrified
her. Accusing a friend. The resurgence of the dead.
Cryptic languages and late-night meetings and the
things that happened when crime flirted with agendas.
She was a superb investigator; she was not prepared
for the intricate levels to which cases such as the
one that had appeared to her in the parking garage of
the Hoover Building could rise, and in this case, had
risen.
He closed the door behind himself and sat on the edge
of her bed, looking into her eyes, which displayed a
mixture of confusion, fear, attempted endurance, and
fatigue. "We'll make it through this," he insisted
quietly. "You, me, Agent Scully, Mulder ... we'll
survive this. That's what we do."
She glanced up at him, "And what if we're wrong? If
it's all wrong?"
He let out a tense sigh. "Then we get up off the mat,
we find our next case, and we try it again."
There was silence in the room for a moment as the
partners of seven years studied each other. They'd
worked together four years in C.I.D., then when he had
been transferred, they had spent one difficult year
apart before she had followed him to the basement of
her own volition. If there was anything to be said
about their partnership, and the friendship that had
evolved with it, it was that they walked through fire
together. There was never a moment when their loyalty
to each other could be questioned. Not even in
difficult times such as these.
"I guess you're right," she admitted. "I just want an
answer. The truth."
"It's what we all want," he reminded her needlessly.
"Sometimes, it just takes a while to find it."
"And sometimes we don't find it at all," she added
caustically.
"But we have to take that chance," he finished the
statement, squeezing her hand firmly. "C'mon. We're
meeting the Gunmen and Mulder over at Scully's place
in," he looked past her at the digital clock on her
nightstand, "a little over an hour."
She looked over her shoulder; the clock read 8:14.
"We were supposed to be at work an hour ago," she said
incredulously, then looked back at him for an
explanation.
"You needed your sleep. We all did." Doggett
shrugged. "We're all just coincidentally taking a sick
day."
"And A.D. Skinner obviously won't notice that the
basement is strangely empty." Stark rolled her eyes,
climbing out of bed, "I'll be in the shower."
"I'll be in the kitchen," he told her as they walked
out of the room, noticing the subsequent look she gave
him. "Hey, breakfast is the most important meal of the
day. And given all the stuff that's been happening, I
think we'll need all the nutrients we can get."
"You may have a point," was all she said before she
walked away, hoping for once that maybe, just maybe,
he might be wrong on that count.
********
She had never wanted to believe. In fact, she had not
gone into that basement office almost three years ago
with expectations of experiencing what she had. She
had chosen her actions with the single intent of
following her partner, the one person she needed with
her above all else. Of finding him and fixing whatever
had been screwed up in her life that one year they'd
been apart. She hadn't come in because she believed,
because she even cared. But slowly, as she had seen it
all, she grew to understand.
Understand what it was Fox Mulder was after and how
it went so much deeper and had so much more meaning
than some of the cynical aboveground agents assigned
to it. Understand that there are possibilities beyond
that which everyone expects. Understand that there are
other explanations, and that sometimes there aren't
explanations at all. It was this thinking which lead
Stark down the path that she had to pursue whatever
had been thrown at her, even if she didn't like the
outcome. The cops in Baltimore homicide had taught her
that you put down a case, no matter if it's your
grandmother that pulled the trigger. Once a case went
up in red under your name, you did everything you
could to put it in black, no matter what. This same
mentality, along with the infinite possibilities which
she knew were possible, made her chase what Alex
Krycek had allowed her to see. And she hated him for
it.
Her fist collided with the punching bag in the other
bedroom hard, a result of all this emotion, so hard
that her knuckles stung with the contact. She didn't
really care. After all the B.S. the X-Files had thrown
at her, she had a high threshold of pain. She took
another shot, and even through the glove she felt the
burning sensation. For a brief, fleeting moment, she
wished it was Krycek, simply so she could let him
experience what she was experiencing inside herself.
But she couldn't fault him as much as she wanted to.
It was her and her alone who'd sat on her couch mere
hours ago and given John all the reasons why she
should do this when he'd told her simply to say the
hell with it and walk away. She didn't listen to him
enough, she decided.
"Watch it. You're gonna hurt yourself," he said from
behind her.
"I don't think it makes a difference," she replied as
her fist hit the bag again.
"I think it does," he shot back, and she took a few
more needless punches before she threw down the gloves
and examined her hands, which were in places somewhat
red. For once in her life, she didn't have the courage
to say something in reply, and walked past him. It was
not a day of conversation. It was a day of war.
********
"Déjà vu," remarked Fox Mulder as he let the two
Special Agents in the door of his ex-partner's
apartment later in the morning. Stark and John gave
him one of those 'it's not terribly funny but thanks
for trying' consolation-prize glances, and waited for
him to close the door and give them whatever news had
passed in the hours since they'd last spoken somewhere
around 4:10 in the morning. He did, and nodded toward
where Lone Gunmen Frohike, Langly and Byers sat
clustered around Scully's computer. "They've opened
some of these files," he explained, "and they say they
seem to be Syndicate documents."
"No surprise there," cut in John. "What kind of
documents?"
"All kinds of documents," Mulder elaborated. "Things
having to do with the nanoprobes in Assistant Director
Skinner's blood. Things that seem to point toward the
Syndicate trying to manipulate us, trying to force a
course of action so that, inevitably, the Assistant
Director would shoot down Alex Krycek."
"Sort of like 'All roads lead to Rome?'" Doggett
half-quipped.
"Or 'All lies lead to the truth,'" replied his
partner, walking between the two men and over to the
computer. "You want to fill me in?" she asked none of
the three Gunmen in particular.
"It's frighteningly simple, actually," Byers said.
"The documents here are showing that the Syndicate
engineered events so that Krycek would be shot by the
Assistant Director. For what reasons, we still don't
know. But if this is true... a good many things we've
learned over the past year, solutions to things,
answers to things, could all be ... I don't quite know
how to say this ... a lie."
Stark nodded in acceptance, though her mind was far
from it. "Can we authenticate those as being from the
Syndicate?"
"Yeah," her partner agreed, "I wouldn't count Krycek
above forging all this to scare the living hell out of
you and Covarrubias."
"So we're talking about the unraveling of a scheme ...
or a scheme," Mulder deduced simplistically. Stark
nodded. "Unfortunately, I can't say which one," she
admitted. "But it could be Swordfish," she added
abruptly.
Mulder and Doggett exchanged glances. All three of
the Gunmen looked at Stark. "You know about
Swordfish?" was Byers' rejoinder, followed shortly
thereafter by Frohike's "But that's just a speculation
... a speculatory system, it's never been confirmed."
The conversation would have gone on longer, but
Doggett cut in, "Okay, you guys want to tell me what
you're talking about here?"
Stark started to explain, "Swordfish is the password
- and, by default, the codename - of a rumored
computer hacking project. It's been a pet case of mine
almost since I joined the Bureau."
Langly helpfully assisted with the background, "There
were - are - rumors going around that Swordfish is
masterminded by a former, or current, member of the
CIA, to steal billions of dollars allocated to a DEA
project using some computer and phone technology, not
to mention a crack team of hackers."
"It could be possible," she took over again, "that
Krycek is, or was, involved with Swordfish. This data
would, when exposed, collapse the Syndicate, and a
majority of government moles. The entire system of
intelligence would go down, and then that would..."
"Leave room for Swordfish to steal more than
billions," Mulder finished. "I think you may be
reaching, but at this point, no alley's too blind to
run down," he assented. "Where would we start?"
"With me," Stark said quickly, "I've got stuff on
this project going about eight years back over at my
apartment."
"Okay." Mulder paused. "Langly, Byers, Frohike - keep
after that data, and see what you can tap into on
Swordfish. Agent Patrick - would you mind if you had
some company?"
Stark smirked, "No problem, Mulder."
END PART 1
=====
PART 2
You're no longer my story
Someone should tell you
I'm balancing the curve
So unafraid
I'm not falling too rough
I'm measuring your words
Don't hesitate
How cleverly you ramble
When it's too late...
- Jan Johnston, "Unafraid"
"How come I didn't notice this before?" was Doggett's
remark when Stark opened her hall closet to reveal
stacks of boxes, all carefully labeled "Swordfish"
with various years and subsequent months within those
years. As Stark selected the most recent - that
particular month - and dropped it on her living room
table, she shrugged. "You're mellowing, John," she
said. He smirked. "That must be it," he replied as
Mulder opened the box, sifting through various
clippings, computer printouts, photographs and
spiral-bound notebooks full of notes. When Stark had
said she was into Swordfish, he hadn't estimated just
how much.
But before he could say anything, she walked past
him. "I need to make a phone call," she told him, and
picked up her cordless phone and walked into her
bedroom, leaving the two men to look at her years of
research.
She dialed the number of the Bureau's L.A. field
office. "This is Agent Patrick with the D.C. office,"
she told the person on the other end of the line, "I
need to speak with Agent Roberts."
"Just a second." There was a click; Special Agent
J.T. Roberts picked up a moment later. "Roberts."
"J.T., it's Stark Patrick. Got a moment?"
"Agent Patrick, hadn't expected to hear from you
again," Roberts said, dryly amused. His voice sounded
overstressed, though, and as John had taught her, she
picked up on it.
"Something up, J.T.?"
Roberts sighed. "We've just got some weirdass shit
that just went down. What d'you need?"
"I need to get in touch with Stanley Jobson," she
explained. "Know where I can find him?"
Roberts swore. "Yeah, I know," he said after a
moment. "He's out of Texas. I think he's in Arizona
with his daughter."
"He got Holly back?" Stark was momentarily surprised.
She'd caught this guy once before, and knew his life
story. She didn't expect that a felon would have his
kid. Stanley was a hell of a lot cleaner and ethical
than many felons she'd met, but with his reputation
and the fact that he'd tried a dozen times to win
custody, she hadn't thought one of these days he'd
actually win.
"Yeah," Roberts said. "He was the major player in
this thing that just went down. Blew a fucking
helicopter right out of the sky, took down this
terrorist who was using human hostage bombs."
Stark looked out her open bedroom door at John and
Mulder. "What the hell's going on out there, J.T.?"
"Swordfish," Roberts said. "That's what's going on."
She sighed. "Funny you should say that, J.T., 'cause
that's just what I need to talk to Stanley about.
We've got our hands on some stuff up here that we
think is connected to the whole thing and we need to
find out fast. Some data. I can't tell you much more
until I know it. Could you send all your stuff?"
"No problem," Roberts said. "Official or unofficial?"
"Unofficial," she said. "Tell Stanley no harm, no
foul, but I need his help on this one. And ask him how
the jaw is."
Roberts chuckled, remembering the punch she'd used to
take out the computer felon two years prior. "I think
it's fine," he said, "I'll set something up between
the two of you. We can fly his ass out there. I can
disguise it on my travel account."
"I owe you, J.T.," she told him, then hung up the
phone and walked back out to her expectant company.
"I'm not calling it much," she confessed, "but I've
got a friend setting up a meeting with a guy I helped
bust two years ago. He might help us put the pieces
into place."
"What the hell did you get into while I was gone?"
Doggett quipped. He'd heard pieces and parts of the
story, and he put it together. "Is this that thing you
were in Texas for?"
She nodded. "Stanley Jobson, computer felon. He's
forbidden to go within sixty feet of a computer. He
blew up the Carnivore program. Since I was a member of
Cyber Crimes Task Force, they called me out on it. I
hooked up with J.T. Roberts from L.A. and we put the
case down."
"Carnivore? That thing that reads people's e-mail?"
Mulder said incredulously. "I would have given the guy
a medal."
"So would I," Stark said, shrugging as if to say it
had been out of her hands. "So if this has anything to
do with computers, Stanley's our guy. If he'll come
anywhere near me," she admitted sheepishly. "But
anyway, I talked to J.T. and he says - get this - he's
got some Swordfish stuff going down in L.A., too. He
says he'll send the stuff and fly Stanley out here.
But this is definitely big game."
"Obviously," Mulder said. "But the question remains..."
"What does Krycek have to do with it," Doggett
answered it for him.
Mulder nodded. "Exactly." He turned to Stark. "How
soon can you meet this source of yours?"
********
"You're sure that this is down?" John asked Stark for
the fifth time as Mulder swung the car around into the
back parking lot of the Blue Light Diner, which had
been selected by Roberts as the place where Stark
would once again come face-to-face with Stanley. It
had taken three days to persuade him and get him to
D.C., during which there had been virtually no
progress, but the show was now in motion.
"Stanley doesn't bite unless you make him," Stark
said tiredly as they exited the vehicle and began
crossing the parking lot. She checked for her gun
inside her baseball jacket, then turned and looked at
her two compatriots. "I told him I wouldn't be alone,
but for once," she said slowly, "trust me." They
nodded and turned, heading for the front entrance. She
waited another few minutes and went in through the
back.
The diner was nearly deserted, but not enough to make
anything noticeable; there were still a few people.
John and Mulder were toward the back, and she could
tell her partner was nervous - all his muscles were
tense. She spotted Stanley instantly. He was taller
than she was, with dark hair and eyes, and she would
have thought him attractive if she'd been a few years
older. He didn't appear like the prototypical
convicted felon. He'd cleaned himself up from last
time she'd seen him, and she knew he was waiting for
her. He had an acceptance on his face as she slid into
the booth. "Just like old times, huh, Stan?" she said
quietly. He smirked. "I don't know, you want to punch
me again?"
"Not really," she said. "I talked to Agent Roberts.
Congratulations on everything."
"Thanks," he replied. "I was kind of hoping L.A.
would be the end of all this."
"So was I. But like I said, I need your help on this
one." Stark sighed. "Here's the situation. My partner
and my co-worker are by the front door. They're not
going to bite unless I tell them to. I'm carrying a
gun and I'll use it if I have to. I'm not here to bust
you, but I do need you to work with me. Can you do
that?"
Stanley looked over his shoulder, presumably at
Mulder and Doggett, and nodded. "Yeah," he said after
a moment. "Talk to me."
She explained the whole situation with Krycek and the
Syndicate and the minidiscs and the data they thought
was on them and what she thought was the connection to
Swordfish as quickly and as easily as she could. She
explained how Krycek had broken into her apartment,
how he had gone after Marita Covarrubias, how her
shooting had gone down, and all the other things that
she'd learned in the last five days since the whole
thing started. There was silence for a moment as he
thought over everything. "I know what you're thinking
of," he said, "but Swordfish went down in L.A."
"I've read J.T.'s reports," she said, "I know that
you blew a helicopter out of the sky and shot down
Gabriel Shear."
"First of all, Shear's not dead. That's not his body.
I saw that body in his basement long before it turned
up in the coroner's office. Second, the reports don't
tell you everything you'll need to know, because
Roberts doesn't know the whole story." He saw the
intrigued look on her face, and continued. "I was
hired to do the Swordfish operation - literally build
the hydra, drop it in, steal the money, okay, which I
did..." He put up a hand to forestall her from saying
that it was a crime to do so and she should send him
back to prison for it, as he knew she would. "But I
engineered a clock timer when I did. Thousand and
twenty-eight bit cypher, even I can't crack it. The
money jumps every sixty seconds to a new series of
accounts. Shear can't touch it. He thought I had it
disabled, but what he didn't know was that I built a
secondary timer that activates as soon as he tries to
touch the money."
"Has he?"
"No, but his associate has," Stanley explained. "I
logged into the World Bank's mainframe, and someone
matching the description of his right-hand woman
Ginger withdrew the entire mass of it into nine
different accounts. We're talking nine billion dollars
and change here."
Stark sighed at the sheer amount of it. "But if
Shear's got the money, why would Krycek try to
collapse the government's moles so that he could take
it?"
"He doesn't technically *have* the money," Stanley
corrected her again. "And a few days before he got it,
we found the body of a minor U.S. senator in Oregon.
Understandably, the public will never hear of his
death, but that makes me think that Shear has his
connections. Which could lead to your Syndicate."
She nodded, then paused. "How the hell do you know so
much, Stanley? You trying to get that world's most
dangerous hacker title back from the Finnish guy,
what's his name?"
"Axel Torvalds. And he's dead. Has been since the
beginning of L.A. Shear's guys got him in the
interrogation room shortly after he was caught at
customs and dragged into Roberts' claws." Stanley
paused. "I should ask you what you think you're
getting into here."
Stark smiled. "I'm just trying to figure out how dead
men seem not to be, Stanley. Just doing my job."
"And if you can do it," he said with his own smile,
"then you're one hell of a federal officer."
She paused, looking past him, past John and Mulder,
out into the darkened D.C. street, then she flashed
John a particular signal before turning back to
Stanley, who seemed vaguely amused. "What?" he said.
"You're going to tell your partner to kick my ass
because I've offended you?"
"No," she said as she felt for the handle of her gun,
"I just told my partner to go find out who's watching
us." Pulling the weapon, she signaled to Mulder, who
approached the hacker as Doggett slipped out the front
door. "Stay here," she told Stanley.
"Fat chance of that," he said, rising to follow her.
At her questioning eyebrow, he said, "We're both on
the same side here, Agent Patrick." She didn't have
time to argue. She started toward the back door,
letting the hacker and Mulder follow her out with a
quiet expediency.
She had her hand on the back door when a single
gunshot split the night, then another, and two more.
They ran out the door and rounded the corner of the
parking lot. She kept a firm grip on her weapon, her
eyes searching the night for John. But there was too
much haze in that D.C. night to see. She once again
passed her charge into the custody of Mulder. "I'm
going to find him," she told them both, starting
towards the front lot where the scene had gone down.
"What the hell are you thinking?" Stanley bit back.
"That's my *partner* out there," she replied tersely.
"Don't you understand?" he said. "It's you they're
after. He didn't call on your partner, he went after
you. Gabriel went after me, not Roberts. It's only by
chance I'm still alive. This isn't about any of the
people you think it's about. It's about you. You're
walking into their hands."
"Yeah, well, I'm full of surprises," she said,
cocking the weapon. Before Stanley Jobson could say
anything else that might prevent Stark Patrick from
certain suicide, another shot sounded, and she
disappeared into the haze of the night, accepting
whatever fate hers might be.
END PART 2
=====
PART 3
This was such a go, take it all right
Taste it all right
Tell me what you know, you'll take it all right
Gotta take it slow, you'll make it all right
Like a stranger and a friend
Sea crashed in and the swordfish goes
Not too lonely, no
Get out of my life
- Paul Oakenfold & Planet Perfecto, "Get Out of My
Life Now"
It was the last thought she expected to have as she
entered the fire.
What do you expect me to think, John? What do you
expect me to feel? Do you want to blame this on me,
all of this, the shooting and the break-in and all of
this, because I alone decided to pursue this? Are you
going to lose respect for me because I decided to
question what everyone else is telling me is the
truth? No, I know you wouldn't. But I know there's
part of you that is.
It was simple facts, cold and cruel. She knew that
her partner was highly defensive of the shooting of
Alex Krycek, which the books called clean. Her
decision to question it - the choice which had landed
them in all of this, including the shootout now taking
place between her partner and unknown assailants in
the front parking lot of the Blue Light Diner - struck
a chord somewhere in him, she knew it. That was why he
hadn't wanted to get involved, but he'd become
involved. He didn't want to think of questioning other
officers. He would, if that was the honest truth, but
until he was sure, he wouldn't even think that. She
had no such problems, especially since Agent Gene
Crane had gone missing and she had nine billion
dollars floating in cyberspace as a result of
Swordfish, the secret theft operation which had
apparently now gone bi-coastal.
All that she cared about, though, were the bullets
flying in the distance.
She held her breath for a second against the wall of
the diner, then filled her lungs with fear and
exhaled, coming around the corner with gun leveled to
fire.
Her partner had taken cover behind a parked vehicle,
and she saw him fire another shot. Maybe ten feet
away, a sharp-looking black Mercedes provided similar
protection for two other people, one of whom she saw
through a shattered backseat window, the other who
took another shot. She dove for cover before he could
notice her, her back slamming hard against the front
passenger-side door of the Acura that her partner was
leaning against. He glanced at her as she looked at
their assailants. "Welcome to the party," he quipped,
but she was in no mood to laugh. "What the hell
happened?" she asked him as she observed the other
car.
"I walk out here and start heading for the car, and
they started shooting," Doggett explained. "Like they
knew who I was."
"I bet they do," she said. "I bet they know all about
us."
He nodded with a grim acceptance. "What do you want
to do?"
She paused. "I don't think they're going to run out
of bullets any time soon. These are probably Shear's
people. We take them down."
"That's what I do best," he said with a smirk.
She smiled briefly. "I'll draw their fire from this
side. Can you circle around and get the jump on them?"
He didn't say anything, but she moved around the
front of the car to between it and the car parked next
to it, firing two more shots. It was all the jump he
needed to break away and find the cover of the diner
building. She made brief eye contact with him; behind
him she could see Mulder, doing his job holding back
Stanley, who surprisingly wasn't fighting as much as
she'd thought he would. But she could see the look on
his face: he still thought she was crazy, but he was
ready to pull her from the fire if need be. She didn't
understand it; she had, after all, put him in prison.
But she nodded to John, and he in turn enlisted the
aid of their two compatriots. They weren't much use
standing around; he would put them to use.
All she had to do was wait. Stark fired again, and as
she dropped back behind the vehicle she heard the
sound of a window blowing out. She looked up and
realized that whoever drove the Toyota she was hiding
behind would need some body work done shortly. These
guys were professionals, she realized. Shear or
whoever had called the hounds on her had sent not
cheap street assassins, but professional hitmen, to
take her number. Problem: she wasn't ready to die yet.
She brushed the glass off of herself and took a second
to line up her shot before she fired; even as the
blood sprayed off the shoulder of one of her
assailants, the other fired a shot that barely missed
her. She fired her remaining three bullets just
because she could.
She knew she was outnumbered. Her aim had never been
that sharp, despite John's tutelage. But she just had
to kill time before they killed her.
Come on, guys, she said silently as she loaded
another clip, thankful that she'd been paranoid enough
to carry extra ammunition. I can't do this forever.
More gunfire sounded, but it sounded away from her,
not in her general direction. The sound of people
hitting the pavement confirmed that the cavalry had
indeed arrived. Standing with her weapon, she raced
across to the battered Mercedes where John had one man
on the ground and Stanley had a gun to the wounded
man's head. She let out the breath she had been
holding, her heart pounding, her chest heaving,
shimmering slightly in the moonlight and haze because
of pieces of glass still left on her jacket. "Verify,"
she said to Stanley, knowing he knew the phrase well.
He glanced up at her, still holding the gun. "Clear,"
he said, still breathing hard. "You all right?"
She nodded. "Except for being under a shattered
window." Even so, she didn't put the gun away. "What
do you want to do with these guys?" she said to no one
in particular.
Mulder answered her. "Let's find out what they know."
Stark produced her set of handcuffs and tossed them
to him, shaking her head. "It's going to be a long
night."
"No shit," Stanley said, hauling his charge to his
feet. "What was your first clue?"
"Maybe the bullet that barely missed my head." She
watched Mulder and Doggett secure their two new
hostages. "We need to talk."
********
"You know those two?" she asked Stanley as they
walked back to the car that the federal officers had
driven in. "You seen them before?"
"Never," he said.
"I have," she told him. "They were at the airport
when you and Torvalds showed up in L.A. Roberts got a
screen capture of them both. He knows they're
connected to the death of Torvalds and the Finnish
lawyer."
"Doesn't bode well for me, does it?" he said
rhetorically as she opened the car door and found the
Swordfish file that Roberts had sent her. She found
the screen captures and showed them both to him. He
examined them both, then looked back over his shoulder
at the Mercedes. "They probably work for Shear," he
stated the obvious for her.
"I need to know who this guy is, Stanley," she said,
closing the car door and locking it. "You need to tell
me who I'm up against."
He sighed. "I don't know that much."
"Tell me what you do know."
"He had Ginger pick me up from the airport and meet
him in some club. Then he holds a gun to my head and
gives me sixty seconds to crack the DOD system.
Anything he can't get out of you, he puts a gun to
your head or some explosives on some innocent victim
and that solves the problem. The guy gets you, takes
what he wants when he wants it, and disappears."
She rubbed tiredly at the bridge of her nose as she
took this in. "Torvalds described him as 'a cold,
unflinching, calculating machine.'"
"That's about right," he said. "You want my advice,
walk away now. It's not worth it. It wasn't worth it
for me, it wasn't worth it for Roberts, it wasn't
worth it for that woman who exploded like the world's
largest living Claymore mine in the middle of the
street outside the World Bank. Don't put yourself
through this."
Her gaze turned hard around the edges. First John,
now this. "The truth may not set you free," she told
him firmly, "but it is always the truth."
Then she gave John another signal, popped out her car
keys, and circled the vehicle. "Get in the car," she
ordered Stanley sharply. He eyed her cautiously. "What
are you thinking?" he asked her.
"He contacted Marita hours after he found me," she
repeated for him. "If they're after me, she's in
danger, too. Now get in the car. We need to get to the
U.N. yesterday."
He did as he was told. She pulled the vehicle out of
the diner parking lot, stepped on the gas and sped
down the street at ninety miles an hour listening to
Paul Oakenfold, hoping she wasn't too late to get
where she needed to go, trying to forget where she'd
just been. And silently cursing Alex Krycek.
********
Grinding the gas pedal into the floor of the car,
Stark reached for her cell phone, pulling out the card
that Marita Covarrubias had given her and dialing the
number as she turned the music up another notch. She
wanted to drown out the sounds of gunfire in her head,
drown out her memories of another time, another
bullet. She listened to the phone ring. Finally, there
was an answer.
"Marita? Are you okay?" she asked immediately.
"I'm fine," the U.N. agent said, concerned. "Agent
Patrick, what's going on?"
"I'm on my way. I'll explain when I get there," Stark
said quickly, "but I've just been shot at by people
sent by someone who may be working with Krycek. You're
in danger. Do you have a weapon?"
"Under my desk."
"I want you to get it, and I want you to get out of
your office and somewhere safe. That's the first place
they'll look for you. Find somewhere and stay there
until I get there. Can you do that?"
Stanley tapped her on the shoulder. She glanced over
and followed his gaze.
"Do it now, Marita," she said, and hung up the phone.
Slamming the phone down with one hand, with the other
she swung the vehicle hard right, turning it entirely
around in the intersection. The black vehicle not
unlike that which had been following them slammed on
the brakes. Stark didn't wait for them to start
driving again. She looked over her shoulder, swung her
car into reverse, and backed the vehicle through the
intersection, where she quickly turned it hard around
again, with the scream of agonized tires her reward.
She stepped on the gas and continued to drive
one-handed, looking behind her as their pursuers
righted themselves and started to drive again.
"How many of these people are there?" she asked
Stanley.
"As many as it takes," he told her.
She nodded, reaching for her gun. "Can you drive?"
she said, unbuckling her seat belt.
"The last person who told me that was Gabriel, before
he murdered eight people in the street firing an
assault rifle while I drove," Stanley said, his voice
full of bitterness and edge, but he unbuckled anyway
and she quickly climbed from the convertible's
driver's seat to its backseat. The vehicle slid
without anyone to control its wild flight, but Stanley
quickly regained control and Stark uncocked her
sidearm. If it were up to her, she wouldn't murder
anyone tonight, but she was fast realizing things
weren't in her control anymore, if they ever had been.
She set up a shot and fired, grazing one of the
vehicle's front tires. The car briefly lost control
for a second, enough to throw off the driver but not
to total the vehicle. Before she could try for two,
however, her own vehicle swung hard around a corner.
"Hold on," Stanley told her without looking back
before he ran a red light in a highly crowded
intersection. She was thrown back against the back of
the driver's seat as he swung to avoid a Hyundai that
slammed on its brakes in the nick of time, then turned
hard in the other direction to miss a Saturn and
grazed a Ford Explorer in the turn lane on his way
out. The turn was a violent whiplash which briefly
disoriented Stark's vision, but it paid off when she
saw her pursuers trying to break through the resulting
traffic jam. The distance between them continued to
grow. Despite this, she didn't let herself relax. She
never could.
She didn't want that to be mistaken for weakness.
She had to find Marita.
Then, maybe, just maybe, she could breathe, period.
********
Stark didn't wait for the car to stop before she
jumped out of its backseat and went running for the
doors of the U.N. building. Stanley stopped the car
and was seconds behind her. She didn't look back,
didn't think twice. She knew she was being chased and
every second counted. Marita Covarrubias, her only
connection to Alex Krycek, was in danger. Or she could
already be in hot water. Stark couldn't take that
chance. She sped up the stairwell she'd mounted three
days ago, taking it in double-time with a desperation
she'd never known before. Stanley covered her with her
own weapon, and they made it to the landing in record
time. Every muscle in her body screamed pain, every
particle of her sixth sense screamed danger, but she
did not allow herself to stop.
There was, after all, one law: fight or die.
No room for middle ground.
"Where the hell is she?" she growled as she opened
the stairwell door with her shoulder and burst onto
the landing, Stanley following behind her. Marita's
office door was wide open, the light still on. Stark
rushed to the door, her mind fearing the worst.
"Damn it!" she yelled at the sight.
Covarrubias's office was a ruin, the desk broken, the
papers all over the place, all of it strewn in pieces
and parts all over the place. Someone had gotten here
first, looking for something that she didn't know if
they'd found. They were not alone. She turned then and
headed down the corridor towards where she'd met
Marita earlier, yelling the United Nations' special
representative's name. The only answer she heard was
the shattering of glass.
At the sound, Stanley turned and followed, but Stark
was already around the corner.
Two gunshots reached the hacker's ears.
Marita Covarrubias fired a third shot before Stark
could stop her or help her. A shadow crumpled against
the wall of the U.N.'s computer office, and a backwash
of red accompanied the motion. Stark kicked open the
shattered door, looking down on yet another black-clad
corpse she didn't know. Marita's hands were shaking
and she slowly put down the weapon, unable to take her
eyes from the man she'd just killed.
Stark pursed her lips to say something, but couldn't
find the words.
Stanley stepped into the room, took one look at the
body and the two women, and shook his head, dropping
Stark's weapon to his side.
He watched Stark cover her eyes with her hand in
abject disgust, then slam her fist blindly into the
wall. She walked out of the room before either of them
could say anything, out onto the landing, past Doggett
and Mulder, who arrived on the scene in time to
witness the tepid silence. She stopped only to ask one
question.
"Where are they?"
Doggett paused. "Six feet under."
"When?"
"Not too long after you left."
Stark nodded soberly. "Fine."
"Are you okay?" her partner asked quietly.
She shook her head, her eyes flashing with a bitter
cognizance. "No, John, I'm most decidedly not okay."
She exhaled. "Shear wants a war, he's got one. I'll
kick in every door, I'll break every head, but I'm not
sleeping until the bodies stop falling. I started
this, I'm going to finish it. Whether you're with me
or not, that's your choice."
He didn't have to think twice. Or at all.
"You know your answer."
"Not yet," she said, "but I will. After all," she
soberly admitted, "It's all I have left."
END
=====
"Oh, for God's sake, please be somebody else."
- Lewis Black
Natalie: Two guys have ascended 5 miles into the sky. They
walked up a wall of ice and are preparing to knock on the
door of heaven itself. There's really no end to what we
can do. You know what the trick is?
Dan: What?
Natalie: Get in the game!
- "The Quality of Mercy at 29K", "Sports Night"