FOUR

Redshirt Alert

.

June 15th, 2000

1:27pm

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Scully walked through the large library, her head turning leisurely as she scanned the faces, the furniture, the air of serious concentration. She eventually found a familiar tuft of hair partially hidden behind an open book that was standing up on a study table.

McGivers click-clicked along behind her, keeping up as Scully neared the desk. She towered over the book to find Mulder with his right elbow out on the table and his hand under his chin. His eyes swivelled up and his slack-jawed expression snapped so quickly into an enthusiastic smile that she almost stood back.

"Here, look," he said quietly, lowering the book to the table. "Here be monsters."

Scully went around him to his right side, pulling the chair out and sitting slowly as her eyes ran over the picture in the large book.

McGivers peered at it over his left shoulder, then turned and found a spare wooden chair, bringing it back over and seating herself. "What is that?" she whispered, bending her nose closer.

Mulder sat back and folded his arms. "A peluda."

"A what?" Scully asked. "Mulder, it looks like a lizard crossed with a porcupine."

"Perceptive as always, Scully," he nodded. "The peluda was famous back in medieval times for terrorising a French town called La Ferté-Bernard."

"Medieval times," Scully echoed. "So… what, it was just stuck in that circle of land for a thousand years?"

"Maybe not," he said. "The Babineaux family were originally from a small place just down the Huisne river from La Ferté-Bernard. Mr Albert Babineaux was a physician, and his wife was a school teacher. They came to America in the 1850s."

"And you think they brought this with them?" Scully asked.

"Maybe not intentionally," he shrugged. "Maybe it stowed away, or… maybe it's able to travel inside a person, or an object—"

"So you're saying this lizard-porcupine got loose and killed two people," Scully interrupted flatly.

"Eye witnesses in France said it was well over eight feet long, including the tail," he said. "And large enough - and strong enough - to fight a bear and win. And its favourite midnight snack was entrails. Doesn't that sound like our killer?"

"So it's been in America… for one hundred and fifty years?" McGivers asked. The other two agents turned to look at her. "And it was trapped for all that time, on its own? It must be very, very hungry. And awfully lonely," she mused. She got up and wandered over to a bookshelf.

Mulder slid completely round in his chair to look at Scully, his elbow on the table. "When are we going to talk about the weird assistant we've picked up?" he asked with a polite smile, his voice barely above a hoarse whisper.

"She's doing her job, Mulder," she said.

"How so? Finding evidence - no wait, I did that. Determining cause of death from the bodies? You did that. Meeting the judge and asking him about his involvement with all this? You did that. What is she doing here?"

"She's a branch agent, Mulder. She doesn't do field work. And in case you hadn't noticed, she seems to believe that you know everything about monsters and I can solve an entire case from a single dead body."

"You read entrails like tea leaves now?" he asked with a grin. She looked at him to distract herself from rolling her eyes. He turned back to the book. "Seriously, we need to find a way to track this thing. Look at its feet - just like the plaster cast I got."

Scully pulled the book over toward her. "Let me see that," she said. He pushed it over and she peered at it, but as she moved to stand it up she noticed McGivers by the bookshelf, scribbling in her notebook with furious speed. Scully pulled the book up to obscure her face from passers-by. "Have you noticed how McGivers is always taking notes?"

"Yeah. I figured she was going to offer to write your report for you."

"I wouldn't let her do that."

"She could do mine. I hate them."

"Is that why they're so short?"

"Well you know me, I have a short attention span." He brought his face up behind the book and popped his eyes over the top of the page to stare at her. "What is she doing now?"

"'She' is standing right behind you," Scully said with a raised eyebrow.

Mulder squeezed his eyes shut in abrupt self-kickery. He turned in his seat but there was no-one there.

Scully picked up the book and stood. "Got you," she grinned.

He let himself sag in both realisation and relief. She patted his shoulder and walked off toward the photocopiers by the check-out desk.

McGivers noted the way her hand had swept along his shoulder rather than lifting straight off. She looked at her notepad. She scribbled.

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2:12pm

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McGivers opened the door and two agents filed in, Scully with copies of some of the book's pages in her hand. Mulder carried a cardboard box of papers with him until they stopped dead in the centre of the room.

"You… work here?" Scully asked.

McGivers nodded. "I like to be by myself."

The office room had bookshelves for wallpaper - except they were filled with lever arch files, box files, and cardboard archive boxes. In some rare cases there were actual books in between them. The light was a bright strip light above them, the fluorescent tubing casting odd, barely-there shadows over the items on the single desk.

Mulder looked around, his hands still full. "Uh… do you have any more chairs?"

"Oh! How clumsy of me," she gasped, slapping a hand over her eyes. "I'll get some. Please, make yourselves at home."

"That would require beer and a couch," Mulder said, as if to himself, as he put his box down. McGivers did not appear to have heard as she swept out of the room.

Scully looked around. "She is… singular," she observed. She wandered to the desk and looked over the precision placement to everything.

"I think the word you're looking for is 'kooky'," he said.

"Then she should be your new partner. You two could tour the country looking for cases," she said with a teasing smile. "Spooky and Kooky - the X-Files twins."

"Ouch," he winced, slapping a hand to the shirt over his chest. "That hurt, Scully. I thought you were the only one who could ever put up with my crap."

She smiled and continued to look around the room. "It's hard, I won't deny it. But that's why the FBI pay me the big bucks."

Mulder spun round slowly. "How much do you wanna bet that everything she notes down is somehow filed away in this room?"

"For what purpose?" Scully asked. She went to a shelf and pulled out a lever arch file. "It says… Remarkable Agents," she read from the spine. She took it to the desk and opened it up, finding a list of names on the inside cover. "FBI agents… listed by name. Each one has a 'year of import'."

"Like… immigrants? When they were brought in?"

"No, as in how important they are." She paused. "You're in here."

"I am?"

"It lists your various monographs… and your assignments with various units."

"I'm getting a real 'jack of all trades, master of none' vibe here, Scully."

"Actually… whoever put this report together seems to approve of your 'tireless devotion to the truth'."

"Well at least somebody does," he said. "Wait - are you in there?"

She flipped back to the inside cover and read carefully. "Yes." She ran much further on in the dead weight of computer print-outs. "Apparently I'm one hell of a pathologist," she blinked in surprise. "This lists my more 'important' autopsies - although I don't know how they've come to be classified as such. They seem to be rather random." She skimmed a few more pages. "You're not the only one with a fanatical devotion to the truth, Mulder. Whoever wrote these case studies uses the words 'allegedly' and 'claims' a lot." She closed the cover and carried the file back to the shelf and slotted it in.

"Maybe it'll be a relief to work with her. It should be nice to work with someone who takes me at face value, rather than assuming everything I say is fanciful," he said.

She turned and looked up at him. "Would you rather I wound you up and let you go, letting you write up reports that end in 'the undocumented and totally unsubstantiated monster did it'?" she asked, a little indignation creeping into her tone.

"Absolutely not," he scoffed. "If it weren't for you I'd have been fired years ago."

She smiled. "Don't you forget it."

McGivers appeared in the doorway with a collapsible chair in each hand. Mulder shoved his box of papers up to her desk and went back to the door, taking them off her. She nodded in thanks and walked in as the other two opened up the seats and made use of them close to her desk.

"Interesting office," Mulder said.

"I like it," she nodded.

"So," Scully said, "we know that Judge Lanoux was against the land being used, but he seems a bit resigned to knowing that it had to be."

"Sure?" Mulder managed, digging into his box of papers between his feet and resting a wad on his knee. He began to leaf through them.

"Absolutely. He said it was… the ecosystem, that he wanted it kept as-is for the wildlife," Scully said.

McGivers flipped open her notebook. "His exact words were: 'there are animals here that need a place to nest, or burrow, or simply live. We're covering more and more of our land here in tarmac and stone, and it's not leaving them a lot of options'," she read out. Mulder paused his hands to look at her. She smiled. "Short-hand. Very useful."

"I hope you don't take down everything I say," he said politely.

"Oh no," she said. "Just the important things." She put her notebook down and looked at Scully. "Can I see this monster you found?"

Scully reached over the desk and picked up the top few pages of photocopies, paging through. "Here. Do you believe we're looking for this thing?" she asked.

McGivers stared down at the pictures and words. "What do you believe?"

Scully considered her answer for a moment, idly taking in the way her hand swept against the page. When she looked up the other woman was watching her with hawk-like attention. "No, I don't believe we're looking for this thing. I think we're looking for a sociopath."

"With his very hungry pet bear in tow?" Mulder mused, pre-occupied.

"What are you looking up?" Scully said, turning to him.

"The Babineaux family tree. Something tells me that they haven't completely died out."

"What tells you?" McGivers asked, excitement in her cheeks.

Scully looked at her, then back at Mulder. "Mulder, you said yourself that the last one died in 1992."

"I said the last surviving male child died in 1992, Scully," he said. He ran his finger down a list on the page in his left hand. "But… you know how sexist some people can be. Sometimes… they forget… that women are… people too." He paused, then tapped the paper. "There."

"What is it?" McGivers asked.

"The last male child of Babineaux decent was Charlie. He died in 1992, that much is true. But he was survived by two years by his younger sister - Antoinette," he said.

"What happened to her?" Scully asked.

Mulder passed her a paper and began to read the next one. "That's what we need to find from somewhere in all these census returns."

"Let me help," McGivers said, putting her hands out. Mulder peeled away a good twenty pages, handing them over to her. She shuffled them straight, laid them on the desk in a perfect pile, and began to skim-read.

Scully sat back as much as she could on her slightly wobbly chair, taking another handful from him. The three of them were sucked into the silent world of nitpicking.

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4:46pm

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Scully yawned but managed to keep her mouth firmly closed, instead rubbing at an eye and standing up. She wandered the office, reading yet another piece of paper.

McGivers looked up suddenly. "Are we going about this the right way?" she asked.

"Yes," Scully muttered, her eyes fixed on the words.

"But… the animal is out there now. What if it's already attacking someone else?"

Scully straightened up to turn around and look at McGivers. "The sister is the key right now. If she married then we need to find out who to, and if she had any children. She was a direct descendent of the Babineaux family - the mitochondrial DNA will go through her. If she had any children, perhaps they could shed some light on all this."

McGivers flipped through her papers. "There are varying reports, here. It's very strange - normally the records are on computer, now. But these have been left alone - they haven't been transferred at all."

"I wonder who choses which records get done first," Mulder said.

"It's a shame they didn't go in alphabetical order," Scully remarked. She looked at her watch surreptitiously, but McGivers noticed and made no secret of sitting up straight in alarm. The other two agents looked at her, spooked.

"I am so sorry," McGivers said, getting to her feet. "It's well into the afternoon and we have not stopped for lunch. You must need to eat."

"Actually, yes," Scully said. "I was about to suggest we find something in this town that isn't deep fried."

"You mean is deep fried," Mulder said with a serene smile.

She looked back at McGivers. "I can go out for food and bring you something back. What would you like?"

"No no no," McGivers said. "This will not do. You cannot be holed up in here all afternoon with no natural light and no fresh air. It's not good for a person." She went to the door. "Let's go."

Mulder and Scully shared a look that came fully loaded with everything from surprise to resignation. He got up and found his suit jacket, folding it over his arm as Scully also went for the door. They stepped out into the hallway, stretching and waiting for the other agent.

"I shall keep looking. You two take a break," McGivers said.

And she shut the door in their faces.

Scully blinked, then swayed round to look up at Mulder. He shrugged and put his hand to her shoulder, guiding her round and down the hallway in front of him. They went to the end of the corridor and Mulder went to turn left at the T-junction.

"Wait, Mulder - it's this way," Scully said, walking off to the right.

"You sure?" he asked.

"Sure."

He turned and followed her.

Until she turned around and walked back again, whereupon he kept his mouth shut behind a smug grin and just followed in her footsteps.

.

5:00pm

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The phone rang. McGivers snatched it up. "Yes, sir. Very good, sir. In fact, Agent Mulder has already identified the creature. Yes, I was quite surprised myself, sir. Agent Scully has proven very useful - she has already given us the signs by which to categorise the attacks and the actual mark itself, although she does not understand its significance. She is also correct about the family tree."

She listened carefully for a moment.

"Of course, sir, everything," she said. "I do not have an assessment yet, sir. The speed with which the agents found evidence and a theory took me by surprise. Oh. Yes, sir. I understand." She frowned even as she listened to the older voice on the other end. "If you say so, sir. However, I must confess… Of all the agents I have studied and catalogued, these two have been by far the most… interesting. They are displaying far more information and stats than I had anticipated. Yes, sir, it's quite breath-taking." She listened to the voice. "So… perhaps we do not need to… end the experiment. It would be a great loss - to science - should we terminate the programme."

She paused and the voice talked at some length.

"I understand completely, sir. But… nevertheless I must protest the ending of their turn." She paused. "I assure you, sir, that even if I did feel in some away attached to them, it would not have an impact on my work here. I know it is not my place, but… I feel their story - their contribution - should not be ended quite so early. There are many more things they can teach us."

The voice went on and she listened intently, her face sagging with remorse.

"I understand, sir. It will be."

She replaced the phone receiver and her eyes, glazed with upset, stared unseeing at the papers on the desk. She felt something wet on her face and touched at it carefully. Pulling her hand away, she noticed water pooling on her skin. She stared, her head tilting in confusion.

And then she wiped her eyes and went back to her reading.

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5:12pm

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"Anything else I can do this evening, Judge Lanoux?" Sylvie asked, looking in the rear view mirror.

Lanoux was unbuckling his seat belt and gathering his belongings from the back seat. "No, I'm good, thank you, Sylvie," he said. "You can pick me up at nine tomorrow."

"Of course, sir."

"You're too good to me, Sylvie," he said happily.

She got out of the driver's side and opened up his door for him, waiting for him to stretch up tall and then turn for the path to his house. He stepped back and she closed the door for him.

"Have a good evening, sir," she smiled.

"And you, Sylvie. Go on home and put your feet up."

"Good evening, Judge Lanoux."

He nodded and patted her on the shoulder before walking away, up the stone path to the large house. The car started up and headed away from the kerb but he didn't turn. He found his house keys and let himself in, disabling the alarm by the door. Swinging the heavy door shut, he paused to lean back on it, looking up at the video camera pointed at the entrance. His hand came up and he waved to it sarcastically.

"Well here we go again. Another night by myself," he muttered. He carried his briefcase to the phone table, at the bottom of the stairs. Plonking everything down, he loosened his tie and walked on into the house.

The kitchen was his first port of call. A quick look in the fridge yielded a cheese platter and a rather small bottle of wine. The cupboard gave up its supply of water biscuits and the judge carried all of this to the wooden table, quite happily seating himself and getting on with the serious business of demolishing everything in front of him.

Until his cell phone rang. He put his hand inside his jacket, pulled it out, and laid it on the table. He saw the name and shook his head, choosing to ignore the shrill noise. He carried on slicing the cheese and laying it delicately on the thin cracker.

A massive crash made him jump in his skin. Tinkling followed - the sound of a shower of glass hitting the floor. He pushed himself up from the table and turned quickly. A dash to the drawers saw him snatch up a long knife. He hurried back to the phone table in the hall. His hand went into the dish and rattled spare coins in noisy panic. Some fell to the floor, others rolled around the wooden surface. His hand fished something out and squeezed it tightly.

He heard a low growl. He turned in a circle steadily, trying to see in the semi darkness. Nothing moved. He edged back to the table and picked up the house phone with his thumb and available fingers. He pushed buttons with trembling fingers as something moved, bumped on the stairs.

He crouched to be hidden by the desk as he heard the line connect. A woman's voice started to ask for his emergency.

"Yes - police. I need police. Someone's in my house. This is Judge Lanoux - 2324 Rosewater Boulevard." He gasped as the growling rumbled again - right behind his ear. "Help!" he cried. He dropped the phone and ran for the front door.

His feet were grabbed out from under him. He slammed into the wood of the door. Yanked down it at speed, he was flipped over onto his back.

And then it was pain, blood, screaming, and horror.

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