[On sea monsters]
Mulder: Sounds like you know a little something about the subject.
Scully: I did as a kid, but then I grew up and became a scientist.
Evidence
7
… When Agent Kogane and myself arrived at the site of the meteorites in question with our informants, we found the site to be lacking the debris that we had specifically come to investigate. Though we do have some personal interviews to conduct with the local citizens of Karin. I am unsure of the basis of this investigation without this crucial material evidence. Therefore, either the focus of our investigation will shift toward the location and retrieval of the suspiciously missing evidence or we will be forced to close the case until further notice.
Lance stared at the blinking cursor for a moment, unsure of what else he should add to the report. He wasn't about to send it in until he was finished with the investigation, but he figured putting down the details while they were still fresh couldn't be a bad thing.
Kogane re-entered the motel room from the bathroom in just a white tee shirt and boxers, his hair still wet from the shower he'd just finished. Lance closed the document window and then closed his laptop altogether so his partner couldn't see what he had been doing. He shoved the laptop off of his lap onto the bed beside him.
"Got to put away the porn because I'm back in the room?" asked Keith, laying back onto the other bed.
"I was researching the area, Kogane. Don't get excited."
Keith raised an eyebrow, but didn't push any further. He sat up against his pillow and headboard and used the remote to turn on the TV. Lance watched him out of the corer of his eye as he did. Kogane was surprisingly calm after the disappearance of the one thing they had come out to investigate.
"So…" said Lance, sliding off of his bed and opening up his suitcase. "What do we do next?" He pulled out a pair of boxers and a towel, but kept rummaging through. "Do we keep on with the investigation here, or do we move on to whatever's next on the list?"
Keith turned to Lance from the muted TV. "As far as I'm concerned," he said, "this is the list."
"There's no other cases, or…?"
"No, there are other unexplained cases in the filing cabinet, but this one—this one just got very interesting."
Lance pushed through the mess of his bag once more. "Interesting?" he asked. "The only evidence we have is gone!"
"That's what's interesting," said Keith. He shifted on the bed, so he was propped up on his elbow and facing Lance. "When we came to this town, what did you see on the sides of the road?"
"I don't know. Some bushes. Sand. Like, one or two cool cactuses. Cacti. Some rusted junk…"
"Exactly," said Keith. "I'm not knocking Karin's ability to recycle, but it seems like most of their junk that ends up in the desert ends up there to rust away, and pretty much becomes a part of the scenery. And that means it's not regularly picked up by a do-gooding highway patrol."
"And?"
"Someone picked up those meteorites on purpose, so that we wouldn't find them."
Lance forced himself not to roll his eyes for two reasons. The first was that he didn't want a repeat of the argument that they'd had earlier that day in the car and were now unhealthily repressing. Two, he had forgotten his shampoo, and wanted to borrow Keith's.
"I forgot my shampoo," said Lance, changing the subject before he could say anything that would just piss his partner off. "Can I borrow yours?" He made toward the bathroom, towel in hand. "Normally, I'd just forgo the lather, but my hair's full of sand…"
"Go for it," said Keith. He thumbed the remote to turn the sound on the TV back on and dropped the remote next to him on the bed. Lance went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
Lance stripped down and got into the shower, letting the water get hot and steamy. Keith had probably taken a cold shower after a hot day in the desert, but Lance had always liked his showers to be almost hot enough to burn him. He wetted his hair, and reached for the bottle of shampoo Kogane had left behind. It was some kind of moisturizing shampoo, for dry scalps. Lance made a mental note to see if his partner had any dandruff, but immediately pushed it away, realizing how both gross and creepy that would be.
He scrubbed at his scalp, making sure to shake loose any grains of sand that had blown in there during the day, and then worked his shoulders, arms, and chest. Every bit of him felt dry, and he wished he's brought something to keep his skin moisturized, but he knew that he'd really skimped on toiletries when he packed his bag in a hurry, and he was lucky to have remembered a toothbrush. He finished scrubbing at his skin, resisted belting out a pop song he'd heard in the airport, and rinsed his hair before shutting off the water and exiting the shower. He dried off and pulled his new set of boxers on before whipping his towel over his shoulders and opening the door to the room.
Kogane was sitting upright in his bed, the TV muted again. He looked to Lance, his brows drawn and his eyes serious. "Who have you reported to about our mission?"
Lance froze in his spot. He felt even more naked than he actually was—which was amazing, since he was standing there in only his underwear. "What?"
"The only people who knew about this mission were you, me, and Shiro." His eyes did not leave Lance's, and Lance was glad he wasn't a suspect being interrogated by Kogane—if this was his look for asking his partner questions, he could only imagine how intimidating he could be when shaking someone down for answers. "Shio wasn't about to disrupt the site himself. It was the only thing that would lend credulity to his situation." He paused and, for the first time since Lance had left the bathroom, blinked. "Someone else had to know. Someone must have found out, and not wanted up to find what was there."
"What about other locals?" asked Lance. He wished he'd found something other than his boxers to bring into the bathroom with him. His palms were sweating against the wet towel slung over his shoulders.
Kogane shook his head. "Shirogane was telling me there are enough celestial events around here, with such clear skies, that most of the locals don't pay any mind to them."
"But didn't you tell your supervisory officer about…"
"I was as vague as possible," said Kogane, cutting Lance off. "They know I get results, but my—our—division doesn't have enough respect for me to just claim we're out here looking for space rocks."
"Well, it could be—"
"Lance." Keith's eyes narrowed. "Who have you reported to about his mission?"
Lance hesitated for the briefest of moments before answering. "No one," he said. "You had already filled out the travel request. I figured I didn't need to." Keith kept his eyes locked on him for another moment before looking away. Lance took this break as an opportunity to move around Keith's bed to his own, where he grabbed a tee shirt from his bag and pulled it on. Kogane frowned at the muted TV, and Lance wondered if he realized that he had been lying.
8
When Lance dialed the number at three in the morning, standing in the surprisingly chilly motel parking lot in boxers and a tee shirt, he isn't sure the Assistant Director will pick up, even if he's two hours later. It's still 5 A.M. Eastern Time, and that's damn early.
Ross picked up on the first ring. "Agent McClain?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'm sure there's a good reason you're calling me at such an early hour." He didn't sound grumpy or concerned, just stern.
"Yes, sir. I just—there's been an unexpected bump in our plans here, and I am sorry, but I need to know—"
"Spit it out, Agent McClain."
"The meteorites we are here to investigate have gone missing," said Lance, doing his best to keep his voice down. He left the room, but he wasn't sure how light of a sleeper Kogane was. "The only people who know of it other than Agent Kogane and I are our informants and you, sir."
"What are you insinuating, McClain?"
"I'm insinuating nothing, sir," said Lance. "However, Agent Kogane has been suspicious of my ability to keep confidentiality. Asking to whom I report."
"You kept quiet, I hope."
"I did," said McClain, "and will continue to do so. But Kogane is nothing if not persistent. I will do my best but he might find out some other way." Lance paused. "And, pardon me, sir, but reporting on my partner and lying to him about it seems more than a little…" He searched for the right word and didn't find it. "…uncool."
There was a brief silence on the line before Ross replied. "I will look into it, where the information went, quietly. Don't make any indication or suggestion that this exchange even happened." Lance nodded before realizing he was on the phone and the Assistant Director could not see him. "Go back to sleep, Agent McClain."
"Thank you, sir," responded Lance, but Ross had already hung up his side of the line. Lance stared at the screen for a moment before deleting the history of the call from his phone. He didn't think that Kogane was going to be snooping, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
He held his phone in his hand and leaned against an old payphone box whose phone had been removed many years ago. He tilted his head back and looked toward the sky. He saw the stars, and they were beautiful in the wide, clear sky. It was what was between them, though, that was interesting. The things too far away to see. Different galaxies. Things not yet known. There were things out there that he didn't even remotely understand. There wasn't the technology to fully understand it—it was too far away.
This left only theories. Good theories, one based on scientific research and the most educated calculations possible.
There still wasn't any proof, though. He balled his hands into fists and crossed his arms over his chest. They needed to find some sort of evidence, retrieve some part of the meteorites, from whoever took them.
Because however much Lance wasn't going to admit it to his partner, he was very keenly interested in finding out where they had come from—pieces of extraterrestrial technology or, more likely, not. He needed to know.
Lance turned back to his motel room and quietly slipped through the threshold, closing the door behind him and not noticing the single meteor that streaked across the sky, just above the motel's parking lot.
9
The Denny's off of the highway was not very busy—only a few older couples shared the restaurant. Agents Kogane and McClain sat in their booth, coffee in hand, halfway through their breakfast meals. They hadn't said to each other, but it had been wordlessly decided that they would stay to find out where the pieces of meteorite had gone.
"So," said Lance, his mouth half-full of hash browns, pointing his fork at his partner, "how many crab legs have you had to eat to keep your cover during an investigation?"
Keith raised an eyebrow and half-scowled. "What kind of question is that?"
"Look, we're partners, and I feel like we hardly know anything about each other." He took another mouthful of egg from his fork. "So it's, like," he swallowed, "a dumb little icebreaker question, to get our bonding rolling."
"That's dumb," replied Keith, looking down to his plate of breakfast and reaching for the toast.
"And that's not an answer." Lance grinned. "Come on, Kogane. How many crab legs?"
Keith took a bite of his toast and chewed it, making a point to look anywhere in the restaurant but at his partner, who was waiting expectantly. He reached for his coffee and took a sip before sighing. "Fine." He took another sip of the coffee, still glaring at Lance. "None. I guess. I mean, I remember eating some once while on assignment in Alaska, but it wasn't to keep cover, it was more of a 'when in Rome' type of deal…" He trailed off and took another bite of toast.
"Yes!" said Lance. "That's the kind of response I was looking for! What were you in Alaska for?"
Keith shook his head, mouth full. He swallowed it down before responding. "Nope. You asked me a question, so I get to ask you something first."
Lance felt the smile as it spread across his face. As stoic as he tried to come off, his partner was joining in on the game. "Quid pro quo, Doctor Lecter," he said, taking a bite of his sausage.
"Okay," said Keith. He paused for a moment, thinking, and asked "Do you have any siblings?"
"Going right to the personal stuff?" Lance stabbed another bit of egg with his fork. "Yeah, a few. Older sister, younger sister, two younger brothers."
"Big family."
"I guess so," said Lance, mouth full of egg. "So, tell me about Alaska."
"it was when I was working with violent crimes," said Kogane. "Someone had been finding people who lived up north—way up north, and finding them when they were all alone, killing them, and making it look like the deaths were accidents, just the hazards of living above the arctic circle alone.
"There was one whose skull was beaten in before the attacker pushed a snowmobile over on top of him, and another who had been stabbed before the killer dragged her body into the caribou migration path, to make it seem like she'd been trampled."
"Jesus."
"Yeah," said Keith. "And the killer did a bad job of covering it up, but it didn't matter because these people were like hermits, living isolated in the cold. It was sometimes months before these bodies were discovered?"
"Did you catch the killer?" Lance had totally ignored his breakfast at this point, engrossed in Keith's story. Keith took a sip of his coffee.
"After I ask a question," he said. Then, in an eerie imitation of Anthony Hopkins: "Quid pro quo, Clarice…" Lance shivered and Kogane grinned. "Where did you grow up?"
"West Virginia," said Lance in a terrible accent, "where my daddy was sheriff, till he was shot and I moved to the sheep farm, and the lambs would scream…"
"Easy there, Jodie Foster," said Kogane.
"Sorry." Lance kept that wide, shiteating grin, though. "Small town in Arizona. Nice place, if kind of boring." He shrugged. "Did you get your man?"
"Sort of," said Keith. "We had been tracking him for a few weeks when the local sheriff got a call for help from a compound about twenty miles out.
"We headed out, and I remember it was snowing, so we took a Snow Cat, and it was so slow…"
"And…?"
"When we got there, our guy was unconscious and wrapped up in a few rolls of duct tape. He's tried to attack a single woman who focused mainly on hunting and fishing. What he'd not taken into consideration was her sister, who'd been up on a week-long visit from Juneau." He took a sip of his coffee to punctuate the end of his story.
"Wow," said Lance. "Why'd he do it?"
"Boredom. Insanity. I'm not really sure." He looked down and away. "I think he was just a sociopath, but he blamed the weird nights and days, where it's all day and all night sun and then the opposite." He shook his head. "But I think he just liked to get away with it. Power trip, a rush, something like that."
Lance took another bite of hash browns, even though he wasn't particularly hungry anymore.
"Ever had any pets?" asked Kogane.
"Yes!" said Lance. "Cats, all while I was growing up." He swallowed a mouthful of potatoes. "I haven't had one of my own since college, though—none of my apartments have allowed pets."
Keith nodded and poked at his eggs with his fork. Lance nearly asked him about his own experience with pets, but figured he should start with his human family. "Do you have any siblings?"
Kogane visibly stiffened, his hand tight around his cup of coffee. He exhaled a breath through his nose and looked away. "N—um, I pass."
"You can't pass, come on."
"I'm passing."
"Fine," said Lance, pushing the last of his eggs into his mouth. He actually had to chew a bit before continuing. "I get it. I haven't reached that level where I unlock your tragic backstory." He swallowed his food. "So, okay, tell me why you're so interested in this paranormal, conspiracy theory stuff."
Kogane pushed his plate away from him and stood up from the booth. "Sorry, Doctor Lecter, game's over." He walked away from the table, toward the cashier to pay.
"I'm Clarice!" said Lance, half-shouting after him. "You're Lecter! And hey!"
Kogane didn't turn around, and Lance felt a heat in his chest. Sure, it had been a silly game, but he'd answered truthfully to all of the questions Kogane had posed, and the ones he'd asked weren't all that different. But Keith was too cool and mysterious for it, for the dumb little game.
Maybe it was because he thought Lance was reporting to someone about him—which, to be fair, he was—or maybe it had been his pride and persona. Either way, Lance felt a little cheated out of the game. He realized that he hadn't, as he had originally intended, gotten much information about his partner, only where he had investigated on a previous case. Kogane had dodged the big question. Lance took another, big bite of hash browns, which he now realized he wasn't going to be able to finish, if his partner was already leaving. Which was great, just another reason to be angry and annoyed. He scarfed down another few mouthfuls of potato and got up to get in line at the register, still chewing as he did.
10
They decided in the car that Lance would work with Gunderson to find out what might have been going on astronomically while Keith would ask around in Karin's tiny downtown to see if anyone knew about what might have happened to the space rocks. Keith called ahead to Pidge, and a few minutes later, he was dropping Lance off on the side of the road near Pidge's house.
"Be cool, though," warned Lance as he stepped out of the car.
"Cool?"
"Yeah, not all 'in your face about aliens' and stuff. Don't weird people out."
"I don't weird people out." His eyes narrowed.
"…okay."
Pidge's house was out by the edge of town, peripheral to the desert. "Call me when you want me to pick you up," said Keith, and Lance gave him a wave before he drove away.
Lance walked up to the house and was about to knock on the ranch-style house's front door when he saw a flash through the garage door windows. He walked over to the door next to the garage and knocked there, instead of the front door. Pidge glanced through the window on the door before undoing two deadbolts and opening it for Lance. "You're alone, right?" they asked.
"Yeah," said Lance, and stepped inside. Pidge locked it behind him, and moved past Lance to lead him to the garage, where Hunk was standing over a semi-finished cage like structure with a welding mask on. He flipped it up when Lance and Pidge entered the garage.
"Agent McClain!" he exclaimed. "Coming back for more weirdness, I see."
"I hope now," said Lance, shrugging off his jacket. "I hope we can figure out some more facts."
Hunk shrugged. "Sure."
"What are you building? Some kind of trap?"
Hunk let out a loud, booming laugh. "Trap? No, I—"
"He found instructions on how to make a hovercraft with a vacuum engine on the internet," said Pidge. "He figures—"
"I can make it even more powerful with a larger engine. Like from a big lawnmower or something." Hunk patted the steel frame he was working on. "Just have to build the structure to cage it…"
"Cool," said Lance, and it was. Pidge had said Hunk was the engineer, but Lance had figured that had meant only with weird devices to detect ectoplasmic energy or something. This was almost a normal hobby. A cool application of engineering know-how.
"So, Agent McClain," said Pidge, sitting in front of a desktop computer setup near the back of the garage. Lance started around Hunk's project to get to them, sitting in an old folding chair in front of the monitors, next to Pidge. They pulled up a few graphs from their cluttered desktop. "I have all of the information from the meteor shower here."
Lance scanned over the charts: altitudes, velocities, coordinates in a plane Pidge had somehow set up using that data and a relative position of the earth—Dr. Gunderson knew what they were doing. There was just one thing that bothered Lance.
"How did you gather this information?" he asked.
"I was going to show you yesterday," said Pidge, adjusting their glasses, but with the meteorites missing and all, it just never really happened. We were too preoccupied with worrying about that."
"And I got to lug that box all the way back to the car for nothing!" Hunk glared from the other side of the garage, where he was carefully putting away his blowtorch.
"Yeah, yeah…" said Pidge, waving him away. They turned back to the display, pointing to the familiar piece of equipment under the desk. "That thing uses radar and infrared, paired with a couple of high-altitude drones designed—"
"You're welcome!"
"—to create a field, or, up, digital grid, that I can then pinpoint and track sub-orbital bodies with." Pidge leaned back in their chair.
"That's—wow." Lance looked down at the unassuming box and to the graphs again. "That's amazing. And you're sure it's accurate?"
Pidge's brows lowered. "Are you doubting my work? We designed and tested it. It works." He turned to the computer and tapped in some commands. "Sure, the research hasn't ever been replicated, but I haven't exactly made the technology public…" They trailed off.
"That's—I'm sorry, I just…" Lance scrambled. "You're really smart."
Pidge flashed a sly grin. "You bet your ass I'm smart."
Lance leaned in and squinted at the list of values in the charts and compared it to some of the graphs. They all matched up, which made sense, but…
"This meteor shower didn't start outside of the earth's orbit," said Lance.
"Well," said Pidge, "we can only measure sub-orbitally. The drones can't reach to speech, though I wish…"
"No, no," said Lance, pointing to the graph on the screen. "Look, here, the way the objects are decelerating horizontally. They couldn't have entered the atmosphere at that angle, at their size, and be traveling across the sky at that velocity…"
"Are you sure?" asked Pidge, looking closer at the numbers.
"I mean, I'm just eyeballing it, but those numbers don't match up with something falling from orbit, or anywhere outside of the atmosphere."
"What does that mean?" asked Hunk, suddenly behind Lance. Lance only jumped in his seat an inch or two, and hoped the other two hadn't noticed.
"I-it means that either this meteor shower came from some sort of a sub-orbital structure," said Lance, "like a plane, a drone, or a weather balloon…" Both Hunk and Pidge rolled their eyes.
"What?"
"A weather balloon?" said Pidge. "Seriously?"
"In our line of work, man, it's never a weather balloon."
Lane turned back to the screen, scanning over the numbers again and wondered, just a tiny wonder, if they could be right.
Fox Mulder: I've seen too many things not to believe
Scully: I've seen things, too. But there are answers to be found now. We have hope that there's a place to start. That's what I believe.
Fox Mulder: [sighing] You put such faith in your science, Scully, but... from the things I've seen, science provides no place to start.
Scully: Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only in contradiction to what we know of it. And that's a place to start. That's where the hope is.
