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Hello everyone! Sorry it's taken so long to update-I'm back in school now, and I find it hard to find time to write because of my eleven hour days and stuff. SO it took a while, but it's here!
IF you want to hear the playlist I listen to while I'm writing this, or want some cool jams on your own that are the Voltron/X-Files aesthetic, you can find that on 8tracks with the same title as this fic!
Mulder: You think that believing is easy?
11
Lance would have been lying to himself and to others if he didn't admit that he loved that he had made progress on their case while Keith had not. Keith had asked many of the local business owners and some people actually open their doors for him about the meteor shower, but all of them either hadn't seen it, told him they didn't want whatever he was selling, or told him to go fuck himself—though more commonly, the outcome was a combination of these.
Keith had been annoyed that Lance had learned more than he had, and externally showed that, but Lance caught him excitedly going through his notes in their hotel room that night; Lance's development supported Keith's theory of alien involvement, no matter how far-fetched that sounded.
While Keith seemed pretty sure about what the debris was, Lance was interested because that fact that the debris came from inside the atmosphere, from below the earth's orbit, made it easier for him to find things that weren't space ships from alien planets that could fit the profile of the pieces. For something to have fallen from inside of the atmosphere and kept its original shape made sense. And if this was from an airplane or, though Pidge and Hunk would vehemently disagree, a weather balloon, they would be able to concretely close the case and move on.
They laid in their beds, Keith flipping through his case notes again. Lance had his laptop open in front of him, and he clicked around the local airport's website, searching for a contact number he could call to inquire about missing parts and documented flight paths for the past couple of days.
He found a number and punched it into his cell phone, saving it for later. He'd call in the morning, and hopefully find out exactly what had gone on with this case. He turned to his partner, who had moved on to some extra files Pidge had given them with data from the meteor shower—or, rather, supposed meteor shower, now that they knew that the debris originated from within the atmosphere.
Lance glanced at the Word icon on his desktop, and wondered again what Keith would think if he knew he was reporting back on him. Keith hadn't brought up the subject again, but Lance didn't think he had dropped the notion. Lance's mind flashed back to the late-night phone call he had made to Assistant Director Ross the night before. After the things they'd found today, he wondered if that phone call was nothing more than Keith's paranoia washing off on him. He hoped that sort of impression wouldn't reflect negatively on him in Ross's eyes—this was his first case, no matter how ridiculous it was, and he wanted all of his superiors to see how well he could do.
"So, Kogane," said Lance, leaning over on his side to face his partner, "what happens if we do find that there are aliens?"
Keith raised an eyebrow and carefully put the file down on the bed next to him, to save his spot. "I guess we'll file the appropriate paperwork, and move on to the next case."
"Wait—so if we prove the existence of aliens," said Lance, immediately holding up his hands defensively. "And I'm not saying that we will, that's a pretty big 'if…'" Keith narrowed his eyes. "But we'll just move on to the next thing?"
"You want to keep chasing aliens?" asked Keith.
"No, I just…"
"Lance, I've got a pile of cases like this one that'll bring us closer to the truth of what's going on, extra-terrestrially. And if we can prove the existence of aliens with this case, we'll have more help next time, more believers…" He looked away.
"You want to just keep at it," said Lance.
"Yeah, I do!" snapped Keith. "And I want people to believe me, okay? To listen to me again!"
He was sitting upright, breaking hard after his outburst, and Lance didn't push him again. Keith's brows lowered over his eyes and he looked back to the file he was reading. Lance's eyes lingered on him for a moment before returning to his laptop. His cursor lingered over the Word button once more, but instead he closed the laptop and pushed it to the side of the bed, and leaned back into his pillows. He sighed, and breathed heavily through his nose.
12
He was awoken around 3 AM by the incessant buzzing of his phone on the bed next to him. He pushed it slightly away from him at first, as if that would stop the noise and vibration, but then woke up with a jolt. He scrambled for it before it could get annoying enough to wake his partner. He thumbed the green "answer" button and slipped out of bed as quietly as he could. He padded to the door, not bothering to put on his shoes, and undid the chain lock before sliding through the door into the parking lot beyond.
He lifted the phone to his ear, but he didn't say anything until he had closed the door carefully behind him and walked across the cool pavement to the empty payphone hub, so he wasn't right next to the door where he might be audible to his sleeping partner.
"Assistant Director Ross?" he said, finally.
A gruff voice answered him. "Agent McClain."
"I'm sorry, I was asleep…"
"I don't care," replied the assistant director shortly. "Your partner was asleep, I figure."
"Yeah—yes, he was. Is." Lance case a glance back at the door, which hadn't moved since he'd shut it.
"Good." A pause. "I don't know the names of the people who took the information you reported to me," said the Assistant Director, his voice hushed. "But I know that they did not like that I was asking about it."
Lance didn't respond to this, but instead shifted his position, leaning against the empty payphone. He sighed and rubbed his face before moving his hand upward to run his fingers back through his hair.
"McClain? I'm not going to dig anymore for you." Ross paused. "I don't know what they were interested in your case for, or why they would care about some fallen space rock at all. But, I will say, someone is, and they don't want to be known."
"You aren't the least bit interested in why they want to know?"
"McClain, you sound like your partner."
Lance's brows lowered and he shot back "I don't—"
"I have to do my best to protect myself and my agents," said Ross, cutting Lance off. "While I'm sure you'll get to the root of this business, this is your case to solve."
"Yes, sir," said Lance, his eyes drifting upward to the stars.
There was a pause on the other end of the line, as if Ross had something else to say, but then the line went dead. Lance held the phone to his ear another couple of seconds more before lowering his hand to his side.
Lance breathed outward as he leaned back against the telephone box and let his head fall backward so his face pointed to the sky. He closed his eyes and let what Ross had just said sink into his brain. There was someone who wanted to know about what they were doing. There was someone who thought this was important enough to not only follow what they were doing, but deliberately interrupt their process in order to sabotage their findings. There was something they weren't supposed to know.
He realized that made him want to know, more than ever before, what the hell was going on in Cairn. He wanted to know, more than ever, what these fallen pieces of debris were, and why they were so important.
He opened his eyes to the stars just in time to see a white streak across them. He blinked, and another tiny streak appeared beside it. It took him a moment to realize what exactly he was seeing, but once he did, he turned back to the motel room and banged his fist against the door. Only after a few raps did Keith open the door. His face was flat and his eyes were wide.
"What?"
Lance stepped out of the way, and Keith stepped past him into the parking lot. Lance pointed upward, and Keith's eyes locked on the streaks.
"Is that what I think it is?" asked Keith. "That's…"
"Another shower," said Lance.
The debris, whatever it was, sparked up in flames as it hurtled to the ground, and landed with a slight impact not too far outside the horizon built by the low buildings of the town. Both agents stared at the fain t smoky trails in the sky before turning to teach other and seeing the realization in each other's eyes.
They had a hard time getting back into the motel room, because they both tried to enter through the door at the same time, and found themselves a little stuck until Keith pushed himself all the way through, Lance stumbling in after him.
13
They pulled off into the desert, the tires of their rental car sending puffs of dark dust up behind them, a soft, dark purple in the receding glow of their taillights. Lance was behind the wheel, and glancing to his partner, he realized this was the first time Kogane had actually ridden shotgun in his car. Judging by the gritted teeth and white-knuckled teeth on the handle above the passenger door, Kogane was taking the bumpy ride as well as Lance would have expected.
They trundled through the night, the headlights bouncing off of various scrubs, rocks, and cacti off to the sides of the road. For a short, panicked second or two, Lance wasn't sure if he was still on the road anymore, that he had lost it in the dark, but when he didn't actually run into anything, he figured he was okay.
"Up ahead!" said Kogane, using his non-gripping hand to point at a spot of haze a few dozen feet ahead of them, where some dust and smoke lazed in the air.
Lance slammed on the brakes and trusted the wheel at the same time, bringing the car to an abrupt stop just off of the side of the road and lifting it up onto its two drivers-side wheels at just enough of an angle to make Keith nervous—and Lance could see the beads of sweat on his face—before settling out and coming to a rest. Lance was unbuckled and halfway out of the car before he even got his keys out of the ignition. Keith was right behind him, after disingenuously staggering out of the passenger side.
Lance waved his hand in front of his face as he approached the dirty fog in an attempt to clear it from where his eyes and nose would be. It didn't really make much of a difference.
"Do you see anything?" asked Lance. Keith was covering his nose and mouth with a sleeve. "I wish we brought a flash…"
He was cut off as Keith help up his cell phone, the flash ignited as a result of the built-in flashlight app. He aimed it in Lance's eyes briefly before pointing it forward, into the smoky dust. They still could see much other than the faint particulates, standing out against the flash's incandescence in the desert light.
The moved forward slowly, their eyes picking over the gradually more visible sandy desert ground. The flashlight began to pick up more of the imperfections in the sand's surface, and they walked side-by-side, their eyes down, scanning for any indication of anything irregular. Lance bumped into Keith's shoulder, and Keith's eyes flicked to him and back to the sand. Lance held up a hand by way of apology, but didn't say anything. The dust in the air seemed not only to dampen their vision, but cloud their hearing as well. Everything was quiet, and the smooth sand seemed to be endless below their eyes.
"Wait," said Keith, breaking the silence. He took two steps forward and knelt down, shifting some of the sand out of the way. As he did, he took the flashlight with him, and Lance shivered. Even though the desert did nothing but absorb the sun all day, here, in the dark, it was cold. That was something he'd forgotten. He knelt down next to his partner a little bit more quickly than he would like to admit to himself, bringing himself back into the glow of the flashlight again.
When he got there, Keith was hovering his fingers an inch or two above something in the sand. Lance leaned in a little closer. "What is it?"
"This is it," said Keith. He moved his hand back, adjusting so that Lance could see the shape in the sand.
The piece had a bit of a warmth around it, a heat that seemed to radiate outward. It was a clump of what seemed to be circuit board and metal, a twisted piece of something mechanical, about five inches across. It looked familiar, just like—
"The meteor fragments," said Keith. "This is a new one, just like them, and it…"
"Okay," said Lance. "Okay, so there was another event, and this is what we found." He reached a hand out toward it, but then pulled it back. He didn't want to contaminate the scene with his fingerprints. Plus, there was no telling how hot the thing was, after falling through the atmosphere as it did. "Are there any other pieces?
"There should be, right?"
"Yes," said Lance, "based on the size of the fireball…"
Keith took another look at the chunk of fallen rock and stood up, taking the light with him. "Okay," he said. "Let's find them, then. We need to figure out how many pieces there are. So we can put this thing together. Figure out what is going on."
Lance raised an eyebrow as he stood up. He wouldn't have thought Kogane would have reacted this well to what was going on. He'd have figured Kogane would have just started grabbing pieces of the meteorite—or whatever it was—and talking about how they were pieces of alien technology, or something as similarly ridiculous. Lance had to remind himself that Kogane was a well-experienced field operative for the bureau first, and a conspiracy theorist second. He knew the procedure. He had that cool, collected way of dealing with things that Lance knew he should have given a bit more credence to.
"We'll have to get a forensics team out here tomorrow," said Lance, scanning around outside of Keith's beam of light, trying to pinpoint any irregularities in the darkness. "I know that you're worried about people knowing about this, but we're going to have to have some official analysts, not just the illuminati we've been working with."
"That doesn't make sense. The illuminati would have been the thing they're looking for, not the group—"
Keith cut off when he saw the headlights. He froze in his spot, and Lance looked to his face, which seemed to have lost all of its color, even in the low light.
"What—?" Lance began to ask when Keith extinguished his cell phone light, plunging them into darkness. Lance's heartbeat quickened as he realized he could not see anything at all. His eyes ad adjusted to the low light of the flashlight's periphery, but had not adapted to the more complete darkness of pure night. He pinpointed the headlights in the distance and used them to get his bearings. He could hear a scuffle of Keith moving around, but didn't want to move himself until his eyes adjusted.
The headlights were getting closer, and they were getting closer quickly. Lance stared at them for a moment before Keith grabbed his arm and pulled him backward.
Hey!" said Lance. "What are you doing?"
"Who knows who's coming?" said Keith.
"It's probably Shirogane and Pidge and Hunk…"
"Probably, but we also know we're not the only ones looking for these rocks."
"Oh, but—"
Keith tugged Lance over a small dune and pulled him down to lie on his stomach. He pointed to where the headlights were coming up the site and shutting off, leaving the whole area in a near-total darkness again. Lance started to say something, and Keith clapped his hand over his mouth. He narrowed his eyes, and Lance rolled his own. He considered sticking his tongue out to make Kogane remove his hand, but he removed it on his own before he got the chance.
They watched, Lance squinting his eyes to see, as a few figures moved from the car to the place where the debris had landed, scanning the ground with flashlights and occasionally stooping down to pick things up from the sand. Lance could feel Keith tense up next to him, and he broke his stare at the men in the mysterious car to look at his partner for a moment. His teeth were gritted, and whatever color that had left his face before was back, his face flushing with color even in the dreary light. Lance glanced down at the way Keith's fists clenched and unclenched, and placed his hand on Keith's back. Keith looked to McClain, who just left his hand there between Kogane's shoulderbades as a reassurance. Keith's eyebrows pointed together and he turned back to the people stealing their evidence. They worked quickly, methodically.
They had been working for about a minute before another set of headlines appeared in the night, starting small but growing steadily. The figures rooting through the sand noticed these immediately and, making sure they'd taken what they needed to, and re-entered their car, pulling away into the night without turning their headlights back on. Lance could hear Keith take in a sharp breath and hold it as they pulled close to where the rental car was parked, but they didn't stop, so he was able to release his breath. While Keith bristled over the strangers absconding with the pieces, Lance moved his eyes to the approaching car. It seemed like this empty stretch of desert was getting more than its normal share of traffic this night.
The car, a larger SUV, pulled up next to the rental car and shuddered into lifelessness, the headlights staying on, pointed at the site where the pieces of debris had struck the earth. The doors opened and out stepped Hunk from the driver's side, followed by Pidge in the passenger seat and Shiro from the back seat. They walked toward the place where the debris had made its impact, and Lance stepped forward from their hiding spot, Keith standing right behind. He brushed the sand that stuck to the front of his jacket and entered the area illuminated by the headlights.
They didn't say anything when they met, all of them looking down to the scuffled, disturbed sand below them. Pidge knelt down, and Hunk turned to scan the horizon, where the car might have disappeared. Keith turned to Shiro. "We're being watched. Someone is covering this up, intentionally."
Shiro nodded, and Lance stepped forward. "What do we do, then? We have proof that something's here, and that someone doesn't want us to know about it. What next?"
"We can start with this," said Keith, fumbling around in his jacket pocket for a moment before retrieving a five-inch squarish section of the debris. It was pock-marked with little indentations and smaller details that indicated where it might connect to other parts of machinery.
"That's as good a place to start as any," said Shiro, and his eyes trailed from the piece of debris to Lance. "So—what are your thoughts on this now?"
Lance hesitated for a moment before answering him, feeling the eyes of the entire group probing him as he looked back at Shirogane. "I—I don't know."
Keith raised an eyebrow. "Good," he said. "So let's figure it out." His hand clasped around the chunk of debris, and the rest of the group nodded in unison in the dark of the night.
Cigarette Smoking Man: What's the truth, Agent Mulder?
Again, thanks so much for reading! I've got a lot more stewing in my brain, so there should be more coming as soon as I find time to write it!
