Agent of Chaos (The X-Files: Origins #1)(28)

*

Mulder knocked on Gimble’s front door for five minutes before he heard someone shuffling around inside.

“They’re probably asleep.” Phoebe stood halfway down the brick steps that led up to the house.

“All the lights are on upstairs.” He pointed at the second-floor windows. “And I hear someone.”

The dead bolts clicked one by one, and Gimble poked his head out.

“Don’t open it!” the Major shouted from somewhere behind him.

“It’s just Mulder!” Gimble yelled back at the top of his lungs. “He has clearance, remember?”

“Sorry to come by so late,” Mulder offered. “But you said you’d be up all night.”

“He saw the crime scene photos,” Phoebe added.

Gimble opened the door a little wider. “Get in here and tell me what I missed. And ignore the Major. He’s having a rough night.”

Mulder and Phoebe sat on the sofa and he recounted the story for the second time, while Gimble sat on the edge of the recliner hanging on every word. The Major stood at the window, with a mop propped against his shoulder like a rifle, watching the street—in case they had been followed.

“Arrows made of bones?” Gimble shuddered. “Gross.”

The Major was talking to himself. “Anyone who tries to breach that door will find out what the soldiers of the 128th Recon Squadron are made of. Mark my words.”

Mulder leaned over the arm of the sofa and lowered his voice. “Before we left for the police station, you said the Major thinks aliens are making a cyborg because some of the victims on his map were missing bones.”

“Not some of them.” Gimble’s dad was suddenly standing behind the sofa where Mulder and Phoebe were sitting. “All of them.”

“Do you have to sneak up on everyone?” Gimble asked, frustrated.

The Major raised his chin, with the floppy gray mop head resting on his shoulder. “You can take the man out of the air force, but you can’t take the air force out of the man.”

“Would you mind showing me your map again, sir?” Mulder asked.

“You’re lucky you’ve got clearance, airman.” The Major gave him a sharp nod.

When Phoebe stood up, the Major stopped in his tracks. “Not so fast, young lady. I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here.”

“Why? Because I’m a girl?” Phoebe narrowed her eyes and planted her hands on her hips. Her side buns had come loose and now she was left with two pigtails, but she still looked terrifying. “I speak three human languages, in addition to Elvish, and I know Morse code. I could’ve graduated from high school at fifteen, but I didn’t want to go to MIT before I had a driver’s license.”

The Major opened his mouth to say something, but Phoebe cut him off. “I’m also willing to bet that I’m the only person in this room, besides you, who knows how to fix an HT transceiver like the one you have over there.” She pointed at the two-way radio on top of the TV set. “And I won the Massachusetts State High School Science Award two years in a row by demonstrating how the Big Ear telescope at Ohio State University intercepted the Wow! signal, and for a prototype I designed using applied robotics.”

“Is she serious?” Gimble asked Mulder.

Phoebe’s head snapped in Gimble’s direction. “As a reactor operator at a nuclear power plant.”

“I don’t care if you’re a man, or a woman, or a grizzly,” the Major said. “You don’t have security clearance, and no one is allowed access to my intel without clearance.”

Gimble pretended to bang his head against the wall.

“Then how do I get clearance?” she asked.

The Major put down the mop. “You have to crack a code, and none of that easy stuff.”

“Maybe she could take a quiz or something instead?” Mulder suggested.

“That’s not the way I run my unit.” The Major marched over to the shelves across from the sofa and returned holding a metal box. “Crack this and I’ll grant you clearance.”

“What’s in there?” Mulder asked Gimble.

He shrugged. “No idea.”

Phoebe took the box and opened it. She scrunched up her face and gave her friends a strange look. She flipped over the box and held up an object they all recognized. “A puzzle cube?”

“It’s the only code the aliens can’t crack,” the Major said proudly, as if he had made the most significant discovery of the twentieth century.

“It’s called a Magic Cube. You can’t even buy them in the US yet.” Gimble scowled at his father. “I told you not to go in my room.”

“And whose contact got it for you?” The Major narrowed his eyes and pointed at Gimble like a drill sergeant. “Man up, airman, and support your unit.”

Gimble crossed his arms and flicked his hair out of his eyes. “I get it back when she’s done.”

“All the squares on each side have to be the same color,” the Major explained, turning to Phoebe. But she was already twisting the cube.

“Like this?” She held it up, each side a solid color. She tossed it to the Major, who stared at her with his mouth hanging open. “Now, let’s see this wall.”

After the Major recovered from the shock, he led them to the map, where he had added a new pin to Southwest DC.