Agent of Chaos (The X-Files: Origins #1)(48)

The second the Gremlin pulled away, X mobilized. He had to get Bill Mulder’s son out of that house without letting the kid get a look at him—a smart kid with a memory like Fox’s would recognize X from the DC police station for sure, and that wasn’t allowed.

He went in through the front door and did a quick scan of the living room before moving on to the kitchen. It looked neat and clean at first glance, but he’d been in a house like this before—nondescript and too generic. X had grown up in one of these homes. The secrets were all there if you knew where to look.

He opened the pantry, half expecting a body to fall out. Something moved, and X stumbled back. A black mass scurried toward him.

A rat king.

A writhing mass of rats—their tails knotted and twisted, transforming them into a monstrous creature.

Some people believed that rat kings were bad omens, a phenomenon so rare that only a few specimens existed in natural history museums. But X knew better. The specimens existed all right, but there was nothing natural about them. X was eleven, maybe twelve, when he read about them in a book he brought home from the school library. One night, the book went missing. He found it in the living room. His father was sitting in his stained armchair, drunk as usual, with the book in his hand. “You know this nonsense isn’t real, don’t you?”

X hadn’t moved.

“In this book, they asked all kinds of fancy scientists, and none of them could explain it.” His father laughed, a spray of spit showering X and the book. “Bet they didn’t ask a janitor.”

His father took a swig from the bottle in his hand. “Rats aren’t smart, but they’ll do anything to survive. You see this?” He pointed to the photo of a rat king specimen. Twenty rats, their tails tangled and intertwined in the center, with their heads facing outward. “If rats got twisted up like this in real life, you know what they’d do?” He took another swig. “They’d chew their own tails off to get themselves free.”

He jabbed at the photo. “People did this. Tied the rats’ tails together so they couldn’t get loose. Nature doesn’t create monsters. Only men do that.”

X watched the black mass of rats scurry into the living room, the pieces of string and yarn that Earl Roy had used to tie the animals together trailing after them.

Now X knew he was dealing with a monster.

Earl Roy would be holed up in the basement. When X tried the door, it was locked from the inside. He had two choices—break it down and protect Fox Mulder, the directive from Cigarette Smoking Man, or follow organization protocol and protect his identity. He knew which option his boss would expect him to make.

But how could he leave the kid?

X took a deep breath and thought about the boy trapped downstairs with a monster. Then he thought about another kid—a boy who stood in the corner for hours until he dropped from exhaustion, while his father got piss-drunk and berated him. A boy who put himself through college and joined the organization. There were sacrifices he wasn’t willing to make.

X made his choice.

He walked into the kitchen and found an ancient black rotary phone. He dialed the number everyone knew by heart.

Then he turned around and walked out the back door.





CHAPTER 21

Earl Roy’s Residence

9:59 P.M.



“Law chooses the sinners.” The voice sounded loud and faraway at the same time.

Mulder’s head felt heavy.

Was he dreaming?

No. That wasn’t right.…

Mulder sucked in a deep breath. What was that smell? Perfume? Flowers? He tried to stretch, but he couldn’t move his arms.

Something was wrong.

Another sound permeated the fog clouding his thoughts—a warbling chatter. “Sing for me, and I’ll give you more steak,” said a man with a gravelly voice. It was the same voice Mulder had just heard. He forced his eyes open and immediately regretted it. The soft light in the room blinded him, as if he were staring at the sun. Mulder tried to shield his eyes, but he couldn’t bring his arms up in front of him. It took a second for it to register that his wrists were bound behind his back, and he was staring at thin metal bars.

Then he remembered—walking through Earl Roy’s house and turning on the light, Phoebe and Gimble coming toward him, feeling an arm around his throat, and Billy Christian’s face behind broken glass.

Mulder was in some kind of a metal cage. If he slouched, he could sit up without bumping his head. He bent down to read a ripped silver sticker near the bottom of the cage: HAPPY DOG HOUSES.

He was in a dog kennel.

Realization set in—along with panic. The man who had choked him out and locked him in there had already murdered one child and kidnapped another. What would he do to Mulder, an intruder who’d broken into his house?

Kill me.

He couldn’t afford to think that way. Gimble and Phoebe must have seen Earl Roy grab him, so the police were probably already on their way.

I’m going to make it out of here, and Sarah will, too.

Mulder surveyed his surroundings. The combination of the rough stone walls and thick pillar candles bathing the room in yellow light, the place looked like a cross between a medieval castle and the headquarters of a secret society.

The chaos symbol, or the Symbol of Eight as the Illuminates called it, was hand-painted on the wall in black paint that had dripped in places, leaving long streaks running down to the floor. The opposite wall was covered with writing and a single arrow pointing straight up, and white rose petals littered the smooth stone floor.