by Kami Garcia
“That could be interesting.” Mulder grinned to let Gimble know that he wasn’t judging.
Gimble perked up. “You don’t want to be the guinea pig in that experiment. Trust me.”
Mulder thought the whole code word thing was sort of cool, like everything else in the room. But dropping by after school wasn’t the same as living here. He took a closer look around.
In addition to books, a row of bookshelves held small cardboard boxes with masking tape labels, numbered VHS tapes, two shortwave radios, some kind of handheld transceiver or CB, a sextant, bowls of rocks, and boxes of cream-filled snack cakes. Mulder picked up a gray rock the size of his fist and tossed it in his hand like a baseball. Nothing special about it, as far as he could tell.
He moved on to the books, scanning the titles in some of the stacks: The Encyclopedia of Unexplained Phenomena, Breaking the Crop Circle Code, Evolution and the Human Brain, The Truth About Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination, Secrets of the Solar System, and Applied Astrophysics. There were a few titles he recognized—like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 1984, and The Martian Chronicles—and at least half a dozen paperback copies of a book Mulder had never heard of called Stormbringer. Judging by the long-haired albino warrior on the cover, it was a fantasy novel.
The room was jam-packed, but Mulder realized the Major had created his own organizational system. Newspapers and magazines were stacked against the walls according to publication and year, and the towers of books beside them were sorted by category, like physics, space exploration, natural disasters, American presidents, and … aliens?
But the Major’s taste in reading material wasn’t nearly as interesting as the wallpaper job he’d given the room. Newspaper clippings and photos of what resembled crop circles and UFOs obscured most of the blue paint, and a huge map covered the far wall, with pieces of yellow string crisscrossing between the colored pushpins.
“What is all this?” Mulder stared at the walls, transfixed.
“The Major is always tracking something—natural disasters, meteors, unusual weather patterns, shortwave radio transmissions. You name it.” Gimble’s cheeks turned red and he looked away. “Let’s head to my room before he comes up from the basement. That’s where he keeps his files.”
“What kind of files?” After seeing the walls, Mulder was curious.
“Who knows? Maybe he’s saving the ‘secret messages’ he decodes from the backs of our cereal boxes.” Gimble kept his tone light as he led Mulder through the kitchen to a back staircase. He sounded worn out and kind of embarrassed, so Mulder pretended not to notice a bicycle lock wrapped around the refrigerator door handles.
Gimble’s bedroom was at the top of the steps.
“This is it,” his friend said proudly as he opened the door.
When Mulder walked in, his first thought was how much Gimble’s bedroom reminded him of Phoebe’s. Books overflowed the shelves, and a miniature model of the Enterprise hung above a small desk. Handwritten lists and charts were taped on a wall next to a Star Wars movie poster that still had fold marks on it.
Another poster covered the back of Gimble’s door—Farrah Fawcett, wearing the red bathing suit that sent every girl at school to the mall to buy a red one-piece. Mulder had the same poster on his bedroom wall back home.
He pointed to Farrah. “Now I know why we get along.”
“Think she’s a Trekkie?” Gimble asked hopefully.
“Doubt it.” Mulder took a closer look at the miniature Enterprise. The model was meticulously hand-painted just like Phoebe’s, though Gimble had added a white G on the back of his ship.
Gimble sighed, still checking out Farrah. “You’re probably right. Nobody’s perfect.”
Farrah Fawcett is pretty close.
“Wait till you see this.” Gimble rushed to his nightstand and opened the drawer. He turned around slowly with one hand behind his back, and then made a dramatic show of revealing what he was holding.
A pamphlet.
“It’s an original zine from Lord Manhammer.”
Mulder shrugged. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”
“Have I taught you nothing in the past three months? Lord Manhammer … the king of D and D?”
“Dungeons and Dragons?” Mulder asked. Most of what he knew about the role-playing game he’d learned from listening to Gimble talk about it. Even Gimble’s nickname—which everyone, including the teachers, called him—came straight out of the game.
“There’s only one D and D.”
“Not true,” Mulder said. “There’s drunk and disorderly and deuterium deuterium.”
“How could I forget deuterium deuterium?” Gimble groaned with an exaggerated head smack. “When most people hear ‘D and D,’ their minds definitely go straight to nuclear fusion.” He held up the pamphlet, undeterred. “This is a copy of Lord Manhammer’s Underground EP Strategy Guide. It outlines Manhammer’s strategy for accumulating experience points. He only printed four hundred copies, and I have one of them.”
“Can I take a look?” Mulder asked. Gimble was his only real friend in DC. The least he could do was fake a little interest in what seemed like his prized possession.
Gimble handed him the newsprint pamphlet. “Be careful. The paper is thin.”
Mulder took it and thumbed through the pages. Lots of references to armor class and adventure goals. Serious geek stuff. Phoebe would love it.
“Interesting, huh?” Gimble craned his neck to see which page Mulder was reading. “We have an empty spot in our party.”
“D and D isn’t really my thing. I played once, and I sucked.” Mulder handed him back the pamphlet.
“At least give it some thought. Our dungeon master, Theo, likes new blood, and you’ve got me. I’m the best teacher around.”
“I’ll think about it.” Then I’ll say no.
Gimble returned Lord Manhammer’s sacred text to the nightstand. “Want to take a look at my Star Trek cards before we check out the telescope? It’ll give you something to talk about if you get stuck meeting the Major later—which you probably will—since he watches Project U.F.O. in the living room every day at four.”
“The show about aliens?” Mulder had watched a few episodes with Phoebe.
“More like the people who believe in them.”
“I didn’t know it was on every day.”
“It’s not,” Gimble said. “We have it on VHS. The Major tapes the episodes and watches one every day at four, even on Christmas Day. He usually makes me watch it with him.”
Mulder tried to imagine his dad videotaping a show for them to watch together. But it was too hard, because it would never happen.
“It’s actually a decent show if you want to watch a little,” Gimble offered. “Some of the UFO footage looks real.”
“Maybe it is. NASA’s Ames Research Center still hasn’t found a way to explain the Wow! signal.”
“Funny.” Gimble flicked his head to the side to get the hair out of his eyes. “Don’t say anything like that around the Major. He’s crazy enough without any encouragement.”
“Has he always been like that?”
“No. It started right after my mom died. Her car went off the side of a bridge. The Major couldn’t handle losing her. He retraced every move she made that day. He ate bran flakes for breakfast just like she had that morning. He scrubbed the bathtub and wore her flowered rubber gloves when he washed the dishes. He even found the fantasy novel she’d been reading on her nightstand—Stormbringer—and he read it cover to cover. That’s where the Major got the idea for the code words—Agent of Chaos.” Gimble took an octagonal die he used in D & D games out of his pocket and rolled it between his fingers nervously. “That’s when he started talking about Chaos and Law, government conspiracies, and collateral damage. Someone on the base must’ve found out about it, because he was discharged right after that.”
“Sorry, man. I didn’t know.”
Gimble shrugged. “Nobody does. It’s the kin
d of thing you keep to yourself.”
Mulder knew how it felt to keep secrets about your life. He hadn’t told Gimble about his sister—or even mentioned that he had one. Transferring to a new school for senior year gave Mulder a chance to walk through the halls with people who didn’t know the story that plagued him back home.
When Samantha disappeared, everyone on the island heard the same version of events. One minute his sister was watching television in the living room with Mulder … and the next minute she was gone. He was there the whole time, so why couldn’t he remember anything? That was the first question people asked. Overnight, he became the poor kid who froze when his little sister needed him.
The police and the FBI never recovered any evidence to explain Samantha’s disappearance. Mulder believed she’d been kidnapped, but no one took him seriously. Why should they when his father refused to acknowledge the possibility?
Instead, Bill Mulder sent his son to a shrink. Mulder’s parents never used the word kidnapped, at least not around him. They saved it for the endless arguments they had in their bedroom at night, when they thought he was asleep. But Mulder rarely slept. He spent his nights lying awake, making a silent vow. If the authorities refused to figure out what happened to his sister, he would do it himself.
“Mulder? You okay?” Gimble was waving his hand in front of Mulder’s face.
“Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t sleep much last night.” He fake-yawned.
“Gary? Are you coming down?” the Major called from downstairs. “It’s almost sixteen hundred.”
“I’ll be down in a minute,” Gimble yelled, red-faced.
“Gary?” Mulder grinned. “That’s your real name?”
“No one calls me that except my father. Gimble is my true name. And I don’t make fun of your name, Fox.”
“Hey, I’m not judging.” Mulder held up his hands in surrender. “As long as I don’t have to call you Lord Manhammer.”
When they reached the staircase, the Major was stationed at the bottom, waiting. He had the tired look of a man who had fought too many battles. Deep lines were etched into his face, and his standard military-style buzz cut was uneven, as if it had been trimmed by a shaky hand. The Major was dressed in freshly ironed olive green fatigues. The button-down shirt hung from his tall frame, too tight in some places and too loose in others. It looked like a real military uniform—complete with a blue air force patch sewn above one pocket and Winchester, his last name, sewn above the other pocket. There were other patches, too, stars and a fancy crest with gold wings on the sides.
Gimble leaned toward Mulder and whispered, “Whatever you do, just don’t tell him that your dad works for the government.”
“Why not?” Fox glanced at the intimidating man staring up at him.
“You don’t want to know.”
CHAPTER 3
Winchester Residence
3:56 P.M.
The Major extended his hand before Mulder made it down the steps. “Major William Wyatt Winchester, United States Air Force, 128th Reconnaissance Squadron.”
Mulder stuck out his sweaty palm. “Fox Mulder. Gim—I mean, Gary’s friend from school.”
The Major clasped his hand in a death grip and shook it. “Gary tells me you have security clearance?”
Security clearance?
Mulder’s dad tossed around the term all the time in an attempt to make his boring job at the State Department sound interesting. Mulder wasn’t sure the Major had enough clearance to get into his own bank account.
Gimble did a face-palm, Mulder’s cue to play along. “Of course, sir.”
The Major nodded and headed for the living room, motioning for the boys to follow him. “Glad to hear it. I can never be too careful. My work is highly classified, and the government would kill to get their hands on it.” He gestured at the sofa and turned on the TV set and the VHS player. “Have a seat.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your clearance level?” After seeing the house, Mulder couldn’t resist asking.
Gimble’s eyes bugged out, and he mouthed, What the hell?
The Major laughed. “This is a black op, son, and it’s my operation. Clearance doesn’t get much higher than that. Every move I make is classified.” He tapped on an AM radio on the shelf above the VHS player. “All my communications are encrypted, and information is supplied on a need-to-know basis.”
“Which means no one knows anything,” Gimble said under his breath.
“How many people are in your unit?” Mulder asked.
And are they real?
If the Major knew that Mulder was humoring him, he didn’t let on. “I keep my unit small—three people, including myself. The members of my unit are true patriots, willing to risk their lives to expose a government conspiracy of epic proportions.”
“I’m going to show Mulder the telescope,” Gimble said.
“You’re not going to watch the transmission?” the Major asked.
“I’ll watch Project U.F.O. with you tomorrow. Mulder wants to see the telescope. He’s into space stuff.”
“We can check it out after the episode,” Mulder offered, sitting on the shag carpet. “I don’t mind.”
The Major nodded his approval. “That’s what I like to hear.”
“Fine.” Gimble looked annoyed. “Then can we start watching it?”
The Major crossed his arms. “I don’t think I heard you correctly, airman.”
Gimble stood and saluted his father. “Can we start watching it, sir!”
As if on cue, the opening sequence filled the TV screen and the Major sat down in his recliner. Mulder was sucked in the moment the opening montage started. Diagrams of schematics of flying saucers straight out of a sci-fi novel filled the screen, while a narrator explained that biblical Ezekiel “saw the wheel”—a UFO—and other people have seen them, too. So the US Air Force created a team to investigate.
“Of course they chose our boys,” the Major said, touching the US Air Force patch on his chest. “But they never wanted them to actually find anything.”
The episode dramatized a scout leader’s encounter with a UFO, outside a small Mississippi town. “I saw a flash of light in the sky, and I went to check it out.”
A fake UFO that looked like a spaceship in a comic book zapped the guy with lasers that left his arm covered in burns.
“It was probably swamp gas playing tricks on the guy, like they said at the beginning,” Gimble said.
“That’s what the government wants you to believe.” The Major was glued to the television, and Mulder couldn’t blame him.
On-screen, the scout leader dragged a hand over his face. “I never should’ve gotten close to their ship.”
“Whose ship?” one of the air force investigators asked.
Mulder knew what was coming.
After a dramatic pause, the scout leader finally spoke. “Aliens.”
The Major said the word along with him.
“I bet he burned himself while he was building a campfire,” Gimble said. “And he didn’t want to lose his job.”
“Being a scout leader isn’t really a job,” Mulder pointed out. “They don’t get paid.”
“Gary is a skeptic.” The Major rose from his chair and turned off the VHS player. “He doesn’t know the truth.”
“I’m not a skeptic.” Gimble leaned forward and dropped his head in his hands, exasperated. “Do you think President Carter would let anyone put a show like that on the air if aliens really existed?”
The Major looked at his son. “By telling everyone that aliens and UFOs exist, the government is proving they don’t.”
Mulder nodded. The argument made a certain kind of sense. People expected the government to keep secrets. “Your dad has a point.”
“You don’t actually believe any of this alien stuff, do you?” Gimble gave Mulder an incredulous look.
“Anything is possible. It wouldn’t be the first time that the government lied. Look what happened with W
atergate.” Mulder remembered hearing about the Watergate scandal on the news. It felt like the moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy pulled back the curtain on the wizard.
He had witnessed firsthand how easily people accepted the explanations they were given. After his sister vanished, the authorities had conducted a massive search. When it turned up nothing, they decided Samantha’s disappearance was an isolated incident—and overnight, everyone on the island did, too.
Except Mulder.
“Watergate will look like a bunch of children arguing on the playground compared to what our so-called government is involved in this time. They think they’re in control, but they aren’t the architects behind the design,” the Major said.
Gimble blew out a loud breath and slumped against the sofa, tossing one of his game dice in the air. He seemed to have heard this before.
The Major rushed over to the map. “The world is in chaos. War, famine.” He tapped an article on the map. “And crime. But Chaos can’t exist without Law.”
Chaos can’t exist without order, was probably what the Major meant, but Mulder wasn’t about to correct him. “Mind if I take a look?”
The Major stood taller. “Go ahead.”
Mulder moved closer to the gigantic map of the Washington, DC, metro area taped to the wall. Colored pushpins marked specific locations, and the Major had strung a web of lines between them—the waterfront in Southwest DC; a residential area in Annapolis, Maryland; a stretch of forest in Severn, Maryland.
Newspaper articles with grainy pictures were pinned next to each location, along with random items, like half-finished word searches, glossy black-and-white crime scene photos that looked real, and fortunes from fortune cookies. A mug shot of a woman with mascara smeared down her face, after she was charged with pimping teenage girls, was pinned next to a Washington Post headline about a madam whose body was found in a waterfront dumpster. Under the Annapolis pushpin, the Major had saved a longer article with the headline FATAL OVERDOSE EXPOSES ANNAPOLIS DOCTOR’S REAL PROFESSION. He had circled the phrase opiate-dealing psychiatrist discovered dead. Mulder’s gaze followed the black line from the Annapolis pin to the Severn pin, where the Major had taped a newspaper clipping about a man who had been killed in the woods by wild animals.