The faint thrum of distant machinery was the only other sound.
As if performing for an invisible audience, she made a show of smoothing her smock over her chest, of caressing a palm over her hair as she walked. Confidence, outside and in, was the key. As long as she kept to her plan, as long as she didn’t lose her head, everything would be fine.
She tested Tymons’ office door; it was locked.
She opened the Project Center door and nearly screamed when she saw him bending over one of the computers.
“Jesus, Leonard,” she said, stepping in. “I didn’t know you’d be here. What are you—”
He turned to face her, and in his right hand was a rectangular block of black metal about six inches long. In his left hand was a gun. “Just stay where you are, Rosemary, all right? Just… stay where you are.”
“Leonard, what the hell are you doing?”
He smiled wanly. “Correcting a few things, that’s all.”
She looked around the room, not seeing anything out of place until her gaze reached the first computer screen. Though the machine was on, the screen was blank. So was the second one.
He waved his right hand. “It was so easy, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.” He held up the block. “Why go through the whole mess when all you need is a magnet.”
“My God, Leonard!”
“One pass, and poof!” He dropped the magnet on the shelf. “Poof. All gone.”
Outrage prevented her from speaking, and fear of what Joseph would do when he found out.
“The thing is,” Tymons said calmly, and put a bullet through the nearest computer.
She jumped, but the gun kept her from fleeing.
“The thing is, you see, nobody’s ever really going to know, are they? I mean, there’s no sense going to the papers or the TV stations, because no one would ever believe it.”
He shot another one, showering the floor with splintered plastic and shards of glass.
She took a step back.
He glanced at her sideways, his expression rueful. “I’m still going to try, though. Despite the odds, I’m really going to try.”
“You can’t,” she said hoarsely, her throat lined with sand. She cleared it and tried again. “You can’t.” Her left hand fluttered helplessly from her chest to her throat and back again. “All those years, Leonard, all the work we’ve done. All the time. For God’s sake, think of all the time!”
“All the failures,” he said flatly. “All that time, and all those failures.” He spat dryly. “Buried, Rosemary. We had to bury our failures.”
He’s insane, she thought; my God, he’s insane.
“Listen, Leonard, if that’s what… if you don’t care about the work…think about—” She jerked a thumb at the ceiling. “You can’t.”
“Why? You mean those stupid oaths we signed?” He fired at the third and last monitor and hunched a shoulder to protect himself against flying shards. “Meaningless, Rosemary. By the time I’m through, they won’t mean a thing.”
“I’ll deny it,” she threatened. “I’ll tell anyone you tell that I don’t know a thing.”
He straightened. “My dear doctor, I’m sorry, but you won’t live long enough to have the chance.”
She backed up hastily until the wall stopped her, the open door to her right. She couldn’t think, could barely breathe, and a small fire in the workings of one of the destroyed computers had begun to lift feathers of smoke into the room.
“They’ll come after you, Leonard,” she warned, swallowing hard, fighting the nausea that roiled in her stomach. “Even if you can get off post, you won’t be able to hide for long. A week, maybe a month.” Sweat stung her eyes, but she didn’t dare move her hands to wipe it away. “You’ve just signed your own death warrant.”
He shrugged. “Like I care, Rosemary? Like I really give a damn?”
Without warning he emptied his clip into the shelves, the explosions deafening, damage almost total. She couldn’t help but scream then, more in rage than fear, hands up to protect her face from the spinning, flaming debris. Before she could move, he had replaced the clip with a fresh one from his pocket.
And pointed the gun at her head.
Her eyes fluttered closed.
All she could think was This is crazy, this is wrong.
“Go away.”
She didn’t move, didn’t understand.
“Rosemary, go away.”
When she looked, the gun was at his side, but the defeat in his voice wasn’t reflected in his face.
“Maybe,” he said, “you’ll last longer than I.”
Disgust twisted her features, but she refused to say a word for fear he would change his mind. Although she wanted desperately to rail against the destruction of all their work, she wanted more desperately to get out of this alive.
“Go away,” he whispered, and shook the gun at her.
Without further urging, she bolted clumsily into the corridor, and hadn’t taken two steps toward the elevator when she kicked herself in the ankle and fell hard into the wall. She cried out, more in surprise than pain, and cried out again when she heard a gunshot.
Another.
At that she ran, keeping her stinging arm braced against her side, fumbling with her free hand for the keys.
At the elevator door the key slid off the control plate twice before she was able to insert it properly. “Come on, damnit,” she whispered urgently, willing her nerves to settle down. “Come on, come on!”
The door opened and she virtually threw herself into the car, spun around and inserted the key a second time.
It wasn’t until the door had hissed closed that she realized she wasn’t alone.
No, she thought; not after all this, no.
“You know,” said a rasping voice behind her, “I’m getting pretty good at this, don’t you think?”
FIFTEEN
Andrews wasn’t in the room when Dana returned, and she decided to take some of her own advice and scrub some of the afternoon away. Maybe some time alone would help her figure out the purpose of today’s attack. So little of it made any real sense. If it had been meant as intimidation, as a warning to stay away and drop the investigation—for whatever reason—it certainly wouldn’t work, and surely whoever was behind it knew that as well; if it had been meant to stop them permanently, that had failed, too, and she couldn’t convince herself that the shooter hadn’t been arming to kill.
“Unless,” she thought aloud, “he wasn’t an expert.”
She pushed a hand back through her hair, and rubbed the back of her neck. There had been a lot of wind, lots of leaves and things blowing around. Branches moving, targets moving. Plus, they had been shooting back.
So maybe, she thought, just maybe, they had gotten a little lucky.
That particular idea unnerved her more than anything. Especially when she realized that the shooter really could have killed her and Webber at practically any time before they had ducked into the trees.
They had been in the open far longer than Mulder.
But he hadn’t.
The more she thought about it, the more she believed he had only been trying, and succeeding, to pin them down. To take them out of the game as much as he could.
What he had actually been trying to do was put a bullet in Mulder.
The man at the Jefferson Memorial:
you have no protection, Mr. Mulder, you still have no protection.
“Oh, brother,” she whispered. “Oh, brother.”
Think. She needed a clear head to think this through, or she’d end up just as paranoid as her partner.
Once stripped and in the shower, however, it wasn’t the shooter she concentrated on—for some reason, she couldn’t stop thinking about Mulder’s other assailant. The explanations she had given him were more than likely correct, or at the very least, parameters. Which did not, under any circumstances, include anything like a goblin.
And yet…
She ma
de a noise much like a growl.
And yet there had been times past when she had been forced to the unwelcome conclusion that explanations could very well be only rationalizations in disguise.
She growled again and turned away from the shower head, letting the hot water slam against her back and splash over her shoulders. Her eyes half-closed. Her breathing steadied as she willed the memory of gunfire to a safer distance.
Steam rose gently around her, condensing on the narrow pebble-glass window in the white-tiled wall, running down the translucent sliding door.
She felt nothing but the water.
She heard nothing but the water.
The perfect time, she thought suddenly, for good old Norman Bates to slip into the bathroom, knife held high and at the ready. Effectively deaf and vision blurred, lulled by the comfort of steam and heat, she wouldn’t know it was over until the end had begun; she wouldn’t know, because all she could see was a smeared shadow on the door.
Standing there.
Watching.
Biding its time.
The shadow, of course, was the drape of bath towels over their rack by the door.
She knew that.
No; she assumed that.
Her eyes closed briefly as she damned Mulder for sparking her imagination; nevertheless, she couldn’t stop herself from holding her breath to brace herself, and opening the shower door, just a little.
Just to be sure.
“Mulder, I swear I’m going to strangle you,” she whispered in relief and mild anger when she saw the towels, and the rack, and not a single place in the tiny room for anyone to hide.
The steam flowed over and around her, twisting in slow spectral ribbons, creating the momentary illusion she had stepped into a light fog.
She shivered.
The room was chilly.
And the steam that should have filled it flowed and twisted, because the bathroom door was open.
He didn’t want to sleep.
There was too much to do.
But the pain had finally ebbed, weariness taking its place, and he couldn’t keep his thoughts in an orderly line. They drifted, fading and dancing.
mulder, watch your back.
Patches of skin like snapshots, flashing too rapidly for him to focus on, barklike skin without the roughness of bark, without the texture, although he couldn’t really be sure because contact had been so brief.
Mulder
The voice was muffled by sleep and time, yet it sounded maddeningly familiar despite the fact that it belonged to no one he knew; a roughness here, too, and forced, as if the speaker, the goblin, was either suffering low-level pain or hadn’t yet gotten used to the voice that it had.
Watch your back.
And if it was true, that he had to watch his back, why hadn’t he been killed, like the others?
I don’t know, he answered, but the voice and the nightmare wouldn’t stop.
Rosemary couldn’t take it anymore. Her knees buckled, and she sagged weakly to the floor, her back against the elevator wall.
“Are you all right?”
Hoarse, painful to listen to.
She nodded.
“What happened?”
Gone, all gone, she thought; everything’s gone and Joseph will kill me and it’s gone, damnit, all gone.
“Dr. Elkhart, what’s wrong?”
She raised her head and gestured defeat.
“Dr. Elkhart, say something. You’re scaring me.”
“My dear,” she said with a brittle bitter laugh, “you have no idea what scared is.”
A shuffling, a shifting, a soft hand brushing across her ankle.
“Can I help?”
She made to shake her head, and stopped. She stared at the elevator door, seeing the two of them, reflections twisted out of recognition in the polished steel, and before long she felt her lips pull back into what might have been a smile.
“Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, dear, I think you can.”
Scully’s purse was on the floor between the toilet and the tub. She reached through the gap and fumbled it open, pulled out her gun, and straightened, staring intently at the bathroom door, still open about an inch. Her left hand shut the water off; her right wrist slid the shower door away.
Once on the bath mat, she grabbed a towel and wrapped it hastily around her; it was no protection at all, but it made her feel less vulnerable. Her teeth chattered and her lower Up quivered as the room’s chill raised a pattern of gooseflesh on her skin.
She switched off the light.
Water dripped too loudly from the shower head.
The only illumination in the outer room came from the brass lamp on the nightstand between the two beds, just as she had left it.
There was no sound or movement.
Using her left hand, she opened the door as slowly as she could, crouching low until she could slip over the threshold and duck behind the nearest bed. The gun barrel swept the room just ahead of her, but no one else was there.
Don’t assume, she told herself; never assume.
Feeling like a jerk now—never assume, Scully, never assume—she half-crawled around the footboard to be sure her visitor wasn’t hiding between the beds. Once satisfied she was indeed alone, she sat on the mattress and tried to remember if, maybe, she hadn’t left the bathroom door open by mistake; or maybe she had closed it, but the latch didn’t catch; or maybe Andrews had returned, heard the shower, and decided Scully didn’t need to be disturbed.
But if that were true, if she had heard the shower, why had she opened the door?
A trickle of water slipped out of her hair and down her spine.
“All right,” she said aloud, as much for the sound as the comfort. “All right. It’s all right, you’re alone.”
That didn’t stop her from turning on the hanging lamp over the table to help banish the room’s shadows, or from drying off as fast as she could, with the bathroom door wide open. Once that was accomplished, dressing was quick and easy—blouse, skirt, matching wine jacket. By then she was almost calm, and she looked in the dresser mirror as she smoothed the blouse over her chest, deciding that one of these days, Bureau or not, she would get herself a fashion life.
Back into the bathroom, then, to wield a brush through her hair, using her reflection as a sounding board as she practiced telling Mulder what his stupid notions were doing to her. It didn’t help. Her reflection just gave her the same sardonic look he would when he heard. If he heard. By the time she was finished, she had decided this was something her partner did not need to know.
A lopsided smile sent her into the front room, where she started and gasped when she spotted someone pacing her at the corner of her vision.
“Listen carefully,” Rosemary said urgently. She stabbed a thumb at the door. “He’s trying to destroy us. Tymons. He’s afraid, and he’s a coward. He doesn’t care about you, me, or the Project. He wants… he wants us all dead.”
A silence then, and she held her breath, praying.
“He didn’t approve of me from the beginning, you know.” Still hoarse, now with sullen rage. “He thought I was too… emotional.”
Rosemary agreed silently.
A giggle: “He’s really scared of me, you know.”
“Yes. I know.”
The giggling stopped. “What can I do? I’m not stupid, Dr. Elkhart. I know what’ll happen if you stop helping me. What can I do?”
Rosemary tried to think, tried to set the priorities that would keep her intact.
“Do you need him? Dr. Tymons?”
There wasn’t a second’s hesitation: “No. No, we don’t.”
“Others?”
“Three,” she said without having to think. Then concern made her stand when a wrenching cough made her wonder if they could pull it off. “Can you do it, dear? Are you well enough?”
“I can do it. Really. But it’ll take time. A couple of days, maybe. I can’t—”
The coughing increased, gri
nding into spasms that made Rosemary reach out a hand, grip a shoulder, and squeeze until it was over.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, rubbing now, soothing. “It’s going to be okay.”
And she believed it. It would be all right. Everything would be all right.
Then she spoke the names.
Scully’s right hand was already reaching for the gun on the bed when she realized the movement was only her reflection in the dresser mirror.
Too damn many mirrors around here, she thought sourly, and pointed at it as if to order it to find someone else to scare.
She froze.
Something moved on the wall behind her. A slight movement she would have missed had she simply glanced in that direction.
She watched, waiting, thinking maybe it had only been a shadow cast by a passing car.
It moved again, and she turned and made her way between the beds.
A moth fluttered its wings slowly and began to make its way toward the ceiling.
Fascinated, licking her lips, she climbed onto the bed, balanced herself, and looked away.
Looked back, and it took a full second before she could find it again.
“Well,” she whispered.
A tentative smile came and went.
Then she bounced on the mattress, just high enough to snatch the moth away in a loose fist. Feeling its wings beat against her palm. Whispering to it as she opened the door and flung it away. Standing back, rubbing her chin thoughtfully.
She needed another test, and footsteps outside made her think fast.
With the hanging lamp on again, the night-stand lamp off, she sat on the far bed and pushed herself back until she rested against the headboard, legs crossed at the ankles. She could barely see herself then, but she could see just the same.
A key turned in the lock.
She heard it but didn’t move.
The door opened and Licia stepped in. “Scully?”
Dana opened her mouth, but kept silent.
Andrews headed for the bathroom. “Scully, you in there? Look, are you going to leave me with that boy all night? Damn, you should hear—” She pushed the door open and cut herself off, sighed, turned, and yelped when she noticed Scully sitting on the bed, pointing at her.
[X-Files 01] - Goblins Page 12