By Amanda Finch
[email protected]

Disclaimers, etc. with first part.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Jonson tore his rifle from his duffel bag, and when he pressed forward with
his hands, he speared one of the two men who stood there with the muzzle. A
Sig Sauer almost identical to the one I was holding clattered at my feet. His
was maybe a bit newer than mine. Without compromising my aim, I picked it up,
my eyes never leaving the two of them. I shoved it between my jeans and my
stomach, scraping my skin, and dug the small flashlight out of my inside
pocket, flashing it from one face to the other. Brown eyes squinted bravely
into the glare and green eyes looked away.

The dark-haired one on the right had dropped his weapon. Not that I could
much criticize *that.* I'd expected rage and anger as the light hit him, but
from the roundness of his eyes, it was more likely that he'd soiled himself.
The black man at his left still held a weapon, but it was defenselessly slack
in his raised fingers. I motioned to Jonson with the flashlight to take it
and realized they were both a good decade younger than either of us. Both
were wearing black, but at first glance, the dust and dirt staining their
clothes made the color uncertain.

The one on the left, only recently unarmed, was swearing in the cold air like
he'd just sprung a leak. "Don't shoot us," he pleaded, winded, closing his
eyes as if we were about to do just that.

Any theory I had about them being NSA evaporated. "Who the hell *are* you?"

"These guns are federal issue," Jonson mumbled, holding the confiscated
weapon on its owner.

The dark-haired man carefully lowered on hand. "I'm getting my I.D." His
partner followed suit.

I shone the beam from left to right as they stood there. The black guy was
Calvin Essary according to his FBI identification. The dark-haired kid -- and
he wasn't much more than that -- was Eric Griffin. Light gleamed off badges
for a moment before I turned it off and shoved it back in my jacket.

"You know them?" Jonson asked.

"Do you know all the other snipers?" I hissed. "No, I don't know them!" I
lowered my weapon but didn't change my aim. "Who sent you here?"

Essary spit it out rapid-fire. "I'm with VCU. Griff's with Fraud. We're on
Special assignment by order of the D.C. main office."

Jonson laughed in exasperated confusion. "They train D.C. green Fraud brats
to come creeping through the woods like that?" He spat on the ground
disparagingly close to Essary's hiking boot. "Yeah. Right."

Essary took a step back. "We thought you were NSA! We saw the duffel bag and
thought you were about to make a hit!"

"FBI, D.C.," Jonson said shortly, not even bothering to back himself up with
documentation as he gave his name. "Tactical Command."

I snapped mine off my holster. "FBI, Fox Mulder -"

"Mulder!" Griffin explained to Essary.

(Okay, what did I do now?)

"You're the one who was supposed to meet us here and brief us on this damn
thing!" Essary stalked off into the trees angrily, temper forcing his
shoulder blades out as he walked away.

"On whose orders?" I asked Griffin.

He turned to watch after his partner. "Section Chief McGrath."

Jonson looked at me for verification. "Ray's old man?"

I nodded and turned back to Griffin. "When did he tell you that?"

"Sunday morning."

"That's strange -- since he didn't *ask* me until Sunday morning. I told him
no, by the way." I tallied up the hours they'd been waiting. "If you've been
expecting me since then, why aren't you back in D.C.? Two days pass and you
think I still might show?"

Turning aside, Griffin spoke softly. "Ess'ry? You tell it."

Stepping out of the trees, he rejoined the fray next to his partner. "We
tried to go back. We knew something was wrong when we went to the Omaha field
office to run an errand. They told us our names were put on a list as having
counterfeit credentials. Like we were only impersonating federal agents."

"It sounds crazy," Griffin added. "But I think we've been kill-filed."

Jonson shook his head in disbelief. "Kill-filed? Meaning what?"

"That's sort of a CIA, Pentagon term," I explained. "If it was declared
dangerous or risky to have someone return to duty from a high profile or
highly classified assignment, the agency would dump their personnel file."

"Oh yeah?" Jonson chuckled derisively. "And you know this how?"

I smirked. "You've never read Victor Marchetti?"

He rolled his eyes dismissively. "I've seen some weird-looking shit, okay?
I've seen politicians talking to mob leaders and I've seen mob leaders become
politicians. You've got two agents -- " he rolled the word on his tongue
skeptically. "Two guys you've never seen before in your life who look like
they just slam-danced with a fucking sewer, and smell about the same -- "

"We been running from our own people!" Griffin interrupted with a yell.
"Don't you *get* that?"

"Yeah, Jonson," I concurred coldly. "Don't you?"

Whatever he started to say dissipated before it reached his throat. He closed
his mouth and tried again. "Alright. Fair enough. If this is their story,
though, why were they about to come out of those trees and kill us?"

"So you couldn't kill us first," Essary replied wearily. "Look, I don't want
to believe it could be done either. This wasn't in the fucking brochures at
Quantico." He fixed his brown, bloodshot eyes on me. "I don't know what kind
of work you do, Agent Mulder... but is it possible we only pulled a Special
Assignment because we -- " He considered Griffin for a moment. " -- aren't
that important?"

"You mean, do I think you may have been sent here to die?"

First Essary nodded, then Griffin.

"That depends," I said. "I can't figure out why he would simply assign you
the case and then abandon you. He'd have to be afraid of something you know,
or you would've had to finish something for him that he didn't want known." I
searched their faces. "Anything like that?"

Neither said anything until Griffin spoke. "We got here on Saturday. We went
to Wyeth's house check things out, just like he asked himself. The NSA told
us that they were the ones handling the case, that it had happened just that
morning or we could've saved ourselves the trouble. We were
disappointed...we'd never been on a Special Assignment before." He raised
some dust with the toe of his boot. "All we did was get that box from him and
-- "

I interrupted. "Box? What box?"

"He said it was case notes and some personal effects of Pam Wyeth's that had
to be returned to the S.C.," Essary responded. "We called him and told him we
had it and would bring it back with us after we tried to wrap some things up
here, but he told us to go ahead and send it overnight mail so we -- what?"

"How large was this box?"

They both tried to show the dimensions with their hands. It was a wide, flat
box. Griffin swore it had a slight rattle, like someone had to wrap something
small in a slightly larger box.

Sounded like the size of a few reels of security footage to me. The same
security footage that S.C. McGrath had believed to be worth the lives of two
FBI agents. The father face he'd shown me had alluded to its importance as
simply a tool of investigating who had killed his son. But it was my sister
-- that woman -- who he was trying to protect.

Griffin frowned. "The only reason I remember the stupid box is because when
we described it to him after we sent it, he chewed our asses out about not
getting everything we were supposed to get from the NSA."

"And it was when we took the other damn box down to Omaha to get a
federal-priority code that we found out we didn't have *jobs* anymore,"
Essary chimed in. "Then that NSA guy ran our car off the road -- "

It dawned on me then. "The *other* damn box?"

They simply didn't understand the importance of the boxes, and impatiently
showed dimensions again.

"You know that stupid box the personnel office gives you when you have to
change offices?" Griffin offered. "The one all your stuff is supposed to fit
into? That size."

The Adios box, we called them at the Bureau. Because if you resigned, were
suspended for any amount of time or fired, they gave you that same damn
unmarked box with a smile that seemed to say "don't let the door hit your ass
on the way out." I knew that box well. "Where is it?"

Jonson made a sound of disgust in his throat, pointedly looked at his watch
and walked away.

"We've been hiding out in this storm cellar," Essary told me. "Back when they
had cellars set in the ground outside the house, only the house isn't there."

"Like an underground bunker," Griffin said.

"It's *nothing* like an underground bunker," his partner argued. "You've
never even *seen* one before -- "

"Whatever's inside that box," I broke in, "is probably why they've been
trying to track you down. I need to see what's in it."

Griffin lead the way. I hung back and waited for Jonson. Finally, he was
trudging a few paces behind me with resentment. Frankly, I would've preferred
he walked in front of me. I kept my gun held down as I walked quickly and
quietly after them. They stood a few yards ahead and waited for us to catch
up.

It wasn't a storm cellar *or* an underground bunker, but a root cellar. It
still had the strong mildew-and-earth odor of one, too. I could just now pick
up that smell on the two of them, and thought of them sleeping down there at
night, prematurely buried in more ways than one.

Essary climbed the makeshift ladder down to the bottom and disappeared from
sight. He came back within seconds, but not before I thought of every cellar
like this I'd ever opened. The news was never pleasant, and the secrets were
never content to be revealed, be it Lucy Householder reliving her sixteenth
year or a would-be prophet and his seven wives.

He pushed the box up first and then climbed out himself while I found my
pocketknife and yanked it across the brown packing tape that was wound around
it. Obviously, they hadn't sent him *all* the videos they were supposed to,
and I wanted to see why the others were so important.

But they weren't tapes at all.

There were several parcels all arranged together. There was a legitimate
evidence log on top that said they were Pam Wyeth's clothes. I shoved the
paper under my knee and pulled the cellophane-wrapped packages out one by
one.

A pair of white Nike running shoes, laces removed, trimmed in dark green.
Size seven and a half.

A pair of white crew socks, rolled up like tennis balls.

A pair of size 6 Levi's, slightly faded black denim.

A thick-knit, long-sleeved pullover, its dark green washed-out to a pale mint
color. One of the three buttons on the collar was missing. Through the clear
wrap, I could see the telltale deep brown of dried blood, deeply soaked
within the knit. My heart was beating faster and faster.

A warmly-lined black windbreaker with silver snaps and a small FBI insignia
on the left breast pocket, size large. It had hung off of her, but she swore
it fit fine. It had been mine back in my leaner, greener days. It too had
blood on it, this time one the inside lining. There wasn't much, but it was
there.

Jonson was at full panic beside me.

Five smaller packages were in one loose bit of cellophane together. I didn't
have to unwrap them to know what they were.

The smallest one was her gold cross. Her tiny gold hoop earrings were in
another. Her badge and wallet. Her watch. And the fifth one was --

(Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay -- )

Well, I had no idea. It was wrapped so thickly and carefully that it was
hard to tell. I could feel it was cylindrical though, about the thickness of
a can of soup. I perforated the cellophane with the tip of the knife until
the metal touched something solid. I worked my finger under the tear and
peeled the cellophane away. After five or six layers, there was something
adhering the cellophane to the container, as if it had gotten wet.

Essary picked up some of the discarded, cut-away cellophane and curiously
raised it to his nose. He dropped it almost instantly. "Oh shit! Oh...god!"

I raised my eyes. "What?"

"Smell it. I mean, I've only smelled that a couple of times before, but
that's enough..."

Formaldehyde.

"You know, that stuff the use to preserve biological evidence."

(Stay calm. Stay calm. Stay -- )

I stared in horror at what floated inside.

(Oh god. Oh my god. Oh no no no -- )

It was a flat, round disk, slightly misshapen. By the strange texture of the
bottom of the pliable disk, which was an angry red, I recognized it as skin,
excised from the body. When I turned it over in my hands and shook the
liquid, the black and red icon punctured into its pale, dead surface spun in
my vision.

An Ouroboros. A snake eating its own tail.

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