Cleanup (Standalone)

Daniel had never had to deal with cleanup before. It took ages. Bodies had to be found, bagged, and shipped out. They found the missing FBI agent and everyone else buried under a rosebush in the lawn. The housekeeper, Sarah, was in the wine cellar below the kitchen.

Bennet helped walk him through all the new paperwork. He knew how to write after-action reports, but he'd technically been in charge of the whole scene. He understood why Henderson had taught him to do after-actions now. Ellis wasn't going to be any help. She was out of it the whole time.

Ecks and her took turns keeping track of the kid until social services came and took them away.

The next day, Bennet picked them both up and drove them back to The Vatler Center, leading them up to The Agency's floor. Daniel wondered what else was in the building and had an increasing suspicion he wouldn't be finding out any time soon. "I want the paperwork." He said, at the front desk. The secretary who'd ignored him last time looked at him like he was speaking another language. "Whatever you give new recruits here. I'd like it."

She looked at Bennet who said, "He's authorized". Which reminded him that he wasn't really a full person in the eyes of this system. Just a pet project. But soon he would be a pet project who knew a little bit too much.

The Major was already waiting in the glass conference room this time, reading another folder full of papers. She made Daniel walk through everything that had happened upstate, accounting for all his choices. He got the feeling he'd met expectations, but not exceeded them. When it became clear she was wrapping up he spoke quickly.

"We're getting really good at addressing the side effects of whatever's going on." he said. She raised an eyebrow, slowly. "What's 'going on' in your opinion?"

"I don't know, we don't know. If there's research that I don't have access to, then the people that did that research haven't had access to me."

The major rolled back in her chair. "So, you think you're an authority? Because of your time in the field?"

Daniel wanted to hit something. "We have no framework for even beginning to understand what these— creatures want or where they come from."

"Creatures?"

"I had a conversation with the thing in the house." Daniel said. "Phenomenon implies that they don't think or talk. I think that language is outdated."

The Major thumbed through a few papers, pulling out the report he'd submitted. "I thought you spoke to the people under its influence?"

"I think they were already dead."

"Based on what?"

Again, Daniel felt they were missing the point. "The creature in Lautville dropped a theater curtain to block out light."

The Major let a moment of silence fill the room. "And you think it understood how to operate theater equipment?"

Daniel found that he'd raised both his hands at some point. He slowly put them down back on the table in front of him. "It seems more unlikely that the creature accidentally operated theater equipment."

The major snorted. "Sure."

She sat there for a moment, letting the silence build. Daniel fought the urge to talk more, to make the argument again. He had either convinced her, or not. She was looking over his shoulder at the analysts. A giant pen of people working on a prediction algorithm without understanding what they were predicting. It was like forecasting the weather without understanding clouds. He should have said that. Too late now.

"What do you think, Ellis?" the major asked suddenly. Ellis had been quiet the entire time. Daniel suddenly felt a flicker of fear. She could disavow him here and undermine the whole thing. She'd probably get to go back to Jefferson if she did that. And she'd never really been in the field, until yesterday. She probably didn't understand the urgency. He should have tried to win her over, before coming into this meeting. Maybe that would have had the opposite effect.

She looked stunned to be called on, and suddenly stared at her hands. Considering her options. When she looked up at Daniel it was with a sympathetic expression. When she spoke, her voice was shaky and uneven.

"When I was alone with the thing in The Peters House, it spoke to me." Daniel froze. He should have asked about this. Every hair on the back of his neck stood up. The Major treated this revelation with a raised eyebrow.

Ellis ordered her thoughts and continued. "It wasn't just mimicking the behavior of the child. When we got into the room, I was getting her some food, and I turned my back. Whatever it was started taunting me—."

"—What did it say, exactly?" Daniel interrupted. Everyone looked at him rudely. He didn't care. He opened the notes app on his phone and prepared to write.

Ellis' forehead creased as she struggled to recall. Adrenaline made memories like this unreliable at best, but Ellis had the same training he had.

"It said 'destroy the tether.'"

"Tether?" Daniel asked.

"Yeah. I remember that because it was so weird. That's obviously not something a little girl would say. When I turned back around it looked like me, and sounded like me, but there was something in-between that I didn't see."

Bennet was writing furiously with a pen on his copy of the report. "And that's when you drew your knife?"

"I was already using it to open an MRE."

Daniel turned back to the Major. "We're dealing with Creatures, Major. Capital C. And they're getting smarter, more powerful over time. I know your room of analysts are tracking that."

The major nodded. "I'll see what we can do as an Agency."

And that was it.

Daniel was hustled back out of The Vatler Center. Bennet saw him down to a waiting car.

"Why didn't you mention that stuff?" Daniel asked, once they were in it.

Ellis shrugged. "Would you have believed that you would believe me if you were me?"

Daniel didn't know, so they sat in silence until they were back at the safe house. There, he went up to his room and started reading the material he'd requested. Manuals defining Phenomenon (complete with a loose retelling of his own recruitment that made The Agency seem much more in-control than he remembered), medical analysis of silver's effect on "non-terrestrial biomaterial", and so many regulations.

The important takeaways, the ones he'd spent years trying to work out of Henderson: The agency knew that the creatures they were hunting contained entire periodic elements unseen on earth. They didn't know what that meant, and they didn't seem to have investigated it very much. He hoped that would change after today.

Secondly, every firearm in the agency was logged and tracked. If the tracker in the handle of the firearm was removed, it would immediately trigger an alert. Silver bullets were custom manufactured. They were sold to a few different world governments, but no one domestically. That meant that the shooter in San Francisco had access to The Agency's firearms in some way.

Daniel spun his chair, feeling elated. Everything was coming together again. If he could learn more about the sources and force The Agency to give him more access in order to research them, he'd be able to track down the missing gun that had been used in San Francisco.

Which meant it was time to talk to the elephant in the room. The only person who could ruin all of this, for a second time. He found her downstairs reading something on her phone. It looked like a book, but she scrolled down instead of turning pages. Online fiction of some kind. He sat down opposite her, in the room's only chair.

All the furniture was garish, bright pastel colors. Ellis was sprawled across a bright orange couch, holding the phone above her. Daniel was sitting in a taxicab yellow overstuffed armchair. "Ellis." he said.

She sat up slowly, her brown hair squished to odd angles.

"I haven't been working well with you." Daniel said, "That's my fault."

"You're mad at me. I know why." She met his eyes, hers were brown with green flecks. Like a wave rolling in from the ocean, churning through the sand. "I took your little sister away."

"No." Daniel said. Sam wasn't his little sister. He'd made a promise to her, and he was going to keep it, but that wasn't the same. The biggest problem was that without Daniel nearby, there was a timer running. At some point, Sam would let something important slip. "You didn't do anything. I know that." Daniel said it firmly. "We're all part of a machine. Henderson was using you to keep me under control, and now Major Utley is doing the same thing."

"What are you going to do about that?" Ellis asked. She was sitting, Daniel noticed, very still. Her hands folded in her lap. Brown bangs, frozen in midair tufts. Shallow breathing. Like a dancer on stage before the music begins. He looked into her eyes.

"I'm going to ask you to help me" he said.

She smiled like a light switch. Click, and it was on. "It's about time."

Daniel laid his cards on the table. "The problem I have, is that I'm good at hunting things and then killing them."

"Is that it? Nothing else?"

It was Daniel's turn to smile. "Pretty much."

"I can work with that."