Simon directed Sarah onto an unpaved road, which wrapped around the concrete wall of an empty parking garage. Across the street, a pair of mustard yellow backhoes lay idle in the adjacent lot, where 'Dave's Development Service' was advertising a new medical center that was scheduled to go up in June. The chain link fence surrounding the construction site had a billboard with a picture of what the building was supposed to look like when the job was finished. Sarah thought the odds of the complex actually getting built were low enough to justify ditching a body amidst the rubble.

"How'd you find this place?" she asked Simon as he fiddled with the heater. "Did you hunt it down after the Light arrived, or has it been burning a hole in your back pocket this entire time?"

Her companion glanced out the window at a flock of pigeons roosting atop the unlit toll booth. He rubbed his forehead and then ran his fingers through his curly hair when the pressure failed to relieve his headache. "It was in the news last week after an elemental was born at the bottom of a utility trench. This was before the milestone was achieved, so the rampage received a lot of coverage from the local stations. Once the city started talking about condemning the area, I knew it'd be a good idea to keep an eye on the property in case we needed to hide a couple of skeletons. I figure we should have a week or two before anyone trips over his body by mistake."

Sarah eyed the battered edifice, put-off by the city's assessment. "If this rat trap collapses on top of my head, I'm crawling through the dust to eat you out of your host."

Simon rolled his eyes and pointed at a sand-strewn cul-de-sac. "Noted. Now, park here. I'll get out and raise the gate."

The wooden bar in question was nominally controlled by an electronic switchboard within the tiny shack. Since the fuse box was disconnected from the city's power grid, Simon had to duck inside and manipulate the crank by hand. The gate rose in a series of jerky bursts. Sarah could hear her accomplice cursing the machine's inventor every time it took another rotation. In truth, she thought he was lucky that the parking attendant had been too busy to lock the door. If they'd been forced to kick it open, they could have been stuck here for an hour.

"Alright, it's wedged into place," Simon announced as he shook a cramp from his wrist. "Let's get this done before the Transportation Department gives me carpal tunnel."

Sarah rolled her eyes and carefully swung the car around. When she passed beneath the hanging lip of the second level, she swore she could feel the floor shift, despite knowing it was all in her head. A bit of gravel rolled beneath her tires. Sarah listened to it pop against her mudflap, instead of rebounding off the undercarriage. Once her heart stopped trying to crack a rib, she pointed at a slab of concrete that was still mostly in one piece. "How about we block off the corner over there and press him up against the wall. If anyone passes by, we should be invisible from the road."

"Sounds good," Simon agreed while he followed her on foot. "Any particular way you want to do this?"

Sarah shook her head. "It's your show. I was the one who wanted to shoot him and be done with it."

"Fair enough."

The Subaru rolled into a section of the garage reserved for Dave's employees. Then, like a crackhead constructing a Jenga tower, Sarah inched the vehicle forward until its bumper was adjacent to a support column. Once she was satisfied that they'd be able to leave in a hurry, she opened the driver's-side door and stepped into the cell formed by the frame and the stone. Simon was waiting by the trunk. "You think our guest's up, yet?" he asked her idly.

"Bastard had better be, or he's not getting up at all." Sarah flicked her key fob and took a prudent step back so Simon could pull their prisoner free. He came up swinging. The man wasn't quick, and he certainly wasn't coordinated; however, he did make things a lot more awkward than Sarah was inclined to put up with.

Simon just took it stride. "Hey there buddy," he greeted the spook before slamming the trunk against his skull. "Nothing personal, but how about you stop fucking around for a moment and answer a couple of questions?" He lifted the compartment back up and threw his stalker onto the ground. This earned him a third blow to the head while Simon grabbed his ankle and dragged him towards the wall.

Halfway there, their victim found his feet. He tried to make a run for it, only for Simon to trip him before he got too far. "Now, now - none of that. We both know how this works. Let's start with something simple: do you have a name, or do I need to keep calling you 'Joe Dirt' in my head?"

Dirt wasn't looking too good and spat a mouthful of blood onto the oil-stained floor. "Fuck you."

"Alright, Joe it is. Listen, Joe: there's two ways this can go. Either (a) you talk to me, so we can both get on with our day, or (b) you keep acting like a jackoff, in which case, I'll break your teeth off in that pillar over there. Might even buy myself a burger afterwards because I can guarantee that stomping your head in won't make me lose my appetite."

Simon studied the skinny spy and made a show of staring at his chest. In between the folds of his shirt, there was a subtle bulge where a holstered weapon might have once been concealed. Dirt shifted his arm and rubbed his shoulder against the flattened leather. Simon reached into his back pocket and pulled out a corroded balisong. "Looking for this? I gotta tell you, it's not going to help."

"Simon," Sarah called out, her warning strained by his smug demeanor. "Don't you fucking dare."

He flapped his wrist. "Relax. This will go quicker once he knows he's outclassed. Here, give it your best shot, Joe." The parasite threw the knife onto the ground, where it scraped against the concrete in a long, tuneless screech. When Dirt seemed hesitant to pick it up, Simon goaded him forward with a sigh. "Come on. I'm a remorseless killer. A mind-controlling, body-jacking evil piece of shit. I took my first life before I ever left the cradle. Are you really going to sit there with your thumb up your ass?"

The man inched closer and cautiously retrieved the blade. "That's right," Simon cajoled him. "There you go. Now, do you remember how to use it?" Dirt fiddled with the latch pin until it wasn't stuck between the handles. As desperate as he might have been, he didn't hold it like he was relieved to be armed.

He still knew which part went into the other guy. Dirt lunged forward with a punch-drunk gait. When the knife was maybe a foot from Simon's chest, the warspawn pushed his wrist aside and slammed his palm into Dirt's face. A bit of clever footwork ensured Simon's opponent went toppling backward. "You see," he crowed indulgently. "Constantine, at least."

Sarah closed her eyes and silently counted to ten. "Please tell me, you're not still hung up on that."

Simon cracked his neck. "It might have played a factor in my decision." A weak groan echoed through the garage as Simon pried the knife free. "More importantly, it let our friend know where he stands. There's no getting out of this. He's out of luck, and his compatriots are currently getting intimate with the cops. There's only two ways this goes. What's it going to be, Sunshine?"

"...T-tim," Dirt choked out, the air forced from his lungs by the fall. "M-my name is Tim."

Simon offered him a smile. "See, Tim. Wasn't that a lot easier?"

A gnarled digit stuck up out of Dirt's fist. "Go wriggle around on a corpse."

The parasite squatted on his heels. "Insults are fine. Screaming; crying; carrying on? All of those are fine too. I'm not going to hold it against you. Like I said, we both know how this goes. None of it's new. You think your friends are the first plucky assholes to pick us out of a crowd? The Russians beat you to the punch by over forty years. This is all just... deja vu," Simon explained, his grin falling painfully flat. "We ape the legacy of our predecessors. With different faces," he murmured softly while dragging Dirt towards the corner. "With different names. Yet, somehow, it's the same fucking story." The man's spine hit the wall. "Why don't you tell me yours?"

"Sure," Dirt replied, the words coming in a bit of a rush. "It was all Carl's idea. I met him online. It seems trite, saying it now. Like, 'Really? Shouldn't you have known better?' It was during Covid, though, and I'd been out of work for months. It was easy to give him the benefit of the doubt when everything was so surreal."

"...And I'd heard it all before," Dirt admitted with a wet laugh. "Not like he was dishing it, but the theme wasn't exactly new. After a while, you can just sidestep the bullshit. I didn't want to pretend we weren't talking about the Jews."

Simon nodded knowingly. "Except, it wasn't the Jews, was it?"

"Naahh, and it thew me for a loop, I'll tell you that much. It was even funny for a week or two. Then, once I got to know him better, it was mostly just disturbing. I don't think I got legitimately scared until he started showing me pictures - videos really - of things being extracted from a corpse."

Sarah knew which footage they were talking about. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office had inherited some ugly files from their previous incarnation. Most of it was buried beneath FLIR recordings of weird clouds, but there had been a couple of leaks over the years that had gotten misfiled in the jurisdictional scramble. No one was terribly concerned. The lunatic fringe thought it was a psy-op; the public saw it as a prank, and the warspawn knew the government would keep their secrets better than the Offal Sea ever had. They certainly couldn't do much worse.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"You didn't think we were just parasites?" Simon asked him. "Some weird infection nature had coughed up?"

Dirt shook his head, then he paused. "...Well, maybe a little. The more people I talked to, though, the harder it became to convince myself. There were too many whistleblowers all saying the same thing. I felt like I could draw a line in the sand between those who were using it as a metaphor and the ones who were dead serious."

"We actually caught a lot of flack for it," Dirt professed with a chuckle. "All of the other skeptics expected us to take them at their word because they refused to push back on our claims. The fact that we kept asking for 'proof' got us into more than our fair share of fights."

"And that's what you were doing today?" Simon asked him. "Looking for more proof?"

"Yeah," Dirt sighed as he rested his weight against the wall. "People will say all sorts of shit if you let them. When Arnold began talking about how you might have been replaced, the accusation wasn't enough. We had to make sure it wasn't just because you were black."

Simon laughed. "How progressive of you. I'm touched. Truly." He bounced the handle of the balisong against the center of his sternum. After a couple of beats, he pointed it at the man on the floor. "Was Arnold one of your friends who fled?"

"Nah, he passed away, about a week back. Overdose of all things."

So, what? Their stakeout was some sort of tribute? The follow up to his fucking wake? Sarah swallowed a snarl and spun up her internal relay.

Simon kept any exasperation he might be experiencing from his face. "Was his drug problem why the police busted in? Should we chalk their raid up to the DEA not getting the memo?"

The pain slipping into Dirt's expression took on a puzzled cast. "I... don't know? Maybe? It could have been unrelated."

"Sure, I bet all of the murders you've been committing were reason enough to get involved.

Sarah could almost taste the sarcasm being directed at her in his reply. Dirt mistook it as being aimed at himself. "Fuck off," he snapped. "This is war. They don't haul you in front of the Hague for shooting a couple of soldiers. If you didn't have the feds by the balls..."

He trailed off. Simon pushed him to finish the thought. "What? They'd throw you a parade? Maybe hand out a couple of medals?"

"Maybe!" Dirt spluttered. "Or maybe they'd just grow a pair and remember what this country stands for! It's ridiculous! We're being replaced by pod people, and the only thing our leaders care about is getting re-elected!"

"Mmm," Simon agreed with a hum. "Humans are selfish. Everyone's just in it for themselves. Me? I'm used to the greed. I wouldn't trust my friends to move my couch unless we'd agreed upon a price first."

Dirt opened his mouth but was reluctant to offer a rebuttal.

Simon noticed the lull. "Not you, though, huh? Six guys? That's enough people to start an intramural basketball team. You ever have that many friends, Fields?"

Sarah scowled at the jab.

"The expression on her face means 'no,'" Simon whispered as he cupped the side of his mouth. "How about it? Feel up to giving me a name?"

"Sure," Dirt offered petulantly. "How's Seymore Dicks, sound?"

"Like you stole it from the Simpsons. But don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about your poker buddies. I want to know what your organization is called. I want to know what you put on the membership cards after you're done passing out the white hoods."

Dirt remained silent, his face more blank than if he'd been paralyzed by Sarah's coils. Simon wasn't discouraged by his stoicism. "Come on," he badgered their captive chidingly. "Live a little. I'm sure you've prepared a speech in case you ever got caught. I know I did. ...No?" Simon asked him when a response wasn't forthcoming. "Alright. I guess I'll have to get the details from that laptop the cops confiscated. You know we love our fed connections."

Needless to say, neither of them had any contacts within the FBI. In fact, the closest they had ever come was the time Kennedy's son had dressed up as Nick Fury for Halloween. Dirt didn't know that, though. Dirt was a paranoid narcissist, who'd seen a few too many episodes of The X Files. The idea that there was a secret conspiracy out there, preventing him from saving the world, was a sentiment which fit together in his head. Simon barely even had to lie to get him to believe it.

"Tch," Dirt grunted as he jerked his chin towards the road. "Fine. Go ahead. It won't help you. This particular genie's not going back inside its bottle."

Simon's response came easily, despite the tension beneath his cashmere turtleneck. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Dirt shrugged. "It's kind of obvious, isn't it? If a bunch of terrorists want to get famous, you ignore them; if they kidnap a plane full of hostages, you write their victims off, and if a bunch of body-snatchers try to hide how badly you've been infiltrated, you blow that shit wide open. The government can't silence all of us. The truth will win out. Besides, magic's real: what are aliens compared to that?"

He raised his arm and pointed his palm at Simon. There was a brief build-up of mana as the motes coiled through his bicep. Simon threw the balisong before the scent could fully register. He should have waited; it smelled like cherry pie. "Ugh," Dirt groaned as he stared at the blade sticking out of his chest. "That... that hurts way worse than I thought... it..." The stubborn bastard passed out before he could finish the thought. Blood leaked from between his ribs, but it'd be a minute before he'd lost enough to die.

"I think you got played," Sarah noted while the incipient spell circled aimlessly through the air. "So much for giving him the Guantanamo special."

Simon held his hand out, his fingers still splayed from the throw. A faint tremor rocked his arm and then raced up his shoulder. "Y-yeah," he stuttered before piecing together his broken bravado. "Yeah, shit. Did I seriously just waste his ass?" He knelt by Dirt's hip and placed his fingers against the man's neck. "His pulse is thready. We can still salvage this."

"Simon..." Sarah murmured, her frustration seeping into the appeal.

He cut her off with a bark. "Shut up - we can. What are you packing, right now?"

"You mean in terms of spellcraft?" Sarah pulled up a window to grab a quick summary from the Light. "It looks like about twenty units of 'Wind' mana and twenty-two of 'Earth'. There's twice that in my 'Flower' core and eleven in 'Time.'"

Simon wrapped his fingers around the handle of the knife. He was struggling to keep it in place while still putting pressure on the wound. When Sarah mentioned her fourth element, his head snapped around so fast she thought she could hear his neck crack. "Is it enough to keep him in stasis?" he asked her.

"Yeah, for like - twenty seconds. Let it go, Simon. He's a dead man walking."

The parasite buried his face in his hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fuck," he cursed before jumping up to kick the spy. "Fuck! You weaselly piece of shit! You think you can just check out?! You think you can leave us all to swing?!" He hit him a few more times. It didn't have much effect.

Sarah listened to the dull thumps with equanimous indifference. "We should call Kennedy," she suggested. "He deserves a heads up."

"About what?" Simon bit out, his boot digging into Dirt's stomach. "That something, somewhere might happen soon? Do we look like the DHS?" He snorted in contempt. "Hey, give it to me straight: do you think this warrants an 'orange' level of terror, or is this more of a 'yellow' situation?"

A flash of anger scorched away her resignation. "How about 'red,' since you've got a little something on your face." Sarah motioned towards her cheek as Simon groped beneath his eye. After pawing around for a second, he brushed away the carmine streak, which had fountained up during his tantrum. "In all seriousness, though," she pressed, "I don't think it matters what we say so long as it comes from us. Or would you prefer he learn about this when he turns on the evening news?"

Simon stared at the body, a low howl building in his throat. "Fine," he bellowed once the clamor broke free. "Call the man if you give that much of a shit!"

"Me?" Sarah asked even as she checked the bars on her phone. "Why can't you do it?"

"Because I'm going to be too busy getting that stupid laptop back!"

Sarah's thumb ceased its mindless search. She glanced away from the glowing screen in favor of the fitful flickering of her companion's dark-green eyes. "Simon... I've gotta be the last person to suggest we take this asshole at his word, but we've both lived on Earth long enough to understand how the internet works. Retrieving his computer isn't going to fix our issues if he actually has anything on you."

Simon reached out and grabbed Sarah by the front of her jacket. The preoccupied film, which had eclipsed his gaze, cleared for just long enough to drill down into her own. "You think I don't know that?! You think I can't see the writing on the wall?! The truth could be held on twelve different servers between here and Dubai: I'd still have to make the attempt!"

A torn thread tickled the back of her neck as his breath washed across her face. Rather than become intimidated by his looming presence, Sarah took it as a sign that he trusted her enough to draw close. She reached up and pried his grip from her shirt. "You're panicking," she told him flatly. "Stop trying to get the last word in and take a deep breath. Running off half-cocked isn't going to help."

"Says the woman who drove across the city to put a bullet in Townsend's head. Where was that vaunted levelheadedness when it was your life on the line?"

"Nowhere," she agreed. "It's why I'm telling you to chill the fuck out." Sarah felt the urge to poke him and feared he'd interpret the gesture as a threat. "You keep talking about what you think; how about we take a minute to discuss what I know? There's no way in hell the two of us can ransack the BPD's evidence locker without getting our names on the news. You saw what they were packing when they cordoned off the cafe. Any attempt that didn't end with us being turned into chunky salsa would be more than we'd deserve. And really, even if we made it out, what could we possibly learn besides his taste in amateur porn? For fuck's sake, Simon: at least rob his house first! For all you know, his grand plan was to leave a letter in his mailbox!"

Simon spun around and punched the wall. When he pulled his fist back, his knuckles were stained black by the film of mold and exhaust. "You rob his house if it means that much to you! Me? I'm doing this! Now, are you with me or not?"

Sarah didn't have to give the question any thought. "No, I'm not 'with you!' Don't you remember what I told you when you called me this morning? You get 'one,' Simon. One favor - one stupid ass plan. As far as I'm concerned, kidnapping this dumbass was it." She pointed at the pool of blood spreading across the floor then jabbed him in the stomach with her phone. "After that. You. Call. Kennedy. Well?" she hissed when he made no move to take it. "See if he'll fucking pick up!"

"Tch," Simon snarled as he snatched the cell from her hand. "So that's how it is?"

"Yeah," Sarah sneered, doing her best to imitate his tone. "That's how it is."

An electronic chime warbled through the speaker while the warspawn did their best to ignore each other. A few moments later, the call failed, and an automated message instructed them to 'please try again.' Simon coughed and re-entered the number. "So," he muttered awkwardly. "Are you still willing to give me a lift?"

"No," Sarah growled, her throat vibrating around her fins. "Apparently, I'll be too busy breaking into this jackoff's house."

Simon almost dropped her phone. He only caught it at the last second by snagging the upper-right corner. "Say what?"

"You heard me," Sarah grumbled while beckoning with two of her fingers. "Now, throw me Mr. Mulder's wallet already. I need to know where he lives."

Sarah plucked the leather projectile out of the air when it came flying towards her chest. After she flicked the billfold open, she discovered his driver's license had gotten wet within its laminated sleeve. At least, his address was still visible. '1826 Parkside View.' Sarah repeated the phrase a couple of times so she wouldn't forget.

Simon licked his lips "I-"

"Shut up," Sarah spat, unwilling to acknowledge his relief. "Just keep calling Kenedy. In the meantime, I'm going to get some air; this pit is beginning to smell like ChapStick and ass."