---
FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
6:36 P.M.
"Going to raise hell" probably would have been a better description.
John Doggett looked up from his case file, raising an eyebrow in surprise. "You're heading out?" he asked, checking his watch to make sure he wasn't insane. His partner rarely left the office before 11 p.m. and here it was a Thursday and she was leaving before seven. Thus convinced he was reading the correct time, he glanced up at her again, "Is something wrong?"
She shook her head. "No," she said, reaching for her belongings, "I'm NetMeching tonight."
"You're *what*?" he said, figuring this to be one of those terms her younger generation had coined or something. "Is this important?" he continued to inquire, because once again he had no idea what the hell they were talking about.
Stark nodded. "It's a call to trial," she explained simply, shouldering her backpack and heading for the door. "I'm sorry to leave you like this, but it just can't be avoided."
He stopped her before she could get away from him, "Are you okay?"
She smiled, but it was a mischievious smirk that said she clearly had something up her sleeve. "I'm fine, John," she insisted. "If you really want to find out, I suppose you could tag along, but I've never carried a rider before."
Confusion made up part of his mind for him. Boredom made up the other part. He reached for the keys to his truck. The paperwork would wait. He hadn't taken a day off in a while and this might explain where she continued to go on Thursdays that he didn't know about. There was very little he didn't know about and the fact he didn't know this piqued his interest. That and the look in her eyes which said she was up to something.
John Doggett loved a good mystery.
What's more, she knew it, too.
"Listen," she began, "I need to take care of a few things. Meet me over at my place by a quarter to eight, okay? And be sharp about it, I have to be ready on time." He nodded his understanding and she smirked again. "All right," she conceded, "but don't say I didn't warn you."
He shook his head and followed her out of the office, only barely remembering to turn the light out before he left.
---
STARK'S APARTMENT
WASHINGTON, D.C.
7:43 P.M.
He was two minutes early but she didn't seem to mind. She seemed preoccupied. She seemed altogether different, Doggett decided as she let him into her apartment, moving with the intention of something, the calculation of a machine not unlike those she'd battled in hand-to-hand combat in previous years. It only served to confuse him further.
"Hang on," she'd told him, "pull yourself up a chair," and she'd disappeared into the bedroom.
Doggett walked over and deposited himself in the second chair next to her massive PC, which he noticed was already on and ready for something. A headset with a microphone sat plugged in but unused on the workspace. The computer was a behemoth, a massive investment for his partner, top-of-the-line. It wasn't the kind of thing that made the Lone Gunmen jealous, but it did earn their respect. He just wished he knew what she was doing with it.
She came back out with a CD in her hand, inserting it into the CD player, which was also already activated. She selected a track, turned up the volume, and hit pause, taking a moment to push her hair back. She was wearing a tight-fitting short-sleeved black T-shirt, one of her favorites, which read "I hear voices ... and they don't like you." It had been a gift from an old college friend of hers. She'd gone for the monochromatic look, having changed into a pair of faded black jeans. Stark checked her watch and slid into the main chair, only then turning to face her thoroughly confused partner.
"You gonna tell me what's going on now?" he asked of her.
She smiled. "You knew I was going to get around to it. I'm on the clock, though, so I've gotta be quick."
"What clock? What're you doing?"
"Here's the thing," Stark began. "Ever since high school I've been playing MechWarrior 2. It's this computer game, simulated combat between giant mecha, you know what I'm talking about?"
He nodded. It was a popular thing and some of the agents could be caught playing during work hours if you knew where to look. Still, though, Doggett had never seen or heard his partner as being counted among the number of players upstairs.
"Okay, well, you can play online. It's called NetMeching," she continued to explain. "You join a unit, and you battle other units, and within a particular gaming organization you battle it out for bragging rights or whatever you're fighting for. It's a thing I've been doing for years - helps release all those negative emotions." She paused. "Tonight's what we call a call to trial. My unit and another unit are going to battle one on one. We've challenged each other over a disputed planet. Whoever wins takes the planet." Checking her watch again, she paused. "I need to finish up. Would you hang on a second?"
"The mighty warrior leads her troops into battle?" he quipped as she locked her front door, then took her phone off the hook, as well as her cell phone and pager.
"Hardly. I'm the executive officer of a group called The Invisible," she said with a smile as she sat back down. "I can let you watch the battle," she explained to him. "It's called carrying a rider. But you can't be involved because you're not part of the game, you get the idea?"
He smiled. "This might be fun."
"It is. It's a lot of fun," she said as she turned toward the computer, fixing the headset in place and punching a few buttons on her keyboard. "Do me a favor, John, don't get in my way, would you?"
"Would I ever do that?" he said, smirking.
She smiled, but he saw a flicker in her eyes. Game time, they said. She turned back toward the computer. "Hit play, would you? And you might want to plug your ears."
Doggett reached over toward the CD player and did as he was told. Momentarily, the deafening sound of Gravity Kills' "Goodbye" blasted into the apartment at a volume that he'd never heard her play anything before, drowning out all other noise. She was obviously dead serious about what she was doing, he decided as he turned back to watch the MechWarrior 2 application flare to life on her computer. Some people had games, he thought. And other people had obsessions.
And as he’d told Scully, he understood obsession.
---
7:50 P.M.
"Are we ready?" Stark said into the headset.
Doggett listened to members of her group count themselves off. Invisible One, followed by Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, and Eight. She proclaimed her "lance" all present and accounted for, then asked if there were any mechanical problems. No one declared any. She smiled and pushed a few more buttons.
"Hound One, this is Invisible Two. Do you copy, Hound One?"
Another voice came over the speakers of the computer, "Hound One copies. The Hounds are ready to fight. No mechanical problems, all hands present."
"Copy that for Invisible," Stark said. "I should let you know - I'm carrying a rider tonight."
"You actually have friends?" Hound One asked.
"Strange, isn't it?"
The voice laughed. "We'll note that," it said. "Ready to review the conditions of this thing?"
"First to eliminate or incapacitate the enemy wins. Winner takes the planet. One on one combat only. Pilots can declare themselves out at any time. Tech failure doesn't count as an out. No artillery, no air support, no tanks, no mines, all of that, right?"
"Right on the nose, Invisible Two," said the voice. There was a pause, then it declared, "We'll start in sixty seconds. It's good fighting you, Invisible Two."
"Same to you, Hound One," said Stark, "here's to ripping you to pieces."
She cut the communication abruptly with a fire in her eyes that scared her partner, something that must have come from deep inside her, or at least from a killing instinct honed by years of this kind of competition. He'd never seen this from her before, but it did explain where she vented all the stress and how she managed to stay in control of herself on the job. Stark's voice snapped him back to attention to the game.
"Invisible, sixty second warning," she told her troops. "Good luck."
A small green digital clock in the corner of her screen counted down from sixty seconds to zero. It blinked once, then vanished as the computer painted in a Mesa desert landscape andthe cockpit of a war machine. In the upper right hand corner, various abbreviations indicated types of weapons -- and she seemed to be carrying a lot of them – while in the bottom right was a wire-frame picture of what Doggett supposed was her particular 'Mech and the throttle indicator. Stark's eyes never left the monitor as her fingers flew across the keyboard, her engine going into a dead run and her machine bringing up a weapon, a reticle painting itself dead center, a red dot on her radar indicating the enemy approach almost simultaneously.
"Bring it on," Stark said almost to herself.
The push of another button and she targeted the first robot she saw. The targeting computer designated the short, squat, almost frog-like grey monstrosity as a "Nova," also at a dead run. Stark didn't wait to ask questions. As soon as the reticle burned red, she slammed down on another key. Missiles spewed out from her machine, painting the left half of the approaching Nova with small explosions. She slammed hard on her joystick, bringing her machine into a roll, out of the way of the Nova's return fire.
The volume of Gravity Kills mingled with the volume of the combat to create a deafening environment of apocalypse. What surprised John Doggett was that his partner seemed to be right at home in it.
The chorus of the song kicked in and as if on cue, all hell broke loose in the desert.
"I don't need this poison,
I don't need control,
I don't need forgiveness,
I don't need you..."
Doggett understood why she'd chosen the particular track. It was loud enough and threatening enough to inspire fear or adrenaline. He felt both. He didn't want to deal with this side of his partner, at least not against her.
A wave of three more grey robots appeared on the horizon as an equal number of tan ones, which he figured to be friendly troops, raced past Stark's premature tango with the Nova to meet them head-on. Almost instantly, there was the sound of bursts of fire, and beams of color and explosions raked the colored death robots. One sound was louder than them all: the sound of Stark letting another set of missiles fly, these ones raking across the enemy torso. The targeting computer painted the affected area yellow - she had done some damage.
"Let's dance," she growled, slamming the joystick forward with a grim determination. Her ‘Mech, a BattleMaster IIC, obeyed willingly, rushing the opposition, breaking away at the last second to rake it with another round and to avoid a blue fireball which shot past its shoulder, barely missing it. The Nova swung faster than she'd anticipated, however, and painted her arm with a burst of laser fire. The arm went yellow on her wire-frame indicator. She swore, but rolled again, out of any further barrages. The BattleMaster didn't give the Nova the time of day, much less the time to turn around. It let loose with everything it had at the machine's back, painting the torso yellow. All of her weapons reading red - recycling - Stark commanded her BattleMaster into the air as the Nova began to turn.
Doggett watched as the BattleMaster took to the sky on jets exhaling smoke. The launch provided an excellent view of seven similar entanglements across the field. In the distance, an explosion blossomed on the screen. The BattleMaster's weapons slowly began to turn green as the 'Mech floated in the air, its jet fuel slowly draining. "Report," said Stark into her microphone, her voice tempered with edge. "Paint me a name on that KIA."
"Invisible Four," another voice answered, "Hound Six is down."
"Affirmative, Four. Engage at will."
The BattleMaster's jets were suddenly cut and Doggett watched the fall, afraid that his partner had suffered some sort of in-game failure. But he watched her as she trained her 'Mech's massive weapons downward and realized she was bringing herself to bear on the Nova - which now realized it remained directly below her. It raced to evacuate the area but far too late. It was only partway out of the BattleMaster's wrath, and the heavier 'Mech landed on the Nova's rear half, crushing it to pieces. The BattleMaster staggered under the awkward landing and stepping back from its conquest only decimated the Nova further. Communication once again crackled to life.
"Invisible Two to Nova. Do you want to surrender?"
Her making the offer surprised Doggett, who continued to watch in silence. Ordinarily he would expect such a gesture from her. But in her eyes he saw the singular desire to win, and by default, to destroy. He almost felt as if he didn't know her anymore. The answer of the Nova cut off his thoughts on that subject.
"Negative, Two." Simple. Cold. Cruel.
A lot like his partner at this particular moment.
She nodded to herself, an almost imperceptible nod, as she took further steps away from the downed Nova. It was obviously done for, and it could not move. She triggered another burst of missiles and it defaulted into animated explosions.
Stark took a moment to look at the BattleMaster. Its left leg, having landed awkwardly, and right arm were both yellow, but otherwise it was in prime condition. She had depleted an entire rack of missiles and one of her ten weapons in the upper right corner now burned permanently black, out of service. Turning her machine with an almost psychic awareness, she began to charge the BattleMaster across the landscape, toward a battle already in progress.
Doggett's eyes widened. He'd heard her set the battle as one on one combat. She was now violating her own rules.
"Abort, Five," she barked into the microphone with desperate ferocity. "Eject!"
He now saw what her true purpose was. But even though the BattleMaster was eating up ground at an amazing rate, and the other tan 'Mech was trying desperately to retreat, it was not to be. Doggett watched Stark slam hard on her machine's brakes and the head of the other tan machine launch off into the distance seconds before the rest of it exploded in the similar chaos that had claimed the Nova. In his head, he did the math - The Invisible were still ahead by one.
He realized with some amusement that even his pulse was racing. The sound of this war, the volume of the song, all of these things equated to an awesome environment which was a world away from any other computer game he'd ever bothered to play (all two of them). This was interesting - the ferocity with which these Internet players pursued virtual goals, the simplicity of these deaths when he dealt with the complex every day.
The song repeated itself one more time.
"A mirror of you
Reflections of you
You're showing what you feel like inside
A power of two
Just me and you
An image that you hold in your mind..."
"Six, help is on the way. Hold the line. ETA 24 seconds."
"Affirmative, Two. Expecting?"
"I'll take Four's target, Four will take yours. Break at 19."
"Affirmative, Two. Break 19."
The BattleMaster watched another of its 'Mechs break from combat with a decidedly larger foe and break into a dead run to another nearby combat. As the first reached its location, the friendly caught in the battle, unlike Invisible Five, broke off obediently and let the stronger 'Mech take over the combat. Without breaking a sweat, her breathing almost nonexistant, her eyes locked, her muscles tense, Stark lead her BattleMaster into battling something bigger and stronger than that which she controlled. A true masochist's gambit.
"Hound Two painted Six," said the voice of Four.
Stark swore. The enemy had not taken the bait, ruthlessly pursuing the weaker machine, leaving the stronger standing. The scores were even. She only reconciled to this when she realized that she would have done the same thing.
"That was a three-time Solaris champion, you mother..." she muttered but didn't finish the swear word, instead breaking from her target and charging Hound Two. Invisible Four noticed this. "Two, report," Four demanded. "Let me take him," Stark insisted. "Stay with your target," Four argued. "It was your target," she corrected, "and I'm going to teach this guy to tangle with someone his own size. Get out of the way."
She rushed her 'Mech past Four, which obediently turned to cover her from her pursuing target with a barrage of lasers. Stark opened fire as she closed within three hundred meters of the murderous "Warhammer" but did not stop, charging the 'Mech in the arm, knocking it out of sync and further into her missile barrage. Her other arm went yellow with the impact but she seemed possessed of a murderous rage. She turned on her 'Mech's heel and fired two bursts of weaponry, lighting up the enemy. Lowering her reticle, she hammered away at one leg, leaving the Warhammer tilted and frozen to the spot. Around her, other explosions sounded, but she was deaf to all but the one which remained in her ears.
This time, she did not offer any surrender. With the cold precision of someone like Alex Krycek, she perfectly aimed her reticle on the Warhammer's cockpit and fired one single shot, sending the 'Mech up in flames. Stark paused for a moment, watching the machine burn, before she inhaled and asked for another report.
"Four-three," said another Invisible. They once again had the edge, Doggett noted. The scales of virtual 31st century combat seemed to teeter by the minute.
"Thank you, One," his partner said with a deathly quiet and turned seeking another target.
Hounds Three, Eight, and One remained standing, her commander continued. Invisibles One, Two, Four and Seven were there to meet them. There were to be no further retreats, One decreed.
"Affirmative, One."
Scanning her terrain, Stark Patrick once again launched herself into battle with the reckless abandon no one would ever have expected of a no-nonsense FBI agent. But as she'd told Stanley Jobson, she was full of surprises. And the ability to destroy until no one remained standing.
"Two, back up Seven."
"Affirmative."
Gravity Kills filled in the gaps between fire and return fire:
"You're a shadow of me
What I used to be
I'm fading as the light dims outside
I know what you need
Because I can see
I'm taking over thoughts in your mind..."
The lyrics weren't comforting to Doggett. He found they had an amount of truth to them.
The truth was, she could be considered what he used to be. He could remember a time years ago when he was possessed of the same rage. A time that was not virtual but terrifyingly real. A time when he, too, wanted to hunt down someone and murder them with cold, detached abandon that his interior ethics prevented. A time when he often forgot to breathe, when he had only one goal, one mind, one intention – to destroy, to exact his revenge. Memories of Luke bubbled to the surface of his mind and he fought them down, letting the distance ward off the pain, immersing himself in the action on Stark's massive monitor in an attempt to escape the correlations. He locked his gaze on the screen, his eyes glimmering with the cognizance of these facts and more even as they radiated a clinical interest. If she was running from anything in pushing these buttons, playing this dangerous game, she didn't show it. He had to try and do the same. Maybe, just maybe, this could be the outlet he was looking for.
Another explosion, this of Hound Three, mirrored the explosion in Doggett's mind.
Almost simultaneously, it was answered in kind.
The 'Mech behind the BattleMaster exploded, and it turned to face a "Cauldron-Born," once again attacking the slayer of Invisible Seven with the same zeal as the leaders of the two lances squared off in their own decisive battle. Stark emptied the last of her missiles in her tangle and froze in position, waiting, watching. By the rules, she could not interfere with this battle. She had done all she could. Unless the Hound 'Mech chose to pursue her, she was now done, three kills to her credit, six lancemates down. She had put in such a terrifying performance that to see her not in motion was almost unnatural to Doggett. She had spent every second moving, calculating, driving, hunting down and murdering, and now her verdict lay out of her hands.
Invisible One, a "Dire Wolf," fired at the "Hellbringer" called Hound One. A battle of leaders. A meeting of minds. Return fire just as quickly. And so quickly, before Stark or Doggett could fathom it, that the explosion of Invisible One was but a mere flash on the screen.
Stark took this in, blinking only once. She brought her weapons to bear. This battle would end with her. Watching her from her side, the flicker in her eyes, her partner thought it somewhat fitting. Fitting that it would be determined by her, her emotions, and perhaps, his own. He watched her then, letting her actions express all he was feeling, as if he could transfer all his nightmares into her power. As if it would make any difference.
Doing her best Linden Ashby impression, she vowed, "Let's dance."
And so she did, firing everything she had, watching the targeting computer paint the torso yellow, the right arm going with it, then simultaneously taking to the sky, above anything save the flight of missiles ripping through virtual air in pursuit of her. Some of them clipped her and her 'Mech wavered but did not fall, only plummeting to earth when she had no fuel left to spare. By this time, her weapons were ready, but so was her enemy. This would not be another Nova conquest. He brought weapons to bear as she landed and he fired almost instantly; the arm that had burned yellow for so long tore itself free, but otherwise she was lucky. It gave her the chance to fire. She needed no encouragement. Revenge, bloodlust, victory, whatever it was that drove her was firmly in control. It was as if she was almost not human, and her partner thought, maybe she wasn't. Maybe she had become an extention of the machine. Maybe she had slipped away. Maybe he didn't know what to think anymore.
He didn't.
She fired.
And just like that, it was over. Doggett watched the screen light with a brilliant explosion, then the empty Mesa desert, the BattleMaster all alone in the infinite landscape. Silence in the room, save the pounding rhythm of "Goodbye."
And then:
"This is Hound One. The Hounds concede the battle."
Stark nodded again, her words simple: "Affirmative."
Then she checked her watch, changing comm channels: “Call it – 8:12 p.m.”
She keyed off the microphone, leaning back in the chair, only then allowing her muscles to slacken and relax. Comm chatter began to liven the line as combatants congratulated each other and commiserated. Stark was silent for a moment. "I'll meet you in chat in a few minutes to go over the battleroms," she said to no one in particular, and lifted the headset from her head. She'd almost forgotten that John was there. She turned in the chair and met his clouded eyes.
"That's all it takes," she said.
He sat straight up in the chair. "What?"
"Pressure and heat. All it takes."
Pressure and heat. Objective and drive. Goal and warrior. Call to trial and an FBI agent whose life escapes her.
"All what takes?" he said, his voice soft, still healing.
"The temperature at which things ignite. The flashpoint."
He nodded, his mind still processing the unexpected events of a Thursday night.
She cut the CD and a silence took up the void which seemed too great to fill. "You okay?" she asked.
After a moment, he looked up at her. "Yeah." Another pause. "You okay?"
"I will be," she said. "It ... it takes some time. For me to relax. To come down from the adrenaline high, from the implications, the idea of..." She ran out of words, her hands shaking. "You know."
He nodded.
"You want to try this sometime?" she offered.
He thought about it for a moment. "Next Thursday?"
"I can get you started."
Doggett really didn't know what to say. It wasn't a hobby. It wasn't an obsession. At least for her, MechWarrior 2, serving with The Invisible on all these missions, seemed to be a catharsis. He didn't really have one. He wondered if he could find one. But he didn't know what to say to her.
"Thank you."
"Don't," she said, standing. "I need a shower. You'll be fine for a few?"
He nodded, shaking off the vestiges of his thoughts. "I'll be okay."
Watching her go, he sat in the silence for another few minutes. Then, when he was sure he was alone, Doggett moved over into the main chair. He reached for the headset, adjusted it, and stared at the program, turning down the volume on her CD player to let the sounds of "Techno Syndrome" by The Immortals, better known as the theme from "Mortal Kombat," fill his ears at a lesser volume.
Pressure and heat. All it takes.
Or, he decided, a dream of a far, far better place.
There would, after all, always be another Thursday.
The Immortals dared him to "test his might." He tightened his grip on the joystick, assuming a firm position in from of the monitor, adjusting the microphone and typing in a new codename in an empty field below her designation of "Masse Noir" – the Black Hammer. Then he hit enter, letting the screen flare to life, remembering a speech of hers. 'They give us everything they've got,' she told him, 'and there's only one thing we can say.'
"Bring it on."
---
FBI HEADQUARTERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
11:46 A.M.
THE NEXT DAY
Stark wiped out a red name on her case board and rewrote it in black. Case closed.
"So," she said, dropping back into her chair, toying with a pencil. She let it fly, but it didn't hit the ceiling, inside twirling needlessly before landing back in her grip. She was no Fox Mulder.
"So what?" John said, leaning back in his own chair as he closed that particular case file.
"So I was talking to some of the guys in the battle last night in the chat room while we were going over the roms – the video – from the desert," she continued. "And they said that somebody logged on from my IP and blew the living hell out of them in an unofficial battle. Painted five kills. Broke the record for most kills in a single combat. That was my record, by the way, four years standing."
"I didn't know," he said.
"And they asked me if I knew who it was," she elaborated. "Because my lance leader, not to mention the Hound leader, is interested in getting this guy on board a team. And I said, 'I have no clue, I was in the shower.' And they asked me if it was my rider," she said, leaning forward, "but I said, 'I don't think he'd go for that.' Until they told me he was using the callsign Luke.
"I knew it was you."
He smiled, knowing he was caught. "They actually said that?"
"Would I ever lie to you?" She paused. "What were you doing on there, John? I thought we would put you through training. I've never seen someone just take the controls of a 'Mech without training and beat the living hell out of people who have been doing this for years. Not even me."
"I don't know," he admitted with a shrug. "There was just something in me that wanted to take on the world."
"Old Marine instincts?" she said.
"More like old ghosts." His voice was quiet for a moment. "But I understand this now."
"You do?" She sounded amused.
"Yeah, I do." He sat up straight, meeting her eyes. "Pressure and heat."
"Pressure and heat." She nodded. "So next Thursday..."
"I'll be there," he affirmed instantly. "If you'll have me."
Stark smiled. "There isn't anyone else I'd rather have."
“All right,” he quipped with a smirk he’d seen on her face not too long ago, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
With a knowing smile, she tossed the pencil at him. John caught it without even trying. If she was full of surprises, well, he had to admit that he was beginning to surprise himself. And all he had to say on the matter was: bring it on.
END
