The F-Files

The offices are sedate. The temperature is cool, and the smell of Clorox and coffee has seeped into the gray carpet. Soft sounds of typing and low voices speaking into phones are a familiar ambience to Valeria Flores as she turns into a corridor, slipping past a woman with her arms full of papers.

Flores knocks on the door at the end of the hall and is admitted to a spacious office, where the desk is covered in folders and paperwork.

Director Vivian Corbin herself waits in her chair, all femininity hidden behind a dark pantsuit and thick glasses. An unfamiliar assistant director sits in another chair, while a blonde with glasses leans on a file cabinet, cigarette in hand, peering out through the drawn blinds. Flores wrinkles her nose and can’t withhold a little internal judgment over the cigarette. As usual, she is the shortest person in the room despite the two inches she gets from having her dark hair up and the other two granted by her sober pumps.

“Sit,” Director Corbin says.

Flores does so.

Corbin considers the file in front of her. “You’ve been with us almost three years. You’re a doctor. What are you doing here, Agent Flores?”

“I’m a psychiatrist,” Flores replies automatically. She is a medical doctor, but she hasn’t practiced since her residency. “I guess you could say I have a natural curiosity about things.”

“Mental health and behavioral science aren’t enough of a puzzle for you?” the assistant director in the other chair asks.

“No, sir, they are not,” Flores replies.

“Are you familiar with an agent named Alice Wilde?” Corbin asks bluntly.

“I’ve heard of her. She has a reputation. She has a lot of credentials and has done a lot of good work in violent crimes, but people avoid her. I guess you could say that she’s considered eccentric.”

“What do you know about the F-Files?”

“My understanding is those are cases where we don’t have a good understanding of what happened, and we want them to go away.”

The assistant director snorts. Corbin ignores that, and the smoker watches Flores closely.

Director Corbin tents her hands. “We don’t generally use the F-File classification anymore when we dispose of cases, Agent Flores. And we were well on our way to forgetting that the F-Files existed before Agent Wilde took it upon herself to reopen a number of those cases.”

“I wasn’t aware a special agent could do that.”

“She was allowed to because she made herself useful,” the assistant director cuts in. “When something new cropped up with similarity to an old F-File, she would take it off the desk of a less troublesome agent, thereby freeing up valuable bureau resources.”

Corbin silences the AD with a look. “Agent Flores, you’re going to assist Agent Wilde in her investigations. We’ll need field reports from you with observations on the validity of the work.”

Flores keeps her expression neutral. “You want me to debunk the F-Files project?”

“You’re a doctor, Agent Flores. We expect you to be clinical and as close to objective in this matter as anyone can be. We look forward to seeing your reports.”