"What makes you so sure you're qualified for this job, anyway? You think growing up with a lunatic mom and an absentee father made you some tough guy? Jeff, you could have gone into law. No guns. No fighting."

He took his razor and swiped it across the last shaving cream-covered inch on his face. Rinsed the razor in the sink, looked into his own eyes in the mirror.

"Because law wasn't enough. Arguing in front of a judge isn't my style. I want to catch the bad guys. I want absolute justice."

In a Jack Nicholson voice, "I want the truth."

With that, Jeffrey Spender dried his face and left the bathroom to get dressed. Black suit, white shirt, red tie, black shoes.

"You could have been a cop, Jeff. It would have been enough."

He put on his clothes.

The uniform of an F.B.I. agent.

----------------

He walked into Assistant Director Kersh's office with his jaw squared and his shoulders back. He was surprised to see another agent there.

Shining dark brown hair and glittering dark eyes, her left arm bound in a cast.

"Agent Jeffrey Spender, I believe you've met Agent Diana Fowley."

They shook hands. "Yes, while we were both working the Praise case." Jeff's eyes lingered on her cast. She'd been shot, he recalled.

They sat down and watched Kersh.

"I want to know that I can trust you both."

"Yes sir," they said, almost in unison.

"Orders have come down that new agents be assigned to the x-files division. You two have been selected."

Jeff stiffened, his cool exterior chipped by the heat he felt inside. Agent Mulder's X-files?

"Mulder and Scully have been reassigned. The office has just been renovated. Here are your keys. From here on out, you are assigned to Assistant Director Skinner. I suggest you report to him directly following this meeting. That is all, agents."

*That* was an interview? Jeff stood up, shook Kersh's hand. Agent Fowley did the same. They walked out together, Fowley with a grim look on her face.

In the elevator, Jeff pushed the basement button.

"Agent Fowley?"

"Diana. When we're alone, anyway."

"Diana, did you request this assignment?"

"No. I was assigned, same as you were." She looked at him, took in his face full of questions.

"Jeffrey, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"We do the jobs they tell us to do. We don't ask questions. We don't ask for better things. They tell us to go to the basement, we do it. Understand?"

He frowned, nodded. She wasn't unkind, just direct.

Diana seemed to know her way around, and grabbed files that she told Jeff to read.

Later that day, exasperated, Jeff mentioned that none of the cases were ever solved, just given weak explanations.

"This is not what I joined the Bureau for."

Diana gave him a pitying look. "What for then? Absolute justice?" She shook her head.

He stared at her.

Sadly, "You couldn't handle the truth, Jeffrey."

He set his jaw. Oh yeah?