Episode 5: Bunnies in Black
Part 7
“He’s going to damage that ship!” Mulder exclaimed as they watched the fighting from the van. “We have to get in there before they destroy everything!”
Brian sighed as he looked at the screen, imagining the potential damage that might be done and what impact that would have. “Let’s go,” he said over his shoulder, as he was already out of the van and halfway down the driveway towards the grotto.
Mulder and Scully exchanged another mutually concerned glance before following suit. This was the breakthrough they had been waiting for, just the evidence they had been searching for all over the country for years: solid proof of alien life.
***
“STOP RIGHT THERE! ALL OF YOU!” Hugh Hefner shouted in a voice that seemed almost too powerful to be his own. Immediately, all the remaining Playmates and guards stopped what they were doing. With three blonde Playmates by his sides, Hef walked closer to the scene that lay before him.
“The real Girls Next Door!” Diamond gasped. “Bridget, you’re an icon!”
“What kind of sicko are you, Hefner?” Jay asked before the old man could say anything else. Hef leered at Jay, then looked at one of the remaining guards and nodded in Jay’s direction. The guard moved over to Jay and managed to restrain him, despite Jay’s efforts to fight back.
“Are you all willing to cooperate?” Hef asked, looking around at his captives. They scowled back at him. Emerald’s eyes were particularly full of hatred. When he winked at her, it took Emerald every ounce of her willpower not to tackle him and pummel him senseless. “You must have gone to a lot of trouble to spy on me, but I wonder why?”
“People are dying because of you!” Red shouted, trying to repress the memories that attempted to resurface again.
Hef scoffed, and the three girls with him laughed. “You have no idea what’s going on here. But you’ll soon find out. All of you.” And with that, something completely unexpected happened.
Suddenly, a bluish tinge seeped across the Playmates’ skin. The eyes grew large and black, completely subsuming their irises, as though they’d been stretched beyond the corners of their eyes. Their nostrils narrowed into thin slits as their noses flattened against their faces.
In the midst of the Playmates’ transformation, the frightened guards mustered up enough energy to run, screaming, from the grotto. They ran right past Mulder, Scully, and Brian, who slowly crept in, hugging the stone wall in the hopes that they wouldn’t be noticed. Mulder and Scully tried to hold in their shock and excitement, while Brian simply couldn’t believe his eyes.
Hef raised his hand to his face and tugged at a wrinkle by his ear. A mechanical sound rang through the air as Hef put his right hand across his face and pulled it right off. In the place where Hef’s face had been moments ago, sat a tiny being surrounded by levers, buttons, and cranks.
Jay burst out laughing. “Dude, that’s what you really look like? A blue Chihuahua puppy with dilated pupils? At least the Playmates look evil… You just look like you’re rabid or something.”
The tiny alien’s face twisted into a scowl as Brian snickered at Jay’s colorful description of the creature. He quickly managed to regain his composure and raised his gun once again, readying himself for another attack.
The alien growled with rage and pulled on one of the levers, forcing Hef’s body to lunge forward. Jay jumped back in surprise. Emerald, finally given the opportunity she desired, whipped out her concealed gun and gleefully fired three shots into the tiny alien’s skull. Hef’s body collapsed in a heap as the alien’s head exploded.
“Man, I’ve been waiting HOURS to do that!” Emerald exclaimed, glaring at the motionless corpse lying a mere three feet in front of Jay. It was then that they all realized that the Playmates were completely motionless as well, their faces devoid of all emotion.
Pearl took advantage of the situation and made her way over to the Hugh Hefner suit that was now abandoned by its tiny alien owner. She squealed in delight at how advanced the technology was. “Ooh,” she cooed, “I never thought I’d see mechanisms like this in my lifetime! It’s a dream come true!”
“Excuse us, Miss Pearl,” Mulder said, appearing next to her, as Scully showed up on her other side, “but we’ll need to take a look at this device.” The incredulous look on Pearl’s face said all she wished she could at that moment as Mulder and Scully stared her down.
“But… I just wanted to… Surely you can let me just–” Pearl began.
“Miss Pearl, this is United States Government property now. Our evidence. Please step away,” Scully said, her intense stare at Pearl only emphasizing her stand on the matter.
Pearl glared at them both one last time before storming away, cursing them silently under her breath. In mere seconds, she had ducked behind the ship to tinker with the devices she had pulled from it.
Diamond slowly stuck out her finger to poke the Playmate nearest her in the arm, quickly pulling her hand back with a shriek when she realized how slimy its skin felt. Red examined the alien next to her closely, paying attention to the color and texture of its skin, every detail she possibly could. She was amazed at how all it could seem to do now was breathe and blink. Her examination was cut short by the loud boom of Emerald’s gun firing a shot into the back of the alien’s skull. Red was shocked, but Emerald simply smiled at Jay as they both continued to shoot the aliens in the skulls, one by one.
Brian walked slowly around the perimeter of the ship, fascinated by its design. He took a few steps up the entry ramp to the interior of the ship before he heard yelling behind him and turned around, gun instantly drawn.
“That’s United States Government property you two are destroying!” Scully exclaimed when she realized what Jay and Emerald were doing. By the time the FBI agents stopped them, Jay and Emerald had killed nearly all of the aliens; only two or three were left.
“Oh please, we’re doing you a favor!” Emerald shouted back.
“They’re evidence! Our evidence! You have no business shooting them!” Mulder screamed at her.
“You have got to be shittin’ me!” Jay replied.
“Hey!” Brian shouted. “All of you, listen to me!”
Of course, just like in the movies, nobody did.
Brian shook his head and tried one last time to get everyone to shut up. “HEY!”
That finally made seven heads turn and look at him.
“So now that I have everyone’s attention, can we at least talk about this?!”
“Talk about what?” Emerald stared right through him with a piercing look. “These things might suddenly come to life and start a killing spree.”
“Maybe so, but we need to keep these last ones alive.” Mulder motioned to the remaining ones. “They can teach us about their species.”
“At least they knew how to accessorize and transform their faces with makeup,” Diamond commented casually. “The world could use more people with that knowledge.”
“Puh-lease.” Emerald was in no mood to reason with the government agents. The whole enema thing was still fresh in her mind, to the point where she wanted to destroy everything that reminded her of the entire ordeal.
“How about making a deal?”
“You’re not in the CIA office, Brian.” Jay smirked. “This is no time for making deals.”
“Hear the man out,” Red said as she motioned towards him. “What’s on your mind?”
“Thanks, Red. How about we let these three life forms live, and Mulder and Scully can do whatever they want with them?”
“Wait a minute!” both Jay and Emerald protested.
“I wasn’t finished. In return, we — or you ’cause I don’t want anything to do with it — get to have a closer look at both them and Hugh.”
It took them a few minutes of bickering about the deal Brian proposed, but eventually, they all grudgingly agreed.
Scully almost had to drag Mulder to the other side of the grotto, knowing they needed to come up with a decent cover-up. First, though, she called their boss because they couldn’t collect all the evidence themselves. They’d need a team of agents to make sure the alien ladies would be transported to a safe environment in which they could be closely monitored or, in case of the dead ones, dissected. In the meantime, Mulder kept glancing over his shoulder at the others, checking to see that they wouldn’t mess things up.
“This shit is crazy,” said Jay, looking around at the dead bodies strewn across the grotto.
“Can you please not use the word ‘shit’ anymore?!” Emerald hissed, her temper reaching the boiling point.
“Sorry?”
“Never mind,” she muttered, not wanting to explain herself. “Let’s take a closer look at the bastard.”
Pearl was already probing inside the skull of the mechanical suit. “This is amazing,” she whispered to herself as she carefully touched the wires. Accidentally, she hit one of the handles, which made Hef’s left leg stretch, almost kicking Emerald, who was just approaching it.
“Hey, watch it, Pearl!” She laughed a bit too loud.
“What are you people DOING over there?!” Mulder yelled.
“Nothing!” Emerald responded, followed by a softly spoken, “Asshole.”
“Sorry, we’ll be careful!” Pearl apologized as she sent him an angelic smile.
“Right,” Mulder muttered under his breath, as he sent a small smile back.
“Mulder, we need to talk about this.”
“I can’t stand here while those fools destroy more evidence than they already have!” he growled as he, being the adult he was, actually stomped his feet.
“Yes, you CAN,” Scully simply stated. “You have to.”
“Okay, okay.” Mulder rubbed his temples as he tore his eyes away from the HimTak team.
“So, what WAS that over there?! What are we going to tell the media — or anyone, for that matter? Because I, for one, don’t have a clue.”
“I think Hefner had control over them.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I figured as much ’cause they all dropped down as soon as what’s-her-name shot him. Got anything better?”
“Let’s see. They all seemed to be under a spell of some sort, but how in the world did he manage that? And, well, they obviously appear to be of another breed than he was. The differences between them are clearly visible.”
“Yeah, not only do they look different but, assuming Hugh’s species built the suit himself, his kind is far more intelligent than the other one.” Scully let out a short laugh. “The Playmates lack not only brain mass, just like in the ‘real world.’ They don’t even seem to have any kind of artificial intelligence.”
Mulder did not see the humor in that, but he hardly ever found anything funny, so Scully wasn’t offended.
“Maybe it was the whole Playboy Mansion. The water or something.”
“Maybe. We’d have to ask the others if they drank something during their time here.”
“Let’s not do that. We don’t wanna make them any smarter than they already are. They know far more than is good for them or the rest of the world.”
“Don’t exaggerate things. I mean, they’re on the good side.”
“Yeah, all the killing showed exactly that.”
“You know you’re sulking, right?” Scully stated as she gave him a look. “What if it was the sex he had with his Playmates?”
“Like how?” Mulder looked at her, a bit puzzled.
“I don’t know. Maybe he injected something every time he had sex with one of them, keeping them under his spell. A microchip that would be in connection with the suit, something along those lines.”
“That’d make more sense.”
“But what do we tell the press about what happened?”
“Maybe that the bastard just died?!”
Mulder and Scully almost jumped up as Jay seemed to pop up from out of nowhere. In reality, he had walked over there to make sure they’d all get their story straight.
“That would be too simple.” Mulder shook his head.
“Why?” Jay laughed. “To the world, he was an old man. Okay, he had a lot of attractive women surrounding him, but he was still an old man. We could release a statement saying he died of a heart attack while he was having sex with his favorite Playmate of the Month. Then also state that she was so shocked by what happened that she killed herself. The other Bunnies were so devastated by the whole ordeal that they went home and turned their backs on being sex objects ever again, out of respect for Hugh. Something like that.”
“I think that could actually work,” Scully said as she slowly nodded. “It’s not too far out there, for the most part. And after a while, we could state that Hugh said in his will that the Mansion would be made into a Playboy Museum — or maybe even something more useful.”
“I still believe it’s too simple.”
“Simple might work, Mulder.” Scully smiled. “It just might work.”
***
“I wonder what happened to the real Hef?” Diamond asked as she walked toward the other girls, who surrounded the robotic suit
“Poor old ass likely got offed,” Emerald answered as she knelt down, determined to find out more about the tattoo and the metal ring embedded in it. While Diamond examined the Playmates, the other three had rolled Hef on his side, careful not to damage the suit. Emerald had told the others about the object while they were looking inside the skull, but wisely skipped the whole enema ordeal.
At first, the women tried to grab it with their nails, but they just couldn’t get them under the metal ring. They looked at each other, knowing none of them had any equipment that could help them.
“Diamond, your nails could get under there.”
“But I just had them done,” she said with a pout.
Emerald rolled her eyes. Then they all looked at Brian, who was standing a few feet away from them, not wanting to come any closer to the whole alien scene than absolutely necessary.
“What is it?” he asked them, hands in his pockets and a stubborn look on his face. He did not want to have anything more to do with this if he didn’t have to.
“We need your help.” Pearl smiled at him.
“I bet he’s the kind to have a Swiss pocket knife on him at all times,” Emerald teased.
A red flush crept up his cheeks as he, indeed, pulled a pocket knife out of his jacket and threw it over to Emerald.
“Thanks.” She smiled at him before she searched for the right kind of tool. After she found a small knife, she carefully lifted up the ring.
“Careful,” Red warned, leaning backward.
Emerald nodded as she slowly pulled.
The women stared in awe as the tattoo moved upward like a hatch, revealing part of the internal structure. Instead of a spine, muscles, blood vessels, and nerves, they saw wires, chips, buttons, and LEDs.
“Maybe it’s some kind of emergency exit for the little bastard.” Emerald laughed.
“Why do you say that?” Pearl asked, leaning forward as much as she could without falling over to get a better look.
“Because there’s a tiny ladder in here, too.”
***