Work Text:
The Problem
by Irena Adler
While Charlie locked the office door, Colby dragged Penfield out of sight and handcuffed him. They met again in the center of the office.
"Now what?" Charlie asked quietly. "I don't know how we're going to get out of this mess."
"No problem is unsolvable for you," Colby responded.
Charlie resisted arguing that there were plenty of things he hadn't solved.
"You say to first define the problem," Colby said.
Charlie gave him a smile, pleased that Colby actually did listen to him, then he frowned again. "Our problem is that Penfield is an ass."
"Okay, maybe that is unsolvable."
"It's permanent," Charlie agreed.
"The real problem is his threat to publish that page of notes that you and Larry did." Colby leaned against a nearby bookshelf. "You shouldn't have left it around."
Charlie glowered in Penfield's direction. "I didn't expect my office to get searched. Rather, I thought that if anyone went through my office, they'd be looking for classified stuff."
"Too bad that career sabotage isn't illegal."
"Or that he didn't find something classified."
"Wait ..." Colby paused and frowned in thought.
"What?" Charlie said eagerly.
"What if it was classified? Your cognitive emergence stuff?"
"Hey, no way, that's my math! I need to be able to talk about it and publish it!"
"Okay, well, what about just that little part?"
"What part?"
"Just that piece of paper."
Charlie eyed him. "You're going to classify a piece of paper that talks about the mind and ESP and the sixth sense?"
"Sillier things have been classified."
"Like what?"
"Drawings of presidents in dresses, the pedigree of someone's dog, a computer disk that has been run through a shredder."
"Huh. Can you do that, classify something?"
Colby grinned at him. "Hey, we're the FBI, we can do whatever we want."
end