Wake up. Dark. Nothing else breathing in the room. It lacked that organic static another human being brings. She always liked to spread out, so at least the bed didn’t feel too big.

Breakfast. Nothing, today. She had set her alarm too late and she had maybe fifteen minutes to jump out from between mattress and assorted blankets and pick clothes. Put them on. Dark, ratty work jeans and thick socks and a plain t-shirt and something warm. A layer of flannel or a sweater. She picked the former. Also a bit ratty, thrifted for cheap. She brushed her teeth and rinsed too much and too aggressively because the grit and the mint always lingered.

She left lights off as she went around. Old electricity still hummed. Old when it had been installed, it felt like. Her roommate across the living room would be back soon. A working girl, bespoke in crystal spectacles and the professional and high-waisted attire of a late night administrator at a precinct somewhere. The closest she would come to law enforcement now.

She didn’t navigate solely from the dim aura of the moonlight-between-the-curtains for anyone but her. She could flick the switch beside her door, feel the cheap buzz through the walls, see the admonished light above turn on. She wanted to pretend she was as asleep as possible until the last minute. Clumsily slip into work boots. Quietly close the door so there wasn’t a five-in-the-morning slam that someone may complain about, metallically turn the key and hear with her fingers as the tumbler clicked and fell.

Thirty minutes in awakening air, traveling on begrudging bus that seemed to wish it would get less use. Everything still had morning damp clinging to it like stubborn moss. She would always try to sleep, but the clunking of her head against the window as the vehicle turned always stopped her.

The big warehouse. The walk from the employee door to the punch machine. The lights of the warehouse had a twenty-four-seven brightness about them. Like they’d evolve into red giants eventually and die given enough time. The entire building had a death knell to it. Like it was sitting on a sunken place, meant to give way at any moment. It felt like it wanted to be swallowed and eaten. She was needled by machine noise and words from night-shift men, which all seemed too awake to be real. 

Punch machine up the stairs to the locker room. Her locker, not one of the ones that took up half a slot. It was a tall sort, acquiesced to her by a departing co-worker who stated that she needed it. She did. It helped.

An insulated jacket, lined up front with dull snaps, bought with a handful of money she could barely spare from a Wal-Mart. She wore underneath what she had come in. She hated changing there. Not only because she was the sole woman on this shift, but because she felt stares at her vulnerable parts even when no one was looking. The issue was, all her parts felt vulnerable.

People greeting her as she went down to morning huddle. She didn’t know the names of most of them. No one ever introduced themselves to her. Not just at this place either. It was just one of her special perks. And she never asked, because she never quite knew how. Even though other people made it look real easy. 

She said her, “Morning,” or, “Hey,” back to the people she didn’t know but who seemingly always knew her name. If it was Monday, she’d get to answer how her weekend went. It was always good, and how was there’s. Other people always had more to say to them. She never did, in the moment at least. It was like a valve closed somewhere in the mind.

Morning huddle just told her she had work to do today. For most everyone else it was an excuse to procrastinate starting. She wanted to start. Because it involved grabbing a reach and inspecting it and doing the checklist and driving it all the way to the punch clock area to grab a scanner from beside the bay of two company-approved slow computers. Then her phone, down in the little ditch on the side of the truck’s control panel. A speaker next to it. A few seconds of looking before she chose the same album she’d been listening to for hmmm, literal weeks.

Then cleaning. Empty pallets, maybe broken, maybe with mangled plastic wrap twisted amongst its bones.

Receiving, when a truck came in. Pallets of non-perishables. Crackers. Chips. It was a Wednesday, so chips it was. A whole fucking truck of fucking chips. A machine change, because the reach couldn’t go in trucks. Too unwieldly, unless specifically required. The short walk to the machine bay for a stout red long john. She liked to be fast getting everything out of the truck, because that was on someone else’s time. When the driver was signed off, she could slow to a reasonable pace. Her own pace. Which is where she liked to be.

Then lunch. Brunch. It was only ten or so. But technically, it was breakfast. Her first meal of the day. Up the same stairs, across from the locker room. She had a leftover sandwich in the fridge from the day before. She held her breath when she opened it. It didn’t even necessarily smell bad. It just smelled like a shared fridge.

Wednesday afternoon. Another order of fucking chips. Maybe there was a sale in the stores. Halfway through, a few skids of peanut butter. And butters of other kinds.

Except she never got to that this Wednesday. The fifth bite of her sandwich went down right as a coworker said there was someone calling for her at the side door. Which was not to be confused with the driver’s door, or the employee door. All entrances of the same make and measurement. Boring metal doors painted boring metal gray.

So she wrapped up her sandwich in a way that probably meant it had a gap somewhere in the plastic and would go bad overnight. She was too curious to care. Down the metal steps, the inverse of the trip she took to start, fifteen minutes earlier than she usually took it.

There was someone at the door. She was standing beside the picnic table that now looked welcoming enough. The morning damp had been dried off by the sun, as confused as it was about whether it was autumn or winter.

A woman. Very out of place here. Like the execs that came by to examine how their hive and little bees were functioning. She had a different air than them. Same sort of style; dark pants, high on the waist. A tucked white blouse, very slightly unbuttoned and hard to tell if it was off-white or just the weak light. A long cloth jacket that hung like it was a men’s fit that had decided she pulled it off better than the original owner. Hair pulled back into a bun that looked exactly as out-of-control as she wanted it to be. Like the tight curls could snap that elastic as easily as she breathed, but she wasn’t gonna let them.

Delicate features that didn’t convey weakness. And eyes. Eyes that looked like they reflected the sun even though it was behind her. She only found it strange if she stared too long, and she wasn’t prone to that. Her eyes flitted around the woman’s, from cheek to chin to forehead and eventually settling at the neck. Uncomfortable, doubly so because of the intensity of the colour. The oddness of it.

“Gwendolyn Foster.” Not a question. For sure, definitely not a question. This woman sounded like she knew her better than her coworkers did.

“Mhmm.” Oddly wary. Circumstances. Interruption in the routine, sort of bothered by her lunch not being finished when she was into what she’d been reading. Willing to concentrate on something for once this week. Able to ignore that Heather’s number was still sitting unused at the top of her text history for a week now. Or almost able to ignore it. She wouldn’t be thinking about it if she successfully ignored it.

The last words they’d exchanged had been civil, in an unpleasant way. Like they were just coworkers going through a tough work situation. Gwen was wishing she could see her more than when they’d been dating. She was funny like that.

And this woman was also strange. Intense eyes. Hued wrong. She didn’t belong here. She’d stepped out of some other life to be standing here.

“Did I interrupt?” the woman said.

“Just eating lunch,” Gwen said. It sounded ruder than intended. Not unusual for her. She had a hard time modulating tone. It came out different than expected most of the time.

“We can talk over something hot, if that helps.” The woman had a tone that was adjacent to motherly. Nice in a way that seemed pointed.

Gwen looked back at the warehouse. She sensed the presence of management knowing work wasn’t being done. Of a break ticking away, always faster than intended. She didn’t actually know what to say to that. There was a few different ways she was confused, and they all bubbled up into a pot of a brain that wasn’t on boil. It wasn’t working. Which was not something specific to this situation.

“What?” Seemed like a salient response. Pithy. She could extrapolate the point from it, hopefully.

The woman reached into her jacket. It looked easy for her. The turn of the elbow looked comfortable, no odd twists. When her hand came out from the dark material, it let a leather wallet fall open. It wasn’t a leather wallet. She held the top half, which was embedded with a dull gold badge.

POLICE. RCMP.

Underneath was an ID card with a first name, surname, rank and badge number. The plastic in front of it held a glare from somewhere. The actual information on the card was indecipherable from the angle she held it. But Gwen knew what it was anyways. She’d had one for a few years.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

She stepped closer. Genevieve Rayne. Chief Superintendent. A string of random numbers.

Gwen blinked at the thing. And did it another couple times for good measure. A bad interruption. Curiosity poorly sated.

“They aren’t asking for you back.” Rayne said. Gwen couldn’t. Which was the end of that statement. Her stomach was tight for multiple reasons. This woman was new. She was part of an organization Gwen had been happy to just hear about in news stories. Her head was black, nothing, unelectrified. Failure of a main organ. Nothing physiological. Simple anxiety. Inability to cope.

“Okay.” Gwen said. It was just a sound. She knew people made those in response. That was the longest one she could think of. The woman leaned back without looking and her coat tapped the table and then folded under her. She lounged back onto the wood, heels of her hands resting on the edge, fingers curled under. The badge had been closed in that slight movement. Gwen hadn’t noticed. It was trapped between a dark hand and dried out wood.

“It’s not mine in the sense you think it is. The only real thing on there is the name.” She paused to let Gwen say something. It was a short enough break it seemed like more of a polite formality. She seemed to already be aware Gwen wasn’t going to be good at saying much.

“They aren’t asking for you back. But they recommended you after a call. They said you knew things other officers didn’t, things they never quite could. Freaky, they said. That was all I got. Not many questions asked if cases got solved, it seems.” She smiled then. It tightened her eyes maternally. But suggestively. Like she was very much quite aware of whatever was inside that expression.

“Would you like to tell me about that?” She asked.

She didn’t know what to say to anyone. It had been a week back after two weeks off. Some acted like it had been a day, like it wasn’t enough time, like she should have taken more. Not for her. For them. So she wasn’t around. Some acted like it had been months. Work to do. Given to her in brisk, odd paces. Nobody particularly lingered, in a very polite and civil sort of way. Not avoidance. Feigned ignorance of her presence until needed.

Fucking desk work. Papers. Mostly the computer and its thick companion keyboard. Sometimes a pen if she was lucky. She had a nice one, which had been given to her by a friend after Quantico. She hadn’t spoken to that person in years.

“Madani?” She turned her head at that. Slightly. Someone leaning on her too-short cubicle wall. It looked like an unsteady perch.

“What’s up?” She asked. In a good tone. A nice, polite tone.

“Merry Christmas,” the person said. Handed over another sheaf of ink on white background. Very unsteady, unregulated ink. Whoever wrote this needed a fucking penmanship course.

“Transcribed to digital please, no particular rush.” Madani smiled at that as an action of recognition. It got the person out of there with a quick nod and a light tap against her cubicle wall. People tended to smile from the mouth when unhappy. She used her eyes. It hid an easy tell. No one really expected discontent when the eyes scrunched up.

She put the pile of paper to the side. In a basket, organized. Quickly (but neatly) penned the words transcribe to digital on a Post-It and posted it on the front page. It blocked out a neat square of words Madani was sure was very important.

Desk work. Because no one had wanted to talk about what had got her put on leave in the first place. Or they couldn’t talk about it. Which she was beginning to suspect was true, just like her family. All those tiny little grain-of-sand years ago when it clearly wasn’t a gas leak or a pipe malfunction or a cigarette left on the bed because her mum and dad hadn’t smoked.

Lots of agents had to shoot a perp, she had been told. It wasn’t good, necessarily (although you wouldn’t know that with the way some fucking people talked) but it happened. Like rolling your car into a ditch in winter. Unfortunate but not uncommon.

No one would listen when she said she hadn’t shot him. Now it was on the after-action report. It had been told to the internal investigators. It was codified. But they also wouldn’t write up an explanation for why he had broken limbs and dusted bones and internal bleeding like someone caught between two fighting trucks. They just didn’t talk about it.

Desk work. Leaving her to think that she didn’t want to fucking go through this again. Being the only one who wondered.

“Madani?” All the voices sounded the same. When she was in these kinds of moods. All the crisp law enforcement tones. Bad memories, sometimes. Badges lying to her.

“What’s up?” She asked. In a good tone. A polite tone. People seemed to like her, naturally. She was on an upward track before this. Shocking, if she thought about it for too long. Considering she didn’t have anything particularly phallic on her and she’d been asked way too pointedly about where the best Indian place was to eat a few too many times. These were the kind of people who weren’t uh, culturally aware enough to care about applying to the CIA, she guessed.

“Can you pull these files up? For SAC Gummer.” Madani smiled at that as an act of recognition. The person handed a pink Post-it with neat lines of alphanumeric strings on them. She hadn’t done a database search in a couple days. She should probably be ecstatic.

People enjoyed her company. She hadn’t been That Guy in the room. They definitely had a few of the Those Guys, that stood up and announced things importantly. Smiled at the guys and gals differently but didn’t get in trouble. Could throw an arm around his SAC or pat him on the shoulder and get off without much fuss, if he was wise about the moment and room.

People just liked talking with her. Quietly. In small groups. She liked people. She got how to navigate them. She never got flustered. She helped friends out here, when they came to her with office politics. Or relationship shit. She just didn’t know how to get deeper than that. She solved problems. She just never got to trade secrets, and trust anyone with issues of her own.

Now she had this bubble around her. She’d Done Something. With negative, metaphysically smelly connotations. She was racking her brain to see if she cared. About the space and the walls she felt. She didn’t. That worried her more than the moat everyone was digging around her career and theirs.

“Madani.” Not a question this time. The voice was still law enforcement. If it spit in her face, that saliva would taste like gunmetal. But there was some authority there. She turned fully this time. Gummer. Stout, for a thin woman. Like she’d been plump as a young lady and age and vocation had sandblasted her down whether she’d liked it or not. She still held herself big.

“Ma’am. Katsuragi just arrived with the file list a few minutes ago, if that’s what you’re here for.” Gummer was shaking her head after the word file. Madani finished the sentence regardless. She didn’t like letting people dictate when she stopped talking, to a point.

“There’s someone here to see you. Conference room two. I’ll take you, but I’m not to sit in, so I’m told.” Gummer looked like she hated that. Not because she was a gossipy bitch. Those select few in the office would hate that they couldn’t have sat in on it, that is true. Gummer wanted to know because hey, knowing is half the battle. She ran things well. That was part of running things well.

Madani smiled with her eyes as she pushed out her chair and stood. Concern. Gummer had already asked to sit in, which is why she had been told no. Or she’d just been told no, which meant there was some running assumption of her sitting in. Not a civilian visitor. Higher up. Way higher up.

Madani thought of four broken limbs and a pool of uneven black blood reflecting cool sun. Madani thought of the crunching noise she hadn’t been able to write anywhere. To speak to anyone.

They walked. It wasn’t a long journey. Conference room two of two. Their footsteps fell to padded stops in front of it. The door was ajar. Anywhere else, it would have been a welcoming gesture. Here, it radiated uninvited from the dull doorknob. Here be secrets. Only one may enter.

Only one did enter. Gummer stood aside and behind as Madani gently pushed the door open. Like a friend making sure you got into your home safely after a drop-off. She didn’t look behind her as she entered to see if she had left. Maybe she’d be standing out there the whole time out of spite.

Someone was sitting at the head of the long conference table. Like she’d been there a while. She lounged. She was dressed like any male agency exec. Except her pants were a bit high for the current times. Maybe seventy years ago, with some suspenders. None of those on this woman. Her coat was draped over the back of a slightly-turned chair to her left. It was dark and thick.

“Amelie Madani?” The woman asked. She was dark-skinned. Darker than Madani. Surprising, from an exec. One high-up enough to boot out an SAC. Madani made an admittedly statistically likely but potentially wrong assumption the woman had nothing particularly phallic on her and was maybe asked where the best jerk chicken was to eat a few too many times. Or fried chicken, if she was somewhere especially, hmmm, rural.

“Mhmm,” was the most polite thing she could come up with. Along with a curt nod. Anything else felt too casual. She wasn’t the kind of likable where she could pull that off. And she was already walking a line recently.

“Sit. Anywhere. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if I bite.” The woman didn’t exaggerate a smile for that. One lingered on her face at all times. Like it was just too lazy to leave. Like it would be more effort to get rid of that very tiny expression than to just keep it.

Madani decided she’d rather the woman just fucking bite her if she was going to. She noticed her eyes as she got closer. They glowed internally with odd colour. Like a hand held tight over a flashlight. She hadn’t noticed from across the room. And it went away in peripheral vision. It was only really noticed when she actively locked eyes with Madani.

As Madani sat on the chair beside the woman, in a trio of her, the exec and the coat, the person opposite her leaned forward easily and rested her elbow on her thigh. Her black tie hung down like a pendant. A straight line up to her hand, which she rested her chin in. Her index finger ran against her cheek, and her second sat between loosely-held lips. The other two rested against her chin.

She stared. Openly. As if she had an invitation to do so. Madani was good at this sort of thing. Eye contact never bothered her. Lord knows she wouldn’t have made it through the crowds of mediocre white dudes throughout the years if it did.

Her eyes were intense. Madani didn’t have a particular feeling about them in that moment, but whatever she landed on would have been a strong one. Although the woman moved, with small adjustments here and there, she looked like she’d never blinked in the seemingly thousands of years she’d been alive. And she would never need to.

Madani felt like she was being searched through like a box of old but important goods.

“Genevieve Rayne.” The woman extended a hand out along with the name. She leaned back as Madani took it. They shook on whatever had just fucking happened there.

“I’m sorry to be this direct, ma’am, but SAC Gummer didn’t give me much on the way here. What exactly can I help you with?” She wanted to ask if it was about the incident. About the black blood in cool sun. But she didn’t want to show her hand.

(or about her family)

She hadn’t thought about that in a while. About actively asking about them.

Rayne’s other hand was up near her face now. Not hiding anything. Her knuckles were simply and lightly brushing the space near her chin.

“You were part of a shooting a month and some ago. The girl survived, but her father didn’t.”

“Yes ma’am.” It hadn’t been a question, but the response had slotted in right.

“Bullets don’t crush bones. Especially from an unfired gun.” The woman’s head was tilted just a tiny bit to the side. Her lips were lightly separated, letting air in between them. Her eyes were loose but directed straight at Madani. Searching through the box again.

Madani didn’t want to swallow. It felt like it would be a tell to the fact her ears were roaring at her. The woman didn’t let her open her mouth to even stutter anything before that lazy smile fought to slowly grow a bit bigger.

“You’re not in trouble. Just sate my curiosity. Go through that day with me again, please?”