Officer Webb’s office was almost bright enough. One of the lights above was slightly dimmer than the rest. It barely darkened the space and amplified Kyrylo’s growing anxiety as he sat in a faded office chair. The space always felt a bit cramped, a tiny area surrounded by false walls that was mostly consumed by the desk that ate up half the room, jammed into a corner with a filing cabinet opposite it. Now it tightened in on Kyrylo with each heartbeat.

The escort had been strange and wordless. Since their cards couldn’t grant access, they needed to be shepherded but nobody they passed was any wiser. There were no whispers or pointing, nobody was shocked and life rolled on for most people in the building. It was just Kyrylo and Felix now left in this room, a RIF agent standing outside, while they all waited for Webb, who famously showed up only after he had acquired a specialty coffee as part of his commute.

Kyrylo listened to the tick of each second on the clock. He had always wondered why anyone would have or need an analog clock in this day but now he understood. This sound was paralyzing. It was all around him every second, it chewed away at his sanity. Felix beside him was equally rigid, thrown from his usual cocky gait and left to scramble in this new world of being discovered by the RIF.

The crunch of shoe on thin carpet in the doorway. Officer Webb was here.

“Morning boys.” The older man stepped around them, shimmying past to make it to his seat in the tight space. He froze for a second as he nearly spilled his drink, his eyes flicking to each of them, then his cup. He gingerly placed it on a coaster on his desk and continued into his seat. “I heard from IT this morning that your accounts were flagged. Sometimes it’s an error, let’s look into it, right?”

“You mean you don’t know?” Kyrylo blurted out, earning a shocked look from Felix next to him. He heard another second tick on the clock.

Webb smirked as he settled into his seat and started to type away on his computer. He scratched at the stubble on his chin. Even with his higher rank he wasn’t immune to the rules on dress code, since they all had to be forgettable to the broader populace, his broad physique was stuffed into a beige shirt.

“I try to keep a work-life balance,” he replied. “They send me emails all night but I’m day shift. I take a look when I’m ready.” He smiled at his coffee and paused to caress the cup before taking a quick sip. “Of course I have to login eight times to get there, sorry for the suspense. You know.”

“Of course.” Felix’s answer was sharp, crisp. It was how he usually spoke to any superior before returning to his flippant attitude once they were back on deployment.

“Bit surprising to see you here though.” Webb nodded towards Felix, who seemed to try and sit up a little straighter. “Considering your extracurriculars.” Webb focused on his screen as he spoke, leaving Kyrylo to wonder what was being referenced. Felix had never brought up anything before, had always seemed pretty indifferent to the RIF as a whole.

Webb suddenly scowled, his face darkening. He leaned in towards the computer, hunching over and reaching for his drink to take another tepid sip and put it back. His mouse clicking was competing against the ticking clock for grating sound on Kyrylo’s psyche. Webb rubbed at his chin again and pulled away from the screen.

“It says you deployed the emergency retrieval on your devices?” Webb posed the fact as a question, turning his head only slightly to stare at Kyrylo. He had opened the door, waiting for someone to fill it with facts, blurt something out while he kept an eye on the monitor.

“We used it as instructed due to an encounter with a spirit we needed to disengage from.” Felix was stoic in his answer. Kyrylo had to hold back asking who the hell this was because it was not the Felix who had trained him. “It was an emergency situation.”

“See here’s the thing.” Webb leaned back in his seat, one hand propping up his chin, the other folded across his body and holding his chin. He pointed a finger towards the screen. “We obviously monitor location, all that stuff. Course we can’t see where people are when they cross over, there’s no satellite to ping off.” He suddenly turned to both of them and folded his hands together on the desk between them, leaning forwards, the curiosity of a predator flashing across his eyes. “But we can see when we lose a signal and when we get it back.”

And that was it. He just left that fact floating in the air between all of them, stopped his sentences without a line of questioning, no accusations. The crushing weight of it engulfed Kyrylo, trying to tear at his soul. But he had been sitting on the much bigger secret of his fusion, had already internalized that he could die at any time. He wasn’t about to break here.

“As I said,” Felix answered, his hands trembling at his side, “it was an emergency situation.”

Webb leaned back again and gestured at his computer. “You fought a spirit for multiple hours?”

“We were…unable to disengage in time and encountered additional enemies. It was our priority to remove spirits as we encountered them.”

“It’s your priority to get back out within five minutes and do a cool down. We would expect you to report any large gathering of spirits on patrol.”

Felix paused and Kyrylo saw him biting into his lower lip from the side. He had to hope Webb wasn’t able to see it too. “It was a complicated situation and I admit we should have handled it better.”

Webb smiled at the answer and it broke the weight on Kyrylo’s shoulders. He didn’t know what kind of rapport Felix had with the officer. He had never witnessed this kind of exchange and there was something the pair knew, maybe some sort of favour or good behaviour award Felix had earned in the past but whatever it was, it was buying them the benefit of the doubt.

“I get it,” Webb said. He pressed a couple of keys and the printer under his desk sprang to life, surprising Kyrylo. He hadn’t realized there was anything else someone could fit in the space and he wondered how Webb had any leg room under the desk, especially considering he was much taller than Kyrylo, an already tall person. “This kind of thing does happen, especially with more of our trainees as you get a little into it, maybe you get lost.” He paused for a moment and bent over to grab the freshly printed sheet out of the printer tray. He slapped it down onto the desk in front of them.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

“Of course,” Webb continued, “none of them have also used overdrive.” The paper was a full report on their weapon usage, noting a period where both their weapons had triggered the unauthorized mode, among other figures and stats Kyrylo didn’t recognize or understand.

“It was a unique circumstance,” Felix answered, back still straight against the chair. Kyrylo could see he wasn’t even touching the back. “We used all available weapons to survive.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to even know about overdrive.”

“You’ll have to speak with Iryna about that.”

“I guess I will.” Webb leaned back again and looked up at the ceiling. He blew out a long breath, cheeks puffed, nearly whistling. “And you said it was just a large cluster of spirits?”

“Yes.” Felix nodded to go along with the answer, his first movement since they sat down.

“And nothing else?” Webb raised an eyebrow.

“No.”

“And what about you?” Webb was forward again, much closer to Kyrylo, his imposing focus switching from Felix onto him in an instant. It was like a spotlight had switched on above, a searing heat suddenly cast on the back of Kyrylo’s neck. “You didn’t see anything?”

“No,” Kyrylo replied, doing his best to keep his teeth from chattering.

“No you didn’t see anything? Or no, you disagree with that statement?” Webb’s eyebrow was up again, amping up the pressure with the simple gesture.

“That’s…I didn’t…didn’t see anything. It was just spirits.”

“Can’t do much about that then.” Webb clapped his hands together and the spell shattered above Kyrylo. He felt like he could breathe again, not realizing he had been holding his breath in those final seconds. “However, IT has a whole process about this and you did violate multiple rules. That’s not nothing. I’ll need you to hand over your weapons so we can run a full diagnostic and your access will remain revoked for the rest of the week, most likely. Consider it a little downtime while we go through all the files, do a review. We’ll bring you back for a whole bunch of mandatory training.” Webb paused and switched his gaze back to Felix. “And I’ll speak with Iryna. Maybe she’ll clear up some confusion about what she’s authorized you to do.”

Felix nodded but didn’t say anything more. Webb pointed towards the door and the pair stood to leave, finding the exit blocked by that same agent, his hands out to collect their weapons. Felix handed them both over since Kyrylo wasn’t technically supposed to have his while in training without Felix’s consent.

And that was it. They were in the broader RIF office, on their normal floor where their normal desks were, where everybody was as people came in for the morning brief and started to check into their computers. There was Fatima at her desk, typing away like it was a normal morning.

“Let’s get out of here,” Felix said, tapping Kyrylo’s back. “Nothing we can do and it’s better if we’re not explaining it to everyone.”

They ducked their heads and scampered out of the building, smiling at a couple of people as they came in. Nobody stopped to ask where they were going; it was normal to assume they were off to grab a coffee or some food and get back before the briefing. All they got were good morning greetings before they were outside.

“What the hell was that?” Kyrylo finally said once they seemed sufficiently far away.

“You didn’t think they could track us?” Felix answered, not turning to acknowledge Kyrylo and checking both ways at the road before crossing to the other side. Kyrylo did his best to keep up, nervous to be jaywalking through a break in active traffic.

“No I…well I didn’t think about it before but I guessed it was possible. I figured there would be something, maybe. I just…what was all that from you? Who was that in there? What are you doing with Officer Vrabec?”

Felix stopped and Kyrylo nearly walked into his back, though the young man didn’t turn around to face him. Then he resumed walking.

“I did what I had to do,” Felix replied. “I know how we’re supposed to talk to superiors, I’m sardonic, not an idiot.”

“Sardonic?”

Felix stopped again. This time Kyrylo saw his hand go to his forehead from behind. That was the typical Felix disappointment. Now would come the belittling. “It’s like cynical, sarcastic, I don’t know. Just look it up.”

“So you’re just not going to answer about Iryna?”

“No.” Felix pulled up to the bus stop and stepped into the shelter. Kyrylo joined him, feeling like he was being pulled out by some undercurrent he was unaware of. He was staring at the person with at least some of the answers and yet it just tugged him along with no way to break through.

“Then what do we do now?”

“I don’t have all the answers, I don’t fucking know. We’re banned from the RIF. Go home. Sit around. Hope all they do is demote us into training for a year or something and they don’t execute you for the whole other fusion thing. That’s my plan.”

“That’s not a plan,” Kyrylo hissed back, his frustration leaking into his confidence and empowering his accusation.

“That means a lot coming from you.” Felix tried his best to look down at Kyrylo but he was an inch shorter so his imposing counterstare lost some impact. “What was your plan again? Just go into the sewers, go meet a Rat King, go fight a Rat King? You know how much easier I could have explained us disappearing for ten minutes? Oh it must’ve been a glitch in the monitor, sir. Oh it was an accidental overstay, my trainee was being an idiot, sir. Extremely believable. Now I’m out here covering for our asses, poorly I’ll add because Webb doesn’t believe either of us, he knows we saw shit, I just don’t know what that means or what he’ll do.”

“Well I still don’t know what to do,” Kyrylo countered, trying his best to stay in this argument he had so clearly lost.

“Fucking figure it out.” The bus pulled up in front of Felix and he pushed past Kyrylo to step into the door. “Just don’t do anything else stupid.” And then he was gone and Kyrylo was left alone in the city.

Not entirely alone. He now felt the weight of the disc clipped onto his pants, the tracking inside of it they were very likely monitoring at all times now. He was probably on a watch list, some little dot on a map that they had tasked someone in the security team with, boring them as he stood at a bus stop he wouldn’t be using.

He really didn’t have a plan though, didn’t know what he was now that he had thrown his entire prior life away to get into the RIF and the RIF had kicked him out. There wasn’t really anything out there, nothing in his apartment either, other than binge-watching all the series he was in the middle of.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and his heart seized for a second in panic. He didn’t really get texts anymore, had blocked out numbers that weren’t RIF contacts. But then he remembered this was probably just his calendar telling him morning briefing was starting and he pulled out his device to clear the notification.

Isabelle: ugh class is already too boring like I want out lol can’t wait to hang out tonight though!!!

Oh right.