The halls of the RIF were shockingly mundane. They weren’t crisp and sparkling the way Kyrylo had envisioned when he had been swept up by a secret organization. They were boring and faded. They had posters on them with wide landscape shots and inspiring words underneath. Some of the aging lights hummed as you passed under them. It was an office building, like the one his dad worked at.
Except now it felt sinister.
Each door they passed by Kyrylo felt his throat seal, waiting for someone to leap out and point a finger at him. Death crime. Death crime. Death crime.
It followed him everywhere, past reception who hardly looked up at him while Felix tapped his keycard to unlock the door. It was with him as they wandered past the changerooms, the storage room with too many punching bags crammed in together, the handful of cubicles he had ever been allowed to visit on this floor where dispatch worked. Everyone here still seemed just as tired as they did the day he met him, clicking through things on computers, answering a phone call every so often, hardly excited by the fact they were combatting things that supposedly didn’t exist.
One of the posters was filled with rules for trainees, rules for engagement and combat. Don’t forget your weapon, don’t engage without it, don’t touch spirits. He traced his fingers over the words. Nothing about fusion because, as Felix explained it, if you followed the first rule you don’t have to know about the next one until you’re a higher rank and finished training and they trust you not to do stupid things like tackle a spirit to save a girl you were supposed to have left behind.
Felix gave Kyrylo a quick glance, a little “shut up, don’t say anything” as they came to a stop next to Fatima. Her overly long false nails clicked away at the keyboard, Kyrylo still wondering how she did it, like he did every time because this was all too normal. Suspiciously normal.
“Fatima,” Felix started, though she still didn’t look up. Sometimes she would toss her waves of dark hair over her shoulder so she could watch them from the corner of her eye, some form of gold earring glittering at them. But other days she would be like this, hardly moving. She blew out a bubble in the gum she was chewing. The pop reverberated in Kyrylo’s skull as he prepared to be executed.
“Fatima?” Felix repeated before sighing. “We’re done our shift but can I take the rookie up to the libraries to show him some stuff? He asks too many questions and I don’t want to answer anymore.”
The typing stopped. Kyrylo’s heart seized and began to sink down into his stomach. Then Fatima leaned over a little and pulled open a drawer, rummaging around before pulling out a lanyard with a keycard on it, as well as the long wooden block with the bathroom key. She held it out to Felix with her eyes still glued to her screen.
“If you keep me from the good bathroom more than an hour,” she said as Felix gingerly withdrew the keys from her grasp, “I’ll kill you.” Kyrylo gulped at the word, feeling the sweat at the bottom of this back.
“Got it,” Felix replied, skipping his usual banter with her. He spun on his heel and grabbed Kyrylo’s arm, yanking him along and helping restart Kyrylo’s legs, which had locked in place. “Can you just be cool?”
“I thought I was?” Kyrylo whispered as they stepped back out into the main hall and shuffled towards the elevators.
“Well you’re whispering like a completely normal person so no. I could feel you breathing behind me. Keep it together.”
“Easy for you to say, you’re not a walking execution notice.”
Felix halted at the elevators and jammed his thumb into the button, spinning on Kyrylo. “I’m pretty confident that by not killing you on the spot when I found you I am also a crime now. And since I didn’t hand you over to the first person we found here, my fate is also pretty sealed so let’s just remember we’re both fucked, ok?”
Kyrylo’s eyes dropped to the floor. “Ok.” The ride up a few floors was painful and silent.
The entire office building was only six floors and a couple of lower levels so it was only a minute even if you were going to the top, where the libraries happened to be. They were dusty and smelled of age yet equally imposing in the totality of forbidden knowledge within them. Even though plenty of the books had browned pages and weathered covers, it had been made clear if a single one left the premises they would be swiftly punished.
Felix started to wander the rows, Kyrylo slinking behind him. There was nobody else up there, as usual, and yet Kyrylo couldn’t shake the anxiety, especially since he had gotten no guidance from Felix on how they were going to reverse what had happened. Or even what they were looking for.
They passed by several more rows, Felix’s finger trailing over different spines. He would mutter to himself and shake his head and keep going. The subjects were all over the place, some of them about the geography of the city, some were identifications of known spirits, a bunch were on weapons and techniques, even more had esoteric titles that Kyrylo couldn’t attach to any subject.
“Shouldn’t we just search it in the system?” Kyrylo finally said. Felix didn’t slow.
“Yes, sure. Let’s type into the monitored computer that maintains search histories our illegal activities. We’ll go to the police station later and ask them how to bury a body.”
“Oh. Right.”
“But you are right,” Felix continued, finally stopping. “This is pretty hopeless. I don’t even know what to try and find or where it would be because I never had to use the library before because why would I. So we’re pretty screwed.”
“Wait what?” Kyrylo was finally breaking through his overwhelming fear of death as this endeavor became increasingly tedious and annoying. He was back to being reminded how much of a lousy tutor Felix had been, disinterested and bored and barely knowledgeable on anything. “This was pointless? You don’t even know what you’re doing?”
“How would I have known?” Felix threw up his hands and began to pace around. “Like this is some regular crime…and let me remind you I’ve only been doing this a year you can’t just…and as if you have some solution? Just going to fix it? No word of thanks for not turning you in!”
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Kyrylo’s could feel his blood boiling. He was doing his best to keep on the lid but months of Felix telling him to just hurry up and abandon his entire life, all of the normalcy he had planned out and been trying to get back, that couldn’t just be ignored. He acted like he had all the answers, this was no big deal, suddenly things get real and he wants to say nobody should expect anything of him?
“Bullshit,” Kyrylo said, feeling the words more than understanding he was saying them. “You can’t get on the ride and then hop back out. You’re supposed to be my trainer, you’re supposed to be responsible, you can’t just let me do whatever and then be upset when it doesn’t go your way. You have to fix this.”
“Oh I have to fix this?” Felix stormed past Kyrylo, bumping against his shoulder. He yanked open the door and Kyrylo decided to pursue him as his rational brain caught up and started to warn him Felix could easily be going to turn him in. “I have to fix this, sure Kyrylo, I’ll fix it, yes let’s fix it.” Felix jammed his finger into the button for the lobby, mashing it several times until the elevator lurched into descent.
He folded his arms and tapped his toe on the floor. Kyrylo eyed him nervously. His initial outburst had emptied the top of his stress. He had bubbled over, water boiling over the edge of a pot and now he felt a little lighter, a little emptier.
And back to terrified.
As soon as the door dinged Felix had shot out of it, Kyrylo in tow, his eyes scanning around for anyone Felix could talk to, anyone who was watching them too closely. Nobody seemed to care.
“Fatima,” Kyrylo mumbled, remembering the other death threat looming over their heads and Felix wordlessly slammed the library key down onto the desk at reception. The person working there was a little startled but didn’t say much more.
Then they were outside, just like that, back in the regular streets of the city, across from the lousy coffee shop with impossibly slow service, the sandwich chain beside it where everyone always got lunch. Other people brushed past them on their own way to wherever and nobody was chasing after them to haul them back inside. Kyrylo breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Morning boys.” Both of them froze, rigid at the deep baritone of Officer Webb, the supervisor for their team. The person who led classes on rules and safety in the field. The one who had shown them his knack for withdrawing his blade at exceptional speed.
“Hello sir,” they replied in unison.
“I trust the training is going well?” Webb continued, stepping past them and pausing in the door. He tilted his head up to the sky, eyes flickering as he processed something. “Yours should be finishing soon, right?” He gestured at Kyrylo, who barely managed to nod in return. “Those months just fly by. And then before you know it, you’ll be training someone. Felix, I expect the report by end of week.”
“Yes, sir.”
Both watched the door shut behind him before Felix resumed stomping away. Kyrylo followed closely, still sweating that Felix was going to do something to expose them, though the further they got from the RIF office the safer it felt. Until Felix suddenly spun around and grabbed Kyrylo’s shirt, yanking him into an alley with him.
“You want answers?” Felix said, his face inches away from Kyrylo’s. It was clear that his rational brain was long gone, caught up in some combination of stress and anxiety and frustration at the situation.
“Y-yes.”
“You think it can just be fixed? Let’s fix it then. We’ll undo the magical spirit fusion thing nobody knows about or understands, right? Let’s go ask a spirit then, I’m sure they’ll know how it works, they’ll figure it out.” Felix pointed at the sparkle in the air, a glimmer representing the rift into the other realm.
Kyrylo wanted to object. They weren’t supposed to pass through any glimmers if they weren’t on an assigned patrol. They weren’t supposed to stay in the spirit realm for an extended period of time, five minutes at a maximum, then you had to do a ten minute cool down before you could re-enter. But they also weren’t supposed to touch a spirit and they had already done that. And he really wanted to call Felix’s bluff and take his cocky ass down a peg.
“Fine, do it.” Kyrylo pushed past him and into the other side, watching the colour start to drain from the world around him. Felix popped in behind him shortly after, shaking his head. There wasn’t anything around, no spirits, just the walls of the surrounding buildings dissolving, becoming blurry as they slowly faded away. It was like they were getting distant but they weren’t moving. It was just darkness around them, though strangely light where they were.
“Do you see how it isn’t that easy?” Felix was almost spitting out the words. He was back to pacing, just like in the library, all the angry energy in his body trying to escape. “Like I don’t think you understand the magnitude of this, like how fucking insane it all is, and that actually I’m the reasonable one for like sort of trying to do something.”
“As if I know what I’m doing? I’m some trainee, remember?”
“Oh what, like two days from graduating and they put you out there with your own partner and whatever. It’s been super fun lying on your forms by the way, marking down that you definitely cut off your past life. At least that’s finally true.”
Kyrylo stared down at his shoes. “Well, I mean…”
“Sure, why not. Who cares. Who cares right?”
There was another ripple around them in the darkness. Kyrylo had never been in the spirit realm this long. This was crossing five minutes and the silver disc clipped to his hip started to vibrate, indicating they needed to exit. Another flicker, like something was coming back into focus after fading away.
“Well we…we should care a little.” Kyrylo tried to look past Felix for the glimmer, a little sliver getting fainter every second. “We’re running out of time and…like I don’t know what happens in here. Can we get stuck?”
Felix shrugged. “Oh I don’t know. Why would I? I'm not the one breaking all the rules.”
“You did lie on the forms.”
“Shove it.”
Silence. The vibration was escalating on Kyrylo’s side, enough he could feel a tingle in his teeth.
Then it was over. The little device on his side was silent. Just him and Felix in a sea of black. The glimmer was just a speck before it too vanished.
Kyrylo opened his mouth but Felix threw up his hand to block him, nearly slapping him given their proximity. “Save it. The disc has an emergency recall, you’re fine. I’m not absolutely insane, but we’ll just sit here until you’ve learned the lesson.”
The world around them rippled again. Something was coming into focus, some buildings, the road under their feet, streetlamps.
Different streetlamps.
Kyrylo knew his city’s lamps. He’d lived there his entire life, had seen all the variations and designs: blocky, modern, cheap. These were different. Ornate, curved, actual glass with a flicker inside, almost as if they had a real fire.
They did have a real fire. Colour was coming back into the world, new colours as the street came to life around him. The streetlamps did have small flames in them, strange green fires that radiated jade light onto the cobblestones making up the road. Buildings around them were made of brick and stone, and not just the odd heritage one preserved for history, every building was bricks and most were only a couple stories high.
But Kyrylo couldn’t see much more because of the intense fog creeping through the streets, wrapping around him as everything became more corporeal, just like when he would return to his own realm.
Kyrylo turned to a very pale Felix, his eyes reflecting the eerie green from the lamps. “Can we say I learned my lesson?”