Julius did his best not to look guilty as his boss glared down at him from her desk. Daphne Bruner was the nominal leader of the BPA. Nominal as the BPA had so much government oversight that they only got anything done because most of the people supervising them were terrified of the sixty-year-old ex-spy turned department head. Julius had known her since she was just a little under thirty back when she first joined the BPA. They were old friends. And right now, his old friend looked like she was trying to make his head explode with her mind.

"What the fuck happened?" Daphne asked in a raspy voice.

"You're going to have to be specific. This entire job has been a cluster fuck."

"Oh well, let me just review for you. Why don't I? You took your new partner for a 'walk' to go and clear out a ghoul infestation without permission."

"BPA charter 164 states that senior agents don't need permission to deal with immediate low-level threats. We only need to call it in before dealing with the issue. Which I did."

"You believed this threat was low-level?" Daphne asked.

"They were ghouls. It doesn't get much easier than ghouls. Hell, your interns could clear out a ghoul nest there a little better than rapid monkeys."

"And yet you encountered a Katakan Vampire?" Daphne countered.

"I had no indications about the vampire; I only discovered it after speaking to Miss Vasquez. By that point, Watkins had already run off despite my explicit instructions to stay put."

"Why didn't you go after Watkins? You could have left Vasquez on her own." Daphne challenged.

"She had been bitten. If she had turned, then we could have had two vampires running around the city. Following BPA protocol, I waited until I could hand her off to someone else. Ideally, Watkins would have done that while I handled the vampire. But he ran off on his own."

"Well, Julius, those are some great points," Daphne admitted.

"Why thank you," Julius said.

"But he's still dead," Daphne said. "Your job was to keep him alive, and you failed to do that, costing the BPA money and man hours."

"No, my job is to kill monsters Watkins's job is to listen, learn and obey my orders. If he disregards those orders and acts on his own, I am not legally responsible for the consequences of his actions, despite the fact that I'm the one who has to clean up after them," Julius said.

He absently wondered when he had gotten so good at deflecting blame. He was pretty sure he would have just accepted the criticism when he first joined the BPA instead of arguing his own case.

"But Watkins isn't the first partner you've lost, is he?" Daphne asked.

Julius felt his hand tighten around the arm of his chair.

"In fact," Daphne continued. "You have lost a total of eight partners in the last six years. Isn't that correct?"

Julius' hand was slowly turning his armrest into sawdust as he crushed the wood under his hand. "Yes. I normally respond to the most dangerous missions, so my partners have the highest fatality rate among the senior BPA agents. I have requested on numerous occasions to work alone due to this fact."

Daphne nodded in sympathy; she said nothing more as she knew this was a sore spot for Julius, something he was grateful for.

Daphne signed.

"Moving on. You failed to kill the vampire resulting in the deaths of at least thirteen people to our knowledge."

"These are volatile situations. I would love to be able to predict how all of my interactions with violent Paranormals will turn out. Unfortunately, at the time, I was more concerned with attempting to save Watkins's life over hunting down the vampire," Julius lied. He knew Watkins was dead the moment he came to the scene. But he also knew these meetings were recorded and could be used against him in the future. That wasn't to say he did anything wrong in this situation, but most bureaucrats didn't differentiate between failure due to negligence and failure due to unforeseen variables. It was so easy to nitpick in hindsight. It was very different in the field.

"And when you attempted to arrest this Mathias, this Ramona killed him. Could you explain to me how you managed to miss the little fact that she was a mana user!? Two days ago, she was completely mundane, and yesterday she was running around a public hospital attacking people like a crazy person."

"Alright, you got me there. I have no idea how she became so powerful so quickly. Her background check came up empty, and nothing in her personal history suggested she had anything to do with the paranormal. I have no idea what happened to her to make her so strong." Julius shrugged.

That wasn't entirely true. He had a few theories on how she could have become so powerful so fast. But until he got the medical report back, it was only speculation.

Daphne grunted as she gave him a stink eye that would make the lesser man wither. Leaning over her desk, she pressed a bony finger to one of the many buttons on her desk that shut off the recording equipment in the room.

"So what's the real reason you called me in here? It certainly wasn't to chew me out for something this small." Julius asked.

He had been curious as to her reasons. While this mission had gone poorly, it was practically a picnic compared to some of the missions he had participated in.

"I have your next assignment, and I need it to go off without a hitch because The board of directors wants you gone and are looking for any excuse to get rid of you," Daphne said.

"WHAT?!" Julius asked. "I've been a part of the BPA since its founding. "

"I suspect that's why the board wants you gone," Daphne noted. "You're reckless and arrogant. You ignore your superiors and BPA protocol when it suits you."

"I never," Julius protested.

"Don't pretend you don't. I know you didn't call in your plans with the ghouls, not that I can prove it with Remi doctoring the records." Daphne shot back at him.

"No comment," Julius said, trying and failing to hide a smile.

"And yet, despite all your flaws, you will jump into any crisis no matter the danger and perform above and beyond what any could reasonably expect of you. It had earned you a lot of goodwill and a lot of influence, and the board doesn't like that. They think of you as a bad influence on the BPA."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Are you sure it's not because of my massive yearly salary? Along with all that hazard pay." Julius countered.

"Well, they do complain about it quite a bit," Daphne admitted. "But this stinks of politics."

"Please, We work for multiple world governments, and our board of directors has people from four different nations, and you, everything is politics." Julius countered. "For all we know, the British government is pushing for this because having a Frenchy as the top agent for the BPA is too big a hit to their national pride."

"Regardless, I need to be seen as punishing you for your perceived actions in Richmond, and I need you to appear to fall in line and be a good soldier who follows orders," Daphne said as she took out a folder. "We've lost contact with one of our research stations up north; its designation is THX 1138. We have no idea what happened up there, and we want you to go up there and investigate." Daphne continued. "Thanks to the storm, this is the only message we've been able to get our hands on. Take a listen."

Pressing a few keys on her computer, a file began to play, its image was extremely distorted and filled with static, but Julius could just make out the shape of a man with a mustache.

"This is Richard Guardsell, Botanist of the Bureau of Paranormal Activity, Station THX 1138. We have been breached. I repeat, the station has been breached. They tour through our defences, in an instance. they already occupy the base, there, just hunting us down at this point." Richard said.

Julius tried to make out words, but the audio kept cutting in and out.

"We had no idea the portal had been taken over from the other side. Doctor Lake and the Alchemist promised us everything would be fine."

"Tell my family I love them. Honey, I love you. I'm sorry, I wish I had taken a teaching job at ---"

The rest of the recording was unintelligible as the visual and audio static became so bad that Julius couldn't tell what the hell was going on. It looked and sounded like someone had tossed the camera into a dry cleaner for all the static.

"Unfortunately, the station's communications appear to be damaged. On top of the blizzard, we were very lucky to get as much as we did."

"It's in a blizzard. Where exactly is this station?" Julius asked worriedly.

"Alaska," Daphne said.

"Shit," Julius swore as he dropped the file in disgust.

"Why? I hate the cold. Can't you send me somewhere else, an active warzone or something." he pleaded.

"Sweet Christ! Stop complaining," Daphne chastised him. "What happened to the man who took a bullet for me."

"Bullets hurt less than frostbite," Julius stated.

Daphne rolled her eyes as she continued. "You're going in there with a team. Get up there and find out what the hell went wrong. Fix it if you can, if you can't erase all the evidence. Daphne said as she gave him a death glare. Julius raised his hands in supplication.

"Alright, alright, I'll do it; what team am I going with," Julius asked.

"C2A 948072," Daphne said.

"The harem," Julius said, smiling.

"Stop calling them that," Daphne snapped at him. "I've already caught other people calling them that; actually, why do you call them that? They're all men."

"Yes, but it's Dicks team, and it pissess him off, and I find that hilarious."

Daphne gritted her teeth but didn't comment as she moved on with the briefing.

"Your mission objective are as follows in this order: You are to rescue the people; in particular, you are to retrieve one Doctor Winter. The Americans want him back more than anything else."

"Who is he?" Julius asked.

"They won't tell me anything other than he is a scientist, they claim that we don't need to know, but I suspect the idiot that I'm dealing with doesn't know anything and is just a mouthpiece for somebody else," Daphne said, clearly annoyed at the lack of information she was getting.

Julius nodded his head in sympathy, but it wasn't the first mission he had to go in blind, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

"After that, grab all of the computer files, burn the place to the ground, then find out what happened up there, and if you deem it necessary, eliminate the problem," she said the last part rather viciously.

"What do they want me to do with the football?" Julius asked curiously.

"Do you mean the nuke in the basement?" Daphne asked.

"I thought we're supposed to call it a football?" Julius quired.

"No, the team did not detonate the bomb. The US head wants you to retrieve that along with the information from the base." Daphne said.

"Any idea what attacked the base?" Julius asked.

"We don't even know if the base was attacked. For all we know, the recent snowstorms up there have knocked out communication long enough to trigger emergency procedures. The file we received is too garbled to understand. You could get there to find the base fully operational."

"I'm not that lucky. What equipment can I expect?" Julius asked.

"Standard winter equipment." Daphne began. "Remi was also able to get us some old flamethrowers and explosives from the Russians. You can take those with you."

"I'll be sure to reward Remi for that. Any idea what was the station researching?"

"All classified," Daphne said. "Despite being a BPA research outpost in American territory, it's mostly controlled by the Americans, and they won't tell us what they were doing up there."

"Did you talk to Remi?" Julius asked. He knew that Daphne didn't like his little angel, but her abilities as a hacker made her invaluable.

"I did," Daphne admitted, annoyed. "There's no digital file; whatever this is, the Americans don't want anyone else knowing about it."

"And yet they want us to deal with it." Julius sniped.

"Officially, it is BPA property." Daphne shrugged. "If they kept us out of the loop at this point, then they would have to take sole responsibility for whatever they're doing up there."

"Which would put the Americans in violation of the Treaty of York. Lovely, What else am I'm I going to have to do? Walk through a blizzard as well?"

Daphne chuckled. "Fortunately not. We've timed your flight, so you'll be coming in just after the storm. We can fly you in close, but after that, you’re going to have to go in on dogsled."

"Alright, alright, any chance this connected to the Alnune?" Julius asked, leaning forward as he tried to change the subject.

Daphne shook her head.

"Honestly, I think your vampire might have been a bit sick in the head. I've talked with everybody I can think of. There have been no signs of alien invasions, no crash sights, no prophecies of doom from our seerers." Daphne said.

"So we have nothing," Julius said.

"Not quite nothing," Daphne said. "We have several rumours of something going to happen, but as far as we can tell, nobody is taking it seriously. At this point, it is just that, a rumour." Daphne stated.

Julius shook his head as he got up to leave. "Mathias lived for almost a century. He was careful and methodical. I find it hard to believe he would upturn his entire life over a rumour."

Daphne looked at him sharply.

"You think this is a credible threat?"

"Call it a hunch," Julius said as turned to leave Daphne's office.