Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s a spider in the corner.

I notice it as soon as I walk into the office, scurrying in my peripheral vision like a floater or a cockroach across the drywall. I always turn my head in its direction to look at it, sometimes hard enough to make my neck hurt. Usually it’s nothing—just some spot in my vision, a pale reflection of the light, something that’s not a bug settling into place. Sometimes it is a cockroach, though. Sometimes it’s a spider in the corner, weaving its web or rolling up its meal in a silken blanket.

“Take a seat,” Chuck says. He’s already sitting at his desk after leading me inside. It takes a moment for my brain to adjust to the situation, looking away from the spider to him and then the chair. Finally, I take my hat from my head to hang off the back of the first chair, sitting down in the second. I hold my messenger bag comfortably on my lap and cross my left ankle over my right knee, polite and demure as can be. Doesn’t matter if pain slices its way across my backside. My comfort is of little relevance here.

The way the Inspectorate General works is you kill someone one too many times, and they send you here for some kind of pep talk to put you back in order before usually sending you on your way. Or you’re racist. Or you’re too sexist for the RCM to turn its back on you because you’ve received too many complaints. It used to be Helen I saw whenever I came here. The Inspectorate General likes giving first offenders to women, probably because they think that women can stroke the sense of morality and ethics that a lot of officers tend to lack. Gentle disappointment, like you’ve upset your own mother. It probably works for some people.

That was way back in the day for me, though. I don’t see Helen anymore—not often—except for sometimes when I come in and she’s chatting with a coworker, or moving around the office to deliver some paperwork to a supervisor. We smile at each other—oh, my god, Helen, I say, it’s been so long. We shake hands and chat, she asks about life, I ask about hers, oh, you got promoted, that’s amazing, I’m so proud of you. We say things we don’t mean like we should get brunch together at some point—both of us are too poor for brunch—and then my handler gets impatient enough to roll his eyes, grabbing my elbow to pull me along. Bye, Helen, I say, tipping my head, can’t stay long, I’m in trouble again.

Now I’ve got a man sitting across the desk from me—a goddamn man, because apparently the rat squad gives their more serious cases to men when it becomes clear that the feminine wiles of a lady don’t do it for people like me, it’s a man’s job to take the load off her hands and put me in my proper place. What they don’t know is I don’t care if the person sitting across the desk from me is a man or a woman. The only thing it means is they took away someone I like for someone who hates me, and that just incentivizes me more to make his life a living hell.

Chuck stares at me, beady eyes watery and sad, having mastered the look of a disappointed father. He’s an old man. Grey hairs, worn-leather skin, his face so attracted to gravity that his cheeks sag with ancient rivers. One of the oldest men that I’ve ever met, and one of his ears is missing from what I can only assume to be the Revolution way back in the day. I always wonder if it was something similar that happened with Damian Latrec, one of my subordinates, though I’ve never asked. There’s a photo of his dead wife facing him on the desk.

I stare back at him until I get bored, turning my head back to the spider in the corner.

“John,” he starts, but I cut him off, turning back to face him.

“Can we just get this over with? I’ve been on my feet all day and I have a report to write at the station.”

It’s a lie, in that it’s an understatement. I’ve barely gotten any sleep since the night before last. Barely had the time to eat anything, either. The most shut-eye I’ve been able to find was about four hours of gentle reprieve at my desk nearly ten hours ago, and that was rudely interrupted somewhere early enough in the second sleep cycle that I woke up feeling worse. But it’s the high point of summer after being freshly transferred back over to criminal investigations, so it’s not like I didn’t expect this.

Chuck sighs and pinches his eyes between ancient fingers. Scars are splattered over his knuckles like the pale shards of a hundred mirrors. If I squint and tilt my head the right way, I might be able to see tiny bits of reflective glass, melded and merged into his skin, shining like glitter. “...Okay. So tell me why you thought it was a good idea to shoot a teenager.”

He had a gun. Pointed it at me when I went to chase after his adult friends. Fired, missed. He would’ve gotten the opportunity to fire again if I hadn’t, and by that point, the Madre cronies got the message that if I wasn’t afraid to shoot a kid, then I wasn’t afraid to kill them, either.

I wasn’t, by the way. Three dead. Two in the hospital, including the kid. They didn’t find a gun on him, because of course they didn’t. Somebody picked it up while I was shooting at an MC a couple streets down.

That was two days ago.

I shrug. “I don’t know,” I say, leaning back in my chair with a crooked little smile. “I felt evil, I guess.”

Chuck’s gaze darkens and he curses, says something like Goddamn it, McCoy, and after a while turns to write down in his paperwork. I look at the spider. It looks almost like one of those giant red ants, so much so you would be forgiven for mistaking it for one at a distance. Except giant red ants don’t hover in the air like that. Eventually Chuck addresses me again, demands to know what really fucking happened, so I tell him.

He doesn’t believe me, of course. Why would he? There’s no gun on file.

So for a long time, I sit there, like a kid in a principal’s office, getting my ass handed to me by a man old enough to be my father who was a father himself before his children died in the People’s Pile. I pretend like I’m listening but don’t have the gall to pretend like I feel guilty about it. After all, I’m just doing my job, and I’m very good at waiting out shit like this. I’ve had a lot of practice in it. A moth flutters into the web, and the ant-spider shuffles over to it. Somewhere in the middle of wrapping it up all nice and cozy for later, Chuck pushes a sheet of paper across the desk.

I turn to blink at it, then at him. Wordlessly, I take it, not even looking away from his smoldering, wet eyes while it’s folded into a rectangle and then a square and then settled neatly into my denim pocket.

“Get the fuck out, John.”

My lips twitch into a smile I neither expect nor want. It’s a nervous tick—I think—that unfortunately has gotten me into trouble many more times than it’s gotten me out. Man like me, I understand why people tend to take it the wrong way. It does seem like I’m making a joke out of everything important. Based on the way Chuck’s expression darkens further, I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m being smug about it, getting away with my bullshit as easily as I have, as easily as I’ve been. Like I’m laughing in his face.

I’m not, really, but I’m not going to tell him that.

I make myself get up slowly, ignoring the cracking in my hip and the ensuing discomfort that trails its way down my thigh and through my muscles, and put my country hat back on my head. It’s deliberate, this slowness. Something that tells him that he hasn’t won over me, and I haven’t quite lost yet. Have a good day, I tell him with a nod. Then I give another nod to the spider-ant, too, up in the corner. Have a good day, Jerry, I think. Enjoy your food.

I must have really pissed him off, I think. When I check my watch, it reveals to me the sneaky truth in the high sun that only about forty-five minutes have passed. Forty-five minutes spent, wasting my time in the same office I do practically every month, hearing the same bullshit so often that I know all the words by heart and know which ones to tune out. Morality and ethics and law. You can’t just kill people for no reason. He says it like I go out of my way to find excuses to do so when the reality is I don’t. If fewer people pulled guns on me, maybe I wouldn’t be so quick to pull my own first.

It was only forty-five minutes, though, which surprises me. Usually these tirades last about two hours, or one and a half. Forty-five minutes, huh. I think either he was having a particularly rotten day or he got sick of me. Or maybe there are so many other cops losing their shit in the summer heat that his schedule’s too full to deal with me proper.

Either way, I take a few minutes in the washroom, splashing water over my face and scratching antsily at several days’ worth of stubble. It itches against my skin, feels wrong on my fingertips. I wash my hands afterwards, scrubbing dirt and grime. I go so far as to peel off my jacket, roll up my sleeves, and lather myself up to my spot-scarred elbows. The water’s lukewarm and then runs hot. Once that’s done, I run it lukewarm again in preparation for the oppressive heat outside.

I look at myself in the mirror and pause. I always look tired, I think. My eyes more often than not have that half-lidded, vague vibe to them, something that makes it seem like I’m rarely, if ever, paying attention to anything around me. ‘Aloof’ isn’t the right word. ‘Disinterested’ fits the bill more. Right now, though, it looks worse—dark and puffy circles form underneath my eyes, and they feel filmy underneath my fingertips. Forget about the developing scruff of a beard. Even without that, I’d look like shit. This is the kind of face that’d make a man want to punch his own reflection in the mirror.

I don’t punch myself, though. Not because I’m a better man than that, but because I don’t want to spend time picking glass out of my hand and dealing with blood for the rest of the day. Instead I rap my knuckle gently against the mirror, lean in, and look myself dead in my tired, grey-blue eyes.

“Dio del santo,” I scoff. “Fuck happened to you.”

I do it all over again—face, neck, hands, arms. It’s the closest thing to a shower that I’ve had all week. When I’m done, I drink straight from the tap, fill up my flask, and leave to grab some lunch.

There’s a Frittte a couple blocks down on the way back to Precinct 41, close to where a bow collector comes to a screeching halt, sparks falling and settling from the connector rail above. Usually after dealing with the Inspectorate General—or after the Inspectorate General is done dealing with me, depending on your perspective, I guess—this is where I go to grab a quick bite to eat on days where I’m going back to hitting the pavement. The tram’s just too convenient, even if I’m generally not a fan of mechanical transportation.

By the time I reach Frittte, my flask is empty again, I’m sweating like the pig that I am, and my brain feels woozy and muggy. I muddle my way through the shelves, mingling here and there and—oh, God, this is exactly the reason why you don’t send a hungry man to the supermarché. There’s just too many options to choose from, and I find myself stuck between a rock and a hard place because some of them, I know, taste good, some of them are filling, and most of them, I don’t actually have the pocket change to afford.

It’s as I’m deciding between a tuna fish sandwich and a meat-stuffed pumpkin bun that I hear him; slick sidewinder voice winding its way toward me after a faint commercial break in the otherwise-empty Frittte. I haven’t heard more than a few words out of him in years, but it’s imprinted in the back of my brain, knowledge awoken like some zombified sleeper agent built to kill when all the memory wants to do is rot in some long-forgotten corner.

“Welcome back to Channel 8, the only radio station in Revachol that gives you the news as it actually is without any beating around the bush. I’m Guillaume Bevy…”

“And I’m Gareth Morrand,” says Gareth Morrand, but I don’t care about him one bit, already tilting my head away, already pressing my fingers against the back of my ear and massaging to ease the staticky ache.

“And today, we’ve got a couple of breaking news stories that I’m sure everyone will be interested in—some of them in the papers, most of them not. As usual, we’ll be taking phone calls at the end of each segment to hear from our listeners. So, if you’re interested in that, keep this number in mind…”

I glance up at the counter, where the Frittte clerk, a teenage girl enjoying her summer vacation slaving away at the register, doesn’t even look up from the magazine she’s surely paid to read. She’s not paying attention to me in the very least.

But I’m hesitant—my hands don’t want to work like I want them to, even though it’d be easy to unclip my bag, slip a packet of food in, then just go up there and buy a pack of cigarettes. Didn’t find anything else? she’d ask, and I’d say no even though I can hear the plastic crinkling against my side. Aren’t you hot? she’d ask, looking at my jacket; Yeah, a little, but. I point at the rectangle stitched on my shoulder and smile. You know. The uniform.

“...heard that McCoy’s in with Internal Affairs again soon,” Bevy continues (I glare at the ingredient list in my hands, squinting through my headache), “because of his most recent shoot-out.”

“What’s the news about that kid, by the way?” Morrand asks after a moment. “Is he still in critical care?”

“Yeah.” I can almost see Bevy nodding along to it now, sunglasses blurred and polluted with the cheapest cigarettes you can get your hands on. Bevy and Morrand, alone in some kind of room, with a window open to let out the smoke. Or maybe not, maybe that’s not good soundproofing practice. “The shot just narrowly missed his femoral artery. According to the medical records, though, just a couple millimeters up, he probably would’ve bled out by the time paramedics came to the scene. He’ll be fine. One less notch under the Archetype’s belt.”

Morrand barks out a laugh while I shake my head. Typical of them to even think that I care about those notches. I never do—never did. I’ve long outgrown them, stopped dotting my ID with the number after I lost it the first time and had to get a replacement. Now the only thing I count is years. Cases. That’s the only thing that matters anymore in any line of work, I think. The only reason to take pride in the number of deaths you’re directly responsible for is to boast about how little blood you have on your hands.

I can’t boast about that. So I don’t really say anything, unless it’s to insinuate that I’m a danger to those around me. Unless I’m asked. Then it’s, oh, sixteen-oh-two, or something, I don’t know. It just feels like a nice number. I like how it forms on my mouth, don’t give a fuck how accurate it actually is. It’s been sixteen-oh-two for a while, according to me.

And then they talk about the Inspectorate General, about how the most I’ll probably get is a slap on the wrist and a send-off, about how the Inspectorate General is really just a stern, parental talking-to that just sends ne’er-do-well cops along their way. They’re kind of right, but it isn’t for lack of trying, I want to correct, some cops don’t care and the rat squad’s just tired of dealing with them. But I don’t because it’s not my place to say. It’s not as if they’d even hear me if I did. It’d just fall on deaf ears.

Besides, I wouldn’t want to give Bevy the privilege of inviting conversation.

They’re talking about donations, now, for one of their programs—the one that’s for people struggling with medical bills caused by the RCM’s weaponized incompetence. The kind of money that goes to people like that gangster kid I shot two days ago. I put down the pumpkin bun and fish out the folded piece of paper, unwrapping it carefully. How much of a slap on the wrist is it this time? Community service, or…

I huff out a laugh, stomach clenching, and shake my head down at it. It’s equal parts shock and dismay and the slow, steady crawl of this-may-as-well-happen. Resignation. With careful fingers, I fold up the paper into a rectangle, and then a neat little square, then slide it back as calmly as I would if I were putting away a grocery list. As calmly as a hungry man can stow a three hundred reál fine away in his pocket.

To help pay for the gang kid’s medical bills. As if it’s my fault the gangster kid had a gun and, magically, it disappeared.

I don’t know what to do.

Leave, I guess. Steal something from the work fridge. Go to sleep for a couple more hours before writing out a report, going home, and scrounging for shit to sell off to pawn shops or neighbors. Three hundred reál. I can’t afford this.

I stare at the shelves for a while like I’m looking for anything in particular, pick up the pumpkin bun again, and glance over at the cashier. She still isn’t looking at me, too busy nodding off to whatever her magazine is. And I could so easily slide this into my bag—again, there’s nothing stopping me—but I can’t because there is. 

It’s G-Bevy, radio-show voice smooth over the sound waves, saying my name and broadcasting my existence for the world to see. And it’s like he’s speaking to me directly, expecting me to respond, like we’re in a recording booth and I’m sitting across from him. Next to him. Whatever. Like he’ll call me out, right here and now, the second I put this food in my bag, and half of Revachol will have another crime to attribute to me. Not just the resident serial killer of the bloody murder station, but a petty thief, too. Call security to see me out. Have you no pride as a cop? And on and on it goes.

I can imagine Bevy saying, and oh, look, the first donation is 300 reál from John McCoy! Guess he felt guilty about it, after all. Guess what, McCoy, it’s not enough. What about the other people you injured? What about the people you killed?

God, that’s the last thing I want to deal with right now.

I put the pumpkin bun back where I got it and limp my way back to the counter, careful not to let my hip roll too badly or else it’ll pop, pop, pop. It might even be painful. I don’t know. I’d like to take some drouamine to numb out the fuzzy edges of it. Numb out the fuzzy edges of my nerves, too. Smooth it all out like uneven beach sand. But I don’t like taking painkillers when I haven’t eaten recently, too concerned about fucking up my liver or my stomach for something like that. So when she asks if there’s anything I need, I point out my cigarettes instead.

These ones? she asks. No, I say, leaning over, the ones next to it. And as I do, I can see that stupid little radio, tinny cheap speaker settled next to where her ankle had been mere moments ago. Distinct voice, the knowledge of what the voices are speaking through—it makes it difficult to drown it out. Shootout outside an abandoned warehouse by the pier, nice, cool, fucking whatever. These? she asks. I nod, leaning back. Yes, those.

I take out a fiver, toss it onto the counter, and it’s just after the loud rattling of a cash register that I hear Bevy’s voice say, “Two thousand guns don’t just go missing along with two officers.”

Oh.

No.

No, I suppose they don’t.

I stare at the space above the radio, static crackling in my brain, trying to listen for more info. But the register closes just as loudly, and Bevy waves it off with a chuckle, like he’s fully aware that he’s got my attention and is teasing me for it. I’m not getting anything else out of him, goddamn it, piece of shit.

“Here’s your change,” she says, then glances over her shoulder; hears the radio and chuckles. “Oh, yeah, Bevy. I like him. Don’t you think he has such a sex-y voice?” She playfully draws out the word with the shuffling of her shoulders, leaning her arms back against the counter. I blink and glance at her. Try for a smile.

“Yeah,” I say, taking my cigarettes. “I guess. Have a nice day.”

I light a cigarette before I round the corner and duck into the shallow part of this Frittte’s neighboring alleyway to take out my gun, making sure that it’s loaded. When it is, I count out the bullets—one, two, three—then slide it back into my shoulder holster, where it’s safe and hidden under my jacket. I don’t realize that I forgot my change until I’m already walking to the tram. Don’t realize how badly my hip hurts until I’ve boarded.

Chapter Text

The building’s smaller than I expect it to be. I’m not sure why—it’s one of those off-to-the-side kinds of places made of red bricks and speckled with dirt. Wild spray paint that the landowner must’ve given up on washing away sometime ago is caked onto the side walls: It feels like it was rented to the local grafitto artists on this side of Boogie Street. Colorful and messy, weirdly nice to look at. The front wall’s almost all windows, heavily tinted, the tiny parking lot half-full. It barely even has a sign. If it weren’t for the tall iron tower climbing up into the sky, the satellite crown sending its waves to thousands of listeners in Jamrock and a quarter of Faubourg, I probably would’ve mistaken the Channel 8 radio station for just another nameless restaurant worthy of inspection.

But this isn’t a restaurant, and I’m not here for a health inspection, so I push my way through the door. The inside is dark, an old ceiling fan rotating slowly to halo a flickering yellow light. All it does is gently stir the stale, hot air, letting it slip through my clothes and itch my skin. I can’t tell if it’s warmer inside than it is outside. The sharp scent of a vanilla-soap candle floats up my nose and cradles me in a sweet, tired embrace.

I ignore it and walk—no, saunter. Like I have some kind of natural purpose and pride to my name—up to the receptionist, who’s a gothy, pretty little thing with a shock of dyed black hair. It either doesn’t agree with the humidity or it’s a bad dye job, so it just frizzes up. She blinks up at me and lifts up her head from the phone, black lips purring out the words “Just a moment, sweetie,” before I even get the chance to lean against the desk.

The breath I let out is impatient, sighing, almost a scoff, but I don’t go out of my way to take out my wallet or point out the rectangles neatly stitched onto my denim jacket. She’s talking on the phone, and it’s rude to interrupt, even if the soles of my feet prickle with the desire to get this done, get it done, get this shit done and move on to something else. Nerves tap out a nascent tune against the wood through the tips of my fingers, long before my leg begins to bounce and shake in an attempt to let out some of this horrible energy.

I don’t even count out the seconds. I’m a patient man like that. Instead I lean against the desk and don’t really listen in, tapping my fingernails, shaking my leg. My other hand thumbs at the strap of my messenger bag, slung securely over my shoulder. I don’t mind waiting, most of the time. I’m a very patient man.

What does get to me is the agony in my hip, the sweat, the sticky denim clinging to my arms. It prickles and rubs against fresh scabs and sensitive skin and my half-buttoned dress shirt. My cuffs have ridden up my forearms inside of the sleeves, and my jacket pulls at the sweat on my back, tucked even closer by this aching strap. It’s claustrophobic, see, makes the dark room feel darker and closer together than it already is. Makes it tight, like it’s not just the oppressive heat and pounding heart that’s making it hard to breathe.

I distract myself by glancing around. There’s chairs against the walls and the window. A small bookshelf in the corner. A neat little fish tank that looks like it’s empty but still filters bubbles that hum in the room, casting a blue light. There’s an aquarium in Grand Couron, I know, that has tanks a million times larger, some a hundred shades darker and many a thousand shades lighter. Corridors of jellyfish in rooms dimmer than this provided most of the light (or maybe the UV made them seem to glow more than they actually did), framing the passageway to a wall of swimming sea creatures like aqua fatuus. Small sharks and discus fish. Insulindic tuna. Manta rays. Oceanic shit.

My brother oohed and ahhed at the petting exhibit, reaching into the shallow pool of water to touch the backs of stingrays and horseshoe crabs. I made him cry once when I said the only reason there were no whales was because all the whales were dead at the bottom of the ocean, and the actual sea creatures were feasting off of their corpses, because I thought oceanic graveyards were cool and wanted to talk about them. Maybe I also felt like being an asshole, I don’t know. Mama had me crying before I could tell him all about it. Papa’s hand probably tingled about as badly as my ass even though I thought I’d outgrown the need to be disciplined by then, all just to wipe that smirk off my face.

This little aquarium, though, it has no life at all. No fish, no shrimp, no algae, just a sanitised tank with fake rainbow gravel and fake pink plants that drift in a manufactured cocoon of sanitation. The kind of place that dreams of whale fall, of the kind of ecosystem that subsists off of rot and death, but mankind is too stupid and obsessed with perfection to allow it to happen. So it’s just blue. Blue water, pink plants, rainbow gravel. Never had the chance to be a little grey graveyard.

I miss it, really. The aquarium, the time with my brother. Not the spanking. I’ll go back there someday, I told myself long ago, even though I hadn’t been able to afford anything similar for years by that point. Maybe now I shouldn’t, because who knows how much has changed, how empty it might be? No, it’s better not to dig up the past. All the better to keep it preserved, my dear, picture-perfect in my memory. It doesn’t matter how bad it was—it could’ve been worse, could be worse now. It doesn’t change if you don’t look at it. Don’t even bother going to the funeral to pay your respects. No one cares.

I look away from it eventually, mind foggy and vague, and find a potted succulent on the counter. As I reach out to touch it, Miss Secretary hangs up the receiver to tell me it’s plastic, sweetie, as if the texture and hollowness and everything about it doesn’t give it away.

“Oh,” I say, my hand lingering. As I pull away from it, I don’t tell her that succulents are easy to take care of, actually, and very hardy, and so why bother with this plastic shit anyway when the real thing could liven the place up so much more? Uncle used to tell me that keeping a couple of plants alive is a lot easier than it seems—people like to overcomplicate it, which is what apparently makes it so impressive.

Instead I tag on at the end, “Cool,” and try not to glance at the potted plants nestled in the corners, wondering whether those are all fake, too.

She perches her cheek against the palm of her hand, her makeup smudged from sweat. I can see a couple of freckles on her cheek. Young wrinkles, pretty little laugh lines. The quiet fan at her desk gently blows her hair in little wisps. Some part of me flutters at sweetie and wants to hear it again, to get close enough to smooth back the strands of hair sticking to her forehead.

The smarter part of me cuts my losses before they can develop, amputating the limb before it can grow ugly, all too eager to make it bleed. I’ve started to learn that it’s easier to do it that way, when it’s too young to even breathe. You don’t even get a chance to develop a real attachment with it. It doesn’t mean that it makes you want it any less. What matters is it’s easier to cauterise, before another monstrous hydra hand can sprout from the stump and reach out for someone to hold without knowing how to hang on. No one gets to bleed but me. That’s a good thing.

“Can I help you?”

“My name’s John McCoy,” I say, finally reaching into the inner pocket of my jacket to produce my badge. My wallet flips open—habit—and I hold it out for her to look, not to take. “I work at the 41st Precinct under the criminal investigations division as a lieutenant.”

She does a double take before she even puts on her glasses and leans in to look. There it is, I think, there goes the dream of lips pressed against my neck, leaving a smudgy tattoo to cradle… a bite, or a kiss? I don’t know. I say farewell to the notion and offer her an apologetic smile, knowing now that she knows who I am, and what I am, and what that means. And I know that she knows that I know. I suppose it’s impossible not to, when one works here. And on and on it goes.

“Okay, sir,” she says, nodding slowly. She drops the sweetie, confirming the dream is dead. “What, uh—what business do you have here, officer?”

“Guillaume Bevy,” I answer, flipping my wallet shut and sliding it back in its proper place. “I need to speak with him.”

“He’s in the recording booth…” Miss Secretary throws an uncertain glance at the door beside the counter, which doubtless leads to a hall that feeds into a neat little row of rooms. Recording booths, or whatever.

For a moment, I wonder what they look like, how effective their soundproofing is, what kinds of fancy little machines they use. It’s probably more complicated than the machine Jules uses to redirect and answer calls, flipping tiny little switches and pushing buttons over flashing lights. They probably have the budget. Microphones, probably; a table. Some way or another to play ads. I don’t know how any of it works: I’ve never been in a place like that. God willing, I never will.

“Could you let him know I’m here?” I’m not impatient when my fingertip taps the counter, no. That’s just the nervous energy, wound up, searching for a place to be grounded into. A listless tap, tap, tap to float my mind on. “At the very least.”

“Is it important, Mr. McCoy?”

I don’t say anything. My answer is in my raised eyebrows and the slight cock of my head, the way my body goes suddenly, deathly still aside from the slow and steady tap, tap, tap of my finger. Tapping out twice a second, every second, yet not counting each one. I stare her in the eye until she swallows thickly, mascara fluttering over hazel eyes, when she reaches hesitant fingers to the phone. “I’ll call them,” she says, and I smile and nod, cradling my chin in my arms while I wait, thanking her softly.

It’s impossible to clearly make out the voice through the static—or maybe it isn’t, but settling down like this, my brain’s too tired and fried from work to parse through much of it. Thirty-eight hours of work straight, with only four of those being dedicated to a pitiful nap at your desk, will do that to a man. So I can’t make out much from the other end, and my brain floats in and out of what she’s saying, fluttering between here and the eighteen cases nestled against my side, the ten at home, but I get the gist of it, I think.

John McCoy is here to see Mr. Bevy, she says.

He says it’s important, she says.

All right, she says, I’ll let him know.

And she hangs up, metal receiver clicking loud. I blink and raise my head from my drowsy half-slumber, stomach clenching, mouth watering. “He says you’ll have to wait until after recording’s done,” she says, apologetic. “You can take a seat or come back later.”

My lungs feel cold. I squint at her, suspicious and weary. “Wait, didn’t you say it’s important?”

“I did, sir.” Miss Secretary nods, avoiding my eyes. “The producer said—”

“The producer?” I press, standing up straight. I know my tone is sharp and tight. I don’t mean it to be. I promise. My pulse is just making me dizzy, or maybe it’s the hunger or the pain, or maybe it’s the exhaustion. Am I dehydrated? When did I last drink water? “Did you tell Bevy himself?”

“He’s already recording for the day,” she explains, reaching across the desk and into some compartment that’s beneath me, some private hidey hole that I’m not allowed to be privy to. The twisting tattoo of a skull trails its way up her arm, lined with bones, with may bells and ribbons that snake around her skin. May bells are typical, boring flowers for tattoos, but it’s far cooler than an empty aquarium tank and fake potted plants.

It’s also mildly alarming. Suddenly ‘sweetie’ isn’t really so nice.

I hear a click underneath me. For a flighty second I think she’s called security. Then the slick voice of Guillaume Bevy winds its way into the air, smooth and boozy with smoke so thick I can already smell its rank stench from the noise alone.

He’s starting on another headline—no, he’s in the middle of another story, something about a riot starting up on the edge of Coal City, be safe, everybody—and Gareth Morrand—Traffic Cop extraordinaire—is talking back at him like he knows anything about being an actual cop. His voice is stuttery and slow at first before it picks up pace. I wonder if they heard the news that I’m here. I don’t know if that’d be good or bad, for Bevy to know that he’s managed to worm his way under my skin.

Miss Secretary looks up at me and gestures to the hidden radio, eyebrows raised, like she’s saying, See? What do you want me to do about it? I click my tongue and pat the counter, lean away, and take off my hat to card my fingers through my sweaty, greasy hair. It hurts to do so, pulling against my scalp. It makes me want to scratch it just to try to work the feeling out even though it’ll only make it worse. God, I miss when I was a child and my hair was soft, healthy, brown. I just don’t know how to get back to that anymore. I don’t know.

For a moment, I scrutinise the tank, waging war with myself and temper and patience (which is a virtue I have, I think).

I already lost the game of pride and power by coming here the moment I heard Bevy’s word on the radio. This alone is an admission of guilt, that there’s something to the story he can hold over me. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have reacted so rashly—I should have waited, maybe a day or two at least, cornered Bevy at the entrance of his workplace before he could get settled in. Give him a physical example of what fucking around will have him finding out.

Instead I’m here, and if I leave, he’s giddy with the knowledge and satisfaction that there’s something deeper to the story, something worth looking into without knowing its danger. If I stay, I’m subservient to his whims, his pretty little bitch sticking around to stroke his ego. I can’t barge in and drag him out, kicking and screaming—not if I want to maintain the peace, not if I want to keep any kind of semblance that his investigation isn’t as serious as it actually is. That’s probably exactly what he wants me to do—bust down the door, cause a ruckus in my desperation to fuck him over for answers at any cost.

Yeah, that’s right, John. Cause mass panic and hysteria over live radio, like the pretty little rabbit you are. Captain would love that.

The other option for that would be I walk in there, into that recording studio. I’m all nice and calm. G-Bevy’s face breaks into a smile, he takes off his headphones or whatever, and suddenly announces my surprise presence to his adoring fans who loathe me. Suddenly I’m there for an interview I’ve been dodging over half my career, and he gets to ask me all the questions that’ve been burning a hole in his back pocket for the past fifteen or whatever years. It lasts hours, however long his show goes on for (he surely has a lot of questions, accusations, shit to pass the time), figures out what buttons to push to get me to erupt anyways. Audiences love reactionary anger, after all, or so I’ve heard.

Or maybe he takes pity on me and sends me off after thirty minutes or so, satisfied that he’s had his fill and thoroughly uninterested with either whatever I need to tell him or need him to tell me. It needs to be—has to be—off the record. He wins the game of cat and mouse; the appeal of the chase is gone. That’s what matters to him.

Fucked. I’m fucked.

I’ve fucked myself.

This is what happens when you’re an RCM officer in the high heat of summer, operating in the busiest section of Revachol during the busiest time of the year, being handed fifteen cases a week and working your ass off to finish two by Saturday. Three, if you’re lucky. More get dropped than they get finished. Tempers flare in summer, ACs stop working, people get murdered or killed or found dead on a nearly daily basis. You’ve got pavement to hit and the pavement’s so hot it burns through the soles of your boots. God forbid you struggle not to get heat stroke, or can barely afford food nowadays, or have to help manage the busiest wing on top of that because you’re the most qualified for the job. Probably. Maybe.

God forbid you’ve got plans for retribution stacked on top of that.

God forbid you’ve had a fucking news reporter breathing down your neck and jacking off every time he gets to harass your career for over a decade. God forbid that reporter find out about the revolutionary plans and fucks everything over, because reporters are always on the hunt for the next big scoop and just love chasing the next big high.

I will never give him the privilege. Not willingly.

But now I have to.

I pinch the bridge of my nose and clench my eyes shut, groaning, fingers squeezing against my tear ducts, but it’s not because I’m about to cry or because I can feel the pressure building up in the back of my throat. It’s because I’m angry and frustrated. Yeah. Yet I lift my nose to take a deep breath—breathe, recollect—and tilt my head back to Miss Secretary, pointing at the fish tank.

“Are there any fish?”

She blinks, follows my finger, and seems confused at the sudden change of subject. “I don’t think so,” she says, slowly. “Not since I’ve started working here, at least.”

“And how long ago would that be?”

“Three years.” Miss Secretary pauses, reconsiders. “...Three and a half.”

“Wow.” I look back at the fish tank, staring at its blue, abyssal artificiality. It’s just an empty husk of a home made for a small community of fish—neon tetras, maybe, or a couple of prawn, or even some snails. I shake my head, putting my boia hat back on. “Okay.”

I don’t mention how, as lonely it’d be, a single betta fish might like to call it home. I don’t even speculate about what kind of fish it was originally installed for, if the installers even had any idea at all. Maybe it was just built to be a flashy cemetery that’d never receive any bodies or love.

She’s watching me.

Call me paranoid, but I know she is. Glancing up from time to time, keeping tabs on me. Writing down notes to give away—notes with valuable information, cataloguing my movements and my very presence. From time to time, someone comes in or goes out, and every time, I glance up to watch her hands. She says such sweet things as, Hello, sweetie, or Have a good day, cher, or See you next week, love. “Cher” gets to me the most. It hurts my heart and fills me with a nauseous longing. It’s being used, specifically, to hurt me.

Call me paranoid, but I grab a book from the bookshelf after some time of standing there. I don’t know how long. Long enough that I start to worry about whether or not I look awkward, standing there. Long enough that every moment I shift my weight, I feel the sharp pain bubbling in the back of my throat.

I go to the fish tank and scrutinise it closely, because maybe there is some microscopic organism in there—some water bear, or a stray piece of algae—but I can smell the chlorine stench and know from that alone: This truly is a glass box of artificial nothing. I go to the corners and touch the plants, rubbing the leaves between my fingers, running fingertips against their edges. I listen to their plastic rustling, inspecting for flaky brown tips. Smell the hot, stale air.

She watches me, looking for the little signs just like I know they are looking for the little signs outside, making my body itch, making it twitch. She hungers for the contents of my bag—my bag, these cases, mine. She cannot have them. No one can. I hold onto it just a little bit tighter, just to make sure.

Eventually I grab a book from the bookshelf. Don’t pay attention to what it is. I sit down beside the aquarium, swaying and swallowing, and turn it to the first page. I pretend to read it, like I’m not. Thinking. About.

May bells.

I’m an overthinker. I know, I know, and I call it a problem. But the real problem is this: Sometimes overthinking is good. Sometimes it leads me to be cautious when I otherwise wouldn’t be. It saves my life, draws my gun and fires the shot. I run through calculations and hypotheticals minutes at a time—contingencies and caution, plans and preparation. I look into things I normally wouldn’t.

And here’s the real, real problem: May bells are the Moralintern’s flower.

So she could be a spy. That’s the real problem.

It’s irrational. I know, I know, but as it turns out, just knowing that isn’t enough to dismiss the thought. So I sit there, flipping pages and pretending like I’m reading. I pretend like I’m not running through the possibilities in my head. My heart isn’t racing through to my fingertips. My lungs don’t feel tight. This is fine. I just need to pay attention. Figure out how best to kill her.

Or maybe I’m doing that overthinking thing again. Maybe she isn’t a spy.

Maybe. Maybe… may bells, may bells, maybe, may, in May, come May, it’s already past May…

May-be she is a spy.

Do I dare to look up?

I take a breath and hold it as I lift my head, staring toward the desk, where Miss Secretary is still sitting. I can see the top of her head from behind the tall counter, shuffling up and down and around, and—I hear the chewing of some food. Sometimes she hums, grunts, shakes the top of her head and scoffs as she listens to Bevy’s voice on the radio. How long has it been now? How long hasn’t she been watching me?

For the longest time, I stare, waiting for her to look over, book steady and still in my hand. The glass box of water bubbles gently beside me. The radio continues playing, and the steady munch, munch, munch of her teeth is occasionally broken up by her swallowing. At some point, my breathing turns shallow. Meandering through the chlorine, taking a leisurely stroll between the vanilla-soap candle, I fucking swear I smell seafood.

It strokes my stomach in the most unpleasant way. Pain cinches in my stomach, drawing me tight around myself. I hug my belly, licking my lips while saliva wells up in my mouth to chase it down, some kind of attempt to delude my body into thinking there’s something inside of me, after all. It’s not the first time I’ve had hunger pangs today, but I’d hoped that I could speak with fucking Bevy, promptly be on my way and grab something the work fridge before collapsing at work again.

This time it’s bad. Bad enough to make me pant, squint my eyes shut, and make pitiful little whining noises in the back of my throat that I hope the world either chooses to ignore or simply doesn’t hear.

“Mr. McCoy?”

I take a breath to steady myself, look up again. Miss Secretary peers over the counter at me. I can’t easily tell what her expression is at this angle. Despite the spit welling in my mouth, my throat’s dry as a desert when I swallow. “Yeah?”

“It’ll be a couple hours before Mr. Bevy’s done, you know,” she says. “He usually wraps up around five.”

I squint down at my watch. It’s not even two, and I have no idea how long I’ve been here. What I do know is that if I leave, I risk coming back to being too late, and then all of this posturing is for nothing. It means I took a risk and didn’t even stick with it, and it’s going to make him wonder, Why? He’ll look into it deeper. I’d need to kill him. Unfortunately, he feeds good morale to the locals—or maybe it’s fortunate, I don’t know. People generally like what he has to say because at least he’s honest about it. I’ll give him that. He’s honest.

“Okay,” I say. I take another deep breath, using it to flood my lungs and ease my spine. Vertebrae crack as I straighten myself before sinking back into the chair. It’s passed, for now, but my hands feel cold, and when I look down at them, they’re shaking. My blood pressure’s low. I really need to get this shit sorted soon, I realise suddenly—water, food, sleep. “Cool.”

“Are you okay?” I look at her again, blinking, and realise I probably look a lot like a startled owl. On my lap, the book I haven’t been reading is still nestled in my hand. The only reason I haven’t let it go is because it’s been warmed by my body heat. Now it’s cozy and warm in my fingers—it’s the perfect size, and it’s made itself feel at home. “You looked like you were in pain.”

“Oh.” My gaze lists to the side, trying to determine the best course of action. Fuck it, I decide suddenly, I don’t give a shit. I turn back to face her, flashing my best smile. “Yeah, no, I’m good. Just haven’t really eaten since yesterday, you know? You know how it is, officer pay and whatnot.”

“Oh, sweetie.”

She says it with some degree of pity, all soft and gentle on the syllables. The softness of it tingles in my spine with a familiar uncertainty but the pity makes me want to pull my gun on her. She shifts in her seat and glances around, going still for a moment like she’s deciding upon something—then, decision apparently made, she stands to her feet, mutters that she’ll be right back, and goes through the recording booth hallway door.

I look down at her ankles where they clack against the linoleum, eyes incidentally roving down short but thick and sturdy legs. Anyone watching would think that I’m undressing her with my eyes. All I can think in this moment, though, is How the fuck do people walk in two-inch stilletos?

I turn the book over on my lap when she’s gone and grimace. If I’d known that I’d plucked out Bevy’s book of all things, I would’ve tossed it to the side a long time ago. Pretty hair so blond and well-groomed that it pools over his shoulders, sunglasses dark and grisly. I know them to be scuffed up by now, particularly on the left lens. I like to imagine it bothers him. The expression on his face is implacable—his lips a little tight, his brows furrowed.

Behind him is a drug den—or a crack house, or whatever people like to call it nowadays. Papers, pillows, clothes strewn all about in a living room. If it weren’t for the blocks wrapped in tight blue packaging, or the needles on the table, or the illicit, unbranded bottles of speed, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for just another hoarding situation. It isn't staged, I can tell—or if it is staged, then they did so in a way that looks like the dealers were recently arrested. Signs of a struggle. If I squint real hard and lean in even closer, then pull the cover far enough away, there might be some blood on the wall. A bullet hole, even. I don't know.

I try to remember if I've heard of Bevy working with a drug bust and doing a photo shoot but come up empty, likely because the moment I hear about that bastard outside of feeling out where in Jamrock he is on any given day, I just tune him out.

Still can’t see his eyes for the fucking glasses, and that pisses me off the most right now. I want to grab them off his fucking face and snap them like a twig in front of him. I want to see a flicker of humanity, whether that be a trace of despair or anger—something, anything. But instead he hides behind scuffed-up glasses, emotions perfectly anonymous in all the ways he expects his interviewees not to be. I don’t think I even know what color his eyes are. Fuck it, maybe they’re purple. Bitches love purple.

It’s not the book itself or the contents within it. Not what he looks like, because who fucking cares? Not the title, either (When Does A House Become A Den?). It’s not even whatever the fuck Bevy does (or at least, tries to do, to some extent).

It’s the way that he acts when he does it, so holier-than-thou and so confident that he knows so much more than anyone else about pretty much anything. Like all reporters, he’s invasive, clumsy, private about everything that doesn’t concern him, specifically. Doesn’t know when the fuck to stop. Doesn’t know when to stay in his lane. Doesn’t know how to take ‘no’ for an answer. And doesn’t even give you the fucking privilege of being able to look him in the eye while he he makes you ride his dick.

Tries to read your book, essentially, but never lets you read his—not unless it’s published. It’s almost violating. It’s definitely exposing. Imagine being ushered to a stage in front of a judgmental crowd of people who already hate you, then stripped naked by his own two hands, made a fucking joke of—a goddamn mockery. One of those people who—so I’ve heard—does it so subtly and carefully, you don’t even realise he’s unbuttoning your trousers until they’re pooling around your ankles. Harry Du Bois but worse, because once upon a time, Harry was on my side, and Bevy has never once been on mine. At least Harry allowed himself to be vulnerable a lot of the time, gentling the blow.

And Bevy’s been trying to interview me for over a decade—something that I’ve been dodging the second I heard of it and was hoping to take advantage of today, to get this shit over with as soon as possible.

I can’t begin to count how many cases he inadvertently fucked up. But see, I'm polite about it. I keep it to myself. I try not to be a complainer, and maybe that's one of my problems, is that I don't complain enough. But nobody likes a whiner, and John McCoy is renowned for taking the blows as they come. It's too late to change that now. Mama raised me differently than that, anyway. Papa, too, all suck it up, buttercup. Put your big boy pants on and take it like a man.

Like it’s my fault every fucking case I'm on always seems to put me waist-deep in shit. So put this bitch in my shoes for a few days while I hound after his ass instead. See how he feels about that.

Feels good, don’t it? Retribution, that is.

When Miss Secretary comes back, the book’s been tossed unceremoniously two chairs down, narrowly escaping drowning in a tank full of water by sheer lack of energy. It'd be a mercy upon it, though. Promise. She approaches me with something in her hand, and for a terrifying second, I think it’s a gun. Then I hear the crinkling of plastic, and the sudden surge of adrenaline has nowhere to go but down. I ride it out through my leg, bouncing it against the ground, asking “What’s this?” even as I reach out to take it.

I realise it’s a curry bun at the same time she says it. The plastic’s open and it’s warm—almost hot—but before I can even think she might’ve poisoned it, my mouth’s full of vending machine food. It’s mostly sweet dough; a puck of ground meat and curry’s nestled somewhere inside its warm, hollow cavity. I barely taste anything by the time I’m struggling to swallow the final bite down, so grateful I can cry. Not just for myself, but because I didn’t even think for a heartbeat to save it for my little brother at home. I don’t, though. Thankfully. Narrowly.

“Wow, you really were hungry,” she says, amazed, and hands me a bottle of water before I can even think to take out my flask.

Thank you, I say, once the curry’s been washed down by half a bottle of cool, sweet, delectable water. I ask her how much I owe her as I reach for my wallet, and she smiles and waves her hand, says nothing, and we talk for a few minutes longer. It almost feels as though, through hunger and vulnerability, some part of the scary monster John McCoy is has been humanised in her mind—though I know better than to think that for long. She just knows that people who are hungry have shorter tempers. She’s nervous that I’m here to shoot Guillaume Bevy through the empty cavity of his skull. How dare I think otherwise, even for a moment.

As she moves to go back to her desk, though, I have to say to her—nice tattoo. Hope she talks more about it, what it represents to her, what it means. Thanks, she says, stopping. She looks down at it. Looks kind of sad. Gentle as I can, I ask her what it’s for.

“My dad,” she murmurs, frowning. “He was taken away by the Coalition during the Revolution. So…”

She stops, lifting a head to scrutinise me, no small trace of skepticism in her eye. Suddenly it’s as if I am the spy, as if I am the one who’ll rat her out to the squad. Break her legs, pull her teeth, steal her nails one by one before breaking every finger and toe in order. This little piggy went to the market, I’d say, whisper-soft. Singsong. I’d tap her pinky toe with a hammer, one, two. Wait until she stops crying, when she loses the trail of what to expect. Slam—then wait until she stops sobbing, screaming; this little piggy stayed home…

Until she can’t take it anymore. Mentally breaks, that is, or loses her fucking mind, whatever you want to call it. Can’t ever be re-introduced into decent society again. That’s how the game works sometimes.

The RCM works under the Moralintern payroll, after all. We’re all cogs in the great machine.

Allegedly. As far as they know.

“Oh,” I say, dumbfounded. My eyes drift down to the tattoo, then away, toward the windows and the street. It’s hard to say I feel much of anything about this revelation other than relief. It should be sad. I should feel sad for her, but I don’t. I just feel tired. Like, oh, here we go again, one of these old things, I’ve heard this one before. I wish I wasn’t so tired. Still, I try. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“Thanks.” She looks me up and down and smiles a little, as if by sheer virtue of saying, wow, that fucking sucks, something about her perception of me has changed. Her lips are slow and hesitant, very gentle about it. It’s not what most people would expect of a pretty goth woman like her—she’s not the stereotype, that is.

But then, stereotypes very often aren’t true, except in my unique case. They’re all I am, just a handful of them in a trench coat, walking around and pretending to be human. Maybe I can pretend hard enough. Puff out my chest to seem more threatening, land enough lethal blows. Maybe then no one will ever want to get close enough to touch.

And if they do, I plan to bite before they can, before they tear the trench coat away and find—not a person, not a concept, not a monster, but the utter absence of a human. Nothing at all.

Chapter Text

I’m pushing soft metal being pushed through tiny holes, straight into some kind of yellow, ribbed repair kit, each rib perfectly sized for each spring. Something about the holes winds them up into tightly-coiled springs. It’s difficult to push it through at just the right pace and consistency, but it’s satisfying to do and pleases something deeply in my brain. And yet it seems like once I’ve realised what the actual trick is, I start fucking up—parts of the springs get too long and straight, parts of them break into tiny pieces, it gets all wobbly and blurry. It’s good enough, I think. Surely it’ll be fine.

Sometimes I pick up the springs to use them, shoving it straight into the flesh of some kind of being. I don’t twist it or anything, and there isn’t any blood. It’s like pushing it against a silicone flesh cube, the kind used for practicing sutures. The ones I made properly are driven through with ease like automatic screws. I don’t think about how the bad ones will go until I reach that point, and pieces start to break off inside of it, sticking out like thick splinters. Oh, I think, that’s not good.

I start trying to pull them out, but it proves to be difficult. As it turns out, it’s easier to make mistakes than it is to fix them. I think there’s blood, finally, but I don’t remember. I see the red flesh from the hole that I removed and don’t know if it’s even real. Apologetically, I put a new spring in—a perfect one, to plug in the hole, as if it somehow compensates for butchering the flesh. It isn’t…

There’s still a hole running through the spring, though; the damage has been done. I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do to fix it.

A voice floats through the door to my room, bubbling, interrupting. It isn’t my brother. My brother, he doesn’t talk much, if at all. My brother never calls me Mr. Archetype.

There’s an intruder in my house.

I’m not really a jumpy person. I’ve found over the years that my nerves are volatile, yes, but they aren’t the kind of nerves that easily twitch when startled or squeak when frightened. They’re very quiet, very demure, nestling in every fibre of my body in well-disguised form until they get so restless that they need somewhere to go. Usually, I can’t predict when they need somewhere to go. It tends to cause problems.

So when Guillaume Bevy’s voice reaches my ears and I wake up, my jumping is barely—barely because I’m jumping out of my skin with fright. Truth be told, it’s because I didn’t realise… I blink my eyes open, straightening my creaky spine with a quiet groan. The bubbling softens, just a little. I think—I must have fallen asleep at some point, leaning against the water tank, though I don’t know when exactly it happened.

I rub my hand against my eyes, taking off my hat to run my fingers through my hair (I wince—it’s so uncomfortable that it hurts) before squinting up at my company.

Guillaume fucking Bevy. I know it’s him even before the blurriness in my vision fully clears. White male who can’t be younger than his mid-thirties, blond hair draped neatly over his shoulders, spilled back and tucked behind a pair of headphones slung around his neck. Stance a little wide, hands held in front of him. Looks like he’s trying to casually cosplay Dolores Dei herself if she were a man. What is it the kids call it again—drag, or something?

Gareth Morrand stands beside him, limbs awkward as bananas and tall as a fucking palm tree. Vaguely, I notice that he seems to have gained significant weight since he quit the force about, oh, nine years ago. I’m not sure if it’s because the stress of being a cop was lifted off his shoulders or because a lot of jobs in Revachol stand to pay better than being a volunteer of the Revachol Citizens Militia. Either way, good for him, I guess.

He looks healthier, though, like the kind of man that’d make Harry wrap his arm around my shoulders once upon a time, in another life. He would point Morrand out on the street and pull me in close enough that I could smell the cheap sugary wine on his lips. Pretend to whisper. Instead say, at normal speaking volume, See that, Johnny? That’s good fucking muscle mass, baby, that guy’s got potential to be a real superstar. And all I’d do is go Ooh, cool, cool. I’d stare at the man as he walked down the road, leaning against my partner, then look Harry dead in the eye and say, Don’t call me Johnny.

God, I wish I were Johnny.

“Scusi,” I say, running my fingers through my hair again before I put my hat back on. It fits neatly over my head, brim wide enough to shield my eyes from both the overhead light and from Bevy’s nonexistent gaze. I lift my head to disarm the shield, leaning back to flash a smile at him, throwing my ankle over my knee. Something in my spine cracks and twinges. “What was that again?”

“I said,” Bevy repeats, tilting his head to the side, “if it isn't Mr. Archetype himself, come to grace me with the time taken from his overburdened schedule.”

“I got bored,” I lie, stifling a yawn. Bevy’s eyebrow raises, the corner of his mouth tightening almost microscopically. “So I came here. Then your show put me to sleep.”

“Is that so? I’m sorry that I couldn’t make the interview with the statistician who follows the excessive force utilised by the RCM interesting for you. I’ll be sure to keep it in mind next time.”

His voice is more polite than I’d like it to be. Calm, cool, collected—sanitised, even. Parts of it feel a little melodic and bassy, moreso without the vague static disturbance that permeates the radio. It's a kind of voice that draws attention. Maybe the Frittte clerk was right—it is a little sexy, though I still don't like hearing it. With the hair and glasses and voice and shit, he could’ve been a rock star instead. Disco is out. Rock is in.

I can’t tell if he’s dreading the fact that I’m here at all, excited about it, or if he even cares. If I were a body language expert, I’d probably assume the wider stance indicates a readiness to bolt or to fight, but body language can sometimes be a trap of opinion that officers fall back on as an easy cop-out.

I stopped listening to that shit when I realised people kept mistaking my brother’s tendency to do things while people are talking to him as blatant disregard for what they’re saying. He just likes having something occupy his hands. Doesn’t mean I’m immune to these sorts of things entirely, though. My nerves are too hard-wired to look for signs of danger.

So I try to take methods of composure with a grain of salt, because none of it’s true one hundred percent. I don’t even have an idea of what Bevy’s usual stature’s like, anyway, so I have nothing to go on. That’s another logical fallacy with using body language to convict. That is, if you’re the kind of cop who prefers convicting the right person.

“I hear enough about it from the Inspectorate General,” I murmur, taking a moment to scrutinise the watch on my wrist. The hands read 5:12, which means, oh… how does it translate? 17:12; afternoon. My other hand opens up my bag, nestled on my lap, fingering through the paperwork and files to make sure nothing’s been stolen.

“Pretty much all the numbers and percentages and statistics and everything. They take me into a board room with all the other dirty cops and squeak out all the graphs on a white board. Then we take a test about it, you know. And if we fail, they take away our badges and throw us to the judicial system. Reunion if it’s bad. Chaise électrique if it’s worse.”

At a glance, everything seems fine. I look up at Bevy and smile, nudging the brim of my hat up a few centimetres.

“Their favorite colour, for all the bad numbers, is red. It really doesn’t stand out, though. There’s too much of it.”

This is the most I've ever said to Guillaume Bevy in one sitting.

Bevy hums and nods along, pretending like he’s buying into it. Like he’s not keenly aware that there is no white board, no class of adult cops, no lecture and no tests. Just a slip of paper with all of the numbers and graphs printed from the radiocomputer. Hand it, sign it, look over it, please, and if the Inspectorate General is really concerned, they’ll lecture you uno a uno about every last one of them.

“Right, a room with a white board,” he says, dryly. “So kind of like Le Academie.”

“Mm hmm.”

His brows knit together a touch tighter, though his posture remains about as rigid, his voice as polite. For the life of me, I can’t tell if it’s confusion, I can’t tell if it’s irritation. I don’t know if he’s looking me in the eye or if he’s looking elsewhere. Scanning every last bit of my body. My greasy hair, my unshaven face, my tired eyes. My hands, settled on eighteen files, some more thickly filled than others. It could be concern for all I know, I can’t fucking tell.

I look at Morrand instead. Shrug a shoulder. “Hello, skipper,” I say, pleasantly. Pretending like none of this bothers me at all. “Traffic misses you.”

Morrand scoffs and rolls his eyes, heaving a great, big sigh. “Yeah, yeah, I’m sure they do,” he sighs, starting for the door. “Tell them I said hey, that’s all. See you Friday, Bevy.”

“Yeah, sure, see you then,” is all Bevy says, only really sparing a glance to see him out, while Morrand doesn’t even look over his shoulder. The carelessness of the situation startles me—they’ve been on the air together for years at this point, almost ever since Gareth quit the force. I expected—I don’t know, for him to be here, backing up his friend as some kind of reinforcement, ready to throw down hands. Pack a meaty punch. Not just—leave, like, what, they’re not friends, or whatever? Like they don’t get along at all? I don’t understand. This has to be something they talked about or planned beforehand, I’m sure of it.

As the door closes, I finally stand to my feet, taking a moment to stretch out my sore muscles. My elbows pop, as do my shoulders, a couple of my vertebrae. My hip, much quieter, a secret little pang that only I can keep. I pull my arms over my head, then brace my arms against my backside, roll my shoulders back. Look at me, it says, I’m the perfect image of relaxed and unbothered.

Then I scrutinise Bevy again, look at him looking at me from a metre or so away. His sunglasses are different, I realise mildly—same brand but different colour frame. They’re missing the scuff on the left lens. I want to rip those sunglasses off of his face and throw them in the water tank just to see how he’ll react, maybe give the tank something new to add to its fake little grave. Just give me some of the energy that he always seemed to have—not even that long ago, back when he was working the major crimes unit with Harry last year and his opportunity to hound me for just a word, just ten minutes, just five increased significantly.

I spread my hands out to the side like I’m inviting a hug, smiling like my mama does when she greets guests at her door. “Really?” I say, huffing out a smug little laugh. “After fifteen years of hounding my ass for a face-to-face, this is what I get? You’ve finally monopolised my attention—and nothing? Come on, amico, show me some love. We both know you’re my number one hater.”

Finally—a break.

A smile cracks over the side of his face—no, more of a smirk, though not one accompanied with a chuckle of its own. “Sixteen,” he corrects, voice purring smooth as butter—because apparently, he’s just good with details like that, numbers and shit. No doubt he’s judging me behind that flash of forced friendliness, fucking bastard. You say you know the statistics, he’s thinking, but you don’t even know how long I’ve been following your fuck ups.

I ignore his thoughts and say, “Sixteen, right.” Gently acknowledge the mistake, but don’t bring too much attention to it. It’s good to be modest, acknowledge when you’re wrong, move on.

“I’m surprised you can even remember that, to be honest.” Finally, he unfolds his hand, offering it to shake. “I’ve got a recording booth with your name on it, if you’ll follow me.”

I stop breathing for a moment. There’s that interest I was asking for. Put it back, I want to say, I’ve changed my mind.

For a fidgety second—and I blame sleep deprivation on this one—this reminds me of prom, for some reason. Come, my lady, some teenage boy says, all gel-slick hair and hand-me-down suit, dance with me. And now she’s in this awkward position, see, because she doesn’t want to dance, but she doesn’t want to commit any social faux pas. So she does, after a moment, because how bad can it be, really? I think that’s what prom’s like, anyway. I never went.

My hand is burning like his own no doubt is, hanging in the air like that expectantly. It’s like the handle to a door that I shouldn’t open, a door with writing on the front that asks, Do you want to ruin your life? Every good business deal opens and closes with a handshake, but this isn’t business, and I don’t have any intention of actually meeting him any more on his level than I already am.

How cruel of him, I think, to lace his trap with the expectation of social niceties. Does he know that if I take his hand, I’m agreeing to his proposition, sealing my fate, and if I don’t let him lead me by that hand down the hall into some frightening, little soundproofed room for God knows how long, I’m the one in the wrong? I’ve strung him along for so long, after all—and now that I’m here, I owe him that much, at least, yeah?

Except I don’t owe him anything. I’ve made his career about as much as he’s ruined mine. If anybody owes anybody something, it’s him who owes me.

So I ignore his hand, pretending like I didn’t even see him offer it, busying myself with fishing a cigarette and my lighter. Which I deliberately take my time to light, sucking in a long, slow drag; and somehow, when I look down, his hand’s still there, hovering, questioning. Come dance with me, it says. I know it’s rude to simply say ‘no’.

“No.” I murmur the word soft and sweet, turning my head to the side, polite enough not to blow smoke straight in his face. “I don’t think you do.” And then suddenly I’m sharing more than I want, drops and trickles of frustration spitting out of my mouth before I can stop it:

“I don’t have any interest in having my words taken out of context, or having it cut to make it look like I’m some babbling, insane sociopath the next time you go live on air, or whatever it is you radio hosts do with folks you don’t like. Like people do with documentaries, or biased newspaper articles, or—or cult recruitment schemes.”

I see his brows furrow a little bit more, his mouth part to say something. I wonder if he’s asking himself why I’m here, then. Whether his stomach is twisting itself into knots of uncertainty as much as mine is. If we’re two men, standing here in a dingy-ass lobby, pushing each others' poker face without realising how bad our own might be.

The moment is gone fast and he quickly closes his mouth, brows raising while he lowers his hand to shrug instead. “Okay. That’s fine. I can work with pen ‘n pad instead. Hell, I’ll do it from memory if I have to. You don’t just go knocking for sixteen years and then just drop the ball the moment it’s open, right?”

I huff out a scoff of a laugh, draping my arm against the top corner of the tank full of water—equal parts to come across cool as it is to ease my weight off my left side. “That’s interesting,” I say with a smile that flashes my teeth, jerking my head back: A cocky little challenge, just for him. I take a quick moment to scan his body, just a flicker of the eyes to take stock of the situation. “What makes you think I’m here for an interview?”

For a second, I’m not sure that does anything.

Then it’s all in the deep breath that he takes, the long, almost anguished sigh that spills out of his lungs as his shoulders slump. One of his hands reaches up, passing through thinning hair that I feel confident in saying must feel much, much nicer than my own, catching his shades along the way and riding them up. “Goddamn it, McCoy. You’re killing me, you know that? You know how long I’ve waited to have a one-on-one with you?”

“Sixteen years, apparently,” I mutter, breathless and fascinated. A part of me is so terrified to speak because if I do, it just might break this spell I’ve somehow cast, and I don’t know if I could ever cast it again. Guillaume Bevy, confident man he is, unshakable journalist willing to go to whatever lengths to get his story—sighing, casting his gaze to the ceiling, shoving aside his glasses. Showing something, giving me something. Fucking wonderful sight, really, and it hits my brain with such a rush of dopemine, it makes me dizzy. Or maybe it's just the exhaustion. It's probably just the exhaustion.

It’s like he’s going through the five stages of grief, all at once, like he’s been begging his mistress so fucking hard for five hours—let me cum, let me cum, please, ma’am. Please, I’ll do anything. And she trailed her fingernails against his side, brushed up and down along his inner thigh, and kissed the head of his straining cock, smearing the pre against her lips. Please, because she’s teasing him, torturing him at this point.

But she comes up to his head, kisses his mouth so that he can taste his own desperation, and whispers in his ear, “No.” Not even a ‘not yet’. Not even a promise for release or what to expect. Just a gentle, serene, teasing “No.” And he can’t even use the safeword yet—still, not yet, because he wants it so, so badly. Because it’ll feel so good if—when—if it ever happens. For now, all he can do is cry about it.

Blissful fucking beauty. It almost makes the bullshit he’s put me through all these years worth it.

So I savour this, drinking it all in as he hooks his sunglasses into his shirt and mutters “Shit” somewhere into the air between us. Bevy takes a slow, deep, steady breath, eyes closed. Reeling himself back in. Recentering himself. When he opens them again, hands on his hips, I immediately clock that his eyes are a dark shade of brown, committing it to memory. “All right. So if you’re not here for an interview, what do you want?”

Blink and you’ll miss the way his eyes linger on my bag as he says it. My miserable pile of secrets. So that’s what he’s been looking at, I realise—my files, my documents, my cases. Wondering if I’m here to request his help on a case and dreading that the answer might be yes. Or maybe wondering what kind of tasty morsels I have stashed away in my pouch, delicious nuggets that only the most worthy of eyes can dine upon.

But I’m their guardian, babe, and you know it. Not even getting to your knees right here and now to suck my dick will grant you access, as funny and interesting as I’d find it. You’re not worthy, and if I have it my way, you never will be.

“G-fuckin’-Bevy.” A chuckle rumbles in the base of my chest, tumbling out like slippery, smooth river pebbles. “Ah, Look at you. You’re so desperate for my time and attention, it’s damn near cute.”

“You know, you’re a lot of things, but you never really struck me as the kind of cop who just sits around on his ass for a couple of hours for no good reason.”

“Well, aren’t I just full of surprises.”

“You sure are. Sixteen years, McCoy. Shit.”

We stay like that for a while. Standing across from each other, staring each other down. The more time passes, the more the humour of the situation slips away from me, settling on my shoulders with an uncomfortable air. I can feel the vibrations of the fish tank pressed against my side, the cool glass seeping into my skin. The smell of smoke eventually reminds me of my cigarette. I take a drag and let it out.

Slowly, Bevy shakes his head, reaching behind himself to take something from his back pocket. My hindquarters instinctively tense up, spine stiffening—before I can stop myself, I’m suddenly standing solidly on my own two feet, body tilted to the side, my hand clenched around the grip of my gun. It takes the sound of my thumb unclipping it from my holster for my brain to catch up and stop myself.

By then, of course, Bevy’s taken notice and frozen, too, one hand still behind his back, the other level with his shoulder. My attention’s focused on the hand behind, glancing up only briefly to see him watching me—watching me damn near about to pull a fucking gun, on him, in his workplace.

I don’t mean to react like this. I’m sorry. I’ve been shot like this before, in conversations I thought at first to be friendly banter, forgive me, forgive me, please don’t let me fuck this up.

I don’t know why I’m begging for forgiveness. I haven’t done anything wrong.

“If you ever change your mind…” Very, very slowly, Bevy moves his hand. Slides whatever it is out of his back pocket, holding it up to show me. A notepad.

Because of fucking course it’s a notepad. This is a news reporter, not a gangster kid off the side of the street, bumming me for a smoke or some spare change to lure me in.

The long breath I hadn’t realised I was holding eeks its way out of my nose. My hand loosens its grip around my gun, releases it entirely, and soon I’m standing up straight with my arms crossed, watching Bevy take out a stubby little pencil from his front pocket, lick at it, write. I probably look like I’m pouting, here, like some embarrassed elementary schooler being teased for having a crush when really it’s just embarrassing for people to say you have a crush on somebody at all.

Restless energy comes out of my leg, channeling out through the ground. Without spurs, it takes me longer than usual to notice—but once I realise what it’s doing, I set my heel down firmly to stop it.

Down where the smell of smoke is coming from. My dropped cigarette, my stick of soothing nicotine. I’ve even the good grace to grind it out into the floor, sparing just a moment of mourning for the wasted money.

My heart’s still hammering in my chest when Bevy tears out the small little slip of paper, stepping forward to give it to me. “About the interview,” he clarifies when I don’t immediately take it. “Just leave a message or something. We’d love to have you here.” There’s a whisper of a smile tagged on at the end.

This close, I can make out quite a few more things about Guillaume Bevy that I never thought I’d be able to intuit. He has wrinkles—can’t be younger than thirty-seven, I guess, or somewhere in that ballpark. Might be older. Cops have been wrong before. He uses the same kind of pine-scented aftershave a great deal of folks I know use. It mingles strangely with the clinging stench of cheap cigarettes and the barely-there smell of his shampoo, which I’m pretty fucking certain is some kind of woman’s brand: I can’t think of any shampoo-conditioner combo that smells like oranges and apricots. Maybe that’s the secret behind his pretty hair—women’s shampoo.

Thing about Guillaume is, he’s a tall man. Taller than me in my boia boots, if only by a little. It means if I can see over his shoulder, then it’s only just a little over the top, and even then if Miss Secretary is watching, she won’t be able to read what I’m saying. I look to the left instead, eyes scanning the street for anybody watching on the other side—find nothing. The good news is, from the outside looking in, these tinted windows make it pretty fucking hard to see. I remember noticing that, very vaguely, when I was approaching.

I look away, look at him as I take the paper—lean in and try to be as quiet as I can. “Listen, Bevy,” I start, carefully. “Let’s say, hypothetically, we do this interview, how necessary is it that it be here?”

He shrugs a shoulder nonchalantly, unclipping his sunglasses from his shirt to let them dangle in his hand instead. “Doesn’t have to be,” he gruffs, gesturing over his shoulder to the recording studio hallway. “But the recording booth I mentioned’s sound-dampened. Recording equipment can be brought in for higher-quality audio.”

“Right, right, of course.”

I nod as if I have any idea exactly how that works. Truth be told, the way I’m imagining it? A padded room, or maybe one that’s ceiling-to-floor lined with foam blocks, and nothing else. A lock on the door. Two chairs in it right in the center, one across from the other. A single microphone in between. Always recording—even when the little light is off. Small little peepholes in the wall, where people can spy in on the place, take sneaky photos, record what’s supposed to be conversations made explicitly in private.

Specifically, my brain latches onto a single phrase: Sound-dampened room. Sound-dampened. Sound dampened. Not extinguished, not proofed—dampened. Damp things still have water. Damp things still have that vague, cottony, not-quite-dry but not-quite-wet vibe to them. It’s a cruel in-between that promises both but delivers on neither. Damp means sound can still slip through if you squeeze it hard enough. Damp is fucking hard to breathe through, but it’s doable if you do it slowly enough.

“Like I said, though,” Bevy adds, “I can do pen ‘n pad. Or just do it from memory.”

I shake my head, taking the pad and the stubby little pencil out of his hands unceremoniously. I don’t think he’s exactly a fan of it, me doing that. By the time I’ve finished up, offering the pad back out to him, I see he’s turned his head away from me now, staring at the window, as if wondering what I was searching for. Glasses back on his stupid fucking face.

Don’t worry about it, I think, tapping the notebook against his shoulder. He looks back quickly and takes it, brows furrowing as he reads the address. While he does that, I re-adjust my shoulder strap and slap my hand firmly against his arm—once, twice—starting for the door.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, officer,” Bevy says before I can get very far, “but if you were anyone else, then I might actually trust it. You want quiet, I got quiet. You want alone, I can do alone. But this? This is a no can do—McCoy.”

I can hear his footsteps following me. I stop only when I reach the door, my hand on the metal handle that swings inside while my face dons its best adaptation of tired indifference. He stops shortly before me, holding the notebook in one hand while the other gestures to it, like I’m too fucking stupid to understand what it is he’s talking about. Again, his mouth is tight, eyes completely obscured. It’d be so fucking nice to clench my fist and punch him in the fucking nose, break his nasal cavity, break his glasses even harder.

“This is a no-can-do. You can have alone or you can have this address, but you’re not getting both without a damn good explanation.”

“You know, I can’t even say that I blame you, really. I did damn near pull a gun on you.”

He doesn’t expect that. Look at the way he shifts on his back leg a little, draws his shoulders down, tightens his mouth closed. He's probably surprised that I called it out for what it was, not even bothering to lie or hide from the reality of it. A smile toys at the corners of my own, something that tries not to be as nervous as it is when my brain is scrambling for shit to say to guarantee his attention—something, anything.

“Look. I don’t mind if you tell someone about the location, as long as you keep my name out of it. I don’t even mind if you bring a gun of your own to this little meeting place. Hell, I’ll even come without my own gun and keep however far away from you you’d please at all times. But this—” I tap the notebook several times, nail against spiral “—is where I want it to be. I don’t want any recording devices. I don’t want any cameras. 

“But you’d better keep in mind that after dodging so much as getting within spitting distance of you for sixteen years, I’m here now, and you better ask yourself why. I’m doing you a kindness, m’sieur. It’s here and then or nowhere never. See you then, or maybe not. That’s up to you. Ciao.”

And that’s it. My genius plan, as I pull the door open and turn my collar against the sun reflecting off of the buildings around me and the sidewalk thrumming with heat. I do my damn best not to limp as I sweat through this concrete jungle, making my way to the bow collector, steadying my breathing. Asking myself what the fuck I’m doing. Proposing some kind of shitty ultimatum to an even shittier work rivalry? Pushing Guillaume Bevy into a private little corner of Revachol so he can be murdered?

If he’s smart, he’ll tell someone to tail him at a distance to keep an eye on where we go, so that if he disappears, someone will have seen me last with him. If he’s even smarter, he’ll ignore this proposal entirely. Continue on with his life. Probably get killed by the Moralintern as a result, or else they’ll force him to find dirt on Captain Pryce and decommission him as captain.

I’m getting on the tram, really, heading to the station to write my report and pretend like nothing’s wrong, when all I’m really doing—to be perfectly honest—is trying to play on a simple marketing trick. Exclusive items, massive sales, coupons to products of questionable quality that will expire soon, soon, soon. The fear of missing out.

He’s a reporter, I tell myself, over and over again. Reporters hate missing out on hot details and exclusive interviews. Surely he’s stupid enough to fall for it.

And if not, I might have a few fingers and toes to break.

Chapter Text

The tram takes me to a trolley that escorts my body up the 8/81 motorway, driving along the spine that carves its way through Revachol. West is La Delta, tall skyscrapers with pretty lights far across the bay—the place where rich people live and work. Bankers, interisolary spokespeople, accountants. Though I have a couple of friends in high places, I’ve never been there before. I don’t think I ever will, even after all of this is over.

Far to the east is the Greater Revachol Industrial Harbor, the capital of the working class—I think—where dockworkers work grueling hours day and night to handle import and export. According to Harry’s report of the Martinaise case, the Wild Pines Group claims that “we contribute to 8% of the world’s cargo.” I’m not sure if the woman who told him meant the 8% is just in Revachol or if she was talking about the Wild Pines Group’s global cargo in general; the kind that includes other cities, other isolas, but I’m hoping to see that number drop significantly soon.

8/81 sweeps its way over Faubourg, slicing the largest and most densely populated area of Revachol almost clean in two. I can look out the trolley’s window and stare down at the residentials, seeing streets sparsely crowded with motor carriages most can’t afford, roads only ever really wide enough for two-way traffic. Faubourg’s large, too—wider than it is tall. Almost none of weathered wooden houses are painted, and many are missing entire sections of their roofing from this summer’s hurricanes and thunderstorms.

Multiple families live in the same house. Some of those houses have been patched up with metal roof plating, and the checkerboard of roads and buildings curve into the far-off distance like the massive lonely fields of Wheat Town. There’s an entire, isolated section of Faubourg by the River Esperance, a hole in the world where particles of radioactivity still trickles its way to the ocean. People don’t tend to go there often, and for good reason.

The ghetto’s split into eleven districts, ranging from Precincts 27-38. For the longest time, I failed to understand why Faubourg got so many while Jamrock—which is bad, maybe even a little worse. People shouldn’t live here, but they do—only gets us: Precinct 41. We’re the heart of Revachol, with wider streets and business mainstays, people who’ve lived here since they were born and would plan to stay until they die, were it not for the crime rate. Over the years, though, I learned that this was always the intention. Revachol cannot wage another revolution if the heart of the city’s criminally starved into complacency.

The trolley turns off the 8/81 and starts down the ramp leading toward Boogie Street, the main road that goes straight south through the heart of Jamrock. I look away from the window to pull the bell line and see one or two others do the same—a woman in her patrol officer blues, RCM rectangle shining across her back in the light. A dark-skinned teenager near the front who takes off his headphones afterward to look over his shoulder and behind him, like he’s checking to see if anybody else is stopping. I wonder if he’s here for a station call.

The trolley stops off the side of the road, and the couple of people, including me, get to our feet. I shuffle my way past my riding partner, who tucks her legs in tight against the seat, and make my way to the front. There’s another cop behind me, a poor, fresh-faced fucker that I barely recognize from the stables. He looks at me and recognizes me; waits to follow my cue to copy what I do.

The teenage kid pays and nervously departs, glancing around, giving me time to show my ID to the driver and get off without paying. Technically members of the RCM still have to pay for public transportation, but unless it’s automated, the people running transport usually let it slide. Even then, I know plenty of cops who skip lines and jump the subway turnstiles that get away with it. You can get away with a lot of things when you’re a cop, it turns out. That’s one of the few benefits of the job.

Behind me, the fresh-faced fucker stumbles off close behind. I can assume he followed my lead. Good job. I can indulge in a small sense of pride.

Precinct 41 is a small walk from here, but it’s really just off the side of the motorway, nestled just off of 8/81, where we can quickly dispatch officers to run down the city’s spine and spread out across her central nervous system. The red building’s more or less this massive dome that’s kind of shaped like the back of a lady beetle, only it has a couple of tall chimneys reaching up into the sky. Like antennae, I guess. I used to wonder back in the day what each of them were used for, but now I just limp up the stairs of the once-impressive building without thinking, not even sparing a thought for the repurposed silk mill and what its inner mechanics might have one day been.

The patrol officer holds the door for me like a gentleman—gentlelady, I suppose—and I utter a brief thanks as I step inside the building. I’ve learned to always expect it to be hot in the summer, since the metal dome has a tendency to insulate the heat more than it lets it out. The AC only works a quarter of the time, and even when it does, it’s only ever really used for the hottest couple of hours of the day. That’s why there are some smaller rooms that have window units hanging out of them, though most of them are so shabby that they hardly work.

I linger by the entrance, wrestling off my jacket without removing my bag, and drape it over my arm as I approach the front desk. Don’t even bother worrying about my shoulder holster or my gun—this is cop country, after all. Nobody gives a shit. Don’t even bother taking out my ID for Apricot Pideau, a pretty young woman who looks up at me, signs me in, and says, Hello, Mr. McCoy. Can you pass this to Daddy, please? I tell her, Of course, anything for you, babydoll, jab my thumb at the dark-skinned kid coming up behind me, and tell her to treat him all gentle-like, I don’t think he’s ever been here before.

Then I go through the building, the sound of typewriters and desks chasing me all the way. I navigate through a couple of hallways and rooms of unimpressive drywall haphazardly thrown together, then up the pocket of silence that serves as a grey little stairwell that reminds me of the ones you’d find on the side of hotels.

Third floor I slip out on, ducking into the closest bathroom I can to take a piss and douse my face with water. Fish out a drouamine pill or two—not to kill the pain, because it’s a bit too late for that now, but to soften its blow. I've given up on taking it without an empty stomach, and it’s bothering me enough that I think I’d prefer an ulcer to it getting any worse.

I spend a few minutes experimentally testing my weight on my left side, then pivoting my hip to an audible crack. I tamp my foot against the linoleum a couple of times, grimacing at the pinprick sensation climbing up my soles, my leg, my waist. It’s bubbling in the back of my throat. Back fucking hurts, too. I need to drop my shit off at my desk before anything else.

So I go to do that, leaving the bathroom, walking down the hall a few more doors past, and push open the one that leads to the special branch of C Wing.

Calling it a sea of cubicles wouldn’t exactly be accurate. There’s no walls between the desks. Most of them are abandoned—thanks to Harry, fucking genius, driving the vast majority of good officers away with his wonderful propencity for outrage—and as such, most are pushed together. Some used for random crap like takeout containers and bags and trash and books.

My desk is probably the most neatly disorganised, over in the far corner by the window, where I can see anything and everything. The unfortunate flaw—which I acknowledge, but try not to think too hard about—means that living in corners doesn’t give me many routes of escape.

A total of three officers mingle around the area right now, two of them bitching and moaning about the heat, the other writing up a report, fingers tapping dutifully at the typewriter. She only glances up to see who opens the door, then gets right back to work after I nod my greeting.

I toss my hat onto the hat rack I stole from the juvie office and make my way to my desk. Mack Torson lifts his bald head and tilts it back, letting go of the bitching to give me a smile. “Hey, McCoy.”

“If you’ve got time to whine, you’ve got time to scribe,” I bite, tossing my bag and jacket on my seat. I lean my hip against my desk and frown over at the two, squinting between the bulky gym bro with the word ‘Jamrock’ lovingly tattooed over every square inch of his body and his scrawny, red-headed little friend who’s so dreamy, he doesn’t even have a gun. Just has a fucking sword, because swords are cool. It doesn’t make him smart. It makes him dumb as a sack of rocks. “So why aren’t you scribing?”

“Typewriter broke,” Chester answers. He takes after me, a little, feet kicked up on his desk and crossed at the ankle. I follow where he flicks his pen, frowning at the ancient beast settled on a lonely little table against the wall. “And yes, I did try figuring out how to fix it, but the thing’s so fucking old it could be your bitch.”

We go back and forth about it for a minute—did you try changing the ink cartridge? Yes; what was it, were the keys jammed? Was it typing out uneven letters? Was the roller being a little shit again?—and before I even know it, I’m picking at the typewriter, pulling it apart. I can’t keep doing this, I say, it isn’t my job to sit around on my ass and fix this hunk of junk every week.

Chester mutters something about how I was more fun before I became his boss. I ignore him, much like I ignore the horrible aching in my stooped back. The sharp pangs in my wrists.

A few minutes later, I give up and go back to my desk, where Chester’s examining the little box that Apricot gave me for her papa. He catches my approach and coos, shaking it in the air. It sounds like something metallic—I think I know what it is. “What’s this, McCoy—you got a present from a pretty little lady?”

“I think it’s the part that Jules needs to fix the communications relay.” I snap my fingers a few times, turning my head up to the ceiling, what was it called, what was it called…? “Qu'est-ce que ‘rimbalzo’ en Surense?”

“I don’t fucking know, man.”

“Like a bounce-back unit? I don’t know. A ricochet unit. Something like that.” I reach out to touch it, gently rapping my knuckle against the fragile label, then nod over to the adjacent doorway that leads to Jules’s relay room. The door’s always open, probably to let out the smoke and help with the ventilation. Through the window, I can see him speaking into the microphone; in the air, I can hear his voice, heavy accent soothing but eternally weary. “Pass this over to him. Ask if he’s been able to find anything on that sabotage.”

“You got it, chief.” He flashes me a grin and a short little salute before heading off to do just that.

I go back to my own business, kneeling down behind my desk, running my hand along the bottom drawer. It’s supposed to be locked by a key and a tumbler; two strips of tape, each intersecting the other, cover the keyhole with a flat, ancient security. It’s all well and good to simply leave it locked, but, you know—there’s nothing stopping somebody with some experience in lockpicking from putting their slippery little fingers into my secrets.

That’s what the tape is for—cover the keyhole, so that if somebody does decide to get nosy, I’ll be able to tell. There would be a hole in the tape. And even if there isn’t a hole in the tape, if they peel away the same tape that I put down and put it back on, I’ll probably notice: It wouldn’t be as sticky; the edges might be peeling; tiny little corners might be missing. Fingerprints. If they use new tape entirely, they might not remember the orientation or the order or even how many strips I used, because it changes. I keep notes.

Lockpicking leaves scratches, anyway, but it’s good to have safeguards.

Call me fucking paranoid, or whatever. It’s not perfect. I know. But it’s also not meant to be a permanent security measure.

My fingers rove along the tape and find nothing—no hole over the keyhole, no flaky edges indicating someone’s pulled it back. I take out a pocket knife from my back pocket, unfolding it to carefully dislodge the edge of the tape until my fingernails can pull it off. I’m stooped down to scrutinize for the telltale scratches of lockpicking when I feel footsteps approaching. I lift my head, frowning up at Mack Torson, wide-shouldered mini goliath, who’s leaning against my desk. “What?”

“Captain wanted to talk to you,” he says, nodding to the door. “By the way.”

“Is this about what Bevy said on the radio?”

“You heard that? I thought you didn’t listen to G-Bevy.”

“Oh.” I scoff out a laugh, taking out my desk key with a shake of my head. It slots neatly into the drawer, turns, lets me pull it out easily. The files inside are horribly disorganized—I haven’t been able to find the time to sort them. It doesn’t take long for the ones in my bag to accompany them, including the couple weighing on the secrets of my conscience. “Not willingly. The Frittte by the Inspectorate General happened to be playing it.”

“Wait, you—” He cuts himself off. I let him ruminate on that information as I lock it back up, reaching to my desktop for the tape and humming a little tune. He passes it to me. I thank him. “So you got out of the rat squad pretty early.”

“Yeah.”

“They say anything about anything else? Did they give you the vibe that they know something’s off?”

I pause at that, inclining my head to the window. Rubbing my fingers against my chin, my cheek, hearing and feeling the scratchy prickling that feels wrong, albeit not unfamiliar. The events replay in my brain—not just that talk with Chuck, but everything else; the greeting with Helen, the way her coworkers might have looked at me, the way the receptionist reacted when I signed in.

Eventually I shake my head, jostling the drawer to make sure that it’s locked. “No. No, I don’t think so. But I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Okay. Where’ve you been the past couple hours, then? Something catch you up?” He circles around the side before I can finish bracing my hand against the floor, the other gripping the edge of the desk, and offers his own hand to me. I stare at it dubiously for a moment before heaving a great, big, melodramatic sigh, letting him help pivot me onto my feet. All my weight on my right—and then, tentatively, on my left. My legs feel weak, muscles tingly.

I like Mack, in some abstract way. Wouldn’t accept his hand if I didn’t. Good bulk. Strong. His height might leave something to be desired, but height’s really just a small factor on the scale of attractiveness. He has a good jawline. A strong, reliable grip. He knows his way around knives: Sometimes we sharpen them together in the quieter periods of the day, blades against whetstones and raw leather, shooting the shit.

We’re on good enough terms to hit up the kebab stand for lunch from time to time, but it’s hard to tell if it’s flattering or irritating how much he admires me. It makes it hard to know how much of what he gives is pandering to my ego and how much of it is real.

I take a breath, let out another sigh, and fish out a cigarette from my jacket. Lighter, too. Through the communications officer’s window, I watch as Jules and Chester talk to each other, the latter leaning over his shoulder and nodding along to whatever he’s being told.

“I went to the radio station,” I eventually say, blowing smoke out to the side. The nicotine warms my central nervous system, stroking the ever-ragged edges nice and smooth. Maybe it’s helped by the painkiller. I don’t know.

Mack’s eyebrows shoot up to the sky. One of my nervous smiles slips out, pushing a chuckle in front of it. “No shit.”

“Yeah.” I take another drag, sliding a bakelite ashtray shaped like an upturned UFO closer to me. It’s actually a piece of evidence from a case a few years back I hadn’t the heart to abandon. Conspiracy theorist fella. Nice enough guy. It’s a shame what happened to him.

I tap out my cigarette. Blow out smoke. “We might have a lunch date or something. I don’t know. For someone who’s been bending over backwards to get me alone in a quiet little room, he seemed pretty damn shy once the opportunity presented itself.”

Mack barks out a laugh at that. “That’s gay as shit, man,” he says, then blanches, trying to backpedal even as I snicker into the back of my hand. Because, yeah, the way I phrased it did kinda sound pretty fuckable. “I mean—”

“It’s called a ‘rebound conduit’.” We look over at Chester as he grabs a chair, legs scraping against the floor, and turns it to sit backwards in front of my desk, arms draped over the back. “So here’s the deal. Apparently from what Oldboy just said, it’s the thing that pushes signals and calls or whatever from one precinct to another. Ours haven’t been the best, not really up-to-date, so when the relay station was updated—”

“Bullshit.” I scoff, shaking my head. “38 to 42 also use that relay, and they’re running on the same system we are. I swear to God, if the ‘lintern’s sayin’ that it’s because our systems are overworked—”

“That’s exactly what they said—that the shit’s all shorted out because it was all old-school crap.”

“I think,” Judit says suddenly, “it had to have been an inside job.”

We all look at her then, halfway across the room, staring at us with the quiet intensity of a woman marked with a numb sense of grief and a sharper mind than most would assume. She has a long face about her, which I think is her most distinguishing feature. The second is her body, filled out with musculature, firm and rigid. I shook her hand when I transferred back onto C Wing mid-March and was surprised by the force of her grip. Her husband’d better consider himself one lucky man—it’s right up my alley, personally.

I don’t like her much. She’s a mother, which is fine enough, but it makes her too gentle around the edges and much too forgiving of mental issues. I don’t like how she treats Harry like he’s some fragile creature that needs to be handled gently. I don’t like how she talks about my brother, either, or addresses me like I’m some kind of pitiable caretaker for him. Her kindness feels misplaced, like she’s overcompensating. I prefer parents like Militia.

Still, we wouldn’t be a team if we didn’t listen to each other. I tilt my head to the side, letting out an inquisitive hum that says, Go on. Judit Minot glances over at the door for a moment before turning back to us.

“It has to be an inside job,” she says again, her voice firm but careful. “It’s too convenient that we were the only station affected by this, isn’t it? I think the Moralintern suspects that we’re working on Le Retour but doesn’t know who our allies are. Maybe the replacement part is even bugged. I think we have a mole.”

Chester and Mack exchange a look. I turn my head to frown out the window. Far off in the distance, mingling with the sky just beginning to turn a soft shade of orange over the horizon, aerostatic ships hang hundreds of feet in the air with all the permanence of a baby mobile over a cradle. I imagine them, sometimes, maybe looking down on us all with spyglasses, their cabins full of bombs ready to drop upon us at any given moment the second they see something they don’t like. I imagine long, wide barrels hanging out of the side, cannons pointed directly at Precinct 41 and ready to fire ballistas that’d tear through the metal shell until there’s nothing left.

Coalition Warship Archer hangs there, too, front and center, the most threatening blight upon the uncaring and disinterested sky. Maybe, right now, in this very moment, their eyes are on us, peering through the window, reading our lips.

I reach to the window beside my desk and pull the shutters closed.

We sit on that in silence, each of us mulling it over in our own separate ways, pregnant with the gravitas of the situation upon our shoulders. As the boss, I’m the one who breaks the silence, my voice splitting through the air conspiratorially: “Nobody told Heidelstam about this, right?”

No, sir, says Judit, and Torson laughs and shakes his head, and Chester scoffs and says, Fuck no, man, that narc? No fuckin’ way.

“Good.” I part ways from my desk, half-stumbling to the corner where my pharmacy-issued walking cane is. I grab it in my hand and I hate the way that it feels. Just one less hand to act with if something horrible happens, severely limiting my options. Nix will have my head if I don’t start using it more regularly. I haven’t used it the past two days because I didn’t expect to be gone this long. I haven’t even had the chance to come back here and grab it until now, and now I’m suffering the consequences of it.

I hate it.

I say goodbye to any hopes that I have of grabbing some food, maybe grabbing a nap, finishing a report, going home to get some other shit taken care of even though I still have so much to do. We’ll have to see what the situation allows, and I’ll just have to go along with whatever that might be. Woozily. Hungrily. Painfully.

“I’ll bring this concern up with Captain Pryce,” I promise, snuffing my cigarette and hobbling my way over to the door, weight uneven and sketchy at best. Don’t bother with grabbing my bag, not now that it’s empty. The cane feels unsteady in my hand, like it’s ready to slip out from between my fingers.

Chester claps his hands behind me, stands to his feet, and declares loudly in the near-empty room, “All right, folks, you heard what the big man said! Let the old geezers duke it out! Back to work we go!” I decide it’s too much effort to tell him to shut the fuck up and just grab my hat on the way out.

“Take a seat, John.”

He tells me to do so and I don’t hesitate. Not even for a second. Not even for a moment. A lot of people don’t seem to know how long a ‘moment’ actually is, deferring it to the equivalent of a second or a couple of seconds. The truth is, the original meaning is ‘a 60th of a second’, just like a second is ‘a 60th of a minute’, like a minute’s ‘a 60th of an hour’. Seems like the definition’s adjusted, then, much like how biweekly can mean, oh, twice a week or every other week, and you’d never know which it is without further explanation.

So I take a seat in one of the chairs in front of Captain Pryce’s desk, heaving a sigh that’s almost a groan, and sink back into it while he closes the door behind himself. I watch him circle around the back of his desk as I put up my feet, grimacing. He peers through the tight window shades behind his seat, flicks them shut, and then—ultimately—pulls the curtains even tighter.

I close my eyes for a moment, listening as he pulls his chair back and settles down. Exhaustion’s creeping up on me like a hunter with a rifle, sniping me through the closed windows. Everything feels distant and foggy. Muscles tired. For a moment, I feel like a spider, floating weightlessly on near-invisible threads of silk in the corner of an office.

Pryce’s voice floats over to me, cottony and soft. “How are you feeling?”

I hum, wordless and breathless for a few seconds before remembering myself—at least in part. Eyes bleary, I blink them back open, rolling my head to the side to lift a sluggish hand to my hat. Take it off, hang it off the corner of the chair to my right. My thumb brushes against the beaded clay band wrapped around it.

“Tired,” I eventually say, my voice cracking halfway through the word. I lick my lips as I turn my attention back to him, squinting across the lamplight. I see him watching me through his glasses, leaning against his desk with his fingers crossed, suit done up as neat as it almost always is.

He's almost in his sixties, ‘round about the same age as Chuck from the rat squad, and it's a fact he wears with stony-faced pride. Crow’s feet and wrinkles slope firm lines that define his face more like a granite sculpture. You can never be too sure exactly what he's thinking when looking in his eyes. All you can do is guess, and guessing wrong stands to get you bitten. A snake in the grass.

Male-patterned baldness that leaves his head smooth, face exposed, naked and unhidden. I can see the sweat beading at his temple. I feel hot, too, a drop of my own sweat slipping down my collarbone. “Hungry.”

Pryce hums and nods, expecting this. He looks me over, considering me just as I’m considering him, lingering on the cane haphazardly leaning against my chair. “And your leg?”

“My hip.” I cock my head to the side, almost as if inviting a challenge. “It’s fine.”

He hums again and nods, lowering his hands and straightening up. I hear him say the word okay, I think, it’s too quiet to tell. I don’t think he believes me. I think he’d believe me more if I weren’t using a cane to get to his office door.

“I expected you back at the station by 13:00. 13:15, at the latest.” He looks me over again, brows furrowing together tightly, like he’s looking for something specific. I’m not sure what he’s getting at until he pushes himself to his feet again, raising his hand like he expects me to do the same.

I do. Like a good little rabbit. It’s not even a question.

Captain Pryce starts from the top. His hands find my shoulders, cold and thin, pressing the fabric firmly against my skin. When he starts to go down to my upper arms, something clicks in my brain and I raise my hands behind my head. Upper arms, forearms, back down, reaching around the backside. He takes my gun and puts it on his desk, and I stare at it with the longing gaze of a horse staring out to pasture. Then it’s my chest, my sides (I try not to flinch—my sides are sensitive), hips (I do flinch, in anticipation of pain more than anything), pockets.

He takes out my cigarettes and lighter, putting them on the desk, too. A pair of small, wooden dice. He removes my pocket knife—both of them. Checks my belt where things can be held snugly in there, firmly enough to rock me on my feet. Pats all the way down my legs, one by one (again, I try not to flinch—the inside of my thighs, you see; and I’m embarrassed to admit it), squeezes through my leather boots tight enough that they hurt. I know he feels the lump hiding in there. Frisks me again from the bottom-up, just in case.

Once he’s done, he turns to my cigarette pack and looks inside—then steals one for himself. By the time he looks back at me, my boots are already off and offered to him, ready to be scrutinised. He does, tipping them upside down and reaching his arm in, all the way down to the toes. Finds what he’s looking for inside—a third pocket knife held in a hand-stitched, haphazard pocket for emergencies. Checks my calves again.

Then, when he’s really done, he makes another gesture. I sit back down to pull my boots back up; the chair squeaks back just enough for my cane to clatter on the floor and break the silence. This time, I do flinch, muttering an embarrassed little apology as I tuck it on the floor against the desk instead, neat and out-of-the-way.

“It’s fine,” the captain says, sitting down. He takes a drag of my smoke and taps it out on his glass ashtray, then lets it sit in there neatly. “Tell me what happened with the Inspectorate General.”

I grab my gun back from the desk and have the good grace to empty out the bullets right in front of him. It’s hard to say if it’s an illegal gun or not—something I stole during some ancient case from the anti-gun museum that the Coalition’s founded, once upon a time, in Couron.

It’s not ancient or anything, just a semi-automatic three-cylinder Iilmaraan revolver, loaded from the breech end. I know that breechloaded rifles, at the very least, were outlawed during times of peace when Revachol was still ruled by the Suzerainty, but the details are hazy to me on whether that extends to smaller firearms. I've almost gotten into trouble with the Moralintern for having this on multiple occasions, but here...

Pryce raises an eyebrow while I do, watching me pocket the bullets and then holster my gun. He never says anything about it.

I don’t have the gall to light a cigarette. As I put away my other crap, I tell him about the Inspectorate General. The usual report, you know, how I pissed Chuck off enough to send me out early, I guess, and it was only about forty-five minutes. Wanted to grab some food, so I went to Frittte for something. Before I can continue, Pryce holds up a hand, asking me if they’ve dealt out my punishment yet.

I clench my jaw and chew against my inner cheek. I tell him grudgingly, the number grinding out from between my teeth.

“And what are you going to do about that?” Pryce's voice slithers silently up my spine, around my neck, makes it difficult to swallow. “Can you pay it?”

I shrug, I don’t know, sir. I’ll figure something out.

“You know.” He unlinks his fingers and leans back in his seat. I imagine he’s probably crossing an ankle over his knee right now, much as I had been in Chuck’s office only a few hours ago. “In times of hardship, it doesn’t hurt to ask your friends for help, John. Officers do it all the time, after all. In many cases, it’s the only way to get by.”

My breath comes out in a sigh, slow, long, and shallow from my mouth. I hold my hands together on my lap, fingers interlacing. “I know, sir.”

“I don’t know that you do. You haven’t exactly gone out of your way to make friends.”

“I know, sir.”

“That’s going to need to change, son.” Pryce nods to himself slowly, folding his fingers over his lap, having mastered the look of a disappointed father. He’s older than me, though not by enough to be my father—not much less than ten years, if memory serves well. Still, it lurches words up in my throat to catch, coiling and tight, boiling with a hot resentment that I wrestle down with pride and an undignified eagerness to please. It isn’t fair, and I think he knows it.

Don't call me son, I want to say.

“If this is going to work, with you heading investigations the way you do your thing, you’re going to need friends who’ll bail you out and have your back. Do you know what I mean?”

I look away and frown at the bookshelf up against the wall next to the window, eyes roving over the covers, not really trying to read anything but just looking for the sake of it. It’s law books, and I know what a good few of them are. Moralintern-issued codes of conduct and legal shit, officer handbooks, Vespertine cop manuals and comparisons to the Vespertine-Revachol cop-culture gap, the history of gang violence in Revachol. Bevy’s book is there, too, nestled on the top shelf. I can’t make out the titles at this distance, but I’ve seen that spine just earlier today, so I now know what it looks like.

The clock on the wall ticks down in seconds. He’s waiting for my answer. Unlike with the Inspectorate General, this will not end unless I comply.

My fingers are squeezing so tightly together that it makes my knuckles hurt.

“...Yes, sir.”

The silence is constricting.

“...You know,” Captain Pryce says, deliberate in his tone, forcing me to draw my eye back to him. He’s watching me, leaning against his desk, chin resting thoughtfully against his interlaced knuckles. “If the problem’s that you don’t know how to make friends, a good way of going about it is just to put yourself out there. Talk to people. Maybe even do some favors for them.

“Then I’m sure that they’ll want to do favors for you, too. After all, friends look out for each other.”

I shrug, my shoulders stiff as a board. I look away again, staring at the Dalson’s Cradle sitting on the edge of Captain Pryce’s desk. If I wanted to, I could lean forward and pull back one of the balls, let it go, and let the laws of physics do its work. I do want to, actually. But I feel like if I move much more, surely, my muscles would snap. My bones. Fragile and edible.

“I guess.”

Captain Pryce chuckles warmly. When I look, he has a smile that’s crinkling his nose a little, drawing out laugh lines at the edges of his mouth and crows feet around the corners of his eyes. He reaches for his mug of—coffee, I’m pretty sure? Beneath the smoke, there’s the trace of a bitter aroma, and when I glance at his coffee pot, it’s half full—but he pauses halfway. Leans further to take the cradle’s hanging ball at the end, pull it back, and let it go. He gives me something to watch other than him.

It taps back and forth, louder than the clock on the wall. It’s so loud that after a few seconds, it makes me dizzy. Heaving a sigh that tries for nonchalance, I reach forward to stop it, muscles so tight and body so stiff that I'm amazed when nothing in me breaks.

The insane clicking ends almost immediately, and Captain Pryce takes a thoughtful drink of his coffee, satisfied. This was a test, and I've failed it. I’m not sure whether or not my stomach or my lungs or any part of my nerves has properly settled down by the time he tells me to continue.

I keep smaller things a secret. Hide things. The way that I was planning on shoplifting food to eat. The panic that I felt in the immediate moment upon hearing Bevy’s words on the radio, and the panic that I felt throughout. The tattoo. The fake plants and the empty fish tank that I don’t think ever had any fish in it to begin with. The food that Miss Secretary gave me. The fact that I fell asleep. That I almost pulled my gun. The color of Guillaume Bevy’s eyes.

Because—maybe—there’s a reason Bevy works so hard to keep them a secret. And I’m not a man who likes to gossip so much as a man who likes to listen. I’m not a man who digs up secrets just to tell them—not unless I have to. That’s why Pryce likes me so much. Guillaume Bevy’s eyes are brown, and that’s for me to know.

Pryce doesn’t say a lot. He sips on his coffee, takes drags of my cigarette, and gets up to refill his coffee from his own little private coffee corner once. I think it means he trusts me to tell him all of the important stuff without being prompted. The thought probably shouldn’t flood my head with the same boozy rush of dopamine I felt when I’d shattered Bevy’s composure so utterly—or something similar to that, at least, I don’t know. I don’t understand it.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Captain Pryce says after a long, thoughtful minute of silence. For a second, I shuffle in my chair. Then I lean back to recline, draping my elbow over the side. My feet find Captain Pryce’s desk again, and I cross my ankles laxly, feeling an uncomfortable pull of pain right around the muscles hugging my sacroiliac joint. I ignore it: My comfort isn’t of any relevance here, either.

“I think I do.”

He raises his eyebrows, watching me over the rim of his glasses. Hunting for symptoms of pain, or waiting for me to speak?

“It means that I’ve taken responsibility for amending this mistake. It’s my job to take care of this now.”

“That’s right.”

A shiver trickles its way down my spine when he nods, a cold and sharp sensation that promises goosebumps. Not sure if that’s a good thing, I nod back like the tame little rabbit I am. Fight, flight, freeze. Fawn. “I’ll take care of it, sir.”

“I know you will. You always do.”

And it’s just that easy. A couple of words of acknowledgement, a nod to the fact that I work so fucking hard to keep this place afloat, and I do so much to keep this dream of Revachol’s freedom alive as the left hand man of Ptolemaios Pryce.

A warmth in my chest, spreading to my aching stomach, fills my head with a sense of relieved accomplishment the likes of which I’ve known deep within my lungs yet is rarely ever stoked. Good job, it says, smoothing over my eyelids. I have faith in you. You can do this. It makes me scoff out a laugh and smile, sinking back against the chair and relaxing wholly, luxurious as a cat.

It's stupid. Vain. Asinine. Captain Pryce could kick me to the curb and I’d come crawling back just to hear him say that the kind of person I’ve become hasn’t gone to waste and that it’s not for nothing, after all. Everything I’ve done is worth something. I haven’t yet expired my use.

I know, I know. I’ve known this for a while, now. I shouldn’t be as warm with pride or relief as I am. I can’t help it. As it turns out, you can’t simply logic yourself out of the way you feel as easily as people would like to assume. Psychology’s… much more complicated than that, as it turns out.

There’s a second where Captain Pryce looks off to the side, expanding into two seconds, then five, leaving him briefly painted in statuesque profile. It’s a quiet affair when he stands to his feet and moves over to the bookshelf, fingers tracing over the top shelf until he picks out Bevy’s book. He turns to its back to examine the cover, probably reading the summary or some shit, I don’t know.

Though I try to give off an air of unbothered relaxation, I can't help but to watch him intently while I lounge, brain blinking in that horrid middle ground between brain wired; eyes tired and eyes wired; brain tired. I feel the air still in my lungs, slow and shallow and tight, hugging my still-thudding heart as it shivers in my ribcage.

“You can tell a lot about a person from the way he writes.” The captain nods to himself sullenly, then turns slowly to cross the distance to me. I don’t look away from the book until Pryce is standing right next to the chair, a towering, oppressive presence urging me to lift my head and observe his face.

“Here,” he says, and I take it with steady hands—steady hands, I said—the same book I held just earlier today, but different. One that never felt at home in my hand or has been warmed by my body.

I turn it around to inspect the front, finger pressing into Bevy’s throat. It’s a hardcover. Those are hard to come by here when books are published independently. How interesting.

“Read this. Maybe it’ll help him become a friend of the RCM.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath.” I scoff and roll my eyes, adjusting my apprehension into something like a snarl instead. “Bitch fucking hates me, that’s no secret.”

“John.” I feel his hand settle on my shoulder and squeeze, shockingly firm and almost painful. It pulls me back instantly from whatever bitter place my mind just slipped to, drawing my head back to the present. It grounds me to this room, this chair, this book. My fingers. My boss. The coils constrict just enough to remind me of who I am, of who he is, of just whose lair this is. Remember yourself, it says.

Pryce loosens his grip when he has my attention again but doesn’t leave entirely, holding me frozen with no pressure at all but the weight of his hand. I wouldn't be surprised to see cold, boney bruises there soon, imprinted like a tourniquet contusion.

“‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’—that can go both ways. He’d be good to be friends with. But if, for some reason, he doesn’t… well.” Pryce heaves a heavy sigh, rolling his head to the side and tossing his other hand vaguely in the air. It’s an echo of what I do, sometimes. Often. “You know.”

The heaviness is back in my body. This… oppressive weight of expectation. I feel it prickling in my fingernails, my toes, but I can’t move to let it out. Not while Pryce is holding me down like this.

I roll my eyes and scoff, pretending like it isn’t there, and force myself to tilt my head into a careless shrug. “Of course I do,” I say with a smile, because it’s true.

Pryce smiles back with a pleased little nod, eyes crinkling, and lets go of my shoulder with a firm pat, pat that leaves my bones rattled. Good boy, it says. You’re doing good.

Beneath it all, the pride wells up again, warm and boozy. And that is that.