My car door thudded shut behind me, and I slid a nervous thumb up and down the strap of my messenger bag; in the grey winter’s morning, CENCA’s district headquarters loomed against the dark sky in storeys and columns of smooth, pale concrete, marred here and there by glimmers of windows and a world inside. An expanse of sliding, double-wide glass doors offered a way in, dwarfed into insignificance by the walls above them—and anyone who went through them felt even smaller. Whoever was behind the architecture of CENCA wanted you to look at it and think “now, there’s power.” Even though there wasn’t a standard building design for the Corporation, from the bases I’d visited it seemed like each construction team started from the same place: determination to create as imposing an homage to brutalism as possible.
On one hand, having once served at CENCA’s de facto headquarters, I knew better than most that this place was a provincial backwater. This was a place people got promoted out of or demoted into (like I had been).
On the other hand, this branch still represented a power that held sway in every corner of my life, bristling with perpetual threat to my status as a free woman (should certain details of my life come to light).
I was sufficiently cowed.
I scanned myself in, watching as the sleepy-looking guard sent my bag through its routine check—though I didn’t miss his side-eye at me after reading my name. Had news of the “Cal incident” had spread? My badge, brand-new phone, travel mug of coffee, Rimloc, belt, coat, and the change from my pocket followed my messenger bag in a clunky grey tray.
Needing to scan my gun usually amused me. Security was checking for dangers, anomalies—but said dangers were moot if they were government-regulated.
But I wasn’t in much of a humorous mood today.
Silently, I passed through the body scanner, got cleared, and waited, watching the Mithae-tech scanners glow and hum as the conveyor belt sighed its way forward.
The blockade was over, and now I was freely trapped inside, stomach churning—and not just from strong coffee.
Gathering my stuff, I headed up the stairs to the right and spotted the custodian pushing her janitorial trolley down an adjacent hallway. Zhang Mei (or, as she insisted I call her, Mrs. Mei), smiled and waved at me as I passed.
Mrs. Mei and I were on friendly terms and, since we both shared a penchant for lunching in quiet, outside corners, we sometimes took breaks together. She didn’t speak English well, but I was happy to let her practice on me when she wanted; she reciprocated by trying to teach me Mandarin. Apparently, my accent was decent, but I suspected she was just being polite; though I learned a few phrases, I was nowhere near conversational.
I liked her well enough, and she sometimes brought me food, like she felt she had to look after me. Truthfully, I didn’t know much about her, and we rarely asked questions about each other, and (due to the weather impeding outdoor lunch breaks) I didn’t see much of her during cold months. I could sense something of a troublemaker’s streak in her, and though I had never seen it manifest towards me, I also wasn’t surprised that coworkers found her difficult. She was somehow both forceful and quiet, talkative but respectful of distance, and was, besides Stanton, probably the closest thing I had to a friend around here.
But I wanted to get to my cubicle and to safety as soon as possible, so I didn’t stop for much besides a quick hello, instead focusing on starting my trek down long corridors of thin carpet and thick concrete, towards the Field Work wing.
Before entering into the main corridor for Field Work, I turned aside and clocked in. In a stroke of luck, the area around the time clock was oddly deserted—which came as a relief. There was no telling how much people knew about what I was calling The Latest Incident, and I preferred to avoid unnecessary, insincere small talk under the best of circumstances.
CENCA was roughly divided into three ‘wings’—one for Field Work, one for Local Affairs (aka, paperwork), and the middle one which was, for some reason, divided between Research and Corporate (even though Research was, by far, the most active of the departments). Stanton supervised Field Work, and had a grand total of eight field agents for our sector (including himself). However, since this was the district headquarters, he also supervised a number of smaller, more local branches and the representatives that worked here.
Everyone talked as though Stanton was going to be promoted to a better location one of these days, with the general understanding that he was too good for here, and that the higher-ups would have to recognize that eventually. Personally, I got the impression that a few of said ‘higher-ups’ resented him specifically for that sentiment. But he was the kind of person that got along well with everyone, so it rarely came up.
The main corridor for the Field Work division was straight as an arrow, carpeted in dull reddish-orange, and lined with plants, the occasional abstract painting, and darkened glass doors. All the offices, meeting areas, supply rooms, training sectors, and nooks were positioned directly off this corridor, or up a staircase leading to the much more open second floor. Or down a few hallways and back-alley-like passageways, and up or down a few other stairways. Or maybe in the Basement. Or maybe hidden in some random spot that was, confusingly, on a third floor that didn’t seem to properly exist outside of its dream of, one day, being used.
There were buildings-worth of space beyond what was usable, and the entire base was like that in every wing and division and department. Simply put, the founders of this district headquarters had cherished higher hopes than reality warranted, and the building ended up as a ghost town as a result. There had never been a call to have as full a staff as a building like this begged for—except, according to legend, one brief period in the early 1950s. But now, in the present, the whole base felt eerily quiet, empty, like you might come in one day and find everyone else had disappeared, too. Walking around the halls felt like you were intruding, like no one was really supposed to be here.
Some people were spooked by that feeling, some ignored it. When I first got here, the emptiness was a comfort. Sure, I could tell people were staring and theorizing about my arrival, but if I wanted to explore the building or go check out the weapons rooms and the gun ranges, there wasn’t anyone around to stare or ask me about what had happened. I’d been hired as a weapons specialist, you see, so in the early days I spent a lot of time at the gun range—it helped me deal during the unpleasant transition, mixing work with working out my frustrations on a series of paper targets. And, finally, when I’d been here long enough, most people had decided it’d be too awkward to ask questions about all those months ago, like they’d missed their window.
Later, I’d also understand that the missed window meant everyone got used to me as a person that wasn’t there, someone they didn’t know and had no reason to. At the time, friend-making had been pretty far down on my priority list, so I hadn’t minded. But now that I was getting settled, now that I’d made an actual friend in Cal, I was starting to realize that when he left there’d be a gaping, friend-shaped void I was in no position to fill.
Stanton should have been the exception to all of the above. Except that he, of all people, was the one I most needed to keep secrets from. And it wasn’t like I could take my acquaintanceship with Mrs. Mei from “man, the weather sucks today” to “let me tell you about my deep sorrow and crushing loneliness” over an afternoon lunch break.
Maybe I should get that cat I’d told Stanton about. Mrs. Mei liked animals, so maybe she could give me some pointers.
Once again, though, I was grateful for the space and emptiness. No one knew me well enough to be sympathetic and stop me for comment; instead, I marched ahead and avoided the occasional glance, the weight of judgement I could feel on the back of my neck as I walked past. How much had people heard? I didn’t know Moira. Had she told others about the story? Or was this just the result of office rumors since I’d missed a day? Maybe this was all my nervous imagination.
I clung to my movement, my business. First stop, Stanton’s office. I had some paperwork to turn in (incident reports and the like), we had a few things to debrief about, and then I’d get started on my investigation into Talsic’s case.
The door to Stanton’s office was open, as usual, and, despite the plants and shelves of books he’d tried to fill the place with, it felt as large and cold as everywhere else in this place. Much more homey and comfortable, but still, the walk from the door to his desk was awkwardly long. Once I knocked at the door and came in, it afforded enough time for him to pack up his maintenance kit, stow it, and manoevre his crossbow off the desk and onto its display shelf behind him—without rushing.
Every time I saw the crossbow, I itched to examine it, see what Mithae runes it had been etched with, feel the weight of it and test it out against something more than paper targets—but that felt rather too chummy and impolite of a request, considering that it was his main weapon non-Rimloc weapon. Mostly I just contented myself with eyeing it when I got the chance.
“Glad to see you made it through the weekend.” Stanton laughed, gesturing to one of the chairs in front of his polished wood desk.
I pulled one out, and settled my messenger bag in my lap. “Yeah, no problems, really,” I said. “How are you doing?”
He shrugged. “Same as ever, I suppose. Trying to sort out schedules for the coming week.”
I felt a twinge of guilt. It was certainly better that I was off of Cal’s case (for many reasons), but that did mean he had more on his plate. “Is there a lot?”
“Not as bad as some weeks.” He leaned back in his chair. “And Croft will be stopping by in a bit to take his portion of the job.”
Cyrus Croft was the semi-official right-hand man and assistant to Stanton, who helped out with the administrative side of the work. He was still classified as a field agent, but since he was also the engineering lead and coordinator, he mostly kept to Headquarters unless he was directly needed.
“Well, that’s good.”
Stanton pulled open the drawer in his desk and rifled through folders for a moment. “I’ve already got you reassigned from the Calernon Agrabeth case to the Talsic Feldspar case. There’s not much in the file you’re getting, but you’ll have both a physical copy and a digital one sent to your work computer.”
I accepted the folder, flipped it open and found, as promised, that it was pretty thin. There was a brief overview of what sparse details we knew about him, and an even briefer overview of what his case was. “I see you guys were able to ask him some of the biographical questions.”
Stanton chuckled, settling another folder on the desk beside him. “Not that it really helped. We’re still trying to figure out what ‘Cregdündracu’ means and where it might be located.”
“And no picture,” I observed. In the place of that was a portrait sketch. Which, actually, wasn’t terribly uncommon in this line of work. Sometimes subjects quite simply could not be captured by photography.
It was an ongoing issue.
“He objected to the flash,” Stanton explained. “Particularly since we asked him to take off his hood. Said there was too much light in the room already.”
“Ah.”
He paused, rubbing his chin and eyeing me like he was trying to divine what I was going to do next.
“Is there something else?”
He sighed.
“I did have to include a report as to why you were pulled from the Agrabeth case.” He slid the other file across the desk. “I had to be as accurate as possible here—this is history and an official record. Since it’s attached to your name, you should know what’s there.”
“Agent and Weapon’s Specialist Jeanne Townford taken off the case due to a personal issue with the perpetrator leading to inhibited judgement and reckless behaviour. Reassigned to a different case [see Case File #579, Talsic Feldspar], and recommended for sessions with a CENCA Psychologist.“
I swallowed the thickening taste of shame back down into my already upset stomach.
“Psychologist?” I asked, picking out the only thing I could contest. “Really, I’ll be fine. That was all just a bad day. A new case and some extra sleep is already doing wonders.”
I hoped my face wasn’t red. I pictured anyone else at Headquarters getting a hold of this file and reading it, preemptively feeling an imagined burden of their pity and scorn.
“I am glad about that,” Stanton replied. He paused again, shifting in his chair. “But, well, while I don’t think it’s a bad idea, I should mention that this was a… suggestion from someone on the Board.”
I bit my lip. Better and better. Not only had someone already read the file, they had already passed judgement, too. I was surprised that a psychologist was the heaviest “suggestion” that had been brought up, but I credited Stanton for the leniency, not the Board.
He let out a deep breath. “Which, I should point out that it’s not mandatory. But I agreed to include the suggestion for a few reasons. To begin with, if something like this case comes up again, I don’t think either of us want to face the same issues, and working through whatever’s going on could be beneficial to both your long-term mental state and your day-to-day job stress. Besides that, I think we’re both aware that there’s something of an… unfair scrutiny towards your cases.”
I winced in agreement.
“This could be a way to show any detractors that you’re taking things seriously, and making concrete steps towards bettering yourself. And, since this was a suggestion, going through with it could show a willingness to work with authority, one which some of the board members might appreciate. Working a few quieter, more successful cases will go a long way towards settling any lingering issues, but, unfortunately, that will take more time.”
More time than I might actually have.
I had already taken less-politely ordered seminars on interdimensional policies, and had undergone extra ‘refreshment’ trainings before being transferred here. Part of me was relieved I wasn’t being sent back to those. They tended to have unsupportive teachers.
I sighed, deeper than I intended, and wilted into the chair. “You know, sometimes I think I should have just gone for a career in library science.”
Stanton chuckled. “That probably would have been simpler. However, if I may, I’m glad you didn’t.”
I flashed an appreciative smile, feeling a bit of warmth in my cheeks. “Thanks. If I do end up taking the sessions, what exactly does that look like?”
“You will have to get a physical check-up and a reference note from Dr. Laurent, then you’ll be referred to the psychologist on staff. I’m not sure if you’ve met Dr. Baker?”
I shook my head, resisting the urge to deflate on the spot and refuse to engage any further with this ‘suggestion’. I had not interacted much with Dr. Holley Laurent, but so far I was not a fan. She had this way of looking at you over pursed lips, like she was mentally using a scalpel to open you up and judge you from the inside out, and she always wore a choking amount of perfume. Anyone else I’d heard talking on the subject shared similar sentiments of aversion.
Dr. Melissa Baker, though, I… actually didn’t know anything about.
“Her office is in Corporate, above Dr. Laurent’s. Won’t be hard to find, but you will have to schedule an appointment.”
Scheduling appointments. I wasn’t a fan of that, either.
“Again, this is all up to you.”
I nodded, and bravely avoided saying “Oh I’m sure it is.”
“In a similar vein, did you decide about the motion sensor?”
At that, I bravely did not groan and flop my head on his desk.
“I’m still weighing the pros and cons,” I said with a small smile. “I’m afraid I’m something of a private person, so the idea… intimidates me.”
All weekend I’d been arguing back and forth about it, in my head. I’d asked Cal, and after a long moment all he’d said was that he trusted I knew what to do better than he did.
Maybe I should get a cat, and then accept, and then I’d continue to be above suspicion. High risk, high reward. Or maybe I’d just be digging a deeper hole and then get arrested within the week. High risk, bad results. Or maybe I could lie about the cat—except that would almost certainly come up again, if for no other reason than Stanton would probably ask to see it next time he came over to the house.
The proposition was chewing holes in my skull.
“Understandable,” Stanton replied. “If you have any questions, feel free to ask Welder—he’s aware of the situation and will give you far more useful answers than I could.”
I chuckled dutifully. Stanton wasn’t much of a Mithae guy—apparently even the rewrites on his crossbow had been done by someone else.
“Though I think you will need to give a concrete answer by the end of the day,” he added. “The labs are a bit impatient to know if they can test it out.”
I nodded, biting back an internal scream. Now I had a deadline, and still no idea what to do.
“But how are things going with Feldspar? Any new information or developments?” He leaned forward in his chair, green eyes watching me keenly.
I took a breath, giving myself space to think. “Well, nothing much. Not… not exactly. He apparently knows his way around a kitchen fairly well, so that’s been both unexpected and convenient.” And a huge relief—mostly for me, but it would have been a relief to Talsic, too, if he knew what he was saving himself from. “He said something about not wanting to impose too much, since he’s aware we have different diets. We’ve had a few talks, too, but nothing new new has shown up.”
Stanton tilted his head, keyed in to my hesitation. I carefully arranged the folder in front of me, looking at it and not Stanton. In the car on the way here, I’d told myself I’d keep this quiet for now, as an attempt to… I guess protect Talsic—but sitting here at Stanton’s desk, I didn’t want to lie, or keep any more secrets. Distantly, I wondered if I had defaulted to secrecy because it was becoming such an ingrained habit to hide, but that was a worry I’d have to unpack later.
There was no reason to not tell Stanton, I decided. The best way to protect Talsic was to get him the help he needed.
“We talked more about where he’s from,” I said, “though I haven’t had much progress in narrowing down which mountains he might be from. Or which dimension. But considering his lack of knowledge about dimensions and CENCA, he would seem to be from one that we’re either not in, or… well…” I laced my fingers in my lap. “He… he said something that’s been kind of… itching at the back of my mind. When I first mentioned CENCA, after he showed up at my door, he clearly had no idea what it was. Had never heard the name. But yesterday evening, we were talking again, and it felt like he was trying to figure out if he should say something.” I was starting to get a very loose handle on his body language, but it was still a work in progress. “Then he asked me if CENCA had the same uniform or logo across dimensions.”
Stanton raised his eyebrows.
“I told him that I wasn’t sure. I’ve only been to one other dimension in person, and that dimension was related to ours. There were a few differences, I think, but nothing major. So I said that, as far as I knew, it was the same, but that there could be differences between CENCA organizations since, while we’re all related, we’re also more tied to the needs of an individual dimension than to corporate policies as a whole. And then he just… changed the subject.”
“Was there any follow up?”
“I asked him if he had seen the CENCA uniform or symbol before, but he said something vague, something about how he doesn’t know much about human culture and clothing. And then he changed the topic again. I tried to bring it up again later, but with pretty similar results.”
Stanton tapped a finger against his chin. “That could imply that he’s seen our agents before, even though he didn’t know what CENCA is. Which would raise questions about where he saw a CENCA operative, and why he’s not talking about it.”
Again, I straightened the already perfectly neat folder, and rearranged my hands on my lap. Perhaps I was trying too hard to overcompensate for lying about Cal, or maybe I was just trying to be comfortable around Stanton again, but I found myself spouting my theory before I could stop myself. “That could make sense, though. He didn’t know about CENCA, and was about to tell me some more detailed stuff about what had happened to him, and then we were interrupted by you, in uniform, and Moira, with a CENCA badge and keycard. And then he tries to stay at a CENCA facility and finds it uncomfortable. Maybe something happened to make him distrust CENCA—or at least the visuals associated with CENCA—and now he’s projecting that fear on to us.”
“But he willingly went back to stay at your house, even though he knows you’re a part of CENCA.”
I shrugged. “Maybe he felt like he didn’t have any options, or that one CENCA agent was better than a whole base full of them, or both.”
“Hmmm.” Stanton drummed on the desk. “That does make a kind of sense.”
“So I was thinking that, for the investigation, I could get started by looking into nearby dimensions where CENCA’s presence is limited or closed-book, and see if I can cross-reference anything from other stuff he’s said.”
“That could be wise,” Stanton mused. “Though if he does have a problem that ties back to CENCA that could be… concerning.”
I thought back, briefly, to past Incidents. “It could be some kind of misunderstanding,” I offered. “Maybe it was something perfectly benign that got interpreted badly by one side or the other.”
“We can hope,” Stanton said, leaning back in his chair. “And if it’s a different dimension’s CENCA, there’s not much we could really do about it besides file a report.”
Personally, I’d prefer to not get involved with any other dimension—much less with a different dimension’s CENCA—so that was good news. Filing a report and asking them to come get their lost extra-normal would be preferable to getting stuck in the middle of someone else’s bad inter-species-relations policies.
“Let me know if you find anything,” Stanton said. “Hopefully this continues to stay a simple case, for everyone’s sake.”
There was a knock on the door behind me, and I turned to see Cyrus Croft standing there, holding a briefcase and one hand against the door. He nodded a greeting, white teeth flashing in a broad smile across his black face. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
“Not at all,” Stanton replied, waving him in. “We were just wrapping up.” He turned back to me. “Looking into nearby dimensions would be a solid place to start, regardless, since most non-tethered portals are limited in scope. Either way, I trust your investigative instincts. And let me know if you’ll need any extra resources or contacts to access more in-depth files—though give Martins a try, first, since he’ll be able to better weigh-in on what research you’ll need to do.” He tucked away the folder containing Cal’s case file and the Board’s ‘suggestion’. “The two other affairs are up to you.”
He didn’t look at Cyrus, approaching the desk behind me, but I found it clear to me that Stanton didn’t want to start on sensitive “affairs” (such as my mental health and personal security) around others. I nodded to let him know I understood. Standing up, I shook his hand across the desk, and then turned to Cyrus. His large hand dwarfed mine completely, firm and uncompromising.
As I excused myself and walked out the door, I heard him asking about why I needed to look into nearby dimensions.
“Just a recent case,” Stanton said. “A return-to-home situation. Now, did you get my email from Friday? With the updates that the Auxiliary Director asked for, it looks like we’ll need—”
I, thankfully, found myself out of earshot before hearing more. The less I knew about the inner workings of the Board, the better. The Auxiliary Director—as the head of each district headquarters was called—had taken me aside after I got transferred here, and told me in polite, thinly-veiled corporate-speak that he would be keeping an eye on me (in case I messed up again), and that the big city might have agents to spare, but down here every team member needed to pull their weight—et cetera. I had been able to avoid him since, and I planned to continue to do so for as long as humanly possible.
And now, I had an investigation to get started.
The upstairs office space was mundane, as office spaces go. Nothing fancy, just cubicles—most of which were empty. Cyrus Croft had his own office, with a window looking onto our cubicled room, and Drake Welder spent most of his days in the Mithae labs. The original, grand idea had been to have two office spaces for the two teams of four field agents; so most everyone else was in a different section of the Field Work wing, down a different corridor. Stanton had talked before about changing that, bringing everyone together into a more united front, but he’d gotten pushback from the board for some unknown reason. Personally, I think the Auxiliary Director still had aspirations towards expanding our reach and influence, and hoped that some day we’d have big enough teams that such an arrangement would make sense.
My cubicle was in a nice, sheltered corner. I didn’t have much hung up, just case notes and a few diagrams of weapons that I had tested out or helped develop. Sometimes it felt a little bare, but mostly the sparseness was fine with me. Less clutter meant less stuff to move if I got, say, fired and arrested for collaborating with an enemy of the free dimensions. But for now, this space was mine, and it was a relief to sink into my own spinny chair, out of sight, and away from any further judgment or scrutiny.
Setting my messenger bag on the floor, I pulled a notepad and pen from it, waiting for my computer to cough its dusty way towards wakefulness (like most everyone’s computer here, it was due for an upgrade). I had much to consider. A large part of that I couldn’t write down in detail—there was no telling who might drop by and look over my shoulder—but I still needed to categorize what to do next. Absently, while I let my brain process, I scribbled on a sticky note an idea to expand the vial of ‘elixir’ housed in standard-issue Rimlocs, and stuck it under one of the diagrams.
I clicked the pen up and down, feeling the spring-release engage and disengage. After staring at the black computer frame for what felt, in this windowless space, like an hour, I rolled my shoulders and put pen to paper.
To Decide:
Psychologist
Motion detector
That was enough to keep me busy for a while, but I did, in fact, have an investigation to do. By this time, my computer was awake enough for me to type my password in, so I did that and turned back to my notepad.
Talsic: lost, trying to get back home.
Current information: species is called a “silverie” and lives in the mountains (which he calls Cregdündracu). Has an accent currently believed to be from the Southern United States. Showed himself unfamiliar with the concept of Mithaedrir’s dimensions, but is competent with many modern utilities. Unsure of how he got here, but portals of some kind are suspected. Has implied some sort of familiarity with CENCA’s uniform, but also did not seem to know what CENCA was, prior to arriving here.
Possible avenues to investigate:
1. Nearby dimensions (CENCA activity, mountains or species fitting his description).
2. Mithae activity / portals (look for traces of rogue portals or areas that might have unregistered Mithecal scars)
3. The Appalachians (on theory that the accent is Appalachian—contact CENCA in this dimension’s U.S.A. to see if they’re familiar with silveries or know anything on the topic)
4. Mithae suppression? (he has complained a few times about his senses feeling limited/cut-off in a way that would imply that, normally, he has some connection with Mithae. Could potentially be something tied to land or region and simply be a result of him being in a different place, but worth checking out)
As discussed with Stanton, I’d start by looking into the records of nearby dimensions to see if I could find any useful information, and my first stop there was the registry. How much help I could get from there was certain to be minimal, since the general registry files would only have short overviews (or else inter-dimensional contact information), but it was a good place to start. Later, I knew, I’d have to go down to Research and ask Martins if he knew anything about silveries or related species, and if he could give me more insight there. I didn’t remember there being a linguist on staff, but Martins might also know someone who could decipher the “Cregdündracu” name.
And, well, I had my own reasons to be researching other dimensions. Being familiar with the nearby ones would be essential, in case I needed to get Cal out of here at high speeds. Ideally, we’d be able to give him some sort of defence or plan or start towards clearing his name, but idealism without rationality is often foolishness.
Two birds, one stone.
Though…
I did want to help Cal clear his name, if at all possible. And, in the beginning, I’d had a hard time reading over his file in as much detail as it deserved—the whole situation made me nauseated. Now that I was off the case, maybe I could read it a little more calmly, objectively, and maybe I could find something new, something we hadn’t seen before.
I hesitated, the mouse on screen hovering between the case-file directory and the dimensional registry.
If I looked at the file, there would be a record of it, and I might have to answer to questions about why I was bothering with it after I was taken off the case. But it was unlikely that I or the file was being that closely monitored. Which didn’t mean that taking a risk wasn’t stupid, but.…
“Knock, knock!” A cheerful, accented voice sang from behind me.
I spun around in my chair, heart-rate spiking, and resisted the urge to grab for my Rimloc.
Mrs. Mei waved at me, smiling, and stuffed a cleaning rag into one of the pockets on her jumpsuit. Typically, I tracked people by their footsteps, which was easy enough in this quiet of an office—but she hadn’t made a sound. She had this almost uncanny way of appearing places, as if she just popped up there via teleportation.
I swallowed my shock and smiled. “Mrs. Mei! How may I help you?” It would have been better to open with some pleasantries—and a less high-pitched voice—but I was more keyed up than I had realized.
She took it in stride. “Oh, no trouble,” she said, rubbing at a spot on the cubicle doorway, as if she were here to dispatch an offending smudge of dust. “I only had a small favor to ask of you, since you are very kind.”
She wasn’t trying to flatter me—I didn’t think—she just talked like that. I nodded and indicated a stool. The cubicle wasn’t big enough to have another chair, and I didn’t usually have visitors, but I had an extra seat, just in case. It wasn’t much of one, but at least had padding.
Mrs. Mei waved her hand in polite refusal. “This only take a minute,” she promised. Instead of sitting, she popped her head back out of the cubicle and looked around, then came in closer. She smelled of cleaning products, old rooms, and a hint of rose. It was a comforting and oddly familiar scent. “You see, it is almost time for holidays, and I am taking vacation to visit daughter and son-in-law in the States. I will be leaving for next few weeks.”
“Glad to hear you’re taking a break,” I said. I assumed that for holidays she meant Christmas, even though that was still a month away. “When do you leave?”
“Vacation start tomorrow,” she said. “I leave after lunch, today.”
I blinked.
“I was planning to tell you, but you were gone last week.”
Okay, that was fair. I wondered how much she knew about why I’d been gone. “Well, I hope you have a lovely time.”
She beamed. “We will. The favor I have to ask… I wondered, do you want cats?”
I blinked again, fighting down a sudden surge of panic. What did she know about that? There was no way she could know, right?
“There are baby cats,” she continued, disregarding my lack of response. “Two, small, in a storage closet in the basement. Their mother die of cold two week ago, so I put them somewhere warm.”
I nodded, wrenching my suspicions back into the real world. It wasn’t like she would have killed off the momma cat to conveniently orphan some kittens, and that before I was even aware that I needed a cat. Much more likely and realistically, she did exactly what she had said: seen kittens in need, and rescued them. She liked animals. But, now that she was going on vacation, she wanted to get them seen to. Or, she’d been hiding them, someone had found out and complained about them being in the closet, and she was resolving the situation by pawning them off on me. Knowing her, both were possible, and not mutually exclusive.
“Could be very good for you to have friends at your home,” she said.
Well, she wasn’t wrong there.
“I do like cats,” I said cautiously, intending to get more information. This was the part where she should show me pictures and I could decide how invested in this I really was.
“Great! Thank you very much,” she said, fishing in her pocket. “I have spare key, you can get them any time today. Some food down there, too. Everything you need, okay?”
“Why the spare key?” I stuttered, not sure what else to say as she shoved the keys into my hand.
“I am leaving soon,” she said. “You need to get cats. Cats are in locked closet.”
“When will you need them back?” I asked, instead of “why are you giving me the entire spare key ring?”
She flapped a hand at me, as if to show me I was being silly. “I get them when I come back, in a few weeks, okay? Cats are in supply closet in underground floor, near lab and portals.”
“Thanks,” I said, unsure of how else to respond, or how to say that I hadn’t fully agreed to take the cats. I knew where she was talking about.
“It is my pleasure,” she replied with a grin and a little bow. “Cats will be good for you. You have good time at work, okay? I will see you and get keys back in a few weeks.”
“O-okay,” I said, and then she was gone as quickly as she had arrived.
I looked down at the key ring in my hands. It was bristling with keys, some looking as new as if they’d been picked up yesterday, and some looking as old as if they’d been dug out of CENCA foundations decades before this base was built. I was reminded how, according to rumor, a lot of the foundations—and most of the Guesthouse—had been here before the building as we knew it. I wondered if that was true, or if that was just a theory, built from a few older-seeming doors and rooms scattered around the place.
But, regardless, I had keys—and apparently kittens.
I looked from the keys to the notepad on my desk.
Was this an answer to my uncertainty about the motion sensor? I could almost call it providential, if I believed in Providence. In the back of my mind, a memory resurfaced, that of my desperate prayer on the night of Cal’s portal; but that was too much to think about right now. Though, I could still just drop the kittens off at a shelter somewhere. Having access to them didn’t mean I was bound to them.
Two kittens, though….
I wasn’t sure if I was equipped to take care of them, but it might give Talsic something to do during the day, and eventually they could be friends for Cal (when he was allowed around the house again). But I didn’t know how to take care of kittens, and they’d probably need vaccines and a few vet trips, and depending on how old they were I’d either need to be bottle feeding them or just putting down a bowl of kibble and leaving them to it.
I sighed.
I already knew what decision I was going to make, really. It was too convenient an occurrence, too neat of an opportunity. And well, it wasn’t like me to ignore an opportunity when there was one. Heaven knew I saw too few of them.
And I couldn’t just leave two kittens to starve in the Basement. I think Mrs. Mei knew that.
I dropped the keys into my messenger bag and turned back to the computer.
Nothing particularly fruitful came of the day. As I feared, the dimensional overviews were too sparse to be truly groundbreaking for my investigation. Still, I made note of the ones that seemed most likely (and most convenient for safe travel), and planned to take the list to Martins for further details. I also went ahead and started the process of requesting information from CENCA’s branch near the Appalachians, just in case they had any knowledge of or experience with silveries. But bureaucracy meant that I’d only get the right names and forms by the end of the day, and wouldn’t get any useful information until tomorrow.
After whaffling and hesitating and going back and forth, I sent an email to Drake Welder, letting him know that I would be going forward with the motion sensor, but that I’d need to talk to him about specifications because I was in the process of acquiring three kittens.
I debated the number for a long while.
Lying so blatantly would be something concrete to raise suspicions, if it was found out—but at the same time, if I could just keep a handle on the information and the details, this might save Cal a lot of trouble. If Stanton ever asked about the third kitten, I’d say he was hiding in a closet and didn’t want to see people, and then later when I gave the kittens to a better home it would be too late for anyone to properly fact-check.
I was playing fast and loose with, well, everything, but if it worked out, it’d be better for everyone. Stanton wouldn’t have wasted a favor, Drake would get to field test his new toy, Cal could have some company and a smidge of freedom, and maybe Talsic would enjoy some company during the day.
Drake emailed back and set up a time for the next morning, saying he’d be busy for the rest of the afternoon.
At that point in time, I assumed that I’d give the kittens to a humane society or something once Talsic, Cal, and the motion sensor all blew over. For a brief moment, I also thought it’d be fun to have some little stress-free creatures around, tiny bundles of fur that were just animals and not fugitives or refugees. But that was impractical. I wouldn’t want to leave any pets at home all day, and it wasn’t like I could bring them to work with me.
It was too bad Cal wasn’t a shape-shifter, like apparently some of his distant relatives were. That would have made the ‘third kitten’ lie even easier.
But by the time I was off work, I had convinced myself to be excited about the whole scheme. I wondered what they looked like, and the latter half of the afternoon was spent determinedly not looking up pictures of kittens, or articles and books about how to take care of them.
I clocked out and said goodbye to Stanton, then headed to the basement. I’d decided to not tell him about the kittens until later, in case he wanted to come with me and see them, and notice there were only two.
In CENCA there are the three wings—Field Work, Local Affairs, and Research and Corporate. But running under all of them was the sublevel, the Basement. It was a whole other floor (and in some cases, multiple floors), that housed maintenance, some rooms for detaining rowdy prisoners, and a few holding cells (which were rarely used). There were also labs, many empty hallways, and the inter-dimensional gates. Hardly anyone except custodians, janitors, and the occasional lab worker frequented the Basement.
As Stanton had brought up earlier, untethered portals were limited in scope, and usually tended to take you to one of the nearest dimensions. But CENCA, being an agency that sometimes required its agents to travel further, needed something more permanent and substantial. So, the inter-dimensional gates, ‘tethered’ portals. They were like portals but bigger, fused with technology, and highly regulated. You could get in there with just a key, but you could barely touch any of the gates or equipment unless you had clearance from someone on the Board and your License for Interdimensional Travel (LIT). Mine had been suspended; it could have been reinstated last month, actually, but I hadn’t gotten around to taking care of it. It was something of a sore subject.
The Basement was the best place for these gates. It had the space, and tapping into the foundations gave it all more stability and Mithecal power (though that was augmented by lining the walls with heavy, dense metals). At this point it was something of a convention, too, to have portals in underground areas; the main headquarters had theirs in their Basement, too, and so did a few other places that I knew of. This CENCA branch, being smaller, had two gates, and honestly that was more than it needed. Neither were used often.
Which is why, when I reached the bottom of the stairs, I did a double-take when I saw someone at the door.
The only thing behind that door was the stairwell leading to the gates, and the gates were the only thing at the bottom of the stairwell.
Ducking back into the shelter of the stairway on instinct—I wasn’t not supposed to be here, but I also wasn’t supposed to be here—I held my breath. There was a second before I heard the door click open, and I risked a quick glance around the corner, catching a glimpse of a CENCA uniform disappearing behind the door. I couldn’t seen who it was—though I had an impression of a lankier, slimmer build—and realized with a start that they had a hood up. I hadn’t been able to see their face or their hair.
Who wore a hood up, indoors, with a uniform?
Who would be heading down to the Gates?
We didn’t have any interdimensional cases going on except for Cal’s, and we had been receiving orders and direction and communication from other CENCA branches, not directly from an interdimensional ambassador. Talsic’s case was also interdimensional, but I was the lead on that case, so I would know if anyone was going through the Gates due to that.
As I wondered if I could check what was going on, I remembered that there weren’t any cameras in the Basement, because of something about how regular technology didn’t like the CENCA foundations. It hadn’t occurred to me before how big of an oversight that could be.
I stayed crouched in the stairwell for a while longer, glad I’d been stifling my keys in my jacket. I didn’t think they’d heard or seen me.
But what was there to hear or see? Why did either of us need to stay hidden? They were supposed to be here, if they were an agent, and I could just say I was looking for Mrs. Mei. Right?
I was jumping at shadows. I’d been playing this deception game for so long that when I saw someone slightly out of place, I assumed they were as guilty as I was. But this was CENCA, where everything was regulated and recorded and everyone did their job. I didn’t know everything about who was where, and why, and that was fine. That was none of my business, wasn’t my problem. My business was with the kittens, and it was time to collect them.
Still, I couldn’t help but look long and hard at the door as I passed, and feel relief when I got through the closet door—after sifting through several stacks of keys. Mrs. Mei must have handed me a spare to every key in the building.
I flicked the lights on, and two pairs of gold and green eyes stared up at me from a box in the corner, framed by shaggy black, brown, and white fur.
I (almost) forgot about the hooded figure in a sudden rush of delight that caught me fully off-guard. My plans to give them to a shelter evaporated from my mind. The black one, with a splotch of white around his eye, yawned. I almost cooed audibly.
“Hi!” I said as softly as I could, dropping into a squat beside the box. “Would you guys like a new home?”
To be continued…..