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The 57-th archives smell of clean aluminium shelves and clean wooden desks, of paper and blue matte folders, a tiny bit – of a woman's perfume. Satellite-officer Chester McLaine looks around, then squats – and starts looking through folders from the bottom up, starting with 'Z'. Liaison officer Alice DeMettrie tries really hard not to laugh.
"McLaine..."
"Huh?"
"You do know that "Levitt" starts with an 'L', right?"
He stops.
"So you're telling me you really have them in order here?"
She presses her temple to one of the shelves. It looks like if she doesn't laugh out loud right now, she'll cry instead.
"Yes. We have everything in alphabetical order in our archives".
"Well, in ours it's..."
"I know".
His hand climbs up the shelves to the 'L' section like a freckle-spotted spider. Alice covers her mouth with her palm.
"Are you bored in here?"
"Why should I be bored?"
"Come on, we just snitched your lieutenant. Means it's boring as hell".
She leans down and starts going through folders too, from the other side. From 'K' to 'M'.
"It's good".
"It's not".
"It's like everywhere else".
"Well, it's not like everywhere else with us".
It looks like Alice is getting in the way of his hand – a spotted spider – so she steps away from the folders. Satellite-officer McLaine has a little yellow spot near the last knuckle of his index finger. Some more on his palm. Those are calluses from his sabre.
One of them got distracted and missed "Levitt, Dominic".
"Oh, you're diffirent. I believe that".
"Come to us. We'll be the two redheads of the 41st".
Alice smiles.
"And they'll give me a shovel?"
"The biggest shovel in Revachol".
"And are the 41st always checking whose is bigger?"
"And are the 57st only giving out sapper shovels?"
"We don't have the same kinds of piles to dig through, you know".
"Piles of what?"
"You know better than me".
They watch each other for a second – and they laugh, and then change places. Alice is looking through folders from 'M' to 'K', McLaine – the other way around. They don't talk so no one misses Levitt again.
Chester's the first one to break.
"Did you know him?"
Alice is quiet. Lesnyh, Leroy, Leon... Chester pulls out a folder with "Landsberger" on it, looks at his face with interest for a moment, then grimaces and puts it back.
"So?"
"A little".
"What happened?"
"There was a shootout, Madre and Mazda fighting for territory. Civillians were hurt. It happened between shifts, we didn't have enough people to deal with the situation. Levitt-Kitsuragi went there. Just the two of them. They couldn't hold out long enough for backup".
She reaches her hand and pulls out a blue matte folder. Exactly the same as others. Levitt.
"Found it?"
"Found it".
McLaine crosses the blue plastic with his finger.
"Rest in peace".
Alice looks at the folder in her hands.
To the right from McLaine's X, she draws an O with her nail.
Chester draws another X.
Alice – an O.
They get a draw.
They don't say anything about X's, or about O's. McLaine puts his hands in his pockets and impatiently taps his foot.
"You'll show me where his stuff is, right? I should be back at the 41st", he checks his empty wrist, "like, right now".
"Of course. Let's go".