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The bang! was loud enough to knock Emily out of field theory and into the present. Her thoughts caught up with her faltering feet and catalogued without missing a step: raised voices coming out of Darling's office; really loud, echoing, going at it probably long before Emily had tuned in; Darling high and furious, Trench raging.
Shit. Not again.
The report in Emily's hands crumpled near the edges. Darling had gone quiet, and only Trench roared the last few words. Emily was steps from the door, but she could hardly make it out, such was the animalistic growl, the full tilt heartbeat thumping in her ears.
"-t'll happen if you continue working against me."
She'd never heard the Director like that. Stern, stick up his ass, sometimes quick to irritation, but--
Thudding footsteps had Emily take several involuntary steps away, and some primal corner of her brain wanted to keep going, all the way to a nice hiding place. The door to Darling's office slammed open, the clang ringing down the hall, and Emily froze, but Trench didn't even see her. He swept out like a battering ram of fury and went the other way, trailing the stench of acrid smoke. Emily was sure that one of the nearby plants wilted.
The Director's form stalked out of view down the gleaming, spacious halls of Research, headed deeper into the sector, and Emily straightened her shoulders. She readjusted the report and smoothed out the wrinkles. She thought about turning around and pursuing some other item on today's agenda. She thought about taking a rare early day and going straight home. She wondered, not for the first time, why she even worked this job.
It was an idle thought, at best. It would take much more than arguments between higher-ups to make her leave. She would never find another job like this one. It was hard to imagine anything like peace or purpose among mundanity, now, not with all she knew.
She wouldn't have any peace today, if she turned around and deliberately heard nothing.
Emily intended to make her presence known, but curiosity took hold, and she'd never been very good at telling it no. She sidled through the open door, steps light as hydrogen.
The room was always a mess, but Darling had a method to it, and it certainly didn't involve stray papers scattered across the floor or cooling fans knocked asunder. Darling was also a consummate mess, but not like this. He had his back to a whiteboard, which was shoved up precariously against the wall. His coat and glasses were askew, his eyes were wide as he stared unseeingly at the opposite wall, and his face was pale, home to something that Emily had never seen on him before.
She still had a few seconds to back out with no one the wiser.
Like hell.
When she stepped forward, footsteps a little more firm, Darling surged into movement. "Emily!" he yelped, straightening his glasses. His fingers were shaking. "You're-- oh, the report! You finished it! You can put it there." He gestured haphazardly at nothing. Emily's eyes followed and caught a flash of red, a mark wrapped snake-like around Darling's forearm.
Darling pulled his coat into order and shook his sleeve down with haste. The red disappeared.
Emily took a deep, measured breath. She placed the papers down on the nearest surface and squared her shoulders. "Am I supposed to pretend like I didn't hear any of that?"
"Oh, it's..." Darling let out an awkward chuckle as he reached blindly for the whiteboard behind him, attempting to straighten it. It creaked and very nearly fell the other way, as Darling flailed with it and continued his flustered excuse. "There's just been... some tension. But it's nothing you need to worry about. You just... I don't want anything to distract one of our best and brightest minds." As the whiteboard finally rocked into place, Darling attempted a grin and landed in the ballpark of a grimace.
Not that again. Sometimes Emily wanted to throttle him. "Permission to speak freely?"
Darling faltered, the painful smile freezing into place. "Um..." he said, bemused. "Sure?"
"Bullshit." Before the Bureau, Emily wouldn't have dared. Not with any professor or god complex-afflicted manager. But this place didn't operate under the same rules, and Darling had one thing right. Emily was one of the best. Wasn't like they'd let her go. Her insides fluttered with nerves all the same. "I have two questions. One, what time the hell was that? And two, what the hell is going on?"
The Head of Research looked more like a cornered animal. Darling skittered further into the office and busied himself with picking up the papers strewn here and there. He wouldn't even look her in the eye. "It's... there's a reason we have the protocol we do here," Darling said, slipping into his lecture voice as he scooped papers and looked anywhere except Emily. "To make sure we operate as smoothly and as safely as possible. If there's something beyond your security clearance, then I'm sorry, but I can't share."
Emily wanted to throw something. She settled for squeezing her fists so tightly that her knuckles ached. "Safely?" she asked, far more softly than her boiling insides demanded. How long would this farce go on? "Is that really your excuse?"
"Emily..." Darling sighed, straightening with an armful of papers all akimbo.
"Don't," Emily said, and she uncurled her fingers and threw her hands out at nothing, as if that would toss the restless, furious energy out of her. "Forget about your secret department, and all of the lying, for a second. Trench comes in here and threatens you, and you have nothing to say about that?"
The whirlwind of movement that was Casper Darling stopped. A shadow passed over his face. "Something is..." he began, then wavered. His shoulders drooped as he dumped his pile of papers onto his desk. "He's... he hasn't been himself." Finally, he looked at Emily again, and now she wished he wouldn't. "He needs help, not..." Emily had never heard Darling stumble over words this much, and it looked like he regretted every single one. "That's all I can say. Please understand."
God damn it. God damn it. She really ought to quit. She wouldn't.
Emily sucked in her deepest breath yet and let it go in a rush. "Fine," she said, brisk and icy. Wasn't the first time they'd been down this road. Wouldn't be the last. It didn't mean that she was giving up, but her head was far from clear at the moment, and Darling wasn't in any state either. "Fine. Keep it all to yourself. I have work to do."
Darling didn't say anything, and Emily turned to go, before she could get a good look at what passed over his face then.
When Emily had, after much deliberation, requested to make a report, she hadn't expected to sit down with Kirklund himself.
He had tea waiting on his desk, though Emily didn't have much stomach for it. Kirklund's dark skin had an ashen hue, the circles under his eyes even darker. He didn't look much better than Trench's rage-mottled face, Darling's hunched and poorly-hidden worry, Marshall's tight-lipped preoccupation.
The Oldest House was hardly a stable place, but never before had Emily gotten the sense that it was falling apart.
"Thank you for making the decision to share this," Kirklund said, steady-voiced despite it all. "I know it's not easy." He had a pen in hand and a detailed set of notes in front of him. He'd hardly touched his own tea. His office, like the rest of the Investigations Sector's cramped, dingy remains, was crowded, disorganized, incongruent with the methodical process of the man behind the desk. "I'm going to ask a few follow-up questions. You aren't obligated to answer them, but any honesty you can offer is helpful."
"Ask away," Emily said. She'd made the decision, one that she felt justified in, even if it sat queasy in her stomach. But here she was, in the closest thing to HR -- if you didn't count Communications, and Emily didn't. No way she was going where things could get back to Tommasi.
Kirklund pulled forth another sheet. "Did you feel safe during this encounter?"
Quite the opening question. Emily didn't think she'd ever get Trench's bellowing out of her head. "Not particularly."
The Head of Investigations made a note. "Do you believe that Dr. Darling is in danger?"
Emily couldn't help it. She laughed, a disbelieving huff, dry as a dessicant. "From Trench?" Emily asked. "From himself? I don't know." Kirklund arched a brow, and Emily said, "I don't know! How can I possibly know when I am told nothing about half of what goes on in Research?"
Kirklund's pen held still over the paper. "You have quite the reputation for brilliance," he said, "but your advancement through the Bureau has been slow for some time. Is that correct?"
"Yes, sir, it is," Emily said firmly.
Kirkland made another note. Probably something like chauvinism. Or workplace discrimination. "I have to assume Dr. Darling has told you nothing about Dimensional Research, then."
"Not a thing." The entrance stood beside Darling's Research office, another locked door out of many. "And no other project that isn't already accessible. Or anything about Trench's activities. Or anything at all that you wouldn't already know about, if that's your next question."
There may have been an attempt at some phantom of a smile. Kirklund was even worse at it than Darling. "It was." He spent a few moments scratching away at his notes. "Is there anything else you'd like to add?"
There were many little incidents that didn't add up. Or added up into things that Emily didn't understand and wasn't allowed to pursue. She had spun a dozen theories about it, but that wasn't the point of this interview. An internal investigation needed facts, not wild speculation about what was locked behind the impenetrable walls of Dimensional Research.
"Nothing relevant," Emily said. "But I have a question. What's going to be done about this?"
She knew the answer before it had a chance to come. It was in Kirklund's eyes, a resignation to circumstance that stoked the embers left smoldering after Emily's unfortunate trip to Darling's office.
"Surely that kind of behavior from the Director leads to something," Emily added, stepping carefully around the sharp edges in her voice that longed to rip free. She could add up the signs here in Investigations too -- Darling wasn't the only one against whom Trench had a vendetta. Why did she work here again?
Kirklund sighed deeply and leaned back in his chair. He twirled the pen between his fingers. "I wish I had a better answer," he said. "But you know that the nature of the Bureau and our headquarters is... different. We can't request the assistance of any third party or legal entity outside of the Bureau, so we are limited to what we can do within. The truthful answer is..." the look he gave her bled apology, "I don't know yet."
Emily could appreciate honesty, at least. It was in short supply around here. But she couldn't help but feel like she'd made the trip to Investigations for very little reason. "I understand," she said and got to her feet. Maybe it was more appropriate to wait for Kirklund to dismiss her, but she didn't much care. The dim office gave the impression that it was closing in on those within, and she itched for a little more breathing room. There were no echoes here. "Thank you for your time."
Belatedly, she grabbed her mostly full cup of tea and took a few hasty sips. No point in wasting it.
Something of a smile had managed to stick to Kirklund's face. It was bleak. "That was my next line," he said, standing and offering her a solemn nod as he gathered his notes into a neat sheaf. "Thank you as well, Ms. Pope. After this has been processed, we can offer you an encrypted copy for your personal records, if you'd like."
"Please do," Emily said. She downed the rest of the tea, placed the cup back on Kirklund's desk, and returned to the Research Sector, where she threw herself into Black Rock field propagation, as if that would fix the distinct and looming feeling that she hadn't achieved much at all.