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The cold makes Craig's beak ache. He wraps the scarf tighter around his face and exits the subway, briefcase in one hand, head down. Even the cold is better than being back there, after the past few months.
The deepsea metro wasn't all bad, at least not the metro itself, but months of sleeping in a seat and comforting a sobbing octoling has settled into his ink. It's gonna take a bit longer before he's relaxed back into normal. Maybe he'll never be truly comfortable in a subway car again.
In the terminal, a small eel stretches tall, a sign clutched in its tiny front fins as it balances on its long long body. C R A I G. He makes his way towards it. “You're my ride then, youngster?”
The eel tightens its body into a spiral as it lowers to see Craig better. “I am, sir.” The eel's voice is the only clue Craig has to its gender. A boy. Probably. Should he ask its pronouns like Marlin would expect?
That's too new-fangled for him. “Well then, you know I'm Craig. What's your name?”
The eel smiles, mouth stretching wide until its teeth seem about ready to consume its face. “Eel.”
Eels, even the sentient ones, aren't great at conversation. Craig waves his bamboozler. “Lead on, then, friend Eel.”
Eel drops to the floor and swims along, leaving a thin ink trail through the terminal. Craig follows him to... he groans.
No one would expect the leader of an elite government agency's government-sponsored ride to be a dusty dented jeep with one blue door. Craig supposes that's why they chose it. But he has no choice but to slide into the front next to Eel, who's already slithered into the driver's seat. That, at least, looks properly up-to-date, with all the equipment and alterations needed to allow a creature with one, uh, leg-body-thing and only two stubby fins to drive safely. Smoothly is another matter.
Like most eels, Eel isn't one for idle chit-chat, and by the time they arrive at the ugly brick office building with dying flowers in front of it, he feels more shaken than a fizzy bomb. It's a darn good thing he stuck to paper for this, he doesn't think any of that new-fangled machinery would stand up to that ride. He waves at Eel as Eel goes to park and makes his way up the walkway.
The receptionist looks up when he enters. “Do you have an appointment?”
“I'm meeting with Andy in ten minutes,” he says, giving the code name for the meeting. “Tell him Craig is here.”
The receptionist rolls her eyes and goes back to tapping at the keyboard with her fins. “May I see some ID?”
Craig produces his senior citizen's discount card, since it has his picture on the front.
The receptionist glances at it, then back at the screen, as she types. “Very well then, Mr. Cuttlefish.” One of her fins moves beneath the desk, a buzzer sounds, and the heavy door behind her sloooooowly swings inwards. “Third door on your right.”
“Thank you kindly,” Craig says. He walks forward, just making it through the automatic door before it starts to close, and makes his way down the hall. Third door is also the last door, a standard boring business door with a frosted glass window. It's locked, because of course it is. He kneels down to open the briefcase, fish out his key, close the briefcase, and let himself in.
“Lieutenant! Have all your tentacles left your head?”
Craig can't help but laugh. “George, you old rascal!” There's a circular table in here, and Craig sets his briefcase down before turning to the old man lounging in one of the chairs, his tentacles long around a prominent bald spot in the center of his head. “Still haven't fixed that bald spot?”
“And I'm not going to, either. It gives me charm.”
“Charm like a crying volcano,” chimes in the old woman next to him. She gets to her feet and walks around George. “Craig. Lovely as ever, Lieutenant.”
Craig hugs her back. “It's always a pleasure to see you again, Helen.” He steps back but doesn't let go of her, looking between Helen and George. “The three of us, together again.”
“And we'll take a drink to poor Frances before we part once more.”
“Lost, not forgotten,” Craig confirms. It doesn't hurt to remember the last member of his old splatoon anymore. Craig releases Helen and she goes back to her seat; Craig takes the empty one. “Business first?”
“It's why we're here,” says George. He pulls out a stack of papers. “Ashley's running late; she said to start without her. She's read all our reports, after all, and we still need to update each other.”
Craig nods.
“Who first, lieutenant?” asks Helen.
“I'm no one's leader here and now,” Craig says, like he has every time, and the other two shake their heads. Lead a splatoon into battle and most of them out alive, and they never treat you quite the same, even if the years have made them equals in every way including title. Oh well.
Craig opens his briefcase and hands them each a copy of the report. “That's from the last year. Most of the details you know already, from our meeting in July,” he says. “The Octarian threat from the domes has largely been dealt with, thanks to the combined efforts of 4 and 8 convincing them they can settle peacefully on the surface; their leader is still imprisoned.” And won't stop insulting Craig at every opportunity. “Agent Four's made great strides: she can competently speak and understand a third language now, her fighting skills are superior, but she still has that damned streak of blatantly ignoring orders when she has an idea.”
George laughs. “Does she remind you of anyone?”
“You were about half as fast with three times the vocabulary,” Craig says, “but yes.”
“I bet they've got her diagnosed with something-or-other, too! My grandsquids these days are always asking about me, but I didn't have any fancy diagnoses when I was their ages!”
Craig chuckles. “She's in therapy, but it hasn't come up. I doubt she'd tell us if she got a diagnosis, but she, as my grandsquids say, must have something going on.” He leans back in his chair. “She got scouted for the Olympinks, a year and a half from now; she'll start traveling with the team, one week a month, for competitions later this year. She'll be just old enough.”
George whistles long and low while Helen shakes her head. “You recruited someone that young?”
“She's doing the job, isn't she?” Craig refuses to let them criticize his agents.
“That she is.”
Moving on, then. “Agent One's recovered from the debacle, thank the zapfish. She's starting to get offers to travel for her job, and always brings back some information; I'm not sure how she does it.” Callie didn't even have a panic attack the last time she left the splatoon to do some filming, though she did call him every day for updates. “Agent Two's been working on Octarian rehabilitation, running the apartment complex many newcomers to the surface stay in for a few months. One of her rescues recently opened a florist shop.”
Helen chuckles. “Hard to imagine an octoling doing something that mundane before now,” she says. “It's a nice change.”
“It is indeed,” Craig says. If he's ever in the splatlands he'll stop by to buy flowers, just to show his support. Maybe during the Olympinks; it'll be nice to see Four play. “Agent Eight has adjusted to living on the surface: she's fluent in Inklish now, has made special trips—with back-up, of course—down to the domes to attempt to talk to people, figure out what's keeping them there, but either she's no good at it or everyone in the domes still believes talking about that will get them arrested.”
“I somehow doubt it's either of those,” Helen says.
“Why not both?” George asks.
Craig stretches to poke George with his cane from across the table. “You shush. And, of course, Agent Three is coming along beautifully. I've seen other agents look to Three for advice or reassurance several times over the past year: about living arrangements, or rearranging patrol schedules, or the best approach to new Octarians. I do believe I've trained my replacement.”
“And not a moment too soon,” says Helen.
“What have you got for us?”
“George should go first,” Helen says, and Craig sighs. That doesn't sound good.
“The splatlands need help,” George says. “The drought's getting worse with every passing day, and the few times there are storms, they do more harm than good: downpours that cause flooding and break trees and cactuses and buildings alike with the force of the wind and the hail. Groups of bandits have started to form, break, and form again, roaming the deserts between the cities; it's only a matter of time before one becomes big enough, and organized enough, to form a choke-hold on the region.”
Craig shudders. “How's the splatoon there?”
“I haven't managed to get a single recruit to another new squidbeak splatoon, Craig,” George says. “I'm not you; I don't know how you manage to find such dedicated and talented young folk without ever betraying the organization's secrecy. If your Agent Three is capable of it, you should promote them to captain and move to the splatlands. We need all the help we can get.”
Craig lets out a long breath. The plan was always to set up splatoons, four to six squids, in all the major cephaling cities. To have a force that could watch for trouble and prevent any more wars from breaking out. But he doesn't want to leave his grandsquids. Any of them.
They need him, still.
“I suppose that means it's time for me to say we've got trouble brewing,” Helen says.
Craig bites back a groan. “Again?”
“Again,” Helen says. “I've received reports from my agents about suspicious sightings of, well... this is going to sound absurd, but we have evidence, and a few different tales.”
“I don't believe it,” George says.
Helen picks up her own bamboozler cane and smacks him upside the head with it. “I could outshoot you then, and I can outsmack you now, Georgie.”
George holds up his hands in surrender.
Helen opens her folder and pulls out a photo. She passes it across the table to Craig. He squints at it. “Is that a glove?”
“No,” Helen says, passing George another photo. “The subject came into contact with what we're tentatively calling... it's not really ink, but Fur Ink is the best I can manage. The skin that came in contact with it sprouted, well... I haven't seen Judd in years but it's very similar to his fur.”
Craig inspects the photo of the pinkish-brown substance covering the inkling's hand and swallows back bile. “Is it permanent?”
“Hard to say,” Helen says, and holds her bamboozler up as a shield when both George and Craig look at her sharply. “No, I'm not being ridiculous. We got to that subject less than a week after exposure. Shaving it didn't work; grew back in a larger area in two days—originally it covered up to the elbow, but by then it had spread to the shoulder. We tried plucking out each individual hair next. It clearly hurt, but the spreading stopped, it took a week to grow back, and only grew back on the lower arm and hand. The picture taken here,” she nods, “was taken two weeks after that, where it only grew back on the inkling's hand, where they'd originally touched it. It's been three weeks since the last plucking and fur's starting to show on their fingertips, but nowhere else.”
“So treatable, if it can't be rid of entirely,” Craig summarizes. “But the more it covers, the harder it will be, I imagine.”
“Or if it gets into the ink, rather than on a squid's skin,” George adds. “Perhaps impossible if someone's exposed too much.”
Helen nods. “Exactly. Haven't pinned down the location of the fur ink yet, but based on what I've learned, it's somewhere in the splatlandian desert.”
Craig sighs. He knows his duty. “When you've got it pinned down, let me know,” Craig says. “I'll alert Agent Three—soon to be Captain Marlin. They'll be delighted. And then I suppose it'll be time to start recruiting a second branch of New Squidbeak Splatoon.”