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"Let me ask you something, Zachariah." The doors of Central Executive swung shut behind her, and Helen Marshall stepped into an unsettling shift in reality. The Director of the Federal Bureau of Control leaned against Barbara's desk and smoked in the foyer outside of his office. The doors to that office stood ajar. The hallway beyond was empty of other personnel, littered with signs of a hasty exit. "Have you lost your goddamn mind?"
Trench took a moment to tap the life out of the cigarette, glow becoming dust. "Marshall," he said calmly. Surname meant formal business, or else he was feeling more contrite than usual. And he damn well better. "I would have consulted with you, but..."
Movement to the right had Marshall's gaze snapping sideways. In the Director's office, Dr. Darling crouched on the far side of Trench's desk, peering at something in the kneehole with a grimace that looked ghoulish in the ambient Astral light.
"C'mon, buddy," Darling said, artificially bright in a way that put the glow of the false window behind him to shame. He had a habit of speaking with no small degree of affectation, but this was grating. "We can go to the cafeteria!"
"My name's not buddy," a voice said from underneath the desk. High-pitched, heated. "It's Dylan." The voice went quiet, Darling sighed, then: "Fuck off. Fucker."
The words were said with all of the trembling confidence of a venture into foreign language. Darling looked hurt all the same. "Well," he said, as shadows moved beneath the desk. A tangle of small legs, pulling in deeper. "That was uncalled for."
Marshall looked back to Trench. Trench folded his arms and met her gaze. "... we had time-sensitive decisions to make."
"The Bureau doesn't do child-rearing," Marshall said. Bad enough that they'd dragged home one willful stray, without looking for another. The logistics threatened a nightmare. Children underfoot, disrupting sensitive operations, compromising security. Short lives ended in one unfortunate building shift or Threshold manifestation. The cracks in the Oldest House swallowed fully grown Bureau personnel from time to time. It was the nature of the job.
"The Bureau needs a Director," Trench said, and the layer of apology was gone. The conviction behind the words flared bright like a radio burst, and something in it made Marshall stop. Listen. The same way she did deep in a Threshold, when all things around her were alien, and she didn't yet know how best to tread under strange skies. "And those children need a home. Need guidance. There was nothing left, Helen."
And there was the given name. It didn't put Marshall at ease.
(In the Director's office, Darling gave the desk chair a half-hearted spin. "Look!" he said. "Do you want to sit in the big chair?"
The boy - Dylan - spat out a negative in the form of another swear, a little more confident this time. Darling heaved another sigh.)
"Tommasi will have his hands full with this one," Trench said. "Place was a ghost town. All of the adults just... gone. The state's going to be flooded with cases already. They wouldn't know what to do with those two."
He stared past Marshall, gazing at whatever possibilities had convinced him of a course of action so absurd. Marshall watched him closely. She trusted him to put careful thought into every decision. He trusted her to tell him when it was still a shit idea. Marshall could see the shape of it taking form. She wasn't sure she liked it.
(In the Director's office, twitchy with frustration, Darling said, "Look, Dylan. You can't stay under there forever."
"Yes I can," the voice beneath the desk said. Darling raised his eyes skyward and looked back at the yawning opening in the wall, as if the Astral light and the silent watchers within would be of any help.)
"He could be powerful," Trench said. "The girl too. I could sense it. The potential they have..." He gave himself a shake and came back to the present, returning his attention to Marshall. "Give them to the system, and that's more tragedy waiting to happen. Here, we can nurture that potential. Direct it."
Marshall could see the logic. If the Bureau was currently ill-equipped to deal with paranaturally-inclined children, then any other agency was dangerously unprepared. But that wasn't all. It wasn't a bleeding heart turning the Bureau into an orphanage. "And you think it'll be different this time?"
The doubt in Marshall's voice was met with unwavering certainty. "The Fadens aren't like anything we've seen. And the Bureau needs a Director.” Trench said it again, fervently, like a mantra. "I won't be around forever. Things happen, risk is unavoidable." He cocked an eyebrow at her. "I distinctly remember your lecture about that before we left."
Marshall leveled a hard look at him. Avoidable risk was leading field missions, especially when Trench worried about a repeat of the Northmoor situation. When Trench went out in the field, Marshall wasn't there to watch his back. She stayed behind to monitor the Bureau. To take command, if need be. That didn't mean she wanted to pick up that damn gun, if it came down to it. And she was no younger than he was.
Trench was truly convinced. That alone did half the work in convincing Marshall, but only half. It was her job to be wary.
A swear came from under the desk again, like the newfound taste of it was irresistible. "And how is it going so far?" Marshall asked, dry.
In tandem, they looked to the Director's office, where Darling had given up for the time being, sitting back on his heels and shooting them pointed helpless looks over the desk.
"He was calm when we got here," Trench said. "A few missteps, that's all. He'll adjust, with time.”
"Hmm," Marshall said. "And our Head of Research is doing a fine job of helping that along. Why aren't you in there, with your experience?"
She was one of two people in the Bureau who could bring it up without inviting ire; the other was no doubt protecting the Director's feelings and, as a result, was currently losing a battle of wills with a preteen. Nevertheless, Marshall stepped around it as carefully as she could. The loss ran deep, and Trench needed a clear head for this.
Trench reached reflexively for the cigarette now abandoned in the ashtray on Barbara's desk. His fingers only ghosted over it. "I'm... used to girls."
It was closer to the subject than she expected him to get, so much that it gave Marshall pause. Trench was hiding outside of his office and leaving Darling to flounder, and that already didn't bode well for the success of this endeavor, but the Director hadn't yet fled to the far side of the House. "Is there a difference?" Marshall asked, pointed.
Something twitched at a corner of Trench's mouth. "Why don't you try?" he said. "You're..." He trailed away, just as pointed.
Marshall regarded him coolly and said, "You had better consider your next words carefully."
"... scary," Trench finished, and his eyes actually twinkled with it. The bastard still had jokes, and Marshall couldn't help an answering smirk. Maybe he was thinking clearly after all. "Casper's soft. The boy might respond better to a firm hand."
Marshall huffed. She knew a bid for mercy when she saw one, no matter how Trench hid it. He was lucky that she had a soft side too, enough that she refrained from telling him to get over himself and deal with the problem he'd chosen to create. Without another word, she marched into the Director's office.
Darling looked relieved to trade places. "Hey, Dylan," he said, as Marshall crouched down behind the desk. "This is my friend, Helen–"
"Helen Marshall. And that's Marshall to you, boy." Marshall tilted her head and took a look under the desk. A smudged face sat on top of ungainly limbs that went every which way as they wrapped around a thin frame. The initial field report had placed him at about age ten. Were all ten-year-olds that small? "Enough of this. Get out."
She was met with a watery glare and the reflection of Astral light within. It reminded Marshall of hunting deep in the backwoods of bayou country, a father silent and focused beside her, animal eyes glittering in the dark. Dylan's mouth drew thin and petulant. "No."
Marshall blinked. Ground her teeth together and swallowed the irritation. "That wasn't a request," she said. "Get out."
"No," Dylan said.
If a Ranger disobeyed an order like that, they were unceremoniously removed from the payroll. But no one did. In a dangerous job like this, they knew better. They didn't make it that far without learning. "Let me make it clearer," Marshall snapped. "Either you get out, or I'll remove you myself."
"No you won't," Dylan said, though he shifted, curling deeper into the depths of the desk.
Marshall bristled and went to answer with heat, then stopped herself. What was she doing? Like hell she was going to get drawn any further into an argument with a child. She glanced up at Darling, who shrugged uselessly, fiddling with his glasses. In the foyer, Trench coughed.
Dylan was sharp enough to call her bluff. Marshall had never liked children, had never spent much time around them even when she had been one herself, but she had no desire to follow through on the threat. As far as she was concerned, Dylan wasn't hurting anyone by hiding under there. And if it inconvenienced the Director, sometimes consequences just had to be weathered.
Marshall shrugged and got to her feet, scooping her dignity up with her. "All yours."
"Seriously?" Darling hissed.
Marshall gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder as she stepped around him.
With another tremendous sigh, Darling, who was far more loose with his dignity, steepled his fingers in something like a prayer and angled his head to see under the desk. He looked too skittish to step closer or get down on eye level again. "Dylan," he pleaded. "What do you want? Because we can get it for you, I promise, but you've gotta work with me here."
"I want Jesse," the voice under the desk said.
The sister. A little older, according to the report, and wily enough to give the field team the slip. Marshall bit down on a comment about children giving the runaround to highly trained Bureau personnel - herself included.
"We'll find her!" Darling insisted, as Marshall circled the desk and left the Head of Research to his thankless undertaking. "I'm sure she's just scared. Perfectly normal. Once we have a chance to explain, she'll be so excited to come here and join you."
The answering silence told them what Dylan thought of that, until: "And how do you expect us to find her without your help?" Trench asked.
Marshall stopped. Darling's eyes widened. Trench stood at the threshold of the Director's office and came no further in.
The boy didn't know the power he had, to keep the Director out of his own territory. But Trench's voice had a way of filling a room, and after a long moment, awkward limbs stirred beneath. A head of dark hair rose up just enough to peer over the desk. The eyeshine was gone, but the glare remained. Easier, now, to see the wet red streaks beneath even redder eyes.
"You know her best," Trench said. His face was carefully blank. "You can help us or not. Your choice. But I can't let you have access to our work if you insist on acting like a toddler."
"I'm not," Dylan said in ornery reflex. Most of his head was above the desk now, eyes intent on Trench, until something changed. Imperceptible, almost, but Marshall caught it: a twitch of movement, a tilt of head, a distance to the boy's eyes. Like he was listening to something.
And Marshall had the sense, sudden and cold and enormously certain, that something else was in the room with them. That something had followed the field team home.
She'd always had that sense of things. Same as her grandmother. Marshall's father had never taken it seriously, never felt the same chill, but Marshall had. She had listened when her grandmother talked. It had led her to the Bureau in time and now kept her alive as Head of Operations. It crept down her spine with shivering alarm.
Dylan answered by crawling out from under the desk and flopping into the Director’s chair. "Fine," he said, pushing off with a foot and spinning the chair around. Darling opened his mouth, but Marshall caught his eye with a sharp shake of her head, and Darling's mouth snapped shut again.
"Fine," Trench agreed, still solicitously blank, though a furrow had broken through between his eyes as Dylan went round and round. Marshall would have laughed, had she been less on edge. "We'll talk later. You go and get something to eat in the meantime." He turned to go and then paused, casting a stern glance over his shoulder, making sure that he caught Dylan's gaze on a spin. "And listen to Dr. Darling."
Darling nodded vigorously, mouthing a silent thank you.
Dylan slowed down and stared at Trench for one long moment, then pushed the chair towards the back of the office and busied himself with peering up into the false window. His show of indifference gave way to fascination as he looked for something else and found nothing but light. He leaned forward and craned his neck, then climbed out of the chair and up into the rectangular opening to see further.
Marshall joined Trench in the foyer as rapid-fire questions and answers filled the Director's office, Dylan's attention caught and misery mollified, Darling relieved to be back in his comfort zone.
Trench sat himself on a reception bench and lit another cigarette, a flash of fire swiftly dimmed into an dull glow. Marshall didn't say a word as she sat beside him and the acrid scent. Sometimes a vice or two was necessary to shoulder this place, and it couldn't always be hidden behind closed doors. She had her own vices, in avoidable risks and treks made alone that were better with a team. But Trench never called her on hypocrisy.
"Is this a bad idea?" Trench mused between tendrils of smoke.
He was ready to listen now, but Marshall had no answers. "I don't know," she said. The boy was headstrong, not easily cowed. A strong, useful trait, and a dangerous one. There was something else about him that she couldn't place, that had made Trench consider the idea in the first place. Marshall could feel it now, still present. It hadn't stopped dripping slow and wary down her spine. "But when's the last time we had the luxury of good ideas?" Marshall sighed, considering the field report, considering all that she didn't yet know without debrief but could see in the hunch of Trench's shoulders. "What the hell did those kids find?"
"Nothing good," Trench said, grim. "The girl burned most of the slides. Cut it off before we could see. But it had a way through before. Any of it could find a way through again." He took another drag and breathed out the obfuscating smog of uncertainty. "Seventeen kids left in that town by the time it was over. We need to be ready for anything. The Bureau needs to be ready."
The conviction was still there, simmering beneath melancholy. Marshall hadn't seen its like since Susanna. She trusted Trench more than most, and she knew just how bad things could get, if that gun was left without a holder. So why couldn't she muster the same?
Maybe the years here were getting to her. She hadn't felt at ease in a good long while. It all left her on edge nowadays, left her with a chill that could have been nothing or could have been everything. Leading field missions with the unshakeable feeling that something would go wrong, watching others go off in the field while she chafed and considered dark possibilities. Going off on her own because risk was acceptable when it was localized. Was she so averse to risk now that she was letting it compromise her insight? That she was willing to let chances pass by?
"We will be," Marshall said and watched as something relaxed in Trench's posture. Within the office, Darling's animated voice had settled into something a little more natural.
Hopefully, between them, at least one of them believed it.