Chapter Text
The sound of heels hammering against the water-stained floor announces her arrival with a series of precise, hollow stabs through the air.
Every background noise—plunking fingers on keyboards, the low, infuriating drone of idle chatter, crinkling wrappers sloughing off of various unhealthy snacks—every clink, clatter, tap or thud falls to its knees for her. Weary beams of light contort themselves to give her the spotlight she demands. They sweep reverently over her stiff, cream-colored trench coat; over boots so polished the dinginess of Preox-Morlana’s headquarters reflects embarrassingly in them; over leather gloves that sing of luxury and status; over the marginally disdainful curl of her lip and the needle-sharp focus in her eyes.
Or at least, that’s how Syril sees her.
Whispers slither through the room, carrying raised eyebrows, elevated heartbeats and an acronym with three letters. His own heart gives a few tripping, tumbling beats. The breath he takes is perfumed with envy. With longing. With… confusion. The supervisor for their sector is, or at least was, a man by the name of Blevin. What happened to him? And, more pressingly, who is this lightning strike of a woman—a woman at the supervisory level within the ISB, she clearly knows what she’s doing—who’d strode into the room with a duo of Troopers and bent it around her finger without a word? Like everyone else in the office, he stares.
She continues walking, approaches his station. He wants her to look at him. Wants to be seen by her; no, not merely acknowledged, recognized. His back and legs are straight and his hands are pulled behind him, a handbook-perfect Preox-Morlana pose that should merit notice. It does not. She keeps her attention fixed on the space directly before her, either unaware or uncaring about the effect she has had on the room. On him. In total, the glimpse he gets of her lasts a few seconds. It’s enough to convince him to reorder his priorities for the day, and to do a light bit of spying.
With restraint that leaves him buzzing, he waits a minute or two before following in her now-inaudible footsteps. He knows where she’d be headed; knows that the door will have slid shut, and Hyne will do his best to absolve their unit of any misdeeds or oversights.
“You should have sealed off the area until I arrived.”
Hyne’s sigh adds a few more silver hairs to his head. “I didn’t see a need. What we’re dealing with here is nothing extraordinary, Supervisor Meero. I don’t feel there’s any threat in a man who abandoned his post without handing in his notice. This is nothing with which the Empire need concern itself, and that is my sincere belief.”
Syril grits his teeth, irked. This wouldn’t be the first time Hyne had chosen not to pry into matters that merited prying. The circumstances are suspicious. But Syril’s as confident his boss knows that as he is confident his boss would lie to set the Imperials’ minds at ease, and, more importantly, escort them swiftly out of his office.
“I don’t root my investigations in belief,” the woman—Supervisor Meero—sneers, invigoratingly undaunted. “I’ll take a look for myself at whatever your officers haven’t already defiled. I’ll also need to question several who worked closely with Onlaut.”
Opportunity has shone upon Syril. As casually as he can manage, he strides around the corner and taps, perhaps a shred too eagerly, on Hyne’s door. “Sir?” he says, feigning ignorance.
His boss’s answer lands with weariness coating each word. “Not now.”
“I'm sorry, sir, but it can’t wait.”
Silent seconds pass. When he answers, the chief inspector sounds as if he’d rather take a blaster bolt to the chest than continue either of these conversations. “Come in, then.”
The door opens. Not wanting to waste an instant, Syril practically leaps into Hyne’s office. He feels Supervisor Meero’s blue gaze start at the top of his head and work downward in silent, thorough evaluation. Today of all days, he’s glad he spent the time and effort to hand-tailor his uniform.
“Out with it,” Hyne requests.
Instantly, Syril’s tongue becomes a lump of stone. He’d been so determined to get inside that he hadn’t considered what he’d say once he got there. “Um,” he starts, Supervisor Meero a blinding sun in his peripheral vision, “there have been complaints of… general unruliness in the Leisure Zone.”
“And is the ‘general unruliness’ of questionable legality, or representing a threat to Imperial security?”
If he says yes, he’ll be placed in charge of a team to investigate his lie, and he’ll inevitably look a fool. But if he says no, he’ll look a fool in front of her. The ground wobbles slightly beneath his boots. He must find a suitable fence on which to sit. “It’s not abundantly clear, sir. Perhaps it’d be best to give the situation more time to develop.”
Hyne’s brows draw together, his expression questioning why Syril was so intent on barging in in the first place. “If that’s your recommendation.”
“Yes, sir.”
He waits to hear what he’s burning to hear—to be given the order he so desperately wants to follow. Behind his back, his fingers twitch from a mixture of excitement and adrenaline.
“Deputy Inspector Karn,” Hyne says, pointing a hand at him by means of introduction, “this—” he gestures toward the woman whose name Syril technically should not know, much less already be polishing on a pedestal— “is Supervisor Dedra Meero. She’s taken over Supervisor Blevin’s duties in our sector. Take her to Onlaut’s station and let her have a look. Let her speak to a few of his co-workers if she still feels it necessary. She wants to verify that his disappearance doesn’t pose a threat to the Empire.”
It’s all Syril can do to bite back a smile. “Will do, sir.” Looking at Supervisor Meero—Dedra—directly is like staring into the white-hot core of a fire. Her flat expression betrays no emotion, but she radiates an uncontaminated determination that Syril wishes he could bottle and drink. The barrier opens once more. “This way,” he tells her. Her blonde hair catches the light as she steps out into the hallway, shimmering on the surface like calm waters at sunrise. He follows.
Then the door seals itself behind them with a rusty hiss, leaving him—not quite alone with her, not in an organization with hundreds of people. But her Troopers have left and no one is interrupting them, so they’re alone in every way that matters.
Their eyes meet, and he draws on his mother’s decades-old advice. Make sure they know your name—if they can’t remember that, they’ll never remember you. “Syril Karn,” he re-introduces himself, giving her permission to call him by his first name. Or to call him anything at all.
“I have a job to do,” she tells him, rejecting his offer. She glances left and right as though trying to judge the location of Onlaut’s desk for herself. “I don’t like wasting time.”
“Of course,” he says in a rush. “Come with me.”
He takes exactly three steps before deciding they don’t have to head directly for their destination. So long as they get there, it shouldn’t matter the route they take. And if he stretches out their commute, he’ll have a better chance of convincing her that he does, in fact, know what he’s doing. That his observations are beneficial.
She maintains a single step’s distance ahead of him as they walk. Enough for her to see the direction he’s moving, and enough for her to remind him who’s in charge. Their postures are perfect mirrors; their hands secured behind their backs, their chins tilted, their strides precise, authoritative, and assured as those beneath them scramble to clear their path. Syril imagines a sculptor’s hands at work on her jaw, carefully molding the delicate lines of her cheekbones. She has removed her coat, and the pristine whiteness of her uniform stands out—froth atop the sea of Pre-Mor’s turquoise.
“I’d raised several concerns about Onlaut’s performance in recent months,” he starts, ramming confidence into his voice while keeping his eyes trained on her. “There were clear signs my superiors refused to acknowledge.”
“Such as?”
“Repeated tardiness. Several misfiled, inaccurate reports. Extended absences without explanation.”
One of the officers seated at a nearby station emits a loud, uncouth belch. Another begins spinning in rapid circles in his chair. Syril clenches a fist; Dedra quirks an eyebrow.
“And did any of that represent abnormal conduct for a Preox-Morlana employee?” It’s a façade of a question. Syril knows that she already knows—has already formed her opinions about his inferiors, his superiors, and him by association. Worse, she’s not incorrect. Misfiled reports, tardiness, mysterious and random disappearances throughout the day… all transgressions Hyne has, time and time again, regarded with a blind eye. If Syril were in charge, things would be different. If Syril were in charge, his officers wouldn’t play insipid little games or let out disgusting burps in the presence of an ISB supervisor.
“I believe any behavior that flouts the rules is worth noting,” he tells Dedra.
She tilts her head a centimeter in a barely perceptible nod, and Syril tells himself the gesture must connote approval. The slightest measure of redemption. Joy sparkles, fresh-cut and immeasurably valuable, in his chest. Someone else who understands that we have rules for a reason.
“What you’d reported wasn’t out of the ordinary, then,” she concludes as they round a corner in unison.
“Not… on the surface, no,” Syril counters. “But his misconduct started falling into recognizable patterns. He’d disappear and come back at the same times each day. He started taking an interest in activities well beyond the scope of his job. And in the past few weeks, he always seemed on edge. Ready to bolt.”
Again, the slightest of head tilts. The moment she looks at him, his insides turn to ice. “And you brought this forward.”
“Yes, but only the chief inspector can open an inquiry into employee performance. He didn’t feel there was cause for concern.” Now, here we are.
He remembers that conversation with Hyne. ‘Conversation’ might’ve been too forgiving a word for it—he’d started to mention Onlaut’s strange behavior only for Hyne to tell him that the man was still completing his patrols, and that, realistically, was all they could ask of him.
Syril has no trouble tracing the lines of Hyne’s thinking. Pre-Mor isn’t known for offering a heap of monthly credits or desirable employment bonuses, and the work is often soggy, unglamorous, and, depending on the characters prowling in shadows of the Leisure Zone, dangerous. The corporation has long struggled to replace departed employees. Hyne felt it best to have an underperforming officer in the position than no officer at all. Syril vehemently disagrees, of course, but the ‘deputy’ in his title guarantees his word can never be final.
He and Dedra walk in silence for a time. They turn another corner, ascend a flight of stairs, descend a flight of stairs, pass a junior officer with an ill-fitting uniform who offers them the bug-eyed stare of the subordinate. As he strides past, Syril thinks that nameless man can hardly hope for a promotion; not if his clothing greets each workday with dark undereye circles and a groan.
Curiosity gets the better of him, and his heart gives a hopeless flutter as he glances at her. “How long has the Morlana sector belonged to you?”
“That’s not important.” Dedra turns her head, looks left, looks right, looks behind them. When she speaks next, suspicion boils her words. “We’ve already come this way.”
Had they? Syril observes the room and finds the same moron rotating idiotically in his chair. Several officers stand beside his desk, counting aloud the completed number of spins. Apparently, he’s made it to eighty.
For a moment, anxiety prods at Syril—this wasn’t the plan—then he smothers it. “Yes,” he agrees smoothly, calmly, as though this was the plan, as though it hadn’t been an unforgivable oversight caused by his desire to spend a few more minutes with her. “Excuse me.”
“Tell me where to go. I’ll—” Dedra starts and then stops, judging him too far away to continue. If she gives a frustrated sigh, which she does, he forces himself not to mind, although he does. Frustration is temporary. He needs her to see this. Needs her to see that he is different. That he is better.
The numbskulls, and their centrally commanding numbskull, are up to ninety-five rotations. Each spin seems to increase their ecstasy; cheers grow in volume, a smattering of claps erupts, laughs limp across the space like the pathetic waste of time that they are. He lingers behind them until they reach ninety-nine, until their anticipation has reached its peak, until the tension in the air begs for release. Then, he acts.
“Attention!” His shout sunders the nauseating merriment. The man comes to a grinding stop in his chair, never to reach his fabled hundred spins. His face has taken on a revolting green tinge. Syril takes a step back, not wanting to risk such a mortifying besmirchment of his tailored attire. Or, more revolting than being showered in vomit: Dedra Meero seeing him showered in vomit.
At least seven sets of eyes blink at him dumbly, vapidly, absent a single spark of critical thought. Syril puffs his chest. Straightens himself to his full height. Verifies, out of the corner of his eye, that she is watching—he’d do this regardless, but the payoff is so much sweeter with her as his cherished witness. “I assume you have something you should be doing?”
At least seven heads nod.
He narrows his eyes, takes a breath, and injects every ounce of contempt his being possesses into his next words. “Then do it.”
The analysts scatter indiscriminately like bugs attempting to evade a boot, leaving the green-tinged man abandoned in his misery. Syril sears him with a derisive glare, holds it just long enough to relish the regret in the man’s watery eyes. Then he turns on his heel and returns to her.
Dedra makes no comment. But he thinks—though it could be his yearning playing tricks—that when they again begin their procession, she’s walking in even step with him.
And it could be his yearning playing tricks, but she might have moved an inch or two closer, as well.