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It was quiet in the precinct as the morning shift filed in and the night shift filed out. There was some brief discussions about cases, the night sergeant filled Kaiba in on the goings-on (an attempted assault and robbery, a few drunks, some kids breaking into an abandoned building again), but overall, things were… calm.
Calm was both good and bad. Calm meant he should be able to relax; but calm also meant that something could happen to ruin it, and the idea set his teeth on edge.
Today felt very much like he'd stepped into the eye of the storm. He gripped the handle of his briefcase and folded brown paper lunch tightly as he wove his way through the desks to his office in the back.
(Jounouchi was late. Again. Maybe he'd fire him today.)
Sure enough, trouble arrived. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Detective Ishtar walk through the blue archway, all smiles, carrying an evidence box, followed by two uniformed officers with heavy-looking dufflebags.
For a moment, Kaiba saw the small boy Marik had been many years ago, when Kaiba had been dating Marik's much older sister, Ishizu. All dimples and blonde hair, a mischievous glint in his eye that made Mokuba seem like an angel.
Kaiba saw that same glint in the other man's violet eyes now. Quickly, he slipped his office key into the lock, hoping to escape before -
"Ladies and gentleman, start clapping: yours truly just completed a major drugs bust," Marik announced, taking in the undercaffinated scene before him with a dazzling smile. He continued, unperturbed by the lack of… whatever he'd been expecting: "Talkin' about four kilos of cocaine and two hundred thousand in cash. Idiots never saw me comin'."
Huh.
Not what Kaiba had been expecting. Indeed, he joined the others in the room nodding their approval. New to the precinct, the albiet odd man had been quick to prove his merit. Really, he'd been a smart boy whe'd been famous for getting himself into trouble, and while that had carried on into adulthood, he was a good detective. Despite having seen the reports himself, it made Kaiba wonder why Marik had been transferred around so many times. Surely, he couldn't be that bad.
"Aaaaand, in addition, I'd like to introduce my new partner!" From the evidence box, Marik pulled out a portable fish tank containing…
A large, hairy, black spider.
A tarantula.
Without another thought, Kaiba unlocked his office door, opened it, and then slapped it closed behind him so fast the windows rattled. He started drawing the blinds, but not before he saw everyone shoot to their feet in alarm. All except Mai, who remained at her desk. The way her eyes twinkled over her coffee cup told him she was smiling.
Never a good sign, god help them all.
Honda stepped closer, inspecting the small fuzzy ball inside the clear plastic terrarium, then reared back in disgust."You took a tarantula from a crime scene?!"
Yep. Nope. All he needed to know. Kaiba closed the blinds and rounded his desk. Ignorance was best.
"Of course not!" Marik huffed. "It's my… friend's. I'm babysitting while he's out of town. The poor thing gets lonely so I thought I'd bring him with me today." his voice trailed off as he held the tank at eye-level, wide amethyst eyes blinking as if he were seeing the creature for the first time.
"Actually, he's pretty scary up-close."
"It's horrifying from everywhere," Honda shuddered as Marik lowered the tank.
"I-I'm not going anywhere near your desk if that's there," Yugi stammered, pushing his rolling chair back from his desk as if determined to get as far away from Marik as he could.
Marik smiled jovially. "That's fine! He's going to help me file paperwork and solve crimes!" Marik sauntered to his desk, placing the terrarium on top of a stack of files. "He's not going anywhere; I'll keep a close eye - wait a second, where'd he go?"
Sure enough, the top was open and the tank was empty.
____
Captain Kabia Seto stared at the open file on his desk without taking in the bold-faced type. Not that it mattered; he knew what it said. He'd read over Lee's file a hundred times since the incident last month.
Office Lee Xun, aged 28. Graduated from the police Academy when he was 21, had been in the Ninth and Twenty-Fifth. The transfer from the first had been a request Lee had made himself. However, the transfer from the Twenty-Fifth to the Seventh…
Officer exhibited inability to follow direct instructions; needs discipline and guidance.
Discipline.
Guidance.
At first, Kaiba had been honored. He was new to his position, new to the Seventh. New in general. At 44, he was relatively young to make Captain.
Lee had been sent to him because he'd needed to be put on the straight and narrow.
Or, so Kaiba thought. With a heavy sign, he closed the file and ran a hand through his hair.
Sabotage. Yugi had said. Yes. Yes, he'd been sabotaged. Set up.
Lee had been a nightmare officer, the kind that gave cops a bad name, made the kinds of headlines that kept him up at night. And even though he had been quickly removed (Kaiba had requested to have him fired, but the union was putting up a fight) from his precinct, the stain was deep, and would take a long time to wash clean - if it ever did.
The loud chortle of a certain loud-mouth blonde reverberated through the office, even penetrating the walls of Kaiba's office. Jounouchi had finally made it in, then. Figures. Kaiba glanced at the clock and snarled. While he'd been late by his Captain's standards, he was not technically late. And if he couldn't fire an asshole officer who'd beaten up a college kid over a parking ticket, then he definitely couldn't get Jounouchi fired for clocking in just a few minutes past eight am.
Ah, well. Always tomorrow. Or, better yet, maybe this afternoon.
With a grunt, Kaiba stood from his desk, rearranged his hair, straightened his tie, and strode to the office door.
"I would like everyone's attention," he called the second he'd stepped out into the bullpen. The room went suddenly silent, all eyes on him. Well, they'd certainly learned that lesson quickly.
Kaiba cleared his throat, probably unnecessarily but he liked the dramatic effect. He clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace the length of the room, meeting every pair of eyes in the room as he spoke:
"As many of you know, the Seven has earned a bad rep recently. While the problem has been dealt with, the aftermath is ongoing. I am under extreme pressure from the Deputy Commissioner to clean this up, and quickly. So, I will need everyone to be sure you are on the top of your game. Be on time. Early even, if you can. Stay late. Complete all reports in a timely manner. Be thorough, dot every "I" and cross every "T". Also, I want to know where each of you are at all times. When you leave, you are filing a report. When you return, I want another report on everything you did, who you spoke to, even where you stopped for coffee or gas. Every minute on the clock must be accounted for.
"Finally," he stopped his pacing once he'd reached the front of his office door yet again. He turned on his heel with military precision. "I would like each and every one of you to know that I have installed tracking software in your computers. I will know exactly what you are looking at and how you are looking at it at all times while you are on the clock. Every keystroke, every browser opened and closed, every email read or unread. So," he locked eyes with Jounouchi, who was glowering at him from where he was perched on the edge of Yugi's desk. "No funny business. And do not think I won't report anything I might find to be inappropriate for the workplace. We are on thin ice, people. Time to straighten up and show everyone what we are made of. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, Sir!" shouted the room.
Kaiba turned his back, but not before calling for Anzu, his secretary, to accompany him into his office, shutting the door behind them.
"Christ on a fucking cracker," Jounouchi groaned, laying down across Yugi's desk despite the smaller man's protests. "Whaddoya think crawled up his butt and died there?"
Yugi huffed, seeing that he would have no choice but to try to pull his files out from Jounouchi's considerable weight. The man might be lean, but he was all muscle and he was heavy. Thankfully, Honda came over and pulled Jounouchi to his feet.
"Do you even have to ask?" Honda asked, still staring at the direction of the closed door. "That whole thing with Sam Alexander last month has been all over the news."
Jounouchi still lounged, careful to keep his expression one of blank boredom. Still, his right hand clenched into a fist. He'd called Kaiba the minute Lee had left the shooting range with Sam, hating himself more every minute. He'd told no one what he'd witnessed, and Kaiba, thankfully, had allowed him to make his report as an anonymous bystander. None of the others knew he'd been there that day, and he'd like to keep it that way. He didn't think he could bare the looks that read why didn't you do anything?
He'd wanted to. Christ, how he'd wanted to. But he hadn't trusted himself not to kill Lee in that moment, or throttle him within an inch of his life, and that would look even worse.
If the whole precinct was on thin ice as Kaiba had put it, then Jounouchi was treading water. As much as he might like to push the new Cap's buttons, he needed this job, and he couldn't do anything more to jeprodize it.
So he played it cool, letting his head lull to the side to frown at Yugi. "Yeah, sure, but what does suddenly monitoring our every stinking move do, other than provide more work for us and, in turn, more for him?"
"Because Lee was transferred here to make Kaiba look bad," Yugi said.
Honda and Jounouchi stared at him, Jounouchi finally sitting up in surprise. "Say what now?"
But before Yugi could elaborate, Marik chimed in. "Hi," he said, waving a heavily tattooed, long-fingered hand. "Umm… hate to break up this conversation, but, my eight-legged friend still missing? Can you guys help me find him? Pretty please? With sugar on top?"
The three of them stared, mouth agape. Thankfully Kaiba's door opened a second time and he barked, "Yugi, in my office now," across the office. Yugi, never more grateful in his life to be called into his uncle but now his boss' office, stood.
"You guys got this covered, right? I believe in you!" then he scampered into relative safety, the door shutting behind him.
Ryuzuki, unhelpful as always, said rather loudly that he thought he saw the spider on his sandwich just a few minutes ago, and that he might have eaten him by mistake when he'd taken a big bite. Haga, Ryuuzaki's forever partner in crime and negligence, exclaimed how that wasn't fair because Ryuuzaki had promised that he'd give the spider to him for his collection if he'd found it first!
Honda and Jounouchi just shared a look and a heavy, heavy sigh. It was going to be a long day.
~*~
Yugi blinked at Kaiba, letting boss/uncle's words settle over him like the uncomfortably heavy blanket it was. "Poster, sir? Of… me?"
His Captain was seated behind his oversized mahogany desk, hands folded in front of him, back perfectly straight. Beside him sat Anzu, perched elegantly on the end of her chair, one long, well-manicured finger tapping against her knee in obvious displeasure.
Kaiba quirked an eyebrow, and Anzu stilled despite openly glaring at Kaiba. Yeesh, did anything frighten her? "Yes," he said to Yugi. "Posters. Of you. Around the city.Smiling, and in uniform. Complete with the slogans 'We're Here for You' and 'Protecting You, Always'. You wish to be Captain someday, and so why not grace the city with your charming face to get them used to the idea?"
Anzu could hold back no more. "Captain," she said. "Captain, I understand what you're trying to do, but I really don't think - "
A crash sounded from outside. Kaiba leapt to his feet, striding around the desk and wrenching open the door. Yugi and Anzu peered at the scene over their shoulders. Jonouchi, Honda, and Marik, standing besides an overturned desk. Yugi's desk, of course. Mai was a few paces behind them, baseball bat at the ready, while Ryuzuki and Haga were frozen mid-crawl on the floor. Five pairs of wide eyes stared at Kaiba, and Yugi swore he saw steam coming out of Kaiba's ears.
"What," the captain ground out, every word the equivlinet of being hit with a blunt instrument. "Are you. Doing."
His steely gaze landed on Honda, and the big man almost flinched. "Sergeant?"
"Sir," Honda began, cowering under the icy stare, "we were merely - "
"Looking for my spider friend!" Marik looked so much like a puppy hoping for a treat and belly rubs as he stepped forward. He was either oblivious or immune to Kaiba's ire, and for that, Yugi pitied him. "We still can't find him. You haven't seen him in your office, have you?"
The back of Kaiba's neck turned beat red, and Yugi didn't have to see his face to know his left eyebrow was twitching spazmatically.
"Get back to work," he snarled, low and deadly, before slamming the door closed so hard Yugi thought the windows would shatter.
Kaiba spun around, his rage flashing before cool, collected composure took his place. He took in Anzu, his secretary, and Yugi, his protegee. His next words left no room for protest: "Yes. Posters. Yugi, you are to report to marketing at once. Anzu, come up with a list of slogans and catch phrases to include on the materials. Make them short, sweet, and to the point that we are here as protectors, not as jailers or abusers."
Anzu raised her hand, opened her mouth to say something, but Kaiba peirced her with his icy stare, silencing her.
"Dismissed."
~*~
The week carried on, not much better. Marik's spider (who he revealed was named Marshmallow), was still uncaught, although there had been several near misses and shrieks heard throughout the office as well as the rest of the building when the creature was spotted before quickly disappearing into the ether yet again. Marik had even made 'MISSING' posters and put them up all over the office, sticking one on every computer, every bathroom stall, every door, and even on the telephone poles that lined the street outside, "just in case he manages to leave the building".
Kaiba's mood was no better, and he'd given Marik a very public scolding about how this was not a productive use of public tax dollars, and need he be reminding that they were in the middle of a scandal that could ruin all them?
Indeed, the number of prank calls Anzu had to screen on a daily basis skyrocketed, there were repeated cases of vandalism on the outside of the precinct. Someone had even spray-painted the words PIG on the sides of every patrol car.
All this made Yugi increasingly nervous about the posters that their marketing team had recently finalized and were now in the process of posting all over Domino. Putting his face out there felt like putting a target on his back.
It was almost a relief, then, when Anzu, after having just ended another nasty phone call, dragged him and Honda away from their desks and down to the evidence room where they could talk in relative privacy. Jounouchi and Mai were out on patrol, which was just as well - the two hotheads thrived on chaos, but they were quick to anger and Kaiba's continuoius temper tantrum was beginning to wear on each of them. The whole office felt like a ticking time bomb, just waiting to explode.
On their way, they passed Marik, cellphone camera shining into every nook and cranny of the stairwell as he called for his friend's spider.
"Marshmalloowww, Mmmmmaaarrrsshhhmallloooowwwww, come'ere buddy, come on out. It's okay. Mmmmaarrrsssshhhhhmmmmmaaalllloooowwwww!"
Despite how the idea of a large, hairy spider loose in his workplace made Yugi's skin crawl, he did feel bad for Mairk, as he was obviously in great distress over the creature's continued absence.
"Christ, I feel like this place is falling apart at the seams," Honda remarked when the three of them were finally in the relative privacy of the evidence room. Yugi's eyes moved to the table where just a few months ago, he and Jounouchi had laid out the, ah, confiscated paraphernalia that had landed both of them in serious trouble. Still, the story still had his uncle Atem laughing to the point where there were tears in his eyes, so he found himself almost smiling at the memory before turning back to his colleagues.
"You're telling me! Have you seen the hashtags?!" Anzu whipped out her phone, tapping her Twitter app and scrolling through her newsfeed. The language was enough to make Yugi and Honda turn slightly green.
"And don't even get me started on the shit I have to deal with on the phones."
"And the Captain is… well," Honda trailed off, not needing to finish. Kaiba was basically out of his mind. From his repeated apology texts to Yugi, it seemed even Atem couldn't get him calmed down for longer than a few minutes at a time.
"But what can we do?" Yugi asked, "it will all die down eventually, right?" But he knew that that wasn't the point. And he'd been thinking about how to get them out of this PR nightmare constantly. But there was no easy answer. The public was mad, and had decided that Lee's actions spoke for all of them. If all they saw was a monster, then that's all they'd ever see.
Anuz crossed her arms over her chest, eyeing both of them wearily. "I think we need to take matters into our own hands," she said.
Honda ran a hand through his hair. The gel had long since worn out from the repeated motion and it was now flopping over his forehead in a messy tangle. "And how do you suggest we do that with that Cap watching our every move? He won't listen to reason. And anything that isn't his idea - "
But Anzu cut him off, pulling two file folders from seemingly out of nowhere and shoving them into his and Yugi's hands.
Both men met looked at each other before looking back down at the files, opening them up with awe.
"I've been brainstorming," Anzu said. "Kaiba might have bugged my computer, but he seems to have forgotten that I do everything on my phone."
Yugi's brows went up, impressed. "So, all the times it looked like you were just texting…"
Anzu smiled a wicked smile, which Yugi supposed was answer enough for him.
Honda was already on the third page, nodding in approval. "Schools tours are a good idea," he said. "We could start at elementary and work our way up all the way to high school. We used to do those regularly before COVID locked everything down. I'd honestly forgotten about them until now."
Anzu nodded, looking pleased with herself. "Keep going," she said.
The next phase was a social media education campaign, where she hoped to get as many officers and detectives as possible - not just in their precinct, but in others, in front of the camera talking about why they decided to go into law enforcement.
The next phase had Yugi looking up. "Community forums?"
Anzu nodded. "I'm thinking we do one a month. We get detectives to show up and answer questions and concerns community members have about their safety and policing. And we record them and post those on social media, too. And we don't just listen and nod along, but we actually take what we learn and try to change how we do things."
Honda snorted. "Good luck with that. The higher-ups are a bunch of bureaucrats who aren't interested in change."
Anzu flung her hands in the air, exasperated. "We have to at least try!"
"She's right, Sarge," Yugi said. "We have to try. And we have to show the public that we're doing so; getting them and us on the same side will make it easier to pressure the Deputy Commissioner and whoever else we need to convince that protecting the bad apples does nothing to actually serve the people. And that's our whole job, isn't it?"
Anzu beamed. "I knew you'd get it, Yugi. Look at the next page."
He did so, and nearly groaned, some of his muster already deflating. "More posters?"
"Ah, ah, ah, not just posters." Anzu flipped the page again, showing a mock-up. It read: WE CAN DO BETTER; TELL US HOW in large, bold letters. Along with some mock dates for the community forums she'd outlines earlier, it also included the Seventh's insignia, an upside-down pyramid with an eye in the center and the number 7 emblazoned behind it, the precinct's main phone number, as well as Anzu's email address.
"I'll forward any email that might come my way to whoever I think might need to see it," she said. "And that includes all of you."
Yugi smiled, and saw Honda's expression was the same. "I would expect nothing less," said the Sargent. "Good work, Mazaki."
Anzu opened her mouth to reply, expression sliding back into her usual one of board exasperation, when a loud crash sounded from above them. All three looked at the ceiling, then at each other before pelting from the evidence room, racing up the stairs to the bullpen before skidding to a halt.
The scene before them was one of absolute chaos. Several officers had flattened themselves against the far wall, eyes wide with terror. One of them even had one of his loafers in hand, holding it as if ready to strike. On the other side where not one, not two, but three overturned desks and chairs, wheels spinning uselessly in the air, with papers scattered everywhere, computer monitors nothing more but a pile of broken plastic and a tangle of cords. Jounouchi and Mai were apparently back from patrol, and Mai was standing on her desk, point at something on the ground. Jounouchi had his gun unholstered and pointed at the same spot, whereas Marik was waving his arms, shouting as he blocked Jonouchi's aim with his own body. On another desk stood Ryuuzaki and Haga, Ryuuzaki in Haga's arms, looking like a damsel who'd fainted dramatically after a shock. His tell-tale red cap was off and lying amidst the chaos on the floor, as if having been thrown at something.
"What in the - " Honda began, but he was cut off.
With a slam like that of a guillotine coming down on a chopping block, the Captian's office door burst open, and Kaiba himself marched out of the room, back straight and fists clenched.
Without even pausing to take in the mess, he strode up to where Jounouchi and Marik stood, twisting Jounouchi's gun out of his hand and slamming it down onto a nearby desk in one smooth motion. Jounouchi barely had time to stumble back before Kaiba bodily shoved him out of the way, turning on Marik next.
Marik's eyes were wide, his mouth opening: "Captain, I-"
Kaiba didn't let him finish. He fisted the front of Marik's shirt at the collar, physically raising the smaller man off his feet so that the two were at eye level.
The Captain's snarl was barely above a whisper, but the whole room heard it as loud as a gunshot.
"So help me, Marik," he began. "If you do not pull your shit together and find your goddamn spider before you ruin the rest of my goddamn bullpen, I'll find it and kill it myself and have you dismissed. Do. I. Make. My. Self. Clear."
Even from twenty feet away, Yugi saw something flash across Marik's eyes - rage, indignation, defiance - but it was quickly snuffed out. Instead, the other man merely nodded, closing his eyes and lowering his chin in defeat. "Y-yes, Sir," he said.
Slowly, slowly, Kaiba lowered him back to his feet before letting go and stepping back a comfortable distance. He drilled Marik with his icy glare before rounding on Jounouchi.
"And you," he snarled, getting nose to nose with the detective, "pulling your gun out on police property. What the hell where you thinking? I should demand you turn in it and your badge, but I already have enough to deal with. Don't allow me to catch you doing that again."
Jounouchi opened his mouth to speak, but Kaiba raised his hand to silence him. "Final warning, detective."
Then he turned on one perfectly polished heel, and went back to his office.
By the time the door closed behind him with a soft click, Kaiba felt a wave of exhaustion wash over him so quickly and completely, he nearly swayed on his feet. He had to drag himself back to his desk, and say heavily in his chair. It took all his muster to spin it so he was yet again facing his computer, when movement caught his eye.
There, sitting right next to his coffee cup, was a large, hairy spider. Although it was difficult to see it's many eyes, Kaiba could feel them on him, as if the creature was studying him with mild interest.
Kaiba stared, blinking, mind blissfully blank.
Only when his office door opened again did he look up to see Mai, the heels of her boots clicking across the floor as she approached his desk with a glass jar in one hand, the lid in the other.
Wordlessly, she approached his desk, turned the jar upside-down, and placed it carefully over the tarantula - Marshmallow, Kaiba thought. It's name was Marshmallow.
Carefully, Mai slid the jar to the edge of the desk, forcing the creature trapped within the move with its cage until Mai could reunite the jar with lid, twisting it into place with a calm finality.
A small smile pulled at the corner of her ruby red mouth as she studied the spider, who now had two legs pressed against the glass as if it were rearing up to strike.
Then, she turned to Kaiba, who met her gaze in silence.
"Go home, Captain." She said. "Sarge and I got things covered here."
And for some reason, Kaiba believed her. Without a word, he stood, grabbed his coat, his briefcase, his still-unopened lunch bag, and left.
~*~
Many hours later, in the dark of the night and long after his husband had given up trying to pester the events of the day out of him and had gone to bed, Kaiba sat in his home office, surrounded by the blue light of several large screens. He studied each one in turn with his mouth pressed against his steepled fingers. In front of him where the logs from the tracking software he'd installed on every computer in his police station, which now in hind sight felt like a waste of time.
Lee hadn't done anything nefarious online that somehow lead him to gross misconduct. He'd been an asshole cop who liked having power over people, and liked using it.
But wasn't Kaiba the same?
No, said a voice in his head that sounded like Atem's. No, you're not.
The truth was he 'd barely slept since Jounouchi had called to tell him about what he'd witnessed at the shooting range. A college kid with an overdue parking ticket, hunted down like an animal, beaten and humiliated. It was no wonder his family hadn't sued them yet, but supposedly Alexander was still recovering from a breakdown at an in-patient facility outside of town, so that could be coming.
It was every good Captain's worse nightmare. But it also left him wondering, where there any good Captains left?
He'd signed up for the police academy after a brief dip in the business world because he'd wanted to use his cool, calculated genius to make a difference. He'd seen bad cops get away with bad things, and good cops get killed. He'd been laughed at, ridiculed, pushed around. But he'd stayed true to the book, stuck to the straight and narrow. He'd basically given his superiors no choice but to promote him.
And now he was making headlines as being yet another Police Captain who allowed his inferiors to get away with harassment.
The truth was, he had no idea what to do to try to fix it.
He closed the tracking logs and instead opened the feed to the building security cameras, which he'd personally installed all throughout the building. Nothing went without his notice, not in his precinct.
Still, he grew more and more annoyed as he flicked through the different scenes of the day; Ryuuzaki and Haga eating lunch, Jounouchi trying and failing to flirt with Mai, Marik wandering around the building looking for his goddamn spider -
But then, he stopped. Evidence room, 4:01pm. Anzu, Yugi, and Honda, standing in a small huddle, talking.
Kaiba un-muted the feed (because of course he'd also installed microphones), and re-wound the video to the moment the three of them had filed into the room.
Honda: "Christ, I feel like this place is falling apart at the seams"
Fast forward.
Yugi: "It will all die down eventually, right?"
Fast Forward.
File folders.
Honda: "Schools tours is a good idea. We could start at elementary and work our way up -"
Rewind.
Anzu: "I've been brainstorming."
From there, he let it play, still as a statue as his secretary, his Sergeant, and his protegee/nephew brought things to light he never would have considered.
He paused, finally, on the second Yugi's hand shifted so that the text within the folders were clearly visible on the hidden camera in the corner high above.
Kaiba read the words "WE CAN DO BETTER; TELL US HOW" and sat back.
Ah. Now he understood.
It wasn't his people he needed to change; it was how others saw them.
How others saw him.
Quickly, he went back to the screen where the logs from the trackers were, and pulled up the one he'd placed on Anzu's phone (how silly of her for thinking that he wouldn't do that; of course he would.). He opened the document she was drafting to send to the Marketing department, and added his work email address to the bottom corner, along with his direct extension.
Once the changes were made, he submitted it to marketing himself, not bothering to cc Anzu or any of them. They'd know when they saw it what he'd done, although whether or not they'd be able to put together how was another matter.
Still, he found himself smiling a secret smile. "Good work, team," he murmured to the quiet, empty room.
"Good work."