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Altered Items always came with an aftertaste of smoke attached to them. It wasn’t a sign of being a latent parautilitarian or something — the FBC put every new recruit through that particular gauntlet, whether they wanted it to or not — just an unshakable association she’d developed.
Zoe had been a few months shy of twenty-one, full of hot air and nothing to show for it, one of her arms wrapped in what must have been miles of scratchy gauze, seated on a fluorescent pink plastic chair outside the gas station she worked at. Her manager, freshly arrived in his ratty pajamas and flip-flops on his day off, was arguing with an officer from some federal agency she’d never heard of. People in hazmat suits with esoteric equipment talked in half-whispers, just out of earshot. They’ve cordoned off the whole neighborhood. She was mentally updating her CV, tallying whether the amount of hours she’d put in could cover her share of the rent.
Her hands shook; waning adrenaline, the absurdity of the situation would not dawn on her until much later. She caught a whiff of cigarette smoke — a downright vintage habit in 2014 — and looked at the agent partaking in the habit. “You shouldn’t smoke near pumps,” Zoe said, her tone coming off as bored, flat. Running on autopilot.
The man turned his head away from his blindingly-polished shoes to face her. He was older — older than her father, most likely — but his body language did not speak of age, of frailty. A worn gun holster peeked beneath the half-opened dark blue polyester jacket. He took a demonstrative drag off his cigarette, and slowly made his way over to her seat.
He pulled out the box from his jean pocket, and offered the last cigarette in the pack.
“I don’t smoke,” she said.
“‘s for your hands,” a scratchy, mid-western accent replied, and tipped the box again, emphatically. “Bad for nerves, to continue letting them shake like that.”
Ignoring all reason, and her health and safety training, she picked the proffered offering. Put it in her mouth. The man — and how she regretted not asking that agent for his name — handed her a box with matchsticks.
The first drag was unpleasant. Hurt like a motherfucker, burning hot across the back of her throat and sinuses. She did not want to lose face, did not want to reveal to this stranger this is the first time she’d done it: leftover teenage bluster. The second one was just plain disgusting, but she powered through it, until there was nought but ash and a horrible lingering taste in her mouth. It did make her feel better.
It was, undoubtedly now, an evaluation: it’s how the bulk of new FBC recruits find their way into the Oldest House. Just before she had got on the metro to her shitty apartment share in Brooklyn, the smoking man gave her a meaningful look, and handed her a final gift — a card with 34 Thomas Street, an invitation to pay the address a visit.
Zoe’s life couldn’t possibly get worse, she had thought at the time — a gore-fest of a possible dismemberment included. The bus brought her to a high-rise she’d never seen, not off the top of the Empire State Building, or any postcards. The rest, as they say, is history.
That had been her one and only cigarette — FBC pay was good, but not good enough to sustain a habit in 2026 — but it came back each and every time she came in contact with the paranatural: the Hiss, the Patterned streets, Dylan.
They’d been holed up in the Watchtower, away from the gushing heavens, and the mesmerizing kaleidoscopes that formed where nature turned to Pattern. The rain hammering on the roof drowned out the drone of the Hiss, and Zoe’s lymphatic system could not be more grateful for that: she could take off the Black Rock injector, even if only for a quarter of an hour. It was a pleasant lull, a momentary return to normality, where she could close her eyes, and pretend the last couple of weeks were the result of a questionable edible.
“What about the apartment block near the intersection of 59th and 6th Avenue?” Dylan, to her right, gesturing in the vague direction of the Park with a Polaroid photo held gently between his fingers.
Arish’s hatred for Dylan ran marrow-deep. Could hardly stand his presence, and that was not limited to Arish’s personage. If Dylan even dared to take a breather somewhere in the Field Office, Arish would know of it; if the parautilitarian was idling, then he was dangerous; if he was not being used, then a use should be found. Zoe was willing to put her meager life savings down that the Co-Director would quite happily put Dylan on Fridge Duty forever, if he had not proven himself to be extremely useful in every other way. So, in this blessed quiet, while the CFD was still just a sketch on a white-board, Dylan bowed out from under Arish’s barbed tongue, and into her make-shift office on the other side of the sector.
Nevermind that she’d been benched. Hopefully, nobody milling around the building would find it necessary to tattle on the unsanctioned visit to Arish.
“Can’t be there,” Zoe said, taking the Polaroid out of his hand. A flock of pigeons was frozen mid-take off of a Mold-covered roof. The legs of an overturned patio chair poked just barely out of the edge of the frame. “Those apartment blocks are completely overgrown. Can’t even see the facade. The angle of this shot could only happen if it’s out of an open door, or window.”
Dylan let out a disappointed groan, and draws a cross in black marker over a tourists’ map of Manhattan he appropriated — stole, technically, but when all was said and done, who would be bothered to include it in the damage report? — from a newsstand on the streets below. They’d been at it for some time; the shittiest game of tic-tac-toe: all crosses, no circles. He pushed himself away from the desk, stretching out his long legs, his spine, tipping his head back, allowing the tips of his thick auburn hair to touch the top of his shoulders.
Zoe was not raised particularly religious — working at the FBC easily disabused one of the notion that their spiritual upbringing was the fundamental truth; deconversion in the first 48 hours of employment was a rite of passage. She had no qualms with the act of lying. When dealing with the weird and paranatural, and a public that can get spooked by the most inane of things: an outmost necessity. What she did believe to be beyond stupid was actively choosing to lie to yourself.
Dylan was an attractive man, with his soulful blue eyes and wide shoulders. If she was still in the business of trawling the apps for dates, it would’ve been an immediate right swipe. In the (too common) unfortunate event he ended up being a shit-head, at least he would be nice to look at over a coffee. And herein lain the rub — it wasn’t just a pretty wrapping. Dylan, even with the mountains of redacted paperwork locked behind walls of NDAs and lengthy release forms, was a good man. To the complete disregard of his own safety, with no concern towards his own survival of this shit-show. Soft-spoken, kind, honest: the kind of person that had been missing from Zoe’s life, for as long as she could remember.
She could see herself falling for him, hard and messy as it would be. If she was reading into Dylan’s body language right — the glances, the force of his attention, the interest he held in her every word — it would not be one-sided.
Dylan wound himself back, curling his arms to the front, compressing the whole of his height back into a half slouch. Zoe wondered if it was instinctual, making himself appear smaller, less dangerous, or the years confined to a glass cage.
“Does the FBC know if any other zones have been exposed to the Mold?” He took the Polaroid out of her hand. The movement of his arm — slow, gentle — stirred the air around him, and the scent of tobacco followed it.
“Rangers have reported outcroppings here-and-there, but nothing to this scale outside of the Park. There’s no date to the photo, is there? Could help us narrow it down to the growth of the outbreak.”
He flipped the Polaroid around. “No, unfortunately.”
“I can only conclude that the Mold had already eaten the poor camera, then.”
“Or I didn’t check all previous locations well enough.” It didn’t surprise her when Dylan pocketed the Polaroid into his trousers, stood up, and began fiddling with his still-wet poncho.
The rain was pouring; you could hardly see the outline of the Verconn building from her vantage point. Zoe could tell him no, could pull out any of her dad’s sayings about catching one’s death under cold water and stop him in his tracks, but she was not his handler anymore. She doubted it would have made a difference, regardless.
“I know I’m not supposed to...” Dylan said, gathering his hair back into a topknot, “but I’ll keep you in the loop.”
“Arish will eat you alive if he hears a word of it, you know?”
“I know,” he said, trying for a humorous tone and landing somewhere else, bittersweet, and he exited the threshold of her (ex) office.
Zoe caught his silhouette a moment later, streaking through the sky from a window above, pulled towards the ledge of a housing block by an invisible rope, like some kind of Spiderman. Dylan turned his head, caught her gaze, and gave her a smile and a quick wave, before disappearing into the mist. Her ear-piece crackled, wind rushing through the microphone attached to his gear, “See you later,” he said, before the patter of rain became the only sound.
Later, she would catch her reflection, the edge of her mouth buttressing the dimple in her cheek. Later, she would let her heart skip a beat when she caught the remnants of his scent lingering on the plastic chair. Later, she would get angry at herself for pretending she was not already willingly teetering at the edge of the fall.