Chapter Text
You open the personnel folders one by one: A chemistry teacher that sold confiscated narcotics obtained by the drug sniffing police dogs. A captured MI6 informant, unable to keep track of which countries were allied and which ones were enemies, who accidentally double-double-crossed their employer. An arsonist whose crimewave came to an abrupt end when they were caught urinating on a Catholic school, of all things. No, no, definitely no.
Your assistant shifts her weight uncomfortably from toe to toe, watching you review each EXR-P profile. You told her to stop wearing those stupid heels. Or at least bring a backup pair of slippers to wear at the desk.
God, these are worse than the folders she brought in yesterday. You close them and shake your head ‘no.’
“Nothing?” She deflates. Your mouth twists in an empathetic moue.
“It's not your fault, Melina. I have very high standards and you have a limited pool of candidates.” You gather up the folders and hand them to her for refiling. “Next time let’s pass on the arsonists. I don’t want anyone who will pose a risk of danger to property.”
“I understand,” she crosses out several lines on her notepad. There's a worrying amount of arsonists on her list.
“I’m fine with murder as long as it was done with just cause.”
“My god, what a thing to say, Dr. Ramirez.” Melina laughs uncomfortably. She doesn’t quite know how to respond to that. Her gentle demeanor is so at odds with your dark sense of humor, but she’s damn good at her job and can keep a secret (she fooled her parents into believing she was straight for twenty years). You couldn’t ask for a better combination in an assistant.
“I know, what have our lives come to?” You huff a laugh. “What I mean to say is I want someone with integrity. This is a big risk. Yes, these prisoners are being sent to their deaths, but I want someone who is willing to fight back before they shuffle off their mortal coil.”
She nods. You sigh longingly. “A background in science would be perfect, but I doubt I'm ever going to find that here.”
You sit up at your desk and smack your hands lightly on the wood to shift focus. “Anyway! We’ve wasted enough time with my passion project. What's on your list for today?”
Melina opens her document holder and pulls the pen out from behind her ear to take notes. “I need your signature on your procurement card before I can send the reconciliation off to Financial Services. Your 1300 meeting with Dr. O’Brien was canceled but I haven’t received a revised date from her PA. So you get to eat today! And you were invited to sit on an advisory panel for the Ethics Review Board to approve the latest round of research proposals for Joruna parva profundus.”
Your eyes roll to the ceiling and your ponytail hits the back of your chair. “Ugh. It’s normally a ‘no,’ but dammit they always get me with the Sea Bunnies… Fine. Forward the details to me and I'll think about it. I'd like a break from staring into a microscope.”
“You are starting to get a permanent ring around your eye,” she jokes. Melina looks down at her notes. “Oh, and your WHMIS certification is expiring. I was CC’d on the reminder.”
“Already? Jeeze. It feels like yesterday I was–” You cut yourself off. The image of flash cards on a messy table floats into your mind and your chest squeezes painfully. Sebastian always took his certification so seriously.
Your assistant patiently stands at attention on the other side of your desk. She pushes a strand of long red hair behind her ear and watches you expectantly. You dismiss her instead. “Thank you Melina, that's all for now.”
You collapse into your chair the moment she leaves, shedding the skin of your professional posture with the grace of a snake in low humidity.
You still hate Thursdays, even after all these years.
Surprisingly there were no administrative repercussions for you leaving the Blacksite without written permission. None of it mattered in the chaos that followed the facility lockdown. No one questioned it; no one asked for your prepared alibi. Urbanshade was relieved to have a living scientist that could help with the Expendable protocol and analyze the recovered assets.
In short, your work continues as it did before the lockdown: without Sebastian.
You think of him more than your bleeding heart ought to.
You've read the account from the two surviving guards (ironically they were the two women who accompanied you to his cell that day). It is harrowing and you are horrified by the magnitude of his destruction. Guess you never know what someone is capable of until their back is up against the wall.
Good fucking riddance to Michaels, though. You assume he was killed in action. His name is a single footnote in the list of personnel that went missing that day.
You scour every report that mentions The Saboteur by name--reading and re-reading everything from the lockdown timeline to his updated personnel file–-until the words appear in the dark across your eyelids when you close your eyes at night.
“To be killed on sight, without hesitation,” it says, bolded in all caps. “Incredibly dangerous and nimble.” You like to think you had a small hand in that dexterity.
…that’s probably a misplaced point of pride.
A tinkling alert peeps from your wristwatch, indicating it is time to head to the lab. Oh boy, another day of bacteriological analysis. Time to calculate the TVC of parasite eggs. Yippee .
If you had live samples to work with it would be mildly interesting, but no adult parasites have survived outside the Let Vand Zone: they are only able to exist above sea level in their larval state. Even when larvae are incubated in vacuum sealed tanks that replicate the pressure of the Let Vand Zone and the surrounding veil, they die before reaching full maturity. It would be fascinating if they weren’t so disgusting.
You mindlessly tap your security card along the doors of each path. You pause on the pedway to check the weather. Surprise, it’s snowing. Again.
Norway is nice, but it's a hell of an adjustment for a person used to living in a warmer climate. Not to mention the disorienting acclimatization of living on the surface again after nearly a decade without sunlight. You seldom used your shore leave even though it was part of your compensation package, preferring to spend vacation days at the Blacksite instead. You always felt so selfish leaving Sebastian behind with no one else. Not that his happiness was your responsibility. You just felt bad for him.
You tried to make up for your occasional absence by allowing him to live vicariously through you, stocking up on a long list of goodies that were impossible to obtain beneath the water. Dairy was a hot commodity. Once when you were short on funds Sebastian helped you organize a black market cheese ring in the MR-P wings, selling the goods at a ridiculous markup.
Movement of a security camera on the ceiling draws your eye. The low profile domes aren’t fooling anyone. Sebastian showed you how to spot the camera’s lens and now you can never unsee it. You also have a knack for locating recording devices when you enter a room.
“Z-13 is currently in possession of our experimental portable SCRAMBLER, meaning that any and all CCTV, radios, and other communications equipment will be rendered offline in a [REDACTED] by [REDACTED] stud radius…”
Ah, the Secure Circuit Radio Amplified Modulating BLockER , or the SCRAMBLER for short. Handy little thing, but a mouthful of a name. Makes the title of your doctoral dissertation sound like poetry in comparison.
You enter the lab to a chorus of chipper greetings from your team. Those who aren’t babysitting parasites are sitting on their phones waiting for their water samples to finish agitating. You put on your professional game face and feign interest in their measurements. You inspect their notes, ask questions you could easily answer yourself so they feel important. You crouch down to examine the compound light images obtained from the EXR-P team. They were able to successfully complete one mission before the microscope and specialized camera were lost. The team was executed for damaging Urbanshade property.
Boy these little bastards sure are ugly. It feels like a final middle finger from Michaels, condemning you to study these simple organisms when two labs down the hall other scientists get to play with deep sea bunnies all day. You nearly cried when you heard about the experiment teaching the bunnies to drive little cars like the rats at the University of Richmond.
Time to hide behind your microscope for the rest of the afternoon. You swear under your breath while you adjust the focus. Whoever prepared this slide did a shit job of it. There’s a big fat fingerprint right in the center of the coverslip. You check the initials on the log–
Oh. It was you.
Your heart just isn’t in the work that you do anymore.
You don’t even realize you are singing while you work until a young intern interrupts your focus. His face is so full of piercings you wonder how much time he spends with Security every morning walking through the metal detectors.
“Is that you humming, Dr. Ramirez? I never would have guessed you were a Metallica fan!”
In spite of everything, you hope that Sebastian is okay.
Beneath the waves, a small group of Deep Sea Bunnies putters through the ruins of the Hadal Blacksite. They do not know the name of their home, but they know they are safe and protected inside its strong walls. The Searchlights will never find them in here.
Suddenly, there is a noise in the dark. Fear! they quiver, huddling together. But instead of the fish with many teeth and eyes, they see the tall creature that speaks their language. They call him Light Eyes. He’s a strange-looking Sea Bunny.
The Sea Bunnies greet him with a trill. He responds, and the Bunnies dance with joy. No one else can communicate with them. Light Eyes reaches down and presents them with a trinket from the unsafe corner of their Home where they cannot travel. How thoughtful!
Wait, they say, returning to their little den to find the perfect gift for their friend. They search through piles of strange metal boxes until they find a disc that glows like his three eyes. Perfect.
They carry it on their backs and sing to him. To their surprise, Light Eyes reacts with a cry they know to mean ‘danger.’ The bunnies are confused by his response.
Light Eyes gently picks up the gift before throwing it across the room. It explodes against the wall with a noise that makes the Sea Bunnies jump. Light Eyes heaves a sigh and the Bunnies titter in delight amongst themselves.
What a fun game!
It’s the end of another boring day, culminating in a long shuttle drive from the remote Urbanshade facility to a quiet residential borough in Stavanger, and the only thing standing between you and a hot bath is a door.
You have been struggling to fit the bent key into the door to your apartment for what feels like hours. God this lock is a nightmare, why does the key never fit?
…Sebastian would know how to fix it.
The door across the hall opens at the sound of your jingling keys, and the wrinkled face of your darling elderly neighbor appears in the crack. “Doktora!” She greets you warmly.
“Hallo!” You respond, immediately stemming the stream of profanity.
You were not supposed to stay in this apartment long-term. In the wake of the lockdown Urbanshade was faced with a sudden shortage of on-shore employee housing. They placed you in a senior's living complex until the paperwork was sorted out and the newly constructed condominium was ready. But Ester and her husband of fifty years fell in love with you the moment you moved in. So you asked to make your temporary accommodations permanent. Confused but grateful for a vacant room, Urbanshade accepted. You were eventually adopted by the entire third floor in your flat. At Christmas you are drowning in lefse.
She insists that you call her Besta. You call her husband Ben-Kongen because it makes him laugh.
Ester leaves her toasty apartment (you can feel the heat radiating out into the hallway) and you note her arms are filled with packages. She must have received your mail again. You take the parcels from her wiry arms and thank her, apologizing profusely for the mixup. Ester smoothly reaches past you to open the door to your apartment. Damn, she has the magic touch for these finicky locks. The two of you cross the threshold of your modest (and freezing) apartment. She cranks up the thermostat with a theatrical shiver.
“Wait,” she holds up a knobbed arthritic finger and disappears back into the oven she calls an apartment. You leave your door open and set the parcels onto the kitchen island. She returns with a fresh plate of Berlinerkranser.
“Tusen takk, Besta.” you respond with a grateful smile.
“Good!” She encourages with a toothy grin. Ester rattles off something in Norwegian too fast for you to really understand. You smile and nod. Ester is sharp though, and she knows you are totally lost. “Dinner, come. Tonight?” She gestures to you.
“Oh! I would love to, thank you. What time?”
“Åtte. Eight.” she holds up eight fingers helpfully. That's kind of late for you, but your Americanized stomach can put up with a European supper time for the sake of a good, home cooked meal from a nice old lady. You would take a bullet for this woman.
“See you then, Besta.”
She smiles and waves, closing your door behind her.
You tear into the parcel from Deluge Labs the moment she’s gone. There are other letters that require your attention (like your bills), but you haven't been able to stop thinking about this one since you saw the logo of their proxy hidden beneath the crook of Ester’s massive wool sweater. There's something inside along with the letter. You tilt the envelope upside down and a USB stick clatters onto the formica counter. Heart pounding, you pull out the cover letter and scan through each line.
They've accepted your offer.
They want to work with you.
The memory stick contains the code for a secure access VPN executable. A thick contract is still inside the envelope. You might have to cash in an old favour with Rose to review the document together before you sign it and agree to their terms.
Jacques leaps onto the counter and sniffs the memory stick. You jump in surprise, so absorbed by the letter. You scoop the tabby up before he can knock the precious drive onto the floor. You read the rest of their proposal with him curled on your lap, running a hand through his fur. His thick coat needs brushing. Good thing you're used to grooming men who won't sit still while you tend to them.
At least Sebastian never bit you.
One day, an EXR-P file lands on your desk. Melina's smile is secretive and knowing. You open the file and feel your eyes bulging with every paragraph you read.
And you know that you have finally found your informant.