“Not really,” Tabitha says. Because she apparently has far larger balls than I do.
“Unless you have information on the stolen mineral deposit,” Shaw suggests, “be quiet.”
Tabitha opens her laptop, still glowering. She reaches to tap a key, but next to her Clyde spasms violently. The laptop screen blinks, and a file opens. Tabitha looks over at Clyde and finally lets her frustration boil over.
“The fuck?” she snaps at him.
“Sorry.”
As soon as he utters the first syllable, Devon seems to shrink into herself. Again I hear how it’s not quite Clyde’s voice. See how it’s not quite his movements when he gestures. Everything is in translation.
And my relationship with Shaw is not the first one I’ve been in. I know that when someone leaves you, you hope they’ll come back, you hope they’ll be regained somehow. But given how much Clyde’s changed “the way things were” must seem like it exists on a different planet to Devon. The impossibility of a way back must be slapping her in the face.
I’m debating if it’s my place to do something about it, when Kayla reaches over and pats Devon’s hand.
There is utter silence in the room. We all stare at Kayla. She glares back.
“Thanks,” Devon mumbles.
“Well then…” Felicity starts but doesn’t seem to have anywhere to go.
I try to think of something to say to cover the moment. “Clyde,” I say, grasping at straws, “did you just open a file on Tabitha’s computer with your mind?”
Clyde turns his head, studiously ignoring Devon. “Well, I sort of figured out how last night.”
“Boundaries,” Tabitha hisses.
Clyde says nothing, while Devon’s stare looks like it’s causing his sperm to detonate one by one.
Felicity massages her skull. “OK,” she says, “On the off chance we can actually get down to business. This stolen mineral deposit.”
“Not of terrestrial origin.” Tabitha sounds almost glad for the opportunity to change the subject. “From a meteorite. Hit earth about a thousand years ago. High percentage of antimony. Odd element. Not much of it here on earth.”
A voice cuts Tabitha off. “It’s mostly used for flame-proofing actually.”
Every eye in the room flies to Devon. She is attempting to look breezy and detached while engaged in a life-or-death staring contest with Tabitha.
“Was saying.” Tabitha curls her lip between sentences. “Main uses are flame-proofing, producing synthetic fibres, and lead-acid batteries. Not typical for bombs. But, of note, Chernobyl came up again.”
Russians. Chernobyl. Bomb. Not the most reassuring triumvirate of words.
I glance up at Shaw but she’s watching Tabitha.
“Big component of Chernobyl experiment,” Tabitha says. “Thought it’d power intradimensional magic. Russians did.”
I look over to Devon. “Magic that doesn’t punch out of our reality,” I say to her in a way I hope sounds more knowledgeable than rote. Then I realize more backstory is explained. “There’s magic, by the way. Did you cover that?”
My respect for Clyde’s explanations suddenly grows profoundly. He makes explaining this stuff seem much easier than it is. Still, Devon finally unlocks her gaze from Tabitha and beams at me with a megawatt grin.
“Thank you, Arthur,” she booms. “Very helpful to know. Don’t really understand a word of what you’re talking about but common courtesy is really just… Well, it’s not that common at all really. Actually a bit of a misnomer. I mean if it’s common courtesy then why mention it? But people are always mentioning it. Well not always. Due to the uncommon-ness.” She glances away. “Yes,” she concludes.
Then she levels her death-stare at Tabitha once more.
I look from Devon to Clyde. God, there are two of them now. My chances of understanding anything at all ever are rapidly diminishing.
“Was saying.” Tabitha’s pointed statement has grown claws. “Antimony. Used by Russians at Chernobyl. Catalyst metal. But we know Chernobyl doesn’t work. So: coincidence.”
“That seems a bit of an assumption,” Devon starts, still booming but with even less friendliness, “in my opinion that is, which, well I realize I’m still proving the usefulness of that, being the new person and all. No one wants to lick the new flavor of lollipop until a friend has tried it. Not that I want to be licked. Horrible image. Just making a metaphor. Licking always seemed a dirty habit to me, anyway. Always preferred a soft chewable candy myself. Why make food you can’t bite? Doesn’t make any sense.” She pushes her hair back from her eyes furiously. “Anyway, I was just saying that it just seems to me that making assumptions about coincidences without fully investigating all the angles may be a little shortsighted.” She blinks. “As I understand the situation.”
I’m not sure she knows what she’s talking about, but I am pretty sure that she doesn’t care.
Tabitha remains unfazed. “Coincidence because Russians know intradimensional magic doesn’t work. Which you’d know,” Tabitha sneers, “if you’d done any fucking research.”
Kayla makes an odd noise. A sort of click of the tongue.
Did she just tsk Tabitha?
For some reason Shaw doesn’t seem about to step in. But, because it feels like MTV’s
Real Life: Supernatural Horrors
is about to be unleashed in the conference room, I think someone has to. I open my mouth and say—
“Well, you can’t trust the bloody Russians to do anything right.”
Except I don’t say that. Someone else says it. And I don’t recognize the voice.
“Incompetent buggers, the Russians,” the new voice adds.
Every eye in the room turns and stares.
A tall, heavyset man stands in the doorway. He wears a brown tweed suit and a red tie that hangs awkwardly to where his waistline is losing its integrity. Ruddy brown hair is cropped close to the sides of his skull and a mustache the size of a seal pup balances on his upper lip.
“Oh God,” Felicity says. “Oh no.”
“Still,” the man says, apparently oblivious to the impact of his sudden presence, “can’t trust the sneaky bastards. Always up to something.” His voice booms as loud as Devon’s but is muddied by the sheer volume of his mustache.
“You,” he points to me. “Tall, dark, and ugly. And you, the one with the Halloween mask.” The sausage finger points to Clyde. “Next to the weird chick.” I have to imagine he means Tabitha. “Off to the British Library, would you? We need the Chernobyl papers.”
“What the hell?” I manage through my confusion. I sure as shit don’t move.
“Come on,” the man snaps. “Ondelé, ondelé, or whatever it is those bullfighting nancies say. Chop-chop. Queen and country. Go, go, go. London. Library. Lots of books. Can’t miss it.” He squints at Clyde and I. “Spreken zee English?”
“George,” says Felicity, her voice like a knife’s blade. “What are you doing here?”
She knows him. The collective stare swivels to her. It registers. She swallows. “This is George Coleman,” she says to us. “He works for MI6.”
The man called George smiles. “Not any more actually. Bit of a promotion. Top brass seem to think brinksmanship with aliens isn’t the smartest of plays. Steadier hand at the tiller and all that.” He thumbs his own chest. “Co-director of MI37 as of about,” he checks his watch, “thirty minutes ago. And now,” he points to Clyde and I, “directing you two to London. Fucking yesterday already.”
“No.” I shake my head. It’s a denial aimed as much at the universe as it is this unpleasant stain of a human being. This seriously can’t be. We save the world and this guy is our reward? “Shaw is the director,” I say. I demand.
But, apparently, the universe is about as interested in my assertions as it usually is.
“Lippy bugger, are we?” Coleman shoves out his chest. “And evidently not at the top of the food chain when it comes to information dispersal. Maybe because you’ve forgotten this is
military
intelligence. There is a chain of command. Information and orders flow big man to little man. And you are a little man and you would do well to remember that.”
It doesn’t happen with any degree of regularity, but I think I am about to lose my temper. I open my mouth—
“George, please.” Shaw, the placatory voice of reason, trying to find the balance point in the room. Sensible. Rational.
“Yes,” I say. “Please piss off.”
Felicity turns to me. She has a pained expression. “Arthur,” she says. Something between an order and a request.
And this is one of those moments she talked about last night, where I don’t like her lead.
But I’m not willing to break my promises this early. I’d like to wait at least six hours before I kick out one of the foundations we’re building this relationship on.
I bite back my bile.
“Come on, George,” Felicity says. “We can do this without the territorial pissing match.” She forces a smile out. “This news is a bit of a shock to everyone, that’s all. I’m sure we can all find it in ourselves to act like mature adults.”
Coleman finally retracts his chest, apparently mollified.
“Now,” Shaw says, “perhaps we can have a brief word in private.”
Coleman’s mustache quivers like an enormous electrocuted caterpillar, then he turns on his heel and stomps out of the room.
Felicity hesitates for a moment, her professional mask flickers. A glimpse of a woman worried and worn. I want to reach out to her as a colleague, a friend, a boyfriend.
Except there’s rather a large audience for that.
“You shouldn’t take this,” I say, restraining myself from stepping toward her. “This isn’t right.”
Her lips twitch in the imitation of a smile. But she doesn’t answer me. She just slips out the door after Coleman.
“This isn’t right,” I inform the room in general. Not that anyone seems to care. They’re all too busy shooting daggers at each other.
And that’s not right either. Something just happened that’s bigger than personal battles. Some ground shift.
Of course getting anyone to see it is going to involve stepping into the middle of the Tabitha-Devon divide. And to be honest I think I’d rather face another zombie T-Rex.
Screw it. I’m field lead. In the office, I’m not touching this crap with a ten-foot barge pole. “I’m getting a cup of tea,” I say as I head toward the door. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
For a moment I think I’m going to get away clean but then Devon says, “I’ll come too.” I can feel Tabitha’s
scowl scouring the back of my neck even as the door swings closed.
The MI37 kitchen is a small nook of one corridor with an electric kettle balanced on top of a microwave, balanced on top of a mini-fridge. A few mugs, a box of tea bags and a jar of instant coffee sit in a sink waiting for everything to fall apart.
I shove a bag into a cup. Everything seems to be speeding up just when I’d like it to slow down. Just a few days to wrap my head around my new reality. To get to grips with this relationship thing. Except now there are Russians, and bombs. And it’s not just my relationship that needs to be adjusted to. And on top of it all, this Coleman prick. He has to be someone’s idea of a joke. A very, very, very bad joke.
I stare at the teabag. Just five minutes to get my head together.
“Did you know?”
Devon, it seems, has no intention of letting that happen.
But… God, I can’t send misplaced aggression her way. It’s Coleman who really has me on edge, not her. She doesn’t even sound like herself. She’s being quiet.
I flick on the kettle. Take a moment to brace for the admission.
“Yes.”
It’s an awful thing to say. A terrible acknowledgment of complicity.
“Does he… Does he…” There’s more swallowing. “Do you think he loves her?”
I grab two sugar packets, tear them open. I suspect I’m going to need to switch to artificial sweetener, though, if I want to get over the bitter taste of this one.
“I…” I hesitate. Would a lie be better? Would that be the right thing?
“Please. I just want to know the truth.” Devon is turned away from me, hiding her face.
“I think so,” I say.
The water in the kettle starts to work itself into a froth. I reach out to turn it off.
“I don’t know why I came here,” Devon says, freezing me. “It was a really stupid thing to do. And now I’m trapped here. Looking at him. At what he’s become. At her. I’m caught and it’s awful and I don’t feel like me. I feel like some mean terrible person who wants to do terrible things. And I’ve never done a terrible thing. I’m a good person, Arthur. And that sounds like an awfully conceited thing to say, but, well, maybe now is the time to be conceited, just a little bit, if it helps. But I try. I really try to be a good person. I try to be happy. I was happy. And I’m not. He’s taken it. She’s taken it. She’s taken my happiness. And… And…”
She’s crying now. Really crying. I step so I can see her, so she can see me. And screw the politics of it, she needs to see she has a friend here.
“Starting here sucks,” I tell her. “But I promise it gets better.”
Another wracking sob from Devon. Then she lunges forward and clamps me in a bear hug. All the oxygen exits my lungs. I gasp like a fish flipped to shore.
“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you.”
My ribs creak.
“Ahem.” Behind us, someone clears their throat. I twist my head as the corners of my vision go dark. Kayla stands there.
“Oh,” Devon says, and releases me. I stagger back, gasping.
Kayla points to Devon’s face. “Your makeup,” she says, a little gruffly. “Should fix that. I’ll show you the bathrooms.”
“Oh!” Devon says again, clapping hands to her cheeks. “Oh gosh, I must look terrible. Really silly of me. I mean, well, this is an emotional time, of course. But still, a tighter rein might be necessary. Keep myself in check. There’s acting the fool and then looking like one afterward. Compounding the problem. You are very sweet to point it out. I’m Devon by the way.” She sticks out her hand. Then her brows crumple. “You know that.” Her lip starts to tremble. “Silly of me.”
“Bathroom,” Kayla commands. And the two of them walk away, leaving me with a screeching kettle and the sense that no one is really who I thought they were.