OCTOBER 4th, 2022

Hastings thought that he had done a pretty good job taking care of his run-down Corolla over the years, and he wasn’t scared of Ruby taking the wheel. She was a better driver than him, and she was already familiar with the old car.

But it was the Tin Lizzy that scared him.

It blew a chrome-bumper Foundation van’s backside like it was nothing, he was certain he’d be lucky to get out with just a few broken ribs when it came to encountering it, as he’d already wasted all of his luck saving Ruby.

Now, it was different. Unlike on the first when it’d rushed into town, when The Driver proceeded to play with them on those Nexus-manipulated wide streets under the night-sky turning everything around him to abstract blurs, they’d been keeping up with it. Gone was any jet lag it made during that fake-out. Compared to the speed it was going at now, the three of them may as well have been walking at a leisurely pace, even with the janky turns that made racing so much harder in the narrower roads. So leisurely that despite the fact they were still going fast, he also got a good look at the surrounding area.

Back when Hastings had arrived roughly a decade ago, he remembered the streets during Halloween being flooded with activity. Sloth’s Pit looked like a ghost town now, civilians clustering themselves inside as it was easier to stay out of the Foundation’s way and any other types of chaos. It was one thing to keep citizens away in times of genuine uncertain danger, it was another for them to simply lock themselves inside without any public consensus. He’d noticed them being quiet for a majority of the year so far, but he’d assumed that was just the result of the people trying to recover after COVID. It'd been a long time since he last saw the Main Street Anti-Gravity parkour parties. The lack of any general human activity was unnerving enough, the churning of leaves that would’ve otherwise been raked into a pile under the Corolla’s tires was just the cherry on top.

Ruby was tense. She made no commentary. The glare in her hazel eyes was striking, her knuckles a blistering white color from where it gripped the wheel. The two of them certainly knew the streets of Sloth’s Pit better, but The Driver’s unfamiliarity seemed to somehow aid how unpredictable her movements were.

The Driver went down Main Street, nearly crashed into Rita’s, did a donut hole around three separate manholes... The amount of times Hasting’s five-foot-one body lurched backwards and forwards, even with his seatbelt and Ruby occasionally flinging a hand over him, was anxiety-inducing. He was pretty sure even if the Tin Lizzy had a turn signal it’d just be used for psychological warfare, even if there wasn’t a chase to be had.

Hastings, meanwhile, was fumbling with his phone and Helen in his earpiece, trying to alert them of Tin Lizzy and struggling to recount the movements. None of the other patrols in the area were going to get anywhere nearby in the next five minutes. Except Dr. Partridge, but he was busy with the Madame of Volcanic Glacier. Hastings didn’t need to question him any further.

The Tin Lizzy, instead of going ahead onto Morrison Road, which would’ve led to the quickest exit westward, took a sharp left turn into the Juniper Hill Apartments, notable for their dark oak-colored walls, bright red roofs, and shade covered parking. Hastings was gracious that nobody was leaving the house; the roads felt even narrower with the addition of the cars sitting outside.

Hastings remembered a funny story he could never forget every single time he saw the signs-- or maybe an urban legend, he couldn’t recall if he checked the archives or not. They were built by the tail end of the 80s, due to the stream of Foundation members moving to town requiring additional housing, but by the time they’d actually started selling apartments in the 90s they couldn’t keep it’s maiden name of ‘Cypress Hill’.

As if The Driver had never been in an apartment complex before, when coming across a round of cul-de-sacs, the Tin Lizzy suddenly came to a stop.

Ruby slammed her foot on the breaks, practically synchronized with the Tin Lizzy despite the sudden stop. Hastings felt his seatbelt burn the side of his neck from the friction and speed more than he felt the tremendous heave of pain in his gut, his back folding in pain. Ruby’s sudden break had saved the both of them from wrecking any more terrain, although as he anticipated, coming out “unharmed” wasn’t really a thing.

Ruby seemed to take a worse hit-- the impact wasn’t enough to send the airbags out, but she gasped after the Corolla’s break struggled, holding her left hand to her chest and folding over herself, getting a few breaths in while she could.

Hastings turned his head to his left, as the Tin Lizzy entered the corner of his eye. She’d pulled up to the side of the Corolla-- the window of the Tin Lizzy was higher up, since the model was taller than it was wide.

And then the window began to roll down.

He could tell from the uneven speed of the window lowering and the quiet squeaking sound that the Tin Lizzy still used a crank handle. He was met with the same eerie driver’s helmet that Robert had described so vividly; clad in decals and stickers yet a sheen that disguised any sense of humanity underneath.

She paused.

Hastings rolled his own window down, cautiously, the hum of the machinery. He heard Ruby take a cautious breath from behind him.

It felt unreal to see those gloved hands take themselves off the steering wheel, and onto the helmet.

Hastings’ eyes met a stranger’s, for the first time.

Her balaclava left space around her eyes and her mouth. Instead of just three holes, hers was racing-styled with one hole, the space between the bridge of her nose as bare as her eyes. She lifted up the balaclava after a few seconds, pulling it off her head entirely.

Her defined jaw looked like it had enough force to break steel, totally not supported by the fact her teeth looked like rows of white daggers that could tear his skin like a hot knife to butter. Freckles dotted her cheeks in enough of a density to be visible, but not enough to cover the rest of her face. Her upper eyelids looked heavy, as opposed to having any eyebags, and her pupils had a dangerous ‘slit’ look to them that made her look catlike. Her ‘bangs’ were so short that they looked more qualified to be baby hairs. The rest of her hair was jet black, choppy, and didn’t go beyond her jawline in length-- something about the way it’d been cut echoed Hasting’s memories of cutting his own hair when he was too anxious to try to schedule an appointment. The tips, although, were dyed white. It was funny how much she matched the way her car looked, as if it was an extension of herself.

And from her thin lips...

“It’s seagrass.”

Hastings’ mind buffered. “What?”

The Driver held her gloved finger up, her shit-eating grin digging into his soul. “In terms of mass, Pando is king. In terms of known land, it’s that fungi colony. But fungi are restricted to living primarily on land, meaning that what they can access is restricted. On top of that, it’s unfair to compare fungi to plants exactly, similar origins of study aside. But if you truly wanted to comprehend the biggest living thing on earth, then the fungi colony is second place. In first place, you have a single strand of Posidonia australis in Shark Bay, Down Under. The Humongous Fungus is estimated to be about 2,000 acres in size, but the seagrass colony, believe it or not, is estimated to be about 25 times that. In that way, it outclasses both colonies. But I guess nobody can fault you for not knowing, since your lot’s likely always flooded with nothing but anomalous studies. Nothing’s shocking.”

Hastings was so glued to what he could see of her face, trying to process what she said, to try to hold himself back before he said anymore, that he didn’t prepare himself in time for Ruby smashing the Corolla into the Tin Lizzy at an angle, ramming the entire left side of the engine into where the Tin Lizzy’s crank handle should’ve been.

“You stupid bitch!” Ruby screamed with a rage Hastings hardly ever heard from her, backing up the Corolla and smashing into the Tin Lizzy again without a hint of concern for insurance costs. “If you’re going to give a parabotanist shit over a conversational detail, then use fucking metric, and be clear about your units of measurement!”

Hastings’ stomach lurched as she rammed into her over and over, only partially due to the motion sickness.

Hastings grabbed her arm. “What the fuck are you doing?!”

Ruby didn’t turn to him, just yelling at the top of her lungs: “INSURANCE!”

The thought of his car still getting destroyed by the second nearly caused him to yell at Ruby again in his breathless stupor, but then realized that since she was destroying it on the job, on a declared public enemy, his insurance was supposed to be covered by the Foundation. Meaning he could either get his money back. Or a nicer Corolla.

Or a nicer car.

Hastings managed an “I love you!” as best as he could, but with the seatbelt knocking out his breath and Ruby and The Driver cussing each other out, it was hardly audible.

⠀

STUPID BITCH

⠀

STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH STUPID BITCH rang in his head over and over again like he was the only person in a thousand-person stadium, forced to bear the tremor of Ruby’s verbal flashbang in his ribcage and his skull. It negated all the physical pain in the moment, like all the little broken pieces of the windows pricking his skin.

All good problems to have right now..?

After what seemed like a few too many times what was necessary to destroy an antique, Ruby avoided bits of plastic and glass turned shrapnel and put what was still left of the Corolla into park. Or at least realized that she couldn’t destroy either of the cars any further than they were already falling apart now.

“God bless your infodumping.” Was all she said, as she clicked his seatbelt open before her own. “You okay?”

Hastings nodded limply, hobbling out of the car like a sickly little boy getting off his first rollercoaster. “I love you,” he repeated.

“Are you okay?” She repeated, enunciating a little more the second time.

“I dunno, but I love you.”

He heard Ruby exhale a little laugh as she came around the blasted car and took his hand, patting his back and dusting some of the glass that still hung onto his clothes’ creases. “I think your airbags are broken.”

“I think you broke them.” He retorted. “And scared them from coming out.”

She pointed at the Tin Lizzy, busted up on the pavement. “You think she got any airbags?”

The Driver didn’t have a seat belt-- she had a straight up harness, race-car style, that crossed over her chest and kept her in place even though she was now sitting horizontally, the baggy having narrowly avoided getting crushed by her racing helmet by less than a foot.

“Hey, girlie.” Ruby snarled, craning her head to make eye contact through the crumbling windshield.

“You do that shit over a goddamn mushroom?” The Driver spurted.

“I do that shit over you disrespecting us in home territory.” Ruby shot.

“And the mushroom.” Hastings said.

“Yeah, about this thang.” A little bit of Ruby’s Bostonian accent leaked out, as she carefully wrung her hand through the bits of glass, the baggy crinkling in her hand. “What was the point of goin’ all Speedy Gonzales over a single mushroom?”

The Driver, although her driving and attitude a few minutes prior spoke otherwise, looked stiff in shock at what occurred. “You weren’t supposed to do that.”

“The fuck were we supposed to do, then?” Hastings crossed his arms.

The Driver let out a puff of breath. “Fuck me, I dunno. Just not that.”

Hastings looked at Ruby. Ruby looked as if she sat between a limbo of bursting out in laughter and the resting bitch face to end all resting bitch faces.

This bitch cannot be for real, Ruby spoke into his brain, earning a chuckle from him.

Wait, my brain?

The look in Hasting’s face must’ve looked perplexed, because without any acknowledgement she looked behind her. Although he hadn’t noticed the pair approaching them until she’d acknowledged them, she looked back at him in surprise, and back at the pair.

“Helloooo, your grace!” Ruby said it in the same cadence as ‘Hellooo, nurse!’.

A familiar pair gradually approached them both. A portly dark skinned woman in a white shirt, long patterned sundress with flowers decorated like a headdress upon her ferociously curly dark hair, and a spindly man that looked like he desperately needed some Vitamin D, crowned with laurels upon long and thin brown hair, armor clad in the standard brown apron of Parabotany and the traditional white lab coat of Foundation personnel-- The Madame of Volcanic Glacier and her Champion.

Hastings, upon hearing a jingling sound, looked back to see what had gone from a simple shock to an erratic, genuine fear in The Driver’s eyes. Her eyes had dilated ever so slightly, feverishly trying to release herself from her harness, writhing in place like a small animal being clutched uncomfortably by a child, even if it meant potentially landing on her helmet.

“Hey, look, buddy.” She said, once she caught Hasting’s eyes. “I can’t stay here anymore. That thing’s going to kill me.”

“What thing?” Hastings’ eyebrows furrowed.

“Fuck you.” She rasped, as she finally released herself from her harness, her hands quivering, managing to hook herself up, ignoring the broken glass digging into her leather gloves, pulling her weight atop her knocked-over car, and posing like she was about to dive into water, with nothing but shards and asphalt underneath. “Fuck your girlfriend especially, and that shithead Tofflemire. I’ll see you all in hell.”

“Wait!”

Not even waiting for him to say anything to her, she drove. Hastings braced himself for the sound of a crack, or any noise at all.

He opened his eyes at the silence of anything but footsteps.

October 1st all over again. The concrete seemed to ripple as if it was water, eventually calming down, with no trace of anything else left. The Tin Lizzy began to sink.

“Gone so soon.” The Madame commented, finally approaching them.

“Should we be following her?” Hastings asked sheepishly.

“No point. Wherever she’s going, she’ll have the upper hand. I take it she gave you trouble?”

“Yep.” Ruby shook the plastic baggy in front of her, an odd cloud of moisture or smog within the plastic swallowing it somehow. “Somehow slipped this from before our eyes. We don’t know why, but she didn’t want us getting out of hand in front of it, and then she acts like she’s shocked we caught up to her when she was hitting speed limit rates.”

The Madame giggled. “Abrasive folks, always have been.”

Hastings brushed the comment off, since it didn’t seem like she was going to elaborate. “Whatever you did, thank you.”

“Nothing to thank me for.” She said. “Maybe she has stage fright, when her face is revealed. Bow for the audience.”

Hastings looked around to see that for the first time in a while, some of the residents of Juniper Hill had poked their heads out, wanting to scope out what the noise was, exactly. Hastings recognized a few of them on face alone just from having lived in the town for so long. One of them, a younger man who looked like he’d just been freed from highschool, made a ‘woo!’ sound. His elderly neighbor chuckled, making a comment Hastings couldn’t make out from her lips, causing the younger man to ‘woo!’ again.

It felt a little weird, being watched in such a manner when lots of his Foundation duties were away from the eyes of others. When Hastings had first arrived in town, he got paranoid at the thought of civilians recognizing his face alone. Not that a part of him still wasn’t worried about it, and that he wasn't secretly onto a few suspicious characters. But he figured if he had to be seen doing virtually anything, he would rather be seen as someone who fought off the Tin Lizzy with only bruises and a car that looked like it’d been pulled out of a bomb testing arena.

“My curiosity has gotten the better of me in regards to her, I’m afraid. It’s not wise of me to continue trifling in this conflict. I won’t be able to help your folk much from here.”

Partridge opened his mouth to protest. Before he could, she lifted up a sole finger at his mouth, to silence him.

“I’m making this decision simply because I can,” She said plainly.

“Yes ma’am.” Partridge’s panicked look remained in his eyes as he shut his mouth, looking wildly at both Ruby and Hastings for some kind of words to quell whatever fire stewed deep in The Madame’s heart.

“Um.” Ruby finally said. “Does that mean you can’t help us at all, period?”

“I realize my help was always limited, but you must understand.” The Madame smiled softly. “Allow me to give you some compensation. Open that bag, Agent.”

Ruby looked back at her and back at the bag, prying it open with her two hands slowly. “What in the fuck?”

Whatever was inside the bag, taking the place of the fly agaric that’d been there before, bounced and jittered a little bit as Ruby reacted. Hastings tried to look through the foggy plastic, to no avail, as she was holding it too high up. He resorted to analyzing her face-- confused, of course, but a small sparkle in her eyes. A small smile crept onto her face, looking back at The Madame.

“Is it... like, safe to touch?”

“Does it have a mouth?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Then it can’t bite you, can it?”

“What about, like, toxicity?”

“Oh, girl, just touch it.”

Ruby looked at Partridge, then Hastings, then pried the bag open a little bit more. Hastings let out a little gasp.

For the most part, the mushroom had remained relatively the same. But what had once been the janky point at which the mushroom had been pried off its original ‘stem’ had turned into a rounded stub with two equally stubby legs, and two small beady black eyes some distance below the cap. It stood up on what Hastings assumed were its toes of some kind, leaning over a little bit, just as curious of Hastings and Ruby as they were of it.

“What in the world?” He could hear Partridge say from behind him.

The Madame grabbed the little mushroom creature, inspecting it as it awkwardly sat in her hand, its eyes still glued upon Ruby and Hastings. “It’s a healthy newborn.”

“Newborn?” Hasting’s eyebrows furrowed, trying to hide his urge to rip it from her hands and hold it gently. “What would we classify this thing as, exactly?”

“Don’t overthink it, Doctor Hastings.” The Madame gestured for his hand, the little mushroom creature stepping into his smaller palm, its little legs hanging off the edge. “It’s a gift.”

“Well, if it’s a newborn...” Ruby said, holding the steely helmet of The Driver. The mushroom creature nestled itself inside happily as Hastings clutched the helmet like a swaddled-up baby. Hastings unconsciously cooed at it, as it craned its head up without its cap interfering with its sight. “We need to be careful with it, right?”

“I know very little about these beasts, but they don’t pose the same threat as regular dangerous mushrooms.” The Madame said. “Just be gentle with it, and you should be fine. Quite the companion.”

“Now, Madame--” Partridge finally piped up, looking as if he’d been wanting to chip in to the conversation for the past few minutes. “If you don’t mind me asking, should we be worried about finding more of these? I’m guessing you know a thing or two where they came from.”

The Madame smirked. "Don't overthink it."

“I’m begging you, please, don’t tell Bailey, he’s definitely furious enough--”

“You seriously think I want to deal with his jackass, right now? Trust me, you'll be fine. I’ll just avoid mentioning the part saying it began with one of your trophies.”

To Hastings, it was a miracle that Takieddine had such important titles and survived for so long in the anomalous world. He didn’t want to call the man a bumbling doof, but one thing was for certain: Security and Containment was not his thing. From the makeshift prison he’d built for a deceased adult ‘Spore Mimic’, to the dozens of little ‘Spore Mimics’ that had imprinted onto him already as he’d feverishly been hunting them down for nearly 15 hours, to just how much he was struggling to just grab onto one of the Mimics for long enough to inspect it properly. Sure, Hastings couldn’t see his eyes, but he was sure if he could, they’d be bloodshot. Takieddine didn’t have the same stamina as a lot of the other Foundation employees. It inflated Hastings’ confidence a little bit at the thought.

‘Spore Mimic’ was a fitting term for them, given that while some of them looked like varying mushroom cap-beings, some of them looked like regular plants, a sparse few of them even resembled the glowing flowers Hastings had seen Dr. Partridge prepare for The Madame, and a few of them just looked like big amoebas with stubbier legs, like the corgis of their species compared to a sea of spaniels and beagles. Despite their resemblance to monera and plants, they acted like domesticated prey animals. Hastings wasn’t sure what they resembled more, behaviorally speaking-- ducklings, rodents, or Pikmin.

According to Takieddine, it took decades for the spore mimics to grow to an adult size. The one that he had angered (then promptly defeated and attempted to contain the corpse of) had been the largest he had come across by a longshot, estimated to be centuries old after getting the second opinions of his other multiversal traveler friends.

Hastings wasn’t paying a ton of attention to the conversation between Takieddine and Dr. Kola beyond that knowledge, but it more or less seemed like Takieddine attempting to repent like his life depended on it, while Dr. Kola was constantly reassuring him they could deal with it while trying to ignore the absolutely adorable peony spore mimic that had made its home in his labcoat’s breast pocket.

“Would you consider them invasive?” Ruby asked Hastings, not wanting to interrupt their conversation, or any of the other chats from the other Foundation Parabotanists and Parazoologists trying to get good looks at the little creatures and figure out what the big deal was.

“It’d honestly depend on how they all reproduced.” Hasting’s overheard from Takieddine that he didn’t know how the fortification of the deceased elder’s corpse had been broken to let the spores free and ready to reproduce. Hasting’s own theory, just from observing the traits of the mimics, was that they might quickly turn into pets, pests, or maybe even both.

He was absolutely biased in the case of the fly agaric spore mimic that took a strong interest in them. The one that remained in his helmet-cradle definitely had lots of energy, but it had the courtesy to stay in the helmet, peering from whatever foam-covered leverage it had.

“Can you handle a baby?” Hastings blurted.

Ruby giggled at his face reddening in self-awareness rather than his words. “I mean, yeah. I like this baby.” She said, opening her palm over its head, watching it scrape its cap against her knuckle like a cat. “You think we could train it?”

Hastings took the cap of the spore animal, twisting it slightly, careful to make sure its cute little legs could keep up. “Spin.”

The spore looked at him after it completed a 180.

Hastings did it again, a little quicker. “Speeeeeeen.”

The spore looked at him again.

“Spin?”

The spore sat down, but it did rotate a little bit in the same direction Hastings had spun it.

“It’s not gonna learn that fast.” Ruby said, hiding a chuckle.

Hastings looked back at Ruby. “If we hurry back to the site ASAP, we can call it a project and establish how safe they are for homes.”

Ruby blinked. “Why?”

“Ruby. Ruby. Ruby, you silly billy. We can get paid to train them. This is paycheck-worthy research. You administer treatments, I do the data tracking.”

Ruby grinned. “You fucking genius.”

Hastings grinned, looking back at the spore in his hands.

“On one condition.”

Hastings looked back at her. “What?”

She gestured to the helmet. “We have to call him Fun Guy.”

“I don’t forgive you for wrecking my car anymore.” Hastings handed the helmet back to her, forcing a neutral face. “I hate you. I’m going to tell Evelyn for the report you just got into a wreck at the same intersection as the Tin Lizzy so you have to pay for it.”

“Aww, nooo. Come back.” Ruby said in a faux-whine. “I can’t be a single mother, I’m only thirty-five.”

“What you just said was breakup worthy.” Hastings tried to sound angry, but his laughter was betraying him. “You’re awful. You’re fucked in the head. You know the driver told me she’d see you and Bobby in hell? I hope when I get my new car and run you over, you go to hell, and see her, and say hi to her. And tell her I said hi.”

“Nooooo... Chrissy... who else am I going to find to ask to buy me fermented goodness and get held up for ten minutes by the younger employees because they think you look too young for your DOB?”

“You could get Mackenzie.”

“Fuck, you’re right. How old’s she again?” Ruby got interrupted from her thoughts.

“She’s... like, twenty-nine?” Hastings guessed. “I don’t remember, but I swear, when she walked in for the first time, I thought she was another teenage intern.”

“Whaaaaat. Querido’s not a teenager.”

“Yes he is! He’s nineteen.”

“No, nineteen year olds are just baby adults. They’re too old to be teenagers.”

“Nineteen!” Hastings emphasized. “Teen! He can’t even drink!”

“Well, even if I got Mackenzie to get me beer, she’d just be doing it because she’s nice.” Ruby leaned in, leaning over Hastings. “And you’re like, the perfect size to hold. You get me goodies and you are my goodie. C’mere, meow-meow.”

Hastings sighed as he fell into Ruby’s open arms, his face on her chest, looking at the little spore mimic in the eyes. “I wish that being short was in style when I was still in highschool.”

“Okay, grandpa. Save the bedtime stories for your baby creature.”

“Baby Fun Guy.”

“Oh, now you’re into Fun Guy.”

“I think it’s a good name. For now.”

“Yeah, yeah..”

Fun Guy looked awfully entertained by its two paternal figures, flipping its gaze between the both of them in fascination.

“Hey, Ruby.”

“Yeah?”

“How’d you do that thing?”

“Eh?”

“The thing, when you were destroying the cars. Can your voice just do that?’

“What, can I yell?"

“No, I mean, when you yelled it sounded like... This is a stupid question.”

“No, no, tell me.”

“It sounded like it was, just, reverberating in my head. Like, a big ‘STUPID BITCH’ just rang in my eardrums. Should I get checked or something?”

The look on Ruby Williams' face was clouded with too many conflicting thoughts that Christopher Hastings couldn't prase through. “If you’re not suffering from any brain damage, I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Think of something completely random.”

“Okay, uh..”

Silence.

“What, why Sputnik? Why not Voyager 1, or one of the Mars Rovers?”

Ruby nearly dropped Fun Guy, who had its tiny little eyes glued upon her face.

“Chris.”

“How’d you do that?”

“How’d you?”

The chatter of Sloth’s Pit had returned, for however long. Most of it was civilians and Foundation employees alike pondering their new, animal-kingdom-ambiguous friends. The estimated count so far was something around 200; Not impossible to control, but with the rampant curiosity of everyone in Sloth’s Pit, there was reason for concern.

Many of the children in town, upon witnessing some Foundation employees trying to corral them, had already begun blabbering to their parents about keeping them as pets, giving them names, cooing at them, trying to give them treats that were unfortunately uneaten.

Sloth’s Pit only Preschool, while not being explicitly Christian, had scheduled to meet at the local Catholic church. In Honor of St. Francis’ Feast, teachers had instructed their students to bring their favorite stuffed animal, so they could be ‘baptized’ if they so wished. Members of the Church saw it less as a religious event and more as a way to engage with the littlest members of their town’s community. Since the trip had been scheduled after lunch, a few of the kids had somehow gotten their hands on a few Spore Mimics, asking if they could be baptized next.

Ultimately, Takieddine was left to house the mimics not already in some form of custody or taken away from upset children, while the rest of Parabotany and Parazoology had their hands ful for the rest of the afternoon.

Bailey wasn’t in the mood to talk to either party about everything. All he cared about at that rate was that everything was under control. Against protocol, he’d set everything he could to ‘do not disturb’ or ‘mute’ or any other equivalent. Helen’s alerts were silenced, his phone went to voicemail automatically, his email alerts didn’t ring.

He’d paced around the entire sublevel his office was at for what felt like he fiftieth time, committing to the mind-numbingly boring and relaxing task of walking in constantly circles with nothing but the found of his footsteps, the hum of elevators in the distance and occasional footsteps and chatter of his subordinates. He'd forgotten what he was trying to accomplish, or why he’d begun doing it. TO be alert, maybe. Aware. If something were in his vicinity it was impossible to ignore.

He could even hear the squeak of some footsteps through the sound-canceled ceiling. If the footsteps had a regular pace to it, a half second in between steps, the occasional misstep from a light trip or limp, and a muffled ‘click sound’, it was Dr. Reese in Bioengineering, wearing her heels. If the footsteps had a quick pace and hints of occasional foot scraping, it was Rsr. Sevens in her dress shoes. It the steps were brisk but heavy, with hints of a rhythmic soldier-like pace when something got their attention, it was Commander March in his combat boots. Bailey used to think it was because he was always ready for a fight, but now that he noticed how much his age was getting to him, and how he wore them more in the winter, Bailey realized that it was because they were his warmest pair. If it had a slight limp, with a somewhat haggard pace, often accompanied by a stride with more energy and health, it was likely Dr. Jacob Kola, accompanied by his daughter Michelle.

Bailey wanted a water break. He let the thought linger in his mind, as he did another loop around the wing. He stopped. He paced around the wing and its offices again, his mouth dry. It’d marinated y the time he finally decided he’d kept himself on his toes enough, taking a janky left turn to his office, opening it just as he’d left it.

The room felt brighter, not because he’d left the lights off or because of the difference in lighting.

Bailey’s senses clicked into place. His room feeling brighter meant that something had made it brighter than it was before.

His computer was not in the center of his room, as opposed to where he typically left it at a right tilt. There was an odd streamer around his long-necked office light, colored in shades of blue, looking like it belonged at an art exhibit or maybe a children's party. The stacks of papers in his room were no longer even, put sorted into piles, with different sticky notes up on each stack, denoting their differences, if any. His chair had a blanket folded for additional unnecessary comfort that he felt he didn’t deserve, if not for his shock at noticing just how much had changed, even though he kept cameras in the area, even though a discrepancy would’ve been detected, even though there’s no way anything could’ve moved, even though he would’ve known if something got in, even though he knew better than to think it was going to be that easy, even if he knew he was going to drive himself crazy over nothing, even though he knew he’s faced plenty worse, plenty much more prominent and daring and blatantly fatal forces--

Why is THIS the thing that throws me over the edge?

Why is this shit getting to me?

What is wrong with me?

What happened in my room while I was gone.

Bailey, with his throat in his mouth, not daring to look and observe just how much else of his room had been moved around, cautiously approached a pale yellow sticky note that faced the door from which he’d entered, upon the edge of his desk. The writing was pristine and perfect-- although it was written in pen, with some visible strokes, the letters were so even and precise they could’ve been computer-printed.

I hope you don’t mind the lack of mess.

It was awfully dreary in here.

I’m not your maid, okay?

Unless you can pay me.

Order gave each thing view.

Cozy? Yes? No? Maybe so?

Bailey, without saying another word, without looking behind him or ahead of him or at any other portions of the room, not daring to inspect the incredibly classified documents that may have just been read by someone other that himself, his desk of other secrets fiddled with, laid down with his back to the carpet, eyes shut, ready for it to swallow him whole.

It left him there to rot.

By the end of the day, out of anxiety for how little he budged, Site Director Tristian Shelley Bailey had been moved to his personal section of the medical wing. His status read ALERT, UNRESPONSIVE.