I fussed with my tail while barely paying attention to a meeting about logistics. I’d been pulled in the moment I stepped into south Harbor HQ. Honestly, there were a billion other things on my mind, so I could barely pay attention.
Thankfully, my direct supervisor seemed to realize as much and simply let me sit without pressing me to participate like he usually would’ve. Thirty minutes—and five cups of coffee—later, I left the meeting room behind and tailed after a bunch of Harbor support staff.
“Reyna!” A hug tackled me to the side the moment I stepped out. It took all I had in me to not react to the clomping footsteps headed in my direction.
”Ugh, Quinn, get off me.” I struggled against the hug for a moment before giving in. She instantly shifted away from my waist to my tail.
“Ah, I missed this.” She snuggled her face into the soft fur, completely disregarding her image as a Guardian. The moment she touched it, all moisture from where it’d soaked in the rain instantly vanished like it’d been hit by a high-power hair dryer.
I whipped my tail out of her arms. She was actually holding it very loosely, and allowed me to pull away at any time. “Don’t you know it’s rude to touch an Apex’s Totem features?”
”I know! You tell me every time!” The careless girl jumped to her feet, and dropped a hand down to me. “Seriously, though, it’s good to see you.”
”Yeah… you too.” I accepted her offer, and she easily hauled me to my feet. I was pretty light, and she was a Guardian on top of that. Strength boosts kinda came with the territory for the Awoken.
“Quinn. Reyna.” A voice came behind us, and a man appeared calmly sipping at a cup of coffee. Just behind him, a peppy woman peeked around his back and waved at us. “As much as I would like to sit here and watch you be affectionate, you’re blocking the door.”
”Oh, sorry Bryce.” Quinn popped to her feet, and whipped me up alongside her. “How’d that Anarch hunt go, by the way?”
Bryce Bentley, AKA Thornton. He was a Guardian that usually focused on the more human side of things at Harbor. “It was alright—“
”I shot him!” Tessa, his Canary, cheerfully called, and moved around him out into the hall. “We got those super-duper high grade tranqs and he went night-night!”
“Reaver?” I asked. I’d been gone for a week, so I was a bit behind on the office news. It must’ve been quite the hunt for Quinn to ask about it.
Bryce dipped his chin toward me with his usual passive face. “He consumed a CE-678 and had multiple anomalous items.”
“Gah! We’re going to be late!” Tessa shot away from the group. Then, as if just realizing she was going to leave her partner behind, she darted back and grabbed Bryce’s hand to pull him down the hall.
“They’re always… something.” Quinn muttered, and watched the two go. She stretched out the next second and immediately tried to grab my tail.
The fluffy limb whipped away from her, and curled around my other side. The tip of it twitched happily despite everything else. “Bad girl.”
“They gave me a temporary Canary while you were on vaca.” Her expression soured, and she pouted. “Please never leave me again.”
My tail stilled, and curled back behind my legs. ”Let’s not use that word, ‘Kay? Just for today.”
Her eyes trailed the streak of silver. ”Which one? Please?”
A shiver went down my spine. Every time I heard it, the sound of a radio-crackling played tin my mind. “Yeah.”
”Fine, fine…” She waved her hands in surrender, and turned to walk down the hall. I, ‘course, followed after her. Quinn was my partner at Harbor.
Oh, vacation was the official reason I left. No idea how Hades managed to pull that off, but whatever. Government jobs had their perks. The pay wasn’t great, but the benefits couldn’t be compared when we worked directly for the USC and Horizon.
“So? How was it?” She pushed open a door into her office, and collapsed on the couch. She didn’t seem to mind just how messy everything was.
“Not as relaxing as I thought it’d be.” What the hell happened here? I was only gone for a week, and her office looked like it’d been hit by a hurricane. “You, uh, been busy?”
”You don’t know that half of it.” Quinn shot up, and glared at her desk. “This place has been abused more than my liver.”
”You really need to stop drinking.” I side-eyed her.
“No, you just need to start.” She grinned at me, though the smile faded and she kicked the leg of her couch in frustration. “That bastard sent us out on eight calamity hunts! It’s like he’s trying to get me to collapse from exhaustion.”
Exhaustion… yeah, I wasn’t far off from that. It’d been at least two days since I last slept. “Horizon?”
”Who else?!” She flicked her hand in irritation, and a bulb of water formed in midair. It shot across the room and pounded her terminal screen.
“Really?”
”Sorry…” Quinn sheepishly rubbed at the back of her head. The water pulled out of the circuits, and dissipated into the air. “You know how I get when I’m emotional.”
”You mean always?” I sat down at her desk, and started to organize the abandoned paperwork. I shifted her nameplate out of the way. “I’m surprised you're even awake.”
“… the support staff hid an industrial grade alarm clock in my bedroom,” she unhappily muttered. “Pretty sure that’s harassment. Or maybe foreplay? Haven’t decided yet.”
Her sleeping habits were notorious. As an Awoken, it wasn’t like she’d get fired for showing up hours late to work, anyway. It helped that calamities mostly came out at night. To be honest, I was a bit surprised she wasn’t passed out on her couch like usual.
I clicked on the computer, and Harbor’s icon of an anchor looming over a wall popped up. The Hazardous Anomaly Resolution Bureau of Oversight and Response… Although it was called that officially, Checkpoint Alpha-Omega had been my first true anomaly Overlap. We usually just stuck with things inside the walls like calamities and anomalous items. HCRBOR didn’t roll off the tongue as well, I guess.
Before doing anything else, I accessed the city records and looked up Ruth Abernathy. I saw it in the papers, but I hadn’t had a single chance to look deeper into her death.
At the base level, my search pulled up her death certificate and articles related to her death. There were unfortunately few of them. I needed to go deeper. I swiped Quinn’s cards for more permissions. The moment I hit enter, a blank chat box popped open.
>Horizon: Using UCS assets for personal benefit is a severe violation.
Heh, he usually never even talked to me directly like this. This was twice in two days… Did the AI catch a virus? I glanced up at Quinn, but she was too busy dozing to care about what was happening at her computer.
>Tidebreak: Even just to see how a friend died?
>Horizon: Would you consider Ruth a friend? You barely knew her.
I paused, and idly tapped a key lightly. Horizon… why would you ask me something like that? What could you possibly gain instead of just denying me? I heard tales our overlord was confusing to deal with, and it seemed those were true.
>Tidebreak: Time and friendship aren’t linked. Otherwise, I’d be friends with most of my coworkers.
>Horizon: Your point is valid…
>Horizon: Fine. I’ll pretend I didn’t see this. Do be quick.
The chat window automatically closed, and my query in the database popped up. The first file showed a corrupted corpse that only vaguely looked human. It was mutated into an absolute abomination that appeared like a mix between a bird and an octopus. It was tagged with Ruth Abernathy.
Corruption… Psykers were the most likely to fall into it, but it wasn’t exclusive. I closed my eyes, and scrolled away from Ruth’s corrupted remains. At a glance, it looked like a normal mission gone wrong.
With a deeper look, the entire file was locked behind so many high-level permissions I couldn’t even take a glance at a redacted version using Quinn’s Guardian-level access.
A secondary unrelated file popped up, with most of it redacted. At the top of the file was the smug grin of Beacon, Ruth’s Guardian. Just below that was a list of all of his previous Canaries. Few lasted more than a couple months.
I leaned back in the chair, and scrolled through all the names. Young men and women were given to him only to be tossed into a meat grinder. Sure, he was one of the strongest Guardians in Silverport, so he handled more dangerous stuff. Likewise, Canaries were more likely to die alongside him.
The numbers just looked way too wrong. There had been dozens of dead Canaries since he started as a Guardian. If it was truly just him being involved with more high-class dangers, then their deaths wouldn’t all be pushed back to three months.
I… I’m just being too emotional. I dropped my face into my hands. I was trying to find someone to blame for her death instead of just accepting it. Ruth was dead. No matter how much I wished it wasn’t true, I’d never see her walking through the doors of Harbor again.
Ding!
A phone rang from the couch, and Quinn stirred from where she’d been snoozing. She pulled her phone out, and tiredly lifted it in front of her face. “Oh…”
“Hmm?” I shut her computer back down, and went back to tidying files. It only took a split-second to get my emotions hidden and back under control.
”Got something. Mass murder in west Silverport.” She sat up straight, and all tiredness vanished from her eyes. “PK responders think it might be a calamity, and Horizon is inclined to agree.”
… was this punishment? The timing—there was no other way. A bolt of guilt flowed through me, quickly followed by incredulity. Punishment? Really? Since when did Horizon join Hades?
I pulled at my choker as if to allow me to breathe better. It didn’t work. It never worked. Instead, it brought my attention to just how tight the band was around my neck. I released it before I could start hyperventilating, and turned my attention elsewhere.
“Let’s go grab our equipment.” She sat up, and stretched out. “Our pilot should be heading up to the AV bays now.”
”Right.” I stood up, and followed her out the door. First day back at work, and it looked like it’d be an eventful one. What great fucking luck.
The skies above Silverport flickered with pale light, and rain fell in droves. Lightning flashed just above and spiderwebbed across the sky in a display of pure light. A moment later, an incredibly loud rumble shook the entire city like an earthquake had struck.
Amidst it all, our AV smoothly flew above the city streets. Rain pattered off of it, creating constant noise throughout its entire interior reminiscent of a tin shack in a storm. Noise dampeners must be down.
Just outside of my closest window, the wall surrounding Silverport loomed overhead. I’d seen it countless times, so it didn’t really catch my eye usually. Today, though, it was incredibly fascinating if only as a reason to avoid the gaze locked onto me like a hawk watching prey.
”You’ve been oddly quiet since getting back. Something happen?” My guardian, Quinn, irritably ran her hands through her short-cut blue hair. It was a bad habit she’d had since back in our academy days.
“I saw about Ruth.” My sharp fingernails dug into the palm of my hand. It felt like a desecration to use her name to cover my hide. Quinn was oddly sharp at times, though, so I couldn’t just give a half-assed reply.
”Oh… sorry. You were close, weren’t you?”
“A bit.” I was her mentor when she first passed training and became Beacon’s Canary. “She started to push me away over the past two months. I thought after getting back, I could patch—“
”I understand.” She cut me off. It was a mercy, more than anything. I didn’t know how much more I could’ve said. Quinn easily shifted the conversation around. “No QRF this time around.”
“Harbor’s understaffed.” I coughed to clear my voice. “It’s just a suspected calamity, anyway. Might not be anything.”
”Maybe.” She tapped the metal floor with her boot. “Horizon indicated all cams in the area suffered interference at the same time, though. Classic response to miasma.”
”True.” I checked my vi-rifle. There was a sad irony to me holding the weapon. Whether it was Hades or Harbor, I was given one regardless.
“Could be nothing.” She groaned, and slapped her baseball cap back onto her head. A heavy duty ballistic vest covered her chest, with a blue dress shirt just below that. Her sleeves were rolled up, giving her a bit of a casual look. Unlike other Guardians, she preferred a much more down to earth attire than a flashy costume.
I, likewise, had on a ballistic plate carrier. They’d done away with the shitty rule that Canaries had to dress in a similar style as their Guardian, though it hardly mattered in this case. Simplicity was the best.
“You have a chance to read the intel?” I asked after reading on my phone for a few minutes. She forwarded me the entire file just before we left.
Quinn just dropped her head onto the back of the seat, and looked away. ”Let me think about that…”
“Right, forget I asked.” I sighed softly. ‘Course she didn’t read. I really should know better by now. “Five adult males, and three adult females were found without their heads in a basement. One was a rabbit Apex, and the rest were human.”
“There’s probably a really bad joke in there somewhere.” She lazily flopped her arm in my direction. “Headless?”
”Mhmm.” I scrolled down through the document, and stopped at a series of pictures likely taken by the Peacekeepers that responded to the scene.
“Might be a Skulltaker,” She muttered.
“Maybe.” I paused, and glanced down through the intel. It’d been updated since she first sent it to me. “Local gang found dead not far off. Likely tried to subjugate the calamity. Horizon puts the chances of it being a calamity around ninety seven percent. The PK declared martial-law on the area.”
”Those idiots never learn, do they?” Her expression twisted into a rather nasty scowl. “Fuck!”
“…!” My tail twitched at the sudden shout, and I turned off my phone.
”Sorry. I’m not mad at you, Reyna.” She sighed and stood up to pace around the AV’s cargo hold. Technically against regulations while we were in flight, though I wouldn’t say anything. “Why’s everyone gotta be a case study for the biggest dumbass?”
“Greed?” That was usually what it was. There was a lot of money in the illicit trade of calamity corpses. ‘Course, money didn’t matter when they wound up dying anyway.
“Fucking pricks.” The AV shuddered as we hit a spot of turbulence, though she didn’t even seem to notice. She just kept pacing back and forth. “Try not to slip in the blood, yeah? I know how clumsy you can get.”
“Har har.” When I was injured as Barghest and didn’t fully heal up by the time I had to return to work, my usual excuse was slipping. I sighed, and rubbed at my ears. They’d soon be caged in a helmet once more.
“Heh.” Her mood seemed to lighten up a bit, and she flopped into a seat across from me. For a moment, her slightly-glowing blue eyes just stared at me. Once I looked away, she asked, “how’s your sis?”
“Don’t you know it's bad-luck to talk about family before a mission?” Was she trying to get me killed? That was field operations 101 stuff. It was literally in the textbook back at the academy.
”Well…” Quinn rubbed at the back of her neck, and guiltily avoided my gaze. “Little Sylvie just hasn’t stopped by in a while. Kinda miss her.”
”She’s busy with school.” Not to mention our occupation wasn’t exactly a safe one, so of course I wouldn’t bring her in.
“… she’s almost fifteen, isn’t she?” Quinn shifted in her seat, and avoided my glare. “Think she’ll awaken?”
”I…” A pang of guilt hit me. In my heart of hearts, I wished my sis wouldn’t awaken. If things went the way I wanted, she would get a nice, safe, and cozy job as an official somewhere high up and protected. I’d take a grocer any day over something dangerous.
She’d dreamed of becoming a Guardian ever since I became a Canary, though. Reyna and Sylvie against the world… Just like every kid about that age, she desperately wanted to awaken. What kind of monster hoped her own sister’s dreams would be crushed? I swallowed thickly. “I don’t know.”
“Well, no use speculating about it.” Quinn laughed lightly. Her earlier foul mood seemed to have dispersed significantly as her thoughts shifted to better topics. “We’re almost there.”
”Yeah…” My hand tightened. This was always the worst part of the job. The wait, I mean. Thankfully, the Aerial Vehicle was incredibly quick out to our destination. The AV shuddered and set down. A moment later, the back hatch popped open.