The first week.

I guess I'm in charge now. No idea how that happened. The upper management's been oh-so-carefully detached from the proceedings, informing me that the promotion will be reflected in my next paycheck, that they expect weekly reports on Fridays, that my dress code isn't up to spec. Don't they expect that by now?

Me, I feel like someone's cut out my heart and roasted it on a platter, but that's civvie talk. Heart, what heart? We know not of what you speak.

I hate them all.

o

I'm sitting here, watching him wade through paperwork, expression blasted to neutral, motions mechanical. I know he can't afford anything else, and this is no time to tease about papercuts or deskwork. There are many reports he'll be filing in the indeterminate future, but these in particular I do not envy him for: the official casualty papers. Where, when, how. How much was left.

How he does this without throwing up, I don't know.

o

I hate them all.

I keep repeating this to myself, as a mantra. They could easily have had Heidegger write up this report. This is a test, and they know that I know it. They don't care that it's transparent. That they would make a test of this makes me want to kick someone in the neck.

I move the pen quickly, keeping my handwriting just barely legible enough that I won't have to redo the thing. I don't comprehend what I'm writing. I let my hand do that for me. In the back of my mind I realize that this will probably not be the last time I fill out these forms. Someday, someone will be filling them out for me.

o

We've all moved up in rank, and it's left a hole at the bottom. Reno refuses to have your suite cleaned out, and I understand this. It's too soon.

If it weren't for the fact that the company is falling to pieces around us, we'd be actively scouting for a new member. There's no sense in it now, there are bigger concerns and if the world really is ending, there's nothing four people can do that three people can't. But it makes me wonder about the one who died to give me my position. Reno mentioned once that his name was Jake. I think they might have been friends.

If we did recruit someone now, would they know or wonder or care about who went before?

o

I've dealt with a loss of this kind twice before. Once I didn't care, and once I did. This time, I don't think 'care' is a strong enough word. Rude has seen it once. Elena never has. This is all perfectly logical, the numbers work out. But I still can't help feeling like I got the short end of one stick or another.

I'm the crazy one, the one who takes stupid risks and never looks back. Wasn't I supposed to go first?

o

I hear him exhale, a sudden and harsh burst of held breath. The pen hits the table. All that's left is folding the documents and sealing them, and dropping them into the interoffice mail. Ritualisms. The computer system won't be updated until those forms are in, and I don't have to guess at what is pulled up on the closed screen of the laptop humming beside him.

I walk over, rest a hand on his shoulder. That'd normally be cause for a sharp shrug and a tease or two. He doesn't seem to notice it there, too busy staring at the paperwork folded under his hands.

o

The question is obvious in her posture, in the way I can feel her looking down at me. I lift my hands up over the papers; they're shaking. I push them back through my hair.

"I don't want to make it official."

o

I close my eyes, and remove my hand from his shoulder. I pick up the paperwork and the department stamp, turn the folded bundle over in my hands. Set it down and roll the stamp over it. "It's already real. That's worse than official."

It was real a week ago, more than any piece of paper can make it. I walk over to the mail chute, conscious of his eyes following me the whole way. They're more hollow than I ever remember seeing them, and I don't think he's eaten in days.

I open the chute and drop the papers into forever.

o

I drum my fingers restlessly on the desk, then stand up, reaching for my coat. I'm going for a walk. She can come along if she wants, or not if she doesn't. These things don't need to be spoken.

She does.

o

I don't know exactly where we're going, or why. It just seemed like a good idea to follow him, even if it is miserable and spitting rain outside, and my coat isn't heavy enough. I tread along a half-step behind him and to the left. We get stares, even on the plate. On the platform. On the train.

Under the plate, we get no stares. Stares draw attention, and these people are smart enough to know that attention is the last thing they need.

o

I haven't said a word and neither has she. It's the silence game, or maybe it's just tact. Maybe we both need the space. I don't have any idea what I need. I'm wearing my shades even down here, in the semi-daylight semi-darkness under the plate that has turned everyone down here into practical albinos. I was the same way, then. I had never seen the sun.

It was raining up above. I can't remember if it's done anything but rain in the last week.

o

This is a bad sector we've come to, one of the worst, even with the urban renewal projects Reeve had been championing for years. I'm distracted for a few seconds outside of a broken-down old grocer, tracing the crowd to its source, looking out for danger. When I turn back, I'm alone.

o

A turn here, another there. They never clean up these messes, do they?

o

It's only by some primitive instinct that I'm able to follow the shallow, unobtrusive footsteps. You taught me how to move and not leave a trace. You taught him better.

I find him on the roof, sitting on the rotting plaster at the edge of a gaping hole. It's larger than it must have been ten years ago, crumbled by time and abuse. It's dangerous where he sits, but he knows that and I know that, and it doesn't stop me from walking to his side, crouching down. His feet swing slightly in the space beneath the hole, kicking up dust motes and stirring the memory to life. I can't imagine what he's seeing there.

o

"This where it started?"

I look up at her question. I didn't even hear her come up, and she shouldn't have been able to trace me. Those are both problems. I'll be wri- I'll have to write myself up later. Business, business. The plaster moves a little under me, threatening to give.

After a moment, I just nod. "Yeah."

o

I don't prod any further; it isn't my place. This isn't my place, with its dust and fluorescents and smell of rotted, termite-ridden wood- this place of memory, of past. I am an interloper. I just watch as he pulls himself to his feet and walks back the way he came, the way I came – across the wooden beams and planks. He doesn't lift his arms out for balance, doesn't need to- he navigated this jungle through most of his childhood, ran and balanced across these beams, lived or died by them.

I don't hold my arms out either, as I follow him. I am familiar with the desperation that makes a person do stupid, careless things. I have no need for balance.