The stack of papers thudded onto the desk with the usual vicious enthusiasm.
Sylvia Sherwood, WISE's most compassionate and accommodating agent handler, prodded the new report gently as she raised an eyebrow at the pair of agents who had taken up so much of her time recently.
"Twilight. Nightfall," she said by way of greeting. The pair of them nodded curtly in response, three eyes meeting her own, full of the confidence she had come to expect. "I see you decided to let Nightfall write this month's report, again."
"I was busy with other matters," Twilight said, looking at Sylvia over the white and black hillock Nightfall had dragged into the room. He shrugged the infuriating shrug of a man who knows that he won't have to read anything. "You didn't give us any strict instruction on documentation."
"No, I didn't." Sylvia had assumed Twilight writing the reports was implied. Twilight's reports were always informative, neatly written, well organized, and concise. Nightfall's were merely informative. Completely informative, in fact. She had taken that one lesson away from Twilight's tutelage, and applied it so thoroughly that the instinct to deliver a ten-ton brick of paper at every stage of an assignment drowned out any attempt to dissuade her. Sylvia couldn't properly reprimand her, because there was nothing technically wrong with the reports, but she felt instinctively that there must be something morally wrong instead.
"Have there been any new developments since we last spoke?" Nightfall said, as rigidly as ever.
"Not in the last few hours, no. Aside from one other matter, this will probably just be a short debriefing session," Sylvia said.
She turned her attention to one of the other reports on her desk, from one of the field agents collecting official information on the bombing attempt. This report was a lot more colorful, and a lot more willing to use words like "flagrantly" and "besmirch". Dashes appeared more frequently than semicolons. It was the sort of thing Sylvia actually bothered to read, instead of just handing off the work to a subordinate.
"The bomb disposal team managed to clear everything without incident. Search teams didn't find anything that we had missed, and normal function has resumed at all the affected buildings. Some of the potential conspirators are still unaccounted for, but you knew that already. And, of course, we've recovered all the animals," Sylvia said.
"About that," Twilight said. "The dog we talked about earlier, the big white one-"
"Will be delivered to your home this very evening, Twilight. Don't worry," Sylvia said. She smiled impishly. "Can't leave your little girl disappointed, can we?"
"Her happiness is critical to the mission. It's no joking matter," Nightfall said.
"I wasn't attempting to make light of it, Nightfall," Sylvia said. Debriefings with these two had gotten strange lately, especially when the subject of Anya came up. Twilight had wrapped himself in the role of a concerned father as easily as he assumed any other role, while Nightfall treated the job of parenting like she was planning the security for a strategic gold reserve.
"It'll just take a few hours to get the dog ready," Sylvia said.
"What are we waiting on right now?"
"Right now? Shots, mainly. There's a very confused and suddenly very well-paid vet in the downstairs storeroom, which is now the downstairs kennel," Sylvia said. Nightfall just nodded, apparently satisfied with this explanation.
She idly ran one finger down the side of Nightfall's report, and paused.
Sylvia flopped open the report and quickly turned to the middle, where she had felt a couple sheets of oddly-sized paper. Any irregularity in a Nightfall report was worth investigating, She hadn't expected the explanation to be several sheets of child's drawing paper, carefully collected in the center and covered in rough crayon scrawl.
"Anya saw me working and wanted to help," Nightfall said without prompting. Her voice never lost its steady steel ring, but Sylvia thought she might have caught the faint harmonics of sheepishness mixed in with it. "I didn't let her see the report, of course. I just asked her to draw some images of what she saw the other day."
"Interesting," Sylvia said. With context Sylvia could interpret one of the crude drawings as Anya herself, riding on a big white hippo-looking thing that was probably supposed to be the dog, pursued by Nightfall, or at least something with a trench coat and one eye. Typed italic text in the corner helpfully identified it as "Figure 2.A: Eyewitness Report".
Sylvia chuckled to herself. There were occasional upsides to thoroughness. "I'll do you a favor and give these back. Don't want the fridge going undecorated."
"I already put up the photocopies," Nightfall said.
Sylvia smiled. "So aside from art class, do you have any last-minute updates on Strix?"
"Plan A depends on the coming exams. Plan B is unpredictable, as always," Twilight said. "Nightfall's plan is still progressing, I believe."
"Two new contacts last week. Waiting on a more mature network before I make any major moves," Nightfall said. This time, Sylvia thought she could see a telltale gleam of menace in her eye as the machinations in her mind shone out the window.
"So what's the other thing you wanted us for? I've sure your hands are full right now," Twilight said.
"Unbelievably so. Give me a second," Sylvia said, digging out a sticky note to assign report-reading duty to whatever unfortunate clerk passed her desk first.
She pulled out a large leather folder and put it on the desk in front of her. It was a case file, full of scattered documents and photographs, plus appendices listing associated documents and reports. The final form of most of WISE's work, intelligence in its purest form. The name printed on the slightly-peeling label simply read "Stuart Schadler".
"Seem familiar, Nightfall?" Sylvia said.
"The assignment I was working on before Strix," Nightfall said. "Observation and collection of blackmail material for a low-ranking member of the National Unity party, cut prematurely short when the subject-"
"Died, yes," Sylvia said. "By banana peel, yes." How could anyone forget? It was astonishing that they hadn't carved it into the man's tombstone.
"You two have a new mission. Yes, on top of Strix. No, I don't care how busy you are. Some of the big thinkers here have been looking through the material on Schadler, and they've worked out a connection to something big," Sylvia said, flicking through the folder. "We don't have enough information to give you an immediate action plan, but I want the two of you to stay informed and keep your eyes open for anything that seems relevant. The boys in analysis have a presentation they'd love to give to anybody willing to listen."
Twilight's usual flat, professional countenance took on a look of mild concern, which on him could mean anything from indigestion to an imminent plane crash. "How long should this take?"
"A couple hours. Probably less."
Twilight looked over at Nightfall, who was tapping her watch impatiently. He looked back decisively.
"Have it encoded and sent over with the dog," Twilight said. "We have to get home in time to tape the daytime Spy Wars special for Anya."
Twilight held the door for Nightfall as they stepped out onto the street. Things always seemed a bit too bright after spending too much time in a WISE hideout. Things down there were too yellow; the lamps they used made everything faded and blurry after a while. It was an essential ingredient of the warm feeling he got after every debriefing. First eye strain, and then relief.
He caught Nightfall's eye as she surreptitiously stretched an arm out. He knew the feeling. It's not like it was actually that cramped down in there, but the air had a way of squeezing you anyway.
And this was the point, after a normal mission, where they would part ways. There would be a couple words of mutual congratulations, or condolences if things had gone poorly. Maybe a few kind parting words in expectation of working together again. And then they would leave for their next assignments. WISE didn't like to group agents together on consecutive missions; it created patterns that counterintelligence might spot. And it wasn't a good idea to fraternize with other agents outside of work. Aside from the risk of exposure, you just didn't want to get close to somebody who could wind up dead or in an SSS cell by the next morning.
But Operation Strix was... different.
"We should pick up some dog food," Nightfall said, walking by his side down the sidewalk.
"Good idea," Twilight said.
"Also a collar. And a leash. Some toys, and food bowls, and treats. That coat will probably require a special shampoo. And a brush, too."
"Some training aides would be useful."
They turned the corner. There was a pet store on the route back home, which made the trip a bit more convenient. For all the world, they just looked like a young married couple taking a walk on their lunch break.
"Toys?" Twilight asked.
"Some balls, of course. And chew toys. And one of those short sturdy ropes to play tug-of-war." Nightfall walked on steadily, gaze locked on the next crossing signal. A slightly conspicuous pause dangled in the air. "Because they'll be useful for training."
Twilight slotted this whole exchange into a mental drawer labeled "For Further Review". It would have to wait, because right now that drawer was crammed full of other conversations with Nightfall, along with some of Anya's more mysterious remarks.
They reached the pet store, a small glass-front shop with a cheery display of animal cages by the windows. Twilight felt an instinctive distrust of places like this. It was the way they put the most photogenic puppies and kittens up by the front, so they could frolic for the view of any passer-by, while all the snakes and frogs and tarantulas got stowed in the dark back of the store where they couldn't offend anyone. It seemed... familiar.
A clerk on the inside of the store noticed them outside and gave them a welcoming wave. Twilight waved back carefully. He reached to open the door, and stopped.
"Say, why don't I go on back to the apartment?" Twilight said. "We don't want to miss taping that show for Anya. Only one of us needs to be here, right?"
"We don't need to be home for at least an hour, Loid. And I'll need your help with the dog food, at least. The most cost-efficient way to buy it is to buy the largest containers," Nightfall said.
Twilight shrugged, and opened the door. Nightfall stormed in, immediately beelined towards the nearest clerk, and entered an animated discussion on the wet vs. dry dog food argument without so much as a word of introduction. With only a slight bit of hesitation, Twilight stepped in after her.
Another clerk appeared from behind a display of neon-colored rubber bones and hurried towards Twilight. "Welcome, sir! How can I help you today?"
Twilight tore his eyes away from Nightfall, who had produced a colored chart from who knows where and was using it to explain her thinking. He smiled wearily at the clerk. "Oh, we adopted a dog and we're going to need some supplies. All the basics. And some of the frills, apparently."
"Oh, that's great! Then let's start from the beginning. How big is the dog, and what sort of home do you live in?"
"It's a big dog. A livestock breed, I'm pretty sure, with a thick double coat," Twilight said. "And the home is... well, we live in a medium-sized apartment. Three people, including my wife and daughter."
Twilight patiently ran through the conversation with the clerk, letting himself be guided towards purchases on all the things a dog would need for their living arrangements. There was no need to steer the conversation, or even to deflect the sales pitch, because after all, Nightfall was right. They were a husband and wife here to buy dog supplies because they did, in fact, need dog supplies.
And there was nothing wrong with that, of course.
They walked out of the store a half-hour later, Twilight carrying all the miscellaneous paraphernalia and Nightfall carrying a huge container each of wet and dry dog food, vowing to make a final decision based on the dog's reaction and initial laboratory results. They got home in time to record Anya's show, and soon Anya was back herself, though she couldn't exactly sit still enough to watch it. The entire evening, she bounced around the perimeter of the living room, going from the door to listen for any dog-related noises on the stairwell, to the windows to search for any dog-shaped vehicles on the street.
And finally a respectable-looking man in a dark suit arrived with the dog, and Anya greeted him with all the grave sobriety of an ice cream truck crashing into a fireworks factory. They welcomed the dog into their home, and Anya was too taken in by showing it around and being drowned in slobber to notice the WISE agent surreptitiously hand Twilight a manila envelope containing the new mission details. He stowed it in their bedroom, for later review.
For now, Twilight thought it was best to just sit back on the couch next to Nightfall, watching Anya play with her new friend.
"We'll have to work out a walk schedule, of course," Nightfall said. "The neighbors will talk if it doesn't get enough exercise."
"I think Anya will be happy to help," Twilight said. He watched as Anya played tug-of-war with the dog. The dog seemed to be letting her win.
"Even so, one of us will have to perform the principle duties," Nightfall said, laser eye locked on the dog, as it placidly held the colored length of rope in its jaws while Anya dug in her heels in vain against the slick floor. "It'll probably fall to me, of course, since my cover is only working part-time at the hospital."
"We all have to make sacrifices."
"Hmm."
And that was it for the next few hours. Anya had earned a happy carefree night like this, there was no point pushing her to study, and there was no point trying to get any work done with an enormous dog gallivanting around the room. The only thing to do was sit back and watch Anya play.
And there was nothing wrong with that, of course.
Anya eventually fell asleep, lying on the floor next to the dog, once the exhaustion finally overtook that deep reservoir of enthusiasm. Twilight carried her back to bed and tucked her in, while the dog supervised sagely. He walked back into the living room, where Nightfall had already cleared a spot on the dining table to discuss the report that WISE had delivered. She looked up at him, her usual stonefaced expression tinged with expectancy.
"I'll go grab the report," Twilight said.
It was good to get back to work, he thought as he grabbed the envelope back out of its hiding place in the bedroom. Evenings like this, with nothing immediate to do for a mission, always made him feel strange, for reasons he could never really articulate. Manila envelopes meant that the universe was ticking back along its intended course.
Twilight paused as he reached back for the bedroom door handle.
Twilight was trained to listen. It was a core part of the skillset: you listened to everything, all the time, no matter how tiny the sound or innocuous the detail. You never knew what might be important. Sometimes a soft sound in the distance was a crucial detail that saved a mission. Most of the time it was pointless garbage. And sometimes it was just... different.
What Twilight heard here was remarkable, but not entirely unexpected.
From the living room, roughly from where Nightfall was sitting, there was the sound of a pair of hands ruffling through fur. And a woman's voice said, in low but warm tones:
"Whosagoodboy, whosagoodboy, whosagoodboy?!"
Twilight heard a repetitive thumping, unmistakable as the sound of a dog's tail going berserk against a hardwood floor. And as a punctuation mark, there was a single, delighted "Worf!"
When Twilight came back out of the bedroom, he found Nightfall sitting primly at the table where he had left her. She pointedly ignored the gaze of the dog, which had brought over a tennis ball and was looking up at her with a full mouth and an expectant expression.
"Shall we?" she said to Twilight, with a curt nod.
Twilight sat down across from her, opened up the envelope, and began sorting its contents neatly into piles between the two of them. There was still work to be done, even if the focused feeling he had been enjoying some moments before had mysteriously vanished.
It was strange knowing that Nightfall liked things. Nightfall liked dogs, apparently. And Nightfall liked writing reports, and teaching Anya when Anya was in the right mood to be taught. Just like Nightfall liked bean bag cushions, and turtleneck sweaters, and butterscotch, and making elaborate paper airplanes. Nightfall, in fact, liked as many things as the average person did.
And there was nothing wrong with any of that, of course. But it still felt weird. Everyone was allowed their own innocuous preferences, but it was one thing to know those sorts of things about a target for a mission and quite another to know them about another agent. He felt, on an instinctual level, that it wasn't allowed, that at their next meeting Sylvia would look him in the eye and demand to know why he knew that Nightfall never ordered seafood unless she could see the live lobster in a tank beforehand.
"This is the third time they've used this cipher variant," Nightfall said, glancing into an innocuous-looking notebook next to her on the table. "That retires another one from this set. We need to remind them to stop burning through them so fast."
"And do what instead? Just shout the briefings from passing cars?"
"Hmm."
One thing Nightfall didn't like was him, of course. That was easy enough to tell. At best she treated him like a slightly embarrassing former mentor, at worst like just another prop for the mission. Always professional, never interested.
Twilight finished his work with the cipher and closed his notebook. "If all this information is accurate, Schadler was even better at covering his tracks then I thought," he said, mostly to fill space.
"Black market contacts. Subversive views. Lots of dubious financial transactions, easily concealed thanks to his role in the party," Nightfall said. "We knew all that. It's just a shame he died before WISE could get its hooks into him."
"And then there's the most damning piece of evidence," Twilight said, staring at another document with a smirk.
He slid it over to Nightfall's side of the table. She picked it up, and stared unflinchingly at a photograph of a dinky sedan with its front fender torn off.
"The exploding car itself. Kept under the radar by supplying it to an uninformed civilian, who held onto it under the impression that a buyer would come along with a high asking price sooner or later." Twilight said. "We would have never made the connection if you hadn't stepped right on it."
"I only came across it because I took a shortcut I was familiar with from my surveillance on Schadler," Nightfall said defensively,
"Right across it, as a matter of fact," Twilight said. "Good work, Fiona."
Nightfall gloomily absorbed his wry smile.
"At any rate," she said firmly, after a pause that seemed calculated for emphasis. "It's lucky that they kept monitoring his financial holdings. I should have expected him to have contingencies to make sure his plan continued even in the event of his death."
"Intercepting the message was the more important part, I think," Twilight said.
"True. We'd be stumbling in the dark without it."
Twilight was back in his element again. Morally dubious characters and a pile of illicit documents, this was what Twilight was made for, not pet stores and friendly dogs. Normally he'd only handle those sorts of things as part of a cover identity. But "Loid Forger" didn't really do a lot on Operation Strix.
Beyond cover names, there was no need to maintain the identity around Nightfall, obviously. That way madness lay. And Anya went happily along with anything he said or did, and just called him "Papa" anyway, so with her the facade was embarrassingly superfluous. "Loid Forger" basically lived at the hospital that was his cover story, and meanwhile Twilight went out on missions, went shopping for dog supplies, and came home to a nice cozy apartment every evening.
It was different. Especially since he had just called it "home" in his head.
"Should we rethink Plan B on Strix in light of this?" Twilight said.
"Hopefully we won't have to," Nightfall said. "They gave us this mission for a reason. If we do our jobs right, Strix should manage to continue unimpeded."
Nightfall was right, of course. But Twilight couldn't help but feel anxious about the future of either mission. He had thrown a lot of mental gears tonight, but maybe none more than when he had first opened up this mission file and saw the intercepted message. The last words of Stuart Schadler, sent automatically upon word of his death from a third-party to an anonymous recipient.
"The worst has come to pass. Your payment and the resources I have available have been delivered according to the channels discussed. The rest of the job is in your hands. The inhuman Donovan Desmond must die for the good of Ostania."
Anya stared listlessly at the TV. She idly scratched the ears of her dog, name pending, while letting the show drift past her. She didn't care about this show, it was something silly about scientists exploring a jungle where nobody ever got shot and nothing blew up. But she had negotiated a full hour and a half of uninterrupted cartoon-and-dog time per day from Mama and Papa, and she was afraid that if she didn't use it they'd make her do something boring instead.
Exams were coming up. She didn't normally like to think about school during cartoon time, but this was a talky scene and her brain was trying to leap through the nearest available window. Still, it wasn't anything to worry about. Mama had taught her tricks to recognize the smartest kids at school, and with her powers there was no way...
Anya paused. This was a night scene. The moon hung in the sky behind the characters.
Urgently, she began heavily tapping the dog on the head. He blearily opened his eyes, yawned, and looked at her with a resigned expression.
"Doggy! What's the moon going to look like on the day of the exams?" she whispered. Better to start here than with Mama and Papa, in case they got suspicious about her questions.
Blurry images flickered through the dog's head, and eventually resolved into an image she could interpret. But it was nothing useful to Anya- just some room somewhere, where some lady was talking to Papa.
Anya groaned, and got off the couch to broach the moon question with an adult. If only the dog's power could be more reliable, like hers. Anya needed to see the exam day, not Papa talking to some dark-haired lady with spiky earrings.
