The phone screen's light was blinding throughout the total darkness of Ivan's bedroom, and he had to shield his eyes for a few seconds before they adjusted. Rolling over, he checked the time on his clock. 3:49 in the morning. He mumbled in annoyance to himself and faced his ringing phone once more. Clearing his throat, he pressed the answer button without even reading who was calling. He felt like that one sleepy gal in that one Vine waking up with the pouring water when he said, "Hello?"

"Privet, Ivan."

The adrenaline that had filled Ivan when the ringtone ("Take On Me" by a-ha) had gone off subsided when the familiar voice hit him. "Natalya!"

"I have missed you, brother," she admitted, in lilting Russian Ivan hadn't heard in forever. He sighed happily. "How are you?"

"It's three in the morning," he replied, shifting in his sweaty covers, "but in fact I'm doing very well! How are you?"

"Oh, no! Oops!" Another recognizable, yet strained voice echoed from thousands of miles away over the line. "Natalya, we forgot! Ivan, I am so sorry. You must be exhausted!"

"Katya!" Ivan laughed. He put a finger briefly over his phone's speaker, as if he could touch their voices themselves. Natalya and Yekaterina hadn't spoken to him in ages. Natalya was a businesswoman; Yekaterina was a humble farmer gal. "You are both here! But how?"

Natalya cut in. "I am visiting Katya in Ukraine. We were thinking of visiting you."

Ivan sat straight up in bed, staring in awe at the shadowed wall and dresser in front of him. "So we can all be together!"

Yekaterina's giggle made the phone vibrate. Another sound Ivan missed. "Well, it has been a while, don't you think?"

It had been so long. "I miss you very much." He slumped over. As siblings, they had always been close, but Ivan had been wary their relationship strained farther apart the more they grew. They didn't talk and play as much as they used to, living back in Russia. "I started to think you would never call."

"That's not true," Natalya immediately responded, with a small degree of ferocity. Ivan snorted lightly to himself, imagining them standing in Katya's tiny kitchen, passing her cord phone back and forth.

"I have just saved up enough for something special," Katya informed them. "Oh, this will be so fun! How about sometime next week?"

"Plane tickets are expensive," added Natalya.

"Of course." Ivan picked his lip. He had a couple of coins saved up on his secret laptop; maybe he could help them with the ticket problem. Anything to finally see a familiar face. "Next week is good! I will start making space!"

"We will see you soon."

Alfred and his brother Matthew shared some differences. One was the way they greeted the day; Alfred's way included Starbucks and stretches at six AM, while Matthew's included multiple trips of the snooze button and desperate attempts to become one with the beavers by building himself a blanket fort and burrowing inside of it. In this way, Alfred was a better candidate for an early monitoring schedule. So, surprised was he to find out from the log he kept on his laptop that Ivan had already been on his phone for twelve whole minutes—at three AM.

Alfred rubbed his eyes, making sure he wasn't just hallucinating. Took another sip of coffee. There it was, right there on the screen. Alfred couldn't rewind the log program like a TV show, but could only see at what times and places Ivan had used his phone. The location pointed to Ivan's apartment, but what would the guy be doing with his phone there at three in the morning? Ivan slept like a bear, judging by the way he grumbled to himself upon waking up. He would have had to schedule the wake up time. This was the "suspicious activity" Arthur wanted.

Instead of first reporting the activity, however, Alfred decided to wait. After all, he was only a few minutes away from Ivan's normal wake-up time. He pulled his laptop into bed with him and closed his eyes, only opening them again when Ivan's face filled the screen.

"Good morning, Mr. FBI!"

Oh god, this again. Alfred was amused Ivan was still keeping it up, and even smiled a little to himself in his sleep-weakened state. Last night Ivan's "news" had been a twenty-minute-long rant detailing their lunch meeting by the Washington Monument. Alfred had been embarrassed in about twenty different ways, especially at hearing how Ivan described him. But the situation was also too ironic not to laugh at; Ivan would have a rude awakening when he discovered "Mr. FBI" and Alfred were actually the same person.

If he discovered. Alfred violently rubbed his eyes. No. Not "when." Not even "if." No, Ivan would never find out, of course. There was no reason why he would ever find out. It would be funny, but no. No way.

"I hope you had a good sleep," the Russian drawled, yawning, which in turn made Alfred yawn. "Today I want to meet Alfred again, so I am going to picnic in the same place. Maybe if he is a businessman, he will have the same schedule and he will be walking there again."

"Dude, don't get your hopes up," Alfred mumbled. "Alfred's got like a bajillion things to do this morning."

"I like Alfred." Ivan sighed and rolled over.

Alfred slapped his pillow. "Ahhgggg. Shut it. Stop being cute."

A giggle from the other end of the link. "I can only wonder if Alfred thinks I am cute too."

"Oh, you little—"

Ivan sat up. "If that is his real name. I am still not sure if he is lying to me." He unconsciously rubbed his neck as he stretched, and Alfred was reminded of the scars there. He looked away. Yesterday Ivan had been wearing his scarf, even in the eighty-degree weather. Alfred had always wondered why Ivan left for work with his scarf on and came home still wearing it. This small, cruel detail restored Alfred's worries; if Ivan truly believed he was being watched right now, he would be wearing his scarf.

"He wasn't lying. I mean, I tried, but, like, giving any other name would have sounded bad. All I could think of at the time was 'Bob' or something and I didn't want to call myself 'Bob.'" Alfred sat up as well, snatching his glasses from his nightstand and propping the laptop on his thighs.

The conversation seemed to be over as Ivan finished stretching and slunk off to the bathroom. Bored, Alfred pulled up a visual of Ivan's phone screen, which he had left glowing on his bed. It showed Ivan's meme account. Alfred was just about to begin reading it when the screen turned off on its own. He groaned. He could still hack into it, of course, but at this point did anything matter?

"Two dudes chillin' in their own bedrooms," Alfred hummed to himself, beginning to roll out of the covers and start getting ready, himself. "One city and two screens apart 'cuz they're not gay!"

He heard Ivan come out of the bathroom and begin to change into his work clothes. Luckily the camera was pointed at the ceiling. (There was an unofficial term for these intimate times that the monitors of the black division referred to as "awkward moments." Usually they meant anxious coffee breaks.)

"Bye, then," Alfred mumbled as Ivan plopped his phone into his work bag and the camera went black. "Go ahead. Don't tell me what you were doing at three early this morning. It's fine. Not like it could finally clear your name off the stupid list or anything. You're right."

"Goodbye, Mr. FBI," Ivan whistled, without a care in the world. He was so damn innocent. Alfred was about to give some half-snarky, half-genuine response, when something across his room burst into song. "Africa" by Toto, in fact. Alfred was confused for a second before he remembered it meant his phone was ringing and he was receiving a call.

"Aw, shit." Alfred threw off his covers and dove to answer it. The display showed the name of none other than Arthur Kirkland. "Howdy."

"Bloody hell, Jones! Where are you?"

"At home! Fiddlesticks, I forgot to tell you. I worked my first shift from home. Ivan just left. Er, Braginsky."

A heaving exhale. "Good God, man! We thought you had been abducted by the Mafia!"

"Oh. Well, nah." Alfred felt bad. He could just see the Chief doing the smh. "Don't you worry! I'll, I'll be—"

"Yes, you better be here soon! It's only Toris and Elizabeta and I and Ludwig hasn't left yet and boy is it stuffy. What is it with staff these days?" Kirkland gave an impatient huff.

"I'm on my way right now. In fact, I'm just getting into the car," Alfred said as he rose to his feet and did a toe-touch, stifling another yawn. "Have to hang up. No texting while driving, you know."

"Yes. Right. Be safe. Wait. This isn't texting, it's a phone call—"

Alfred hung up. "Still a cause for distraction."

He took a shower and relaxed on the couch with a bowl of cereal and a robe, too lazy to get dressed just yet. Ivan didn't use his phone again until the late afternoon, so Alfred technically had plenty of time before he had to go to work. He glanced over at his TV table. On top of it lay a stack of video games he hadn't yet completed. Bored, Alfred started sifting through them.

One disc toppled off the pile to the floor, and when Alfred picked it up, he was surprised to see his name, along with another, both written in felt marker under a semicircle of letters spelling out STARSCRAPERZ!

Back in college, Alfred and this quiet Japanese kid named Kiku Honda had gotten endlessly bored in their computer class and teamed up to create a video game, becoming best friends along the way. The game was successful, too; with Alfred on programming and Kiku on art, they had churned out a basic RPG with a short plot by the end of the semester. Alfred hadn't played it in ages, though he and Kiku still kept in touch. Kiku was an employee of the Smithsonian.

Jeez, Ivan worked at the Smithsonian, kinda. Alfred hadn't thought of that. What if they even knew each other.

Suddenly, he felt very cold. He glanced quickly over his shoulder and around the apartment's small living room, but of course no one was there. He released the disc and replaced it by clutching a pillow to his chest. Alfred needed to get out, to be with people. He needed to see Kiku, because Kiku would be ecstatic Alfred had found their old game, and Kiku might have more information on Ivan that Alfred didn't yet have access to. He needed to see Matthew, because Matthew always had wise words of advice, and he knew that Matthew tended to get lonely and would want to see him as well. He needed to forget that he had only just been bowling with Gilbert on Friday, and now Gilbert was gone, and what did that mean?

"Aaaaand, that's enough thinking for today," Alfred declared, standing up. "I've reached my max. No more."

He dressed in his usual dark casual suit, sliding the token sunglasses on over his normal glasses. (He thought glasses that tinted automatically were a hassle, and if he was ever given a promotion, he would get the really cool FBI glasses that had x-ray, night-vision, and lazer-eye features anyway.) He even tried to wrestle with a tie but gave up. Alfred stuffed his computer in his bag and took transit to headquarters.

This time, Chief Héderváry wasn't the one to sign him in. An anonymous man in black scanned Alfred's credentials without uttering a word. Regrettably, Alfred found this sad and boring. "What, is there some kind of secret Eye of Providence in there you're lookin' for?"

Slowly, the man tilted his head up. "You know that only the Illuminati agents are required to carry those."

"Obviously." Alfred rolled his eyes. He made it to the elevator without a hitch.

When the doors slid open on the negative two-hundredth floor, Alfred expected Chief Arthur Kirkland to be there waiting with his arms crossed. He wasn't. Kirkland, Héderváry, and Ludwig all stood around the lounge's dry erase board, talking rapidly. Alfred shrugged and made his way over to Toris's cubicle.

"Ah!" The Lithuanian shut his laptop screen and swiveled around so quickly Alfred almost blushed himself.

"Um, what's going on?" he asked.

"Nothing!" Toris retorted. "I mean, er, I'm just admiring my new SAVE THE WHALES poster!"

"...You mean magnet?"

"Yes! It is quite nice. I am starting to liking it very much." They both gazed at the magnet, taped to the carpet-covered cubicle wall.

Alfred let it go. Whatever horrific action he assumed Felicks was undertaking couldn't compete with the rising ferocity of whatever was happening in the lounge. "Cool. Knew you would. But seriously, what's up." He jammed a thumb over his shoulder.

"...Oh." Toris stood, tripping on his chair a little, peering to see closer. "They have been doing that all morning. Writing and drawing and printing out articles and pinning them up. I think they think they are close to solving the mystery."

It got quiet as the two watched. Ludwig Beilschmidt, in near-hysterics judging by the two strands of hair that escaped his gel swoop, stabbed a finger at a picture of his suspect, which was the center of a network of intersecting red lines connected to related circled words, photos, and newspaper cutouts. "And if you direct your attention to Exhibit F, you'll realize just how much of a mastermind Feliciano Vargas truly is!"

Kirkland was skeptical. "But that's just a flattering picture of him using a broom. It doesn't prove anything."

Héderváry was sympathetic. "Ludwig, we know Antonio Fernandez-Carriedo disappeared on-duty up on Embassy Row last Wednesday. Gilbert went MIA walking home from bowling on Friday, and Francis's last connection with us was on his way to work yesterday morning. In all these pictures, collected around the same times judging from the stamps, Vargas is at home in his kitchen."

"Exactly!" Ludwig declared. "Vargas has positioned himself in just the right place at just the right time in every single instance!"

Kirkland scratched his chin. "So there are two solutions. Either we've got the wrong guy, or he's strategically fooling us with these images somehow, which would explain why his camera went down briefly early last morning."

"Yesterday he was working at a market," Ludwig informed. "I observed him from afar, and nothing seemed amiss. The strangest thing was the way he talked to people, always smiling and laughing and keeping up a conversation for twenty minutes about things as meaningless as gelato cramps! Then he went home, of course, and slept. He sleeps a lot."

"Which would explain why he's home so often," Kirkland countered, turning away. "Whatever. If you think you've got a lead, take it. Not like we have anyone else here to do it—oi! Alfred F. Jones!"

Alfred leaned to Toris. "I've never known how to respond when he says the 'Oi!' at me. Like, what does it even mean? Chief! Hey, amigo!"

"Don't you 'amigo' me!" Arthur pointed a finger in Alfred's face. "You're an hour late!"

Toris wisely swiveled his chair back around. The black division chief was a force when he was angry, and it was a fact he was often angry around Alfred (admittedly for good reason).

"My car broke down due to distracted driving," Alfred explained, trying to sidestep Arthur. "It was tragic. I waited in the sweltering heat, wishing for the good ol' days when I could just stick a saddle on any four-legged animal, or mount a big rock like the pioneers—"

"Boy, you don't even own a car!"

Alfred paused, his train of lie derailing. "What?" This was saddening to hear. Even if his explanation had been a lie, he still did own a car. Or at least he shared one. With Matt...who was using it at the moment. "I've got a Ford F-150!"

Arthur turned his nose up. "That's no car."

A slight to Alfred's honor! He prepared to defend himself. "Hey! You wanna argue about cars, old man? You drive on the left!"

Kirkland put his hands to his temples. "Stop this at once. Now you're distracting me. The point is we need you here, Alfred. We're understaffed and low on morale—just look at poor Toris! He's barely hanging on!"

Indeed, Toris looked ready to run a letter-opener through himself. "Please get out of my cubicle."

They left.

Arthur lowered his voice. "What I mean is I feel better with you here, doing work where I can see you. Protected. You understand. To finish this investigation we all need to work where we can see each other, and it's now of even more utmost importance we all are working. Chief Héderváry and Ludwig are both going out on separate missions today, and—"

"Agh, dude." Alfred scratched his head. "This makes it so bad. I was actually just going to ask for some time off."

They froze outside of Alfred's cubicle. Kirkland looked almost sad. "That I cannot give you."

Alfred clenched his teeth. Were his working hours being extended, then? Did the Chief expect him to check in every morning, now? What happened to only hacking phones when phones were being used? "I only wanna see my brother."

"Ludwig wants to see his brother, too," Arthur sighed. "Until we get a lead on the Mafia situation, I'd like you to check in every morning. Maybe in your spare time, you can even help us!"

Alfred crossed his arms, unsatisfied, but willing to take the bait. "I still get lunch breaks."

"So be it. A single hour, only. And not today."

Alfred's shoulders fell. That morning he had even mocked at Ivan that he might not be able to see him at lunch since he had "like a bajillion things to do," but now that he actually knew he was restrained, everything felt worse. Itchy.

"Alfred?" Alfred looked up. The Chief had taken on a softer tone. "We really do care. Say, how is your work going? Anything noticeable or suspicious happening with Braginsky?"

Alfred met his eyes, steady and sure. "Nope; nada. Nothing at all."

Ivan was blaring Spotify. "Do you like my cleaning playlist, Mr. FBI? I am sorry you have listen to it so many times." He made sure to leave his phone in his bedroom while tidying up the bathroom; more specifically, the cabinet under the sink. He ran the water while logging into the computer, checking his inbox quickly for any messages from the circle. He didn't get a "thanks for the highly confidential intel," and only a curt email dictating his next order. Ivan shut the laptop with a grimace and flushed the blue cleaning fluid down the toilet.

"I want everything to look good when my sisters come over!" he proclaimed, picking the phone back up. "Do not be afeared. You will like my sisters, Mr. FBI. I hope so. A family visit will make me seem less boring."

Ivan didn't have a particular image for "Mr. FBI," but the longer he kept up the joke, the more his mind worked to develop a sort of persona for the character that fit the needs of whatever state Ivan was in. He imagined Mr. FBI cast in shadow at a desk, eating popcorn and saying, "Of course I will love your sisters, Ivan! Just as much as I love watching you! uwu!"

The dream was entertaining. Ivan stared directly at his camera, found those purple dots inside, and laughed.

He let his phone be with a final smile and plugged it into the charger while he cleaned out the Tupperware he had used for lunch. Today he had sat in the same spot as yesterday, and kept a close eye on the street. But it was a true bust.

"Alfred" hadn't shown.

video phone - beyoncé

Golly wow. Plots. So far now, we've met/heard of/mentioned every character appearing in this story except for three. I'm real excited. Hope y'all are too!