Shadow reappeared in an open-plan office. He'd never visited the PR department, but he'd walked past it enough times to know where it was located. Rouge was a different story – she often had to beg the PR team to work their magic after Shadow and Omega caused too much collateral damage during a mission.

The PR department leader, Agent Bridges, sat hunched over on a swivel chair in the centre of the room.

Agent Boulder and Agent Verity, the military and biomedical department leaders, were also in the room. Boulder was leaning against the wall, and Verity was sitting on the edge of a nearby desk. Verity noticed Shadow, and her eyes widened behind her round, gold-rimmed glasses.

'Am I going to be fired?' Bridges asked.

'… I don't know,' Verity said.

Boulder shrugged. 'Here's hoping.'

Shadow silently stepped forward, walking into Bridges' field of view. 'Not yet, at any rate.'

Bridges screamed and dove under a nearby desk. His empty chair spun until it gradually came to a halt.

Shadow sighed. 'People wonder why I don't work with other departments often, yet this is what I have to deal with. You. Get up. Now.'

Bridges crawled out from beneath the desk, but he still kept his distance. 'Can you blame me? I heard you handed someone a live grenade because they pissed you off.'

'Yes. The operative term being "they pissed me off" – so pull yourself together.'

'I-I'm sorry.'

'New field agents get blown to bits if they can't handle themselves, but new internal agents just get shouted at instead.' He glanced at Boulder's military vest. 'Would you prefer the grenade after all, Agent Bridges?'

'No, s-sir.'

'All right.' Shadow grasped one of his inhibitor rings, unlocking and unlocking it as he spoke. Verity stiffened, sitting as far back as she could, and Boulder tensed up, but Bridges didn't realise what Shadow was doing.

'So what did you want?' Shadow asked, staring at Bridges intently. 'To make a big splash at your new job?'

'I've been here for three months.'

'Yet I've never heard of you until now. So you've clearly been underperforming, but you decided to overcompensate in the worst possible way.'

'That's not –'

'It is, and it was.'

'It just seemed like a waste,' Bridges blurted out.

'What did?'

Bridges nodded towards Boulder and Verity. 'All your recent assignments have been with the military, but your biomedical potential has been … under-utilised.'

Shadow raised an eyebrow. 'Has it now?'

'I-I did my research.'

'If you did your research, then you would know that my past no longer has any bearing on my decision-making process.' Shadow sat on the edge of a nearby desk. 'Yet this proposal of yours seems to have been carefully crafted to tug on the heartstrings that I supposedly have.' He could hear the bitterness bleeding into his voice, and he cleared his throat. 'Listen. You weren't hired to save the world. You were hired to make a problematic organisation look better than it actually is. You understand the difference … right?'

Bridges stared at the floor. 'Yes. I understand. But I thought that once I got the job, I thought that I could –'

'It doesn't matter.' Shadow's heel touched against the front of the desk. 'Whatever you thought, it's not part of your job description.'

'I thought –'

Shadow jumped off the desk and began to pace. 'Here we go again. You thought – you didn't ask. You're desperate to use GUN's resources for your own ends, yet you can't think outside the box of organisational constraints. If you wanted my help, then you should have asked me directly.'

'I thought we would have to get the commander's approval.'

'After everything you heard in that meeting, do you honestly still think that I can't act on my own? I stole one of GUN's rockets last week, for Chaos' sake.'

Bridges grimaced. 'I'm aware. My department and I have been doing damage control for you.'

Shadow stopped pacing and gave him a sharp look. 'Does that make you think you're entitled to my help? Do you think I owe you a favour for you merely doing your job?'

Bridges looked like he'd been hit by a truck. 'No. I didn't ask because I didn't think you'd say yes.'

'Why wouldn't I have?'

'W-Well, I'm a junior agent, and I haven't been here very long –'

'You've made that crystal clear. I don't care whether this is your first day or your thousandth. It wouldn't even matter – because you don't have any confidence in your own ideas –' Shadow drew his foot back, but then he remembered what happened the last time he'd kicked an agent in the shins. He slammed his foot into a desk instead. It atomised and exploded into a cloud of sawdust.

Bridges yelped and fell onto his chair.

'Don't waste people's time.' Shadow put one hand on his hip and exhaled. '… Even if their time is infinite.'

Bridges looked confused. 'You're immortal?'

Shadow's grip slackened, and his hand fell from his hip to his side. 'You didn't know?'

'No. I know that you can control space and time, and … you have a long list of abilities, to be fair.'

Shadow could feel his hand beginning to twitch. 'What? Did you get sidetracked when you were asked to accept cookies before you reached the bottom of the Wikipedia article?'

'N-No?'

'Did it ever occur to you why people call me the Ultimate Life Form?'

'Because of your powers?'

'Yes, but also because I can't die.'

Bridges blinked. 'Oh.'

'If this is the result of your research, then thank God you're not in our R department.' Shadow turned to Verity and Boulder. 'You two. I know you've both been here longer than him, but not that much longer. What in the fresh hell are they telling you about me in orientation these days?'

Verity winced. 'To be fair, the true extent of your abilities may be classified.'

Even if he really was the Ultimate Life Form, Shadow was still capable of getting migraines. He gave Bridges a weary look. 'Thankfully, one of my abilities is the ability to tolerate an incredible amount of bullshit. I'm joining your stupid program.'

Bridges' eyes widened. 'You're what?'

'I've already wasted a lot of my time on this, and we haven't even started yet. Don't make me waste my breath as well.'

Bridges sat in silence for a moment. His head must have been spinning. Then he snapped his mouth shut and nodded aggressively.

'I don't think this is a good idea,' Boulder said.

Shadow straightened up and gave him a curt look. 'You'll have to forgive me, Agent Boulder, but my amnesia appears to be worsening. I don't remember asking for your opinion.'

'I only humoured Bridges and Verity because there was some merit to what they were saying, despite their delusions. GUN's image needs a shot in the arm, otherwise we're going to start losing support from the public. Why do you think Bridges is flailing so desperately?'

Shadow gave Bridges a wary look.

'There's been … a lot going on,' Bridges said. 'Some people are protesting against GUN, and given your past, you're the perfect symbol for them to latch onto. They're sympathetic towards you. But there are also anti-GUN extremists who think that you represent everything that's wrong with the organisation. They think you're too much of a liability. And then there are some people who are just confused about why you're stealing spaceships from the organisation that you work at.'

Shadow stopped time, and the room turned a sickly shade of green. His mind raced. He'd always known that most people were wary or distrustful of him, and in many cases, their concerns were warranted. But this was different. This was new. This was a growing tide of sentiment – and eventually, sentiments could catalyse into something more significant. He shook his head, and the flow of time resumed.

'How do you know all this?' he asked.

Bridges held up his phone. 'You'd be surprised how many people are willing to openly criticise the government on social media.'

Shadow could see his expression reflected on the phone's screen. 'So? I don't care what people think of me.'

'Clearly. But GUN has a vested interest in what the public thinks of them.'

'Enough,' Boulder said, cutting Bridges off and speaking to Shadow. 'You're all getting sidetracked. None of this changes the fact that you can't undertake something like this without some of us worrying about what might happen to one of our strongest assets.'

'You should be worried about what's going to happen to those damn children when they inject them with my blood,' Shadow retorted. 'I'll be fine – but they could start growing tentacles and vomiting ichor for all we know.' They all turned to look at Bridges. Shadow froze. 'Please tell me you knew about the Black Arms.'

'The Black Arms?'

Shadow nodded tightly.

'Of course I did!' Bridges protested. 'Information about the Black Arms is far more accessible than information about Project Shadow.'

'What a shock,' Shadow muttered. 'It's almost as though it's harder to cover up the existence of an eldritch alien hivemind than it is to cover up a gross abuse of institutional power.'

'Shadow?' Verity asked.

'What?' he asked, and it came out harsher than he intended.

'Bridges did come to me for feedback. I was the one who told him that you've previously given people blood transfusions without incident.'

'It was only one person.' Shadow gazed at her, wondering what was going through her head.

'I know.' Her voice was gentle, and he could tell she was carefully choosing her words. 'But there is a precedent.'

'There are two precedents – I've never harmed someone I was trying to cure, but I've never saved anyone either.'

Verity's eyes gleamed behind her glasses, and she stepped forward, clasping Shadow's hands in her own. He tried not to flinch. 'You were never given enough time. Look, I'm not much better than Bridges. I'd love to see GUN do bigger, better things through their biomedical department, but the military gets the lion's share of the budget.'

Boulder grunted. 'We can't defeat terrorists with cotton balls and bandaids.'

Shadow shot him a look. 'Either contribute meaningfully or be quiet.'

'And …' Verity's expression saddened. 'I thought you would have valid reasons to refuse. Personal ones, at that.'

If Verity knew about his blood transfusions, then she was probably familiar with both Maria's medical history and his own. 'Bridges' incompetence would have been a reason to say no. But my past isn't enough of a reason for me to say yes.' He gave Bridges' a pointed look, and the man squirmed.

'What does the commander have to say about this?' Boulder asked.

'He was going to veto the proposal and launch disciplinary action against you and everyone else at that meeting. '

The three agents paled. 'B-But …'

'But out of the goodness of the heart that I supposedly have, I decided to interfere.' He glanced at Boulder. 'This no longer concerns you. You're dismissed.'

'But –'

'Would you also prefer the grenade? Agent Boulder?'

Boulder bristled and stomped off, slamming the office's glass door in his wake.

Shadow turned back to Bridges. 'You have 24 hours to get Central City Children's Hospital to agree to this. Otherwise, I'm joining one of GUN's surgical strike units and going off the grid until someone sends me word that you've gotten fired.'

'Y-Yes. Yes! I just need to get a new tablet and retrieve my files.'

Shadow remembered smashing Bridges's tablet on the conference room table. He grimaced. '… I'll have Resources send you another one. But if you say one more stupid thing, I'm taking it back and breaking it over your head.'

'Y-Yes, sir.'

'Dismissed.'

Bridges sprinted out of the room and dove into the nearest elevator.

'Why is he running out of his own office?' Shadow muttered. 'He only has 24 hours.' He realised that Verity was the only one left in the room. He held out a hand. 'Hold still.'

She took it and asked, 'Why?'

'So you don't fall over,' he said, and the two of them snapped out of existence.

To be continued...