Arc F1.10 | Chapter 21: Glass Doors, and all that

“Hey, Prin!” Clover called as he rounded a corner, catching sight of one of his many colleagues.

While there were dozens of officers milling about, shifting through the many halls of the district’s main station—there were a number of smaller outposts scattered throughout each district, but the main stations of each generally acted as the primary base for most officers before they set off for their normal duties in the outposts—Prin was one of the more recognizable ones, especially for Clover, as the man had once had his job, if only for a few months.

Prin had been with their station quite a while and while not exactly possessing the sort of personality suited for any sort of upper management position, the man was capable of pulling his shit together when necessary. As a result, the man had temporarily had Clover’s job before he had been recruited for it. Prin had given the position his all, but he was far more laid-back than someone more suited for the position would have been—so laid-back that, even with his attempts to do his best, Clover had still found the state of the station’s paperwork when he arrived to be…

Well, it had been bad enough that Clover had earned himself about a hundred hours of overtime, trying to get the place organized. Good intentions only got people so far, and Prin had other things he was far more suited for. From everything Clover had seen, this largely amounted to keeping their boss from ripping anyone’s head off and having the most fashion sense of any living, currently working Drinarna.

That was the other reason Prin stood out: not only was the guy exceedingly tall, towering a foot and half over most of their colleagues, but he was also the sort of person to push regulations to the brink. The man never broke any uniform regulations, which were actually relatively lax for the Drinarna, amounting to: wear your uniform with pride; replace your uniform as necessary; do not wear anything that would be offensive to either your fellow officers or civilians; and, do not style yourself in a way that would be dangerous to your person or those you may interact with.

It was these last two rules where things became a little messy. Some—mostly the manly men officers of other districts—had argued that Prin’s propensity for painting his nails was offensive to them. One of the first people to tell Prin that, shortly after he had been transferred into the city and into Officer Fawnreen’s care, after being referred to her by a sweet little silverstrain, had been a highly religious man. Lüshan had no official religion, but there were a few more common ones. This man had not followed one of the more common religious; rather, he had followed one that tended towards both being considered a cult and claiming that their religion was the only good religion, everyone who was not a follower—as well as those followers who didn’t donate enough of their income to the church leaders, in order to support their comfort—would be consumed by the aether and cease to exist upon their death.

Prin had argued back that, in wearing religious symbols of the religion, the officer was offending everyone who wasn’t of the religion, as well as potentially making civilians who met him uncomfortable—or worse, potentially disbelieving that this man who thought they, as non-believers, would be erased upon death, while followers of his religion would be granted reincarnation or eternal bliss, depending on how much they had donated to their leaders, would actually take what they said seriously.

An argument had broken out… and then the men had come to blows. Clover had never been able to get the outcome out of anyone, but he had learned that many officers—both those with their station and those who worked for many other districts—thought Prin was correct in his arguments against officers of this religion being allowed to wear religious symbols. Unfortunately, one of the most powerful legacy families was also part of the religion—being one of the highest-ranking families within both the Drinarna and the religion, no less—so nothing had ever been done to regulate the officers, nor had a decades-old attempt to audit the various officers who followed the religion and their treatment of both civilians and fellow members of the religion ever been approved. Instead, such things were perpetually stuck in meetings and discussions, but they all knew those officers favoured fellow members of their religion in virtually every way they could.

There were some theories that suggested this family—the Cistär—had blackmail material on numerous other families, as there were apparently a number of strange things about them. No one would ever confirm the rumours Clover had heard, but even in his first few months in the city—the outskirts city he had originally been assigned to had little use for capital gossip, even if legacy families and their machinations within the Stands did affect every officer and city—he had heard quite a few.

The most notable rumour? That one of their most powerful members was actually a silverstrain who was hiding their irregular deviation behind contacts and hair dye. Silverstrains had never been particularly maligned in Lüshan, which made it quite strange that the family had bothered to hide their irregular deviation… unless they knew something about the number of interns with irregular deviations who had been going missing? That had only started recently, as far as they knew, but what if it had actually been going on longer, the Cistär seeking to protect their silverstrain member by hiding what they were?

“Sup?” Prin asked, backtracking several steps from where he’d been about to vanish out the door, the man’s acknowledgement that he’d actually heard Clover call to him over the cacophony of the area pulling him back into the moment.

Later, after he talked to Officer Fawnreen about the mystery messages, he would ask whether there was anything else in the past of the Cistär family that might imply they knew something about the situation with the missing interns.

“Have you seen the boss? I got a message about some sort of situation—if it can even be called that—on her xphern from someone who is labelled… oddly,” Clover said, eyes catching on the long braids Prin currently had woven through his hair. Beads were sewn through a number of them. It wasn’t unusual for Prin to wear such complicated hairstyles or bead work, although he’d recently had grey extensions put in, the braids pulled up in a ponytail while he worked and trailing down his back. The small, silver and black beads faded into the braids, but they were beautiful when they caught the light… and no doubt also quite weighty. Clover had heard a rumour that one of them was actually an emergency-use-only willbrand, but as all of them were imbued with aether, it seemed impossible to determine which one it was.

“Just left her,” Prin said, further backtracking into the room in order to get out of the doorway. While there were several doors in and out of the building, with how busy things currently were, even those brief moments lingering in the threshold had caused a small backlog of officers. “Odd how?”

“It just says ‘Baalphorian Brat?’” Clover said, sucking in a squeak when Prin was suddenly right there, towering over him. Not for the first time, Clover wondered how much the older man’s son—whom Prin had conceived with his wife before realizing he was gay, although they had remained both friends and married in order to make raising their son easier—looked like him. Clover had no idea if Prin’s son was into people like him, but they were close enough in age that he could dream—could imagine a world where some beautiful, tall specimen who looked like a younger version of Prin was into him.

It wouldn’t happen, but a guy could dream.

“Emmie? What did she say?” Prin asked despite the hand already extended Clover’s way, intent to take their boss’s xphern and see for himself.

Some people, their boss would be upset about seeing her private messages, even if most were work related. Prin was not on the list of people Officer Fawnreen would care about seeing… probably anything personal over. The man could walk in on her wiping her ass, and it was likely neither would give a shit—no pun intended.

Prin was immediately moving the moment he had their boss’s xphern in his hands, Clover scurrying after him. One of his hands latched around Prin’s upper arm, and as they moved through the building, the older man barely looking up, Clover was left to both shout at people to get out of their way and to tug Prin about when people didn’t move or came bursting out of offices with all the energy of a wild cux.

This was, somehow or other, a regular part of his job description.

Also, the few times it had happened with Prin—there were a few other officers who had a similar propensity of looking at their xpherns or paperwork while wandering the station, bowling down people who happened into their path—things had been… well, quite dire, to be honest.

Just who was this Emmie, and what in the world could they be up to that would inspire this sort of response from someone who really only became serious in the worst of situations?

Against the back of the xphern, Prin’s fingers moved as he typed out a message to this Emmie—which, honestly, Clover might be a little upset if they replied to Prin’s message when they had yet to reply to his!

“What the fuck…” Prin hissed, the sound barely heard over the slam of doors, the stomp of feet, the yells of this officer or that. Most of them were yelling for no good reason—drink and food orders from interns being sent off to one restaurant or another, mostly.

Clover’s mouth opened in intent to ask what the man was upset by when they suddenly turned. Prin’s hand slammed into the door, which was thankfully one of the ones the swung in and had a huge glass window in it. Allegedly, it had once been a solid door, but a number of officers had constantly been banging their way through it and smacking people reaching to exit backwards. There was no proof this was true—Clover had looked through the various work orders for station repairs and upgrades for the last few decades and found nothing—but it had apparently only happened about a decade and a half ago, which made it such an odd thing to lie about. It was one thing for some story to have been made up and told to a gullible intern, that story later passed along as truth. Half of the people who claimed it was true, however, would have been working in the building long before the door was allegedly changed.

This was not the only rumour of such dubious quality that everyone in the station swore was true, and yet, could give no proof of.

Mostly, Clover had simply come to assume he was being hazed in the most benign of ways, and that decades of Drinarna in the station had been subjected to a similar hazing ritual of false tales. The result was an impossible to detangle mess of stories that could be true, could be skewed, and could be complete shit.

“Did you know the xphern transmission network is down?” Prin demanded as they entered the conference room where their boss was sitting, her eyes closed as though she had been taking the brief moments of solitude to actually rest. Such things were rare—their boss was as go, go, go as people came—but with how the day was expected to go, maybe the power naps were taking the edge off.

Also! Since when had the xphern transmission network been down!?

“What?” he asked, fumbling to get the xphern back, thinking that maybe Prin had gotten it wrong. It wasn’t unheard of for xpherns to suddenly be unable to properly connect to the network for unknown reasons, but no. There was the error message indicating that the xphern transmission network was down on the network side, rather than the xphern side.

“What?” Officer Fawnreen repeated, one bright-green eye popping open as Prin tugged his own xphern from his belt and confirmed that it to had no connection. Neither did Clover’s, pulled from his own belt a second later.

“Clover,” his boss was saying, and Clover already knew what she was going to say: go confirm it isn’t just their station’s work numbers that are out.

“On it,” he said, slipping back out of the room and rushing down to the jail cells. There weren’t many people in the cells at the moment, but between their confiscated xpherns and anyone there to spring them, there would be enough to confirm whether their Drinarna xpherns were the only ones down or not.

Fortunately, there were two extremely helpful mothers there, gathering up their young children who had wandered off and been plopped into the care of an intern… who seemed overly happy to be rid of the girls. Combined with another three people in the cells—who, with promises of the now-freed babysitter intern going to get them something snacks, agreed to unlock their xpherns so he could check their network status—Clover rushed back the conference room with seven data points that all said no one from Falmíer’s xphern was working.

As the mothers were from a different district—and how had those girls gotten so far across the city?—it wasn’t just limited to their district either. The three people in the cells were childhood friends who were back home for a school break and gotten a little too intoxicated the night before, but they were all in different professions, and two had xpherns registered to different cities. Those two xpherns were working, while the one that belonged to the woman who lived and worked in Falmíer was down. On his way back, he had run into a maintenance worker and a local man making a report of an animal running wild through the streets. Neither of their xpherns were working either.

“What are the chances Emmie isn’t involved in whatever is happening with the network?” Prin was asking when Clover reappeared, softly panting. While he had tried to get one of the people in the cells to give up one of their working xpherns they had both been weird about it. Both had stated they would give them up, but only with a promise—and proper, legally binding paperwork—that assured them that nothing found on the xphern would be used against them—them, plural. Even if he only took one, all three wanted immunity from something. This was, needless to say, exceptionally concerning, because what in the world was on the things?

As the situation wasn’t quite so dire that they would potentially sign away their right to prosecute someone for, say, a terrorist plot found on the devices, Clover had turned them down… then sent another intern off to locate a lawyer who could get that paperwork started, in case the situation became so serious that giving a few people amnesty from gods knew what sort of charges would be worth it—it was also possible they were being idiots and overblowing the consequences for shoplifting or something. As their station didn’t normally keep a lawyer on staff—only a few of the stations did, most stations instead bringing them in as needed—and with the xphern transmission network down, it would likely take a while for the intern to even find one, let alone get them back to the station.

In the meantime, the women and their children had been sent to a nearby restaurant to get some food, lest the xphern transmission network be down due to some breaking situation. Usually, such situations didn’t result in Drinarna being cut off from the network, however, and the fact that they and the entire city seemed to have been cut off was concerning. If every xphern hadn’t been working, it would have been possible something broken within the network. As those xpherns from another city were working, however, it seemed that someone had purposefully blocked all local numbers. Clover wasn’t the most well-versed in how the xphern transmission network worked, but presumably a programming—or user—error could have caused the blackout; somehow, he thought it unlikely.

“Low,” Officer Fawnreen replied, her dark-black fingers, scarred over with hot lines of white from a fight with a criminal who could control flames a few decades earlier, tapping over the table. “Possible, of course. We all know how that girl can get her nose into near anything, but… the likelihood that she’s in the city and has become involved in some completely different situation? Then, would contact us just as the network is going down?”

“Do you think it's related to everything else going on?” Prin asked, his own, red-tipped fingers tapping in the same rhythm as their boss’.

“Could be. Could not be. Did you even know she was in the city?”

“Nope, which, weird, right? Since when does she visit and not let us know?”

“Since when does she visit without her father,” Officer Fawnreen added.

“Uhm…” Clover said, pulling two sets of eyes to him. “Who is this person? I read through some of your messages with them and I couldn’t figure it out or get a read on them or your relationship with them.”

Officer Fawnreen’s lips twitched in a rare smile. “I suppose you haven’t personally met her. Emmie is the Baalphorian Secretary General’s daughter—Emilia.”

Emilia. The Baalphorian Secretary’s General daughter—presumably, Emilia Starrberg, then.

Clover hadn’t met her, but he had heard about her—of course he had. That girl was the whole reason his life in his old city had blown up, after all.