Outside the lecture block, the air in the third-floor female restroom was cold and smelled strongly of lemon bleach.
Holly stood before the wide plate-glass mirror, adjusting the high collar of her sleek track jacket. She was smoothing down a small piece of double-sided fabric tape along the shoulder seam when the heavy outer door burst open with a violent, "whoosh".
Fiona practically fell through the threshold, her face the color of skimmed milk, her breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps as she gripped the edge of the nearest ceramic sink for balance.
"Woah," Holly said, stepping back a half-step, her dark eyes narrowing slightly as she took in the girl's frantic, trembling stature.
"Are you alright? You look like you just saw the old janitor's ghost in the basement."
Fiona didn't look up, her head hanging low over the basin as she turned the cold water tap on full blast, splashing her face with an uncoordinated, shaking hand. "I'm fine... I'm fine," her voice raspy as it merged into the splash of the drain.
"Just... a sudden drop in blood pressure. The heat in the hall."
"Right," Holly murmured, her voice carried a dry skepticism which she quickly masked with a lazy shrug.
"Well, don't pass out on the linoleum. The department head's already running a tight shift today because of the early curfew."
Fiona didn't answer, running into the furthest stall and slamming the door shut.
Holly let out a soft, low sigh, shaking her hair back over her shoulders as she pushed through the outer exit. "Man, some people are way too pressed by the midterm schedule," she muttered to herself, her thick boots pacing against the terrazzo tiles as she made her way down the stairs toward the basement theater annex.
The lower level of the performing arts building as usual was an entirely different world—a sprawling, subterranean space that smelled of dry timber, stage paint, and the rich, musk-heavy scent of velvet bolts.
The production for the upcoming semester showcase was Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", and the main stage was currently a maze of skeletal pine frames and half-finished painted flats.
Lira sat atop a heavy oak worktable in the center of the costume shop, her long legs swinging lazily as she tracked the line of an industrial sewing machine being operated by a sophomore flyer. She had a silver tape measure draped over her shoulders like an aristocratic stole, her blonde hair perfectly brilliant under the halogen track lights.
"The collar assemblies need to be higher, Claire," Lira called out, her voice a warm, bright melody that filled the dusty studio with immediate comfort. "Olivia's mourning dress shouldn't look like a standard cocktail piece. We bought that heavy crimson silk from the mall for a reason. Increase the gather by two inches."
At the secondary cutting table, Claire let out a bright, youthful laugh, her scissors biting into the fabric with a cleanly.
"If I increase it any more, Lira, the poor girl won't be able to turn her head toward the audience during the first monologue. She'll look like she's wearing an orthopedic neck brace made of velvet."
Rein on the other hand stood slightly apart from the main group, leaning her casual, loose-denim frame against a massive rack of period doublets. She held a fresh cup of black coffee in her pale fingers, her dark designer sunglasses pushed up onto her hair as her sharp eyes watched the door.
When Holly pushed through the double doors, her boots making a sharp against the floorboards, Rein's gaze locked onto her face immediately.
"You're late from the upper block, Holly," Rein murmured, taking a slow sip of her coffee without breaking her stride.
"Did the guard checkpoint at the engineering plaza flag your ID again?"
"No, the guards are mostly gone," Holly said, dropping a heavy box of iron grommets onto the workbench with a solid thud.
"But I just ran into that girl Fiona in the third-floor restroom. She was practically vibrating out of her sneakers. Slipped out of the history seminar like she was about to have a leak. You know I peeks through their hall and saw Ryan's sitting right next to her seat, by the way."
Lira stopped swinging her legs, her green eyes expanding slightly as she looked toward Rein and the costume shop turned instantly thick —a silent.
"She's not going to go vodoo I suppose " Lira said softly, a small, knowing smirk tugging at the corner of her lips.
"Ryan's fine If he stays away from her, besides she's going to have more than a blood-pressure drop to report to her department head."
"I'll handle the alignment," Rein said smoothly, sliding her dark glasses back down the bridge of her nose as she turned back toward the rack of doublets. "The silk is cut, the patterns are tight..."
[The precinct]
Two miles away, behind the reinforced oak doors of the county precinct headquarters, the atmosphere carried none of the artistic buoyancy of the theater annex. The windows were high, narrow, and covered by thick aluminum blinds that blocked out the gray afternoon light, leaving the interior swallowed by the green-and-amber glow of tactical monitors.
Detective Quive Stephenson sat behind his heavy mahogany desk, his long trench coat draped over the back of his leather chair, his sharp, weathered features pinched into a mask of absolute, unadulterated frustration. His silver pocket watch lay open on the green blotter, its ticking digits counting down the minutes until the it cleared the Columbus terminal.
Standing directly across from him, leaning against the closed door with a cold calmness, was a tall man dressed in a dripping yellow oilskin raincoat. His rubber boots were still dusted with the gray limestone grit of the eastern ridge, and his hands were shoved deep into his wet pockets.
"The containment order is already through the pipe, Bill," Stephenson hissed, his voice a jagged whisper as he leaned forward, his knuckles turning a stark, bloodless white against the desk. "Jarvis logged the verification terminal an hour ago. If the federal director sees your extraction logs from the regional hospital before we secure the university's student registry, the entire Ohio unit is going to find themselves reassigned to a black site."
The man in the raincoat—Buffalo Bill—didn't move. He didn't look at the pocket watch or the tactical maps spread between them. Slowly, the corner of his mouth twitched into an enigmatic, dark smile beneath the shadow of his hood.
"The federal director doesn't care about the registry, Quive," Bill said, his voice a flat, unhurried rumble that sounded like dry stones shifting in a riverbed. "They care about the rats. A squishy clean sub-floor and every single unit I extracted from the clinic yesterday had its digital insurance trail rewritten before the body was cold. The local coroner thinks it's all wild animal trauma."
He pulled his right hand from his pocket, producing a small, dense cylinder of dark, magnetized alloy—the identical twin to the Byte Seal that Stephenson had used to secure the subterranean capsule.
He tossed it onto the desk, where it landed with a dull, heavy thunk right next to the silver pocket watch.
"Your teenagers are the ones leaving teeth in the dirt," Bill added, his bloodshot eyes narrowing under the dim office light.
"The hot-wiring old iron behind the maintenance annex has had some Asian freelancer shopping in the regional mall while my tables are running wet. If your Vince Duchy cell can't keep the architecture right inside a small room, I'm going to start cutting my patterns from the university third-floor dormitory block."
Stephenson grabbed his hair with visible frustration, a thin line of cold sweat breaking across his forehead as he reached for his blue handkerchief. "The asian guy is far more dangerous than you think. Although I don't know why someone like him, a yakuza is here, Bill, but he was a huge help to us in Paris".
" Huh, you mean the one with that psycho Ian as the center of it all," Bill at this moment seemed genuinely surprised. He was aware of the incident in France to some extent especially how Ian got to auction off many arms to different groups of huge assets.