Kai and Avren, we were stuck in Delta longer than we thought. One day turned into seven. A whole week of sweat and dust. Couldn't iron a place like this in a day, not when every drawer you pulled open spit out a mess from years of people not giving a damn.
Precinct was a graveyard of bad habits. Files stacked sideways, tags missing, resonance detectors blinking like they were choking. Lockers with busted hinges. Bloodstains on the tiles from old cases no one ever bothered to scrub. We started tearing through it room by room.
Avren had this weird calm the whole time. Sorting files, cross-checking logs, handwriting like a machine. Creepy precise. I hauled equipment, rewired panels. Velnix hummed in my skull like it was keeping score. Flicker, for once, stayed quiet—like it respected the work.
We patched the resonance detectors first. Sat them in a row, opened their backs, soldered and sealed. Avren handled the calibration, eyes narrow, breathing slow, like he was listening to a heartbeat no one else could hear. I held the resonance steady, fed my own energy into the cores. When the first one glowed solid green, it felt like we'd just kicked a ghost out.
[Day Two]
Scrubbed bloodstains. Someone should've done it years ago. Buckets, rags, bleach. My hands raw, Avren not complaining once. We tossed bags of old swabs into the incinerator—biohazard bin had been overflowing. Nobody stopped us. Nobody cared.
[Day Three]
The evidence room. This one mattered. We logged everything again, box by box. New sheets, new signatures. Found bags shoved behind cabinets, half-rotted, labels unreadable. Avren's face went hard when he pulled one open, muttered something I didn't catch. We burned the compromised stuff. Entered the rest clean. By nightfall the shelves looked almost official.
[Day Four]
The weapons locker. Propped with a mop when we first came in. We fixed that. Bolted steel, set resonance locks, cross-checked the inventory. Missing rifles, missing mags. We wrote it all down, shoved it under Delta's nose. Avren even printed duplicate copies—"So they can't pretend they lost the first," he said.
[Day Five]
Dispatch. Screens half-snow. Wires gnawed by rats, maybe. I sat cross-legged with a screwdriver, re-routing lines. Avren called out each channel, tone sharp, steady. When the boards lit up clean and clear, I actually smiled. Felt like we'd built something that might save someone's life.
[Day Six]
We trained the staff. Or tried. Pulled them into the planning room, explained chain of custody, evidence procedure. Half the officers listened. Half stared at the wall. Avren snapped a joke about the ghosts of Delta being angrier than us. I laughed. For once it felt real.
[Day Seven]
Mary showed up. Didn't say much. Walked the halls, steel eyes cutting over the desks. She saw the files stacked neat, the detectors humming, the evidence room sealed. She nodded once. "Ironed it out," she said. That was it. Then she left.
Her words stuck. Ironed it out. Like we'd just smoothed a shirt. But the place looked better than it ever had. For the first time my badge didn't feel fake. Like maybe I'd earned it.
Avren cracked a smoke outside, handed me one. I didn't take it. My lungs already burnt enough. But I sat with him on the steps, watching the Delta sky sag into dusk.
"Think they'll keep it up?" I asked.
He blew smoke sideways. "No. But that's not why we did it."
"Why then?"
He looked at me, eyes darker than the smoke. "Because it needed to be done. And because you were watching."
I didn't answer. Just sat there, listening to the precinct buzz behind us like it wanted to convince itself it was alive again.
---
We left the next morning. Packed bags, signed the last sheets, turned in the Delta keys. Walked out the front doors like we'd never been there.
Back in Zone Alpha the air hit different. Streets alive, vendors shouting, neon flickering in puddles. The smell of fuel and fried noodles punched the nose. Home, in its way.
Matt greeted us at the apartment, badge shining with his new promotion. He bragged a little, couldn't help it. Burnt dinner on the stove. I smiled anyway.
Neo hovered nearby, eyes sharp, still off on his mission shit. Didn't say what. Wouldn't. Just looked at me like he already knew where it ended.
Crest's livestream popped on my phone later that night. Her voice carried through the tiny screen, laughing, talking to strangers. I sent her another donation. Thought about the apartment I still needed to get her.
Avren stretched on the couch like he owned it now. We were friends—good ones. I didn't know how it happened, but it had. From car trunks thumping to bloodstains scrubbed, somewhere in the mess we'd become a team.
Next day we were back at GRARC, our desks side by side, ready to hunt more killers. Mary praised us in front of the squad. Said Delta had been "stabilized" thanks to us. People actually clapped.
Felt strange, but good.
For once, the lie wasn't eating me alive.