Adya finds herself constantly fidgeting with the padded sleeves on her forearms, trying to get them to sit just right against her skin. The uniform is hardly for her own protection, considering the… everything about her body-- but she can’t deny how much she adores the way it looks. She has to restrain herself from putting a skip in her step out of the excitement.
“Making a detour, are we?” a voice calls in her ear.
“You said reconnaissance,” Adya claims, slipping out of the parking garage and making a beeline for the second floor doors. “I’m reconnaissance-ing.”
“The word is ‘reconnoitering’, Agent.” Nate lets out a hearty chuckle. “Just making sure the mall is back to normal after those guys had their joyride through it.”
Sure enough, businesses are back in full bloom. Even the most trashed storefronts have been restored to their original state without as much as a single shard of broken glass left on the ground. If Americans love anything, it’s spending money, Adya thinks.
“Give me the brief on your first two weeks as a communications agent,” she implores her mentor. “I haven’t seen much of you since you gave me my uniform.”
“It feels nice to be afraid of someone who’s not General Morales, admittedly. The new general is pretty stone-cold, but I think my white boy charm is warming up to him.” There’s no longing in his sigh, just a gentle sense of reassurance for himself. “I’m far from combat ready, so I’ll be here for a while. But I’d rather be a good comms agent than a shitty field agent.”
The sea of shoppers is too dense for her to see if anyone’s staring at her, but since she’s still riding the high of her promotion, she wouldn’t particularly mind, anyway. The most she gets is a curious glance from a toddler or an affirming nod from their parents. It feels good to be trusted-- if not by President Armstrong, by the people she’s tasked with protecting.
“Everything look just as good on the second floor as it did on the first?” asks Nate.
“Yep.” She eyes a storefront, snagging on the wicker baskets and fake plants in the window display. “Could you give me a few extra minutes, though?”
“Make it quick. Val won’t let you hear the end of it. Plus, I have something to show you when you get back.”
Swerving between teenagers carrying shopping bags and fathers pushing strollers, Adya ducks into the shop. Patrons stick their noses into canisters of loose leaf tea and toss assorted containers into their baskets, weighing them on the scale at the checkout counter. Even if brewing tea leaves much for her to desire, the smell brings her a smile. It’s a scent of home for everyone in the shop, but especially her.
“Adya!” The voice practically stumbles out from the back room and slaps her hands down on the counter. The long black hair, the clean apron, the ear-to-ear smile-- it’s a far cry from how she looked when Adya first encountered Shannon. She beckons her over to the counter. “What are you doing here?”
“Short patrol. Making sure everything’s normal after… you know.” She can still see the bruise on Shannon’s arm, but any other suggestion of injury is nowhere to be found. Her charisma covers it up.
“Took us a hot minute to reorganize,” explains Shannon, “but it was a hell of a lot easier considering I only had to take a couple days off. Three different papers asked me for a testimony, but I turned them down. I’m sure that’s something you’re quite used to.”
Adya half-sighs, half-chuckles. “Boy, am I. How’s your son?”
“Good!” She drums her knuckles on the counter. “He’s big on superheroes right now, so I told him I met a real one.” Adya rolls her eyes, but before she can put together a rebuttal, Shannon is rooting around for something under the counter. “Now, I know you’re gonna say that’s not what you are, but I’m serious. The people in charge of looking after a community actually care now. No more cop scandals or hostile home visits or anything. I think that’s pretty heroic.”
“I wish everyone saw it that way,” she says, her internal database rattling off about a dozen articles from police advocates about how the implementation of ACA agents was “a mistake”. Just another group on the list of people who don’t like her, and another reason for their hatred. She’s not looking to please everyone, though.
“Me, too.” Grasping a small basket of canisters and loose tea bags, she carefully steadies herself upright against the counter again. “You saved my life, Adya. The least I can do is try and return the favor.”
Adya peers into the basket and hones in on some of the labels. Each group of tea bags has been carefully tied together with twine and labeled with handwritten notes, presumably by Shannon herself. “There’s herbal, black, oolong, and a few other kinds. I know that drinking it isn’t an option, but there’s a lot of other uses for tea. Plus, it’s just nice to have. Make it if friends come over or if you just like the smell.”
She wonders if Nate and his teammates-- well, her teammates now, too-- like tea. That’s all she really has when it comes to what constitutes as a friend. Still, she smiles. Even if she can’t drink it, the thought of making chai again sends a warmth through her chest.
“Really, it’s fine--”
Shannon practically shoves the fabric-lined basket into Adya’s gut. Her glowing smile almost forms a halo around her head. “You should probably get back to your patrol, Agent.”
Adya nods and firmly grasps Shannon’s hand. “Thank you, Shannon. Take care of your family and your business.”
“You, too.”
She walks through the garage with the taste of the word still on her tongue. Family. Family was never something tossed around lightly by the Prishams. It was steady, grounded, and formed the backbone for everything. And here she was, eight thousand miles from them.
But family is a lot more than who clothes you and feeds you when you’re a child. It’s the people who teach you to walk again-- literally-- when you can’t manage it on your own. It’s a bright man with a youthful face, despite all the skeletons he’s still pulling out of his closet. It’s an odd group of young adults, cobbled together from all walks of life who don’t hesitate to help Adya down her own path. She knows how to carve out a space in whatever world she ends up in; they just need to lend her the tools.
“Just when I was thinking you weren’t taking after Nate, here you go, taking a victory lap around your patrol,” Val says, hanging out of the back of the truck.
“I had some loose ends to tie up,” she says with a smile.
She fakes a gagging noise. “You almost sound like him too.”
“I heard that!” he cries into both their earpieces. “There is nothing wrong with being diligent with your work, Adya. Now, hurry up and get going. I’ve got something you might wanna see.”
Nate’s pacing is much quicker now that he doesn’t get dizzy every time he stands up anymore. The aches and pains still linger, but it’s nothing that a couple painkillers in the morning can’t curb. The mess of files and web searches pulled up on the briefing room screen consolidates itself into a few nice, neat tabs, just in time for the door to swing open.
“Do you drink tea?” Adya asks without as much as a beat.
“Coffee, mostly, but sometimes I do--”
His arms are occupied with a small basket before he even finishes. “A gift from a friend,” his cadet-- agent-- explains. “Pick out whatever you want and I’ll keep the rest. I figured it was only fair that you share the reward from a job we both did.”
“See? Being diligent always comes in handy.” He sets the basket aside and slinks back over to the wall, opening the first tab he sees. A few blurry photos and some security cam footage pops up. “Lucky for you, I’ve gotten really good at that.”
She squints at the figures in the first photo, only recognizing the muscular man on the far left. “Who are these people?”
“Underground cage fighters. People with illegal bionics competing in fighting rings for a cash prize.” Adya nods, seeming to accept that as a fair assessment at face value. “We just got the report back about the suspect you nabbed at the mall. Turns out, he runs one of these rings-- used to, anyway. His records are pretty loss-heavy.”
“That would explain why he lost the fight.”
“But guess who else he’s in leagues with?” Nate swipes away the first photo and hits play on the security cam footage. A young, helmeted figure exchanges a handful of cash in passing to the familiar, bulky figure she met at the mall. “The bounty hunter we ran into. If we can find that bounty hunter, we can shut down possibly a dozen illegal fighting rings. Save a lot of people a lot of headaches-- literally.”
“It seems kind of risky,” she doubts. “I don’t really know if I’m ready to throw myself in with someone who knows how to fight dirty.”
“It’s incredibly risky,” he says, almost with a smile. “But if anyone can get in and shut this thing down, it’s you, Val, Tristan, and Murphy. I’ll start drafting up a game plan for you. If you can convince General Morales, I can convince my new general to give you a full team on comms.”
She turns the notion over and analyzes the evidence some more. Convincing General Morales of anything, especially something that will inevitably turn into a firefight, is easier said than done. Nevertheless, Adya looks at her (former) mentor and nods.
Her wrist comm beeps in the silence. “Prisham, Elora wants to see you upstairs,” Tristan’s voice says. “She needs to run your diagnostics.” She knows better than to keep the Doctor waiting; her feet make for the door. But just as the doorknob starts to turn, Nate calls to her. She eyes him over her shoulder with a curious look.
“You can trust me with this,” he says with as much finality as he can manage. “I promise. I will not fail you. Not now, not ever.”
Her grin grows and she huffs out a chuckle. “You never have.”
The door slams shut with a metallic clang. Nate leans back against the wall, bathing in the glow of the floor-to-ceiling LED screen with a newfound sense of calm washing over him. He peels himself from the side of the room and reaches into the basket, fingers wrapping around a tin of herbal tea bags. He pops the lid and inhales the soft, earthy scent of the leaves. His smile shines like the silver of the chain around his neck, which he pulls out from beneath his shirt and allows to rest right beside his heart.
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