Peace of Mind

In the minutes we spent waiting for the supervisors to arrive, Dixon continued to glance at me on occasion. I tried to ignore it. I tried to look busy and unconcerned.

Hide the fact that I was sweating bullets.

But his eyes ate through me and I was squirming inside. I just wanted to scream "What do you want?" at him, but I had to stay calm. If I didn't, he'd get more suspicious.

So, I sat quietly, playing dumb games on my phone.

Mr. Hassan found us sitting in silence as he entered observation. I immediately put my phone away. When Dixon stood, I followed his lead and hovered behind him.

"Chris, good afternoon," Mr. Hassan said, shaking Dixon's hand with both of his. He smile was too-white against his dark complexion and he spoke with the hint of an accent.

A man and a woman flanked him as he entered. Both wore neutral expressions; the man was carrying a clipboard and wearing a white lab coat, and the woman was in a sharp-looking suit. Glasses obscured both of their faces.

"Joseph," Dixon said, his smile just as wide, "good to see you again. How's Lucy?"

"Good, good. Still hasn't learned not to jump on the counter, but we're working on it," he replied with a fond shake of his head.

I stared at the two of them, my brow furrowed. Was this guy training his wife not to jump on the counters?

Dixon shrugged. "You tried the squirt bottle? That's how we trained our cats when I was young."

/Oh. Duh./

Mr. Hassan nodded and rubbed his mouth, covered in stubble. "Yes, but the crazy thing just keeps coming back. I think she likes it."

"Well, that's unfortunate!" Dixon said with a laugh.

Pleasantries exchanged, I cleared my throat to be noticed. Mr. Hassan glanced over at me and brushed past Dixon, his arms up.

"Ah yes! Nichole Shain," he greeted me, "I've heard good things about you. Are you looking forward to working on the case?"

"I am, sir."

He took my hand in both of his like he had Dixon and I tried to keep my handshake firm. "Excellent. I didn't expect to meet you until Monday. I like an agent with some initiative."

Heat crept across my cheeks but I maintained eye contact. "Yes, sir. I've been hoping for a chance to work on a case like this."

Mr. Hassan put a hand on my shoulder and spoke with a warm voice. "I can understand that. We appreciate you being so willing to help. Are you ready to start interrogations?"

I nodded. "Whenever you are."

"Good, good. And you're sure your history will make things easier?"

"Yes, sir." I wished he'd take his hand off me.

As if reading my mind, he pulled his hand off my shoulder and clapped them together. "Always worth a shot. Anything we can do to get the information we need without causing undue stress on our important guest."

He made a sweeping gesture toward the other two that had come in with him and said, "These are my close associates, Jamison Blanco and Susan Kinnaps. Jamison is head of research and development. Very knowledgeable."

Jamison inclined his head in greeting. "I look forward to picking your brain later."

"Likewise," I muttered on reflex.

No one offered to shake my hand, so I remained where I stood. The atmosphere was too casual for my comfort and bordered on aloof. I still couldn't help but watch Dixon from the corner of my eyes, but he wasn't paying me any attention anymore.

It didn't make me feel any safer.

"Susan here is my personal aid. She does everything and anything I need to do so there is no need to clone myself." He chuckled and Susan offered a terse smile in reply—she was in the middle of cleaning her glasses. "She'll oversee everything that has to do with the extraterrestrial and leave me to fill out the necessary paperwork."

She replaced her spectacles and glanced at me. Despite her hawk-like glare, her voice was pleasant.

"We're all very excited to have you on the team," she said.

I'd thought the pleasantries over with, so I struggled to keep my smile genuine and my voice as amicable as the others'. I hoped that the conversation would end soon.

"Glad to be here," I replied. At least that wasn't a complete and total lie. "Wish you hadn't had to suffer casualties."

Which they wouldn't have if they had just not fucked with something they shouldn't have in the first place.

Mr. Hassan turned to his side and held a hand up. "Alright, now that everyone is acquainted, I'm afraid we must get back to work. Jamison?"

The lab tech nodded and headed out around the corner. I watched him curiously, prompting an explanation from Mr. Hassan.

"We heard our guest needed to relax some more. He's going to administer more sedatives."

"Oh. I see." It was all I could think to say.

Hassan gave me a chagrined look. "I'm afraid that beyond the interrogations, you won't have much to do. What do you think your partner, Devon, can help with?"

The answer came easy and I smirked. "He's my moral support."

That made Hassan laugh. "Well, that is important!"

Jamison entered the interrogation room then and I watched him give the predator the sedative. He did it directly with a needle into an arm vein, and the results were nearly instant.

"There, that's better. Now he can relax," Hassan said, rubbing his hands together.

He hadn't stopped smiling since he arrived and it was kinda making my skin crawl.

"Alright, I do believe files you asked for are ready and waiting in Chris' office, Miss Shain," Hassan said, his voice upbeat again.

I guessed that was my cue to leave.

"We'll chat again on Monday. There are some things I must attend to so we're ready for the interrogations and you are currently off the clock! No more working for you," he chastised in good nature.

"Oh yeah, I guess I am," I said. "Sorry, I'll get out of your hair."

"It was nice meeting you!" Hassan bade.

I waved over my shoulder as I left. Dixon said his goodbyes as well and was soon trotting along. I managed to make one last glance in the direction of the predator.

Dixon escorted me back up to his office. I could feel him at me and I wondered if he was suspicious. Had he seen me? Caught the tail-end of me leaving, maybe?

But if that was true, he would have outed me the first second he could. Lectured me about breaking the rules . . .

I had to just be overthinking things again.

It was still in the back of my mind, wondering and guessing how much he thought he knew. If, come Monday, I was going to be out of a job or if I was reading too much into everything.

Entirely possible.

"Hassan will likely get everyone a keycard made so you don't have to keep punching in codes," dixon announced, breaking the silence and startling me. "It's something we've been talking about for a while."

"Does seem smart," I remarked.

"Just make sure to stay out of labs. It would inconvenience the scientists."

"Yeah, I think you mentioned that."

He didn't say I wouldn't be able to enter them at all, so it was still on the table if I needed something.

Didn't imagine what, but maybe it would come up.

"You might be effectively on call, free to do whatever you like until Hassan calls on you at any point during the day—or night," he said, unlocking the door to his office.

"You mean for interrogations?" I asked, waiting in the doorway.

Dixon sat down and sighed. "I'm not sure. Hassan works a bit independently from the rest of the squad. I'm sure he'll go over your duties with you come tomorrow."

"Okay."

Well, he was acting normal and telling me all these things. I really was overreacting because of my guilty conscience.

"Just understand this, Shain, while you may have had generally pleasant interaction with this species—"

I raised my eyebrow at him and he cleared his throat. "Ah, I mean . . . directly. I'm sure that whole incident was unpleasant. I merely meant that—"

"Yes, I know what you meant," I huffed. "I haven't had one hunt me or kill my teammates."

"Yes. The one you met was an outlier. The rest of them are bloodthirsty murderers. You would do well to remember that," Dixon intoned.

And there it was. I once again believed he knew what I was up to.

Not only that, but now I wondered how many agents would have a vendetta against that predator. Against Jailbreak, I decided to call him.

The same way I had a vendetta against the xenomorphs.

He leaned over his desk and started rifling through the papers on his desk. When he couldn't find what he was looking for, he opened a drawer on the other side.

"Ah, here," he said, getting up and grabbing a file off his cabinet across the room. "That homework you asked for."

I reached across and took the huge file he handed me, flipping through it.

At first glance, I saw many written notes, witness testimonies, pictures, and initial lab reports. If anything good came out of this, it would be how much I learned about Wolf's kind.

"I'll be sure to read through it all," I vowed, setting the folder in my lap.

A hefty order: it had to weigh a pound or two.

And I only had the rest of the evening.

"Take your time." His words were punctuated by the sound of his drawer closing. "Devon should be here soon to pick his copies up."

It seemed I could put "tree murderer" on the checklist for Dixon and Hassan.

"Hopefully that has everything you wanted in it."

I nodded absently, already flicking through some bullet points. "Of course."

"I'll also expect you to check whatever loyalty you think you have to this thing at the door when you come in tomorrow morning," he quipped.

It was subtle, but his pleasant tone shifted. I refused to look at him.

"I won't let you down," I sufficed to say.

He nodded and said, "Hassan and I have great expectations for you and Devon. We'll see you tomorrow."

I couldn't leave fast enough and I took the bus home, unable to shake the nervous feeling in my gut.

By the time I got home, I was almost a nervous wreck.

It was a surprise that a rut didn't form on my floor with how methodical I was about pacing between the breakfast bar, around my couch, and back again.

There could be no more plotting, no more waiting. I would have to do something soon. Between my half-remembered drunken ramblings and the risks I'd taken to sneak in with the predator, I had raised suspicions.

How high I'd raised them I wasn't sure, but I had to assume the worst.

That I had fucked up.

The trip on the bus had been excruciating. As much as I'd wanted to read the thick-as-shit folder, I had been too busy thinking about all the things I'd done wrong.

After reading the same line eight times without retaining any information, I gave up.

All I could do was replay the day in my mind.

Forcing myself into that room, letting my emotions run wild in front of my bosses.

If I was going to make it, I had to continue on under the assumption that everyone knew that I was a charlatan.

Dixon had sure acted like he'd been putting the puzzle pieces together. Pretending everything was fine was just going to be a recipe for disaster.

So I'd managed to weasel my way into that room. Was it worth it to sate my hunger? If I was found out, I'd lose my position and never have another shot at the xenomorphs or Jailbreak.

My time to destroy those alien parasites was running out, too. Some company had paid off the right people or had enough power to claim a stake to the xenomorphs. They were going to be moved out to California for some reason . . .

To turn their hide into armor and weaponize their acid. Something like that.

I couldn't dally any longer. The time clock was ticking and I didn't know how far it was from winding down completely.

Now or never.

The file I'd been given was on the breakfast bar, taunting me. I'd been home for a total of forty-five minutes, but I'd been too worried to so much as sit down, let alone focus long enough to read anything in it.

If I was found out, everything would be that much harder. I was already looking at doing everything in one day.

/Is that even possible?/ I wondered.

Free Jailbreak. Destroy the xenos and their queen, plus any leftover eggs or chestbursters. I wouldn't be able to do one without doing the other quickly afterward.

I'd have to flash the lab, then run and fetch the prisoner, or the other way around . . .

If I could find a way to clear all the personnel inside before flashing the lab, I could minimize casualties. Fire alarm? Rushing in and chasing them out at gunpoint?

I thought about heading back to headquarters and doing it right there, but no, even if a lot of agents weren't there, the research teams and similar employees would be.

As far as the R&D department was concerned, days off didn't exist. They had too much to learn.

A voice in the back of my head nagged at me. It started as a seed as I ruminated in my apartment, growing and feeding off of my unease and uncertainty.

/You only made up the xenomorph excuse because you were scared,/ it told me.

The thought blossomed into a flowering weed and I pressed my hands to my head, squeezing as if the action would vacate that poisonous implication.

/You didn't want to go with him. You were grasping at straws./

No matter how hard I tried to deny my own subconscious, I couldn't shake it. In the course of several hours, my entire world had been shattered seven years ago.

Aliens—near deaths—loss of my friends. In the end, I was returned to my home and I was feeling safe.

Wolf had shown up in my house, with the rest of my family around. I couldn't deny the fact that going with him terrified me.

Was I really basing my entire life around the possibility of meeting him again if I didn't want to go with him? If it had all been an excuse to make Wolf leave without me, then why would I have gone through the trouble of landing the job?

That couldn't be it.

No, no I couldn't accept the fact that I was scared. I wasn't stalling. I hadn't come upon the right circumstances yet. Simple as that.

I squashed the nagging voice in my head and drowned it with the last of my milk, smothered it with a ham sandwich.

Finally, I decided I needed to distract myself. I figured chipping away at the file would give me something to do.

An hour after I had made myself comfortable and started reading, there came a knock at the door. I stared at it from my small dining table, my brow furrowed in confusion.

No one visited me. I didn't have guests.

Ever.

After some hesitation and deliberation, they pounded on the door again. I sighed and headed over, swinging my door open with more vehemence than was necessary, scanning the front for who would possibly be bothering me on a Sunday evening.

Should have guessed it.

"Devon? What are you doing here?" I demanded.

Though startled, he grinned and lifted up an identical manila folder to the one sitting on my counter.

"Hey, a little birdy told me you already stopped by and picked up your 'homework'? Hope it's okay I dropped in. I tried calling but you never answer your phone," he said.

I glanced toward my living area, but couldn't immediately find the phone. I sighed. That stupid thing was forgotten so much I wasn't sure why I even bothered buying it.

If Hassan was going to be calling on me at all hours, I'd gave to get in the habit.

Oh, wait. I wasn't planning on being here long.

"That's pretty stalkerish. What if I was out?" I asked, leaning against my doorframe.

He raised his eyebrows at me. "You suddenly pick up a life over the past twenty-four hours or something? I've never known you to go out."

Rolling my eyes, I stepped aside so he could enter. I gestured and said, "Whatever, just get in here."

"I bet you already read through that file three times, haven't you?" he teased as he entered, kicking his shoes off at the front door.

"No, actually." I slipped past him and picked up a stray glass from my coffee table and moved it to the kitchen sink.

"Really? That's surprising."

That glass was the only thing I had to clean up, and I was worried about how it looked to him. My apartment was deceptively clean because of the lack of actual belongings and the fact that I used the space to sleep and eat.

All of my time was spent at work, watching Netflix, or keeping the place organized. I barely lived in the place.

Besides, I didn't want to disappear off the face of the planet and leave a giant mess behind. The more mystery, the better.

That was what I told myself, but really I had nothing better to do than clean. Like Devon said, I had no life.

"Make yourself at home," I said with an errant wave.

The glass graduated from sink to dishwasher after a quick rinse and I snatched the folder off the counter and sat down on my single chair, folding one leg over the leg to use as a table.

Devon looked around and I furrowed my brow. "What?"

"You only have one chair?"

"Oh shit." I moved to the dining room table and slapped the folder down on top of it. "Sorry, I don't have guests often. We'll sit here and do our homework together."

Even though he put his copies on the table, he didn't sit and I hesitated as well, wondering what was up.

"Have you eaten yet today?" he asked me.

I shrugged and said, "I ate a sandwich a few hours ago."

Clicking his tongue, he pulled his phone from his pocket. "I'll order a pizza. What kind you like?"

"No Chinese food?" I asked, finally taking a seat. "Didn't you tell me once that Chinese was the only kind of food to eat for a mission?"

He shook his head with a chuckle and joined me in the adjacent chair, texting away on his phone. "No, no. You do Chinese takeout for a STAKEOUT. It rhymes, you see."

"Naturally . . ."

"This isn't a stakeout, it's a study session. Everyone knows you study with pizza, duh," my partner concluded.

Rolling my eyes, I said, "Whatever you say. Want some water while we wait?"

It took him a moment to respond while he finished doing pizza-related stuff on his phone. "Nah, I'll get us some sodas. Now c'mon, what kind of pizza you like?"

"Whatever," I said, leaning back. "Ham, I guess."

"You mean Canadian bacon?"

"Yeah, whatever the fuck you call it. It's ham as far as I'm concerned."

Devon indicated to the phone with an exasperated motion. "It's cooked differently! You can get ham or Canadian bacon. Do you want ham?"

Somehow we managed to craft a pizza we could both enjoy—pepperoni with 'Canadian bacon' and extra cheese—and we popped open our case files to begin our "homework". It would be a hot minute before the food and sodas to arrived.

"Brings back memories, don't it? You and me, sitting at a table, reading over a case file together." Devon shot a smile at me while he leaned back in his chair.

I snorted. "We do this all the time. With every case file. Usually it's at work, though."

"God, you're no fun."

"Have you met me?"

"Fair enough. Where should we start?"

All of my stress from earlier dissipated as Devon and I fell into a more normal routine of theories and discovery.