The taxi dropped Gwen off at Shadow Guard headquarters.
She paid the driver without really looking at him, her mind still processing the morning's revelations while her body went through the familiar motions of entering the building that had been her professional home for the better part of a decade.
The security checkpoint was routine—badge scan, brief nod to the guard who'd been working the morning shift for three years, elevator ride to the third floor where the operational divisions maintained their offices and briefing rooms.
Colleagues passed her in the hallways with the casual acknowledgment that came from years of working together in an environment where people regularly disappeared for weeks at a time on classified assignments.
"Morning, Patricia," called Detective Martinez from the Supernatural Crimes Division, juggling a stack of case files and what looked like his fourth cup of coffee. "How's the inspection going?"
"Still ongoing," she replied, which was technically true even if the inspection had nothing to do with her current preoccupations.
Her office was small and modest—a single window overlooking the parking garage, a desk that had seen better decades, two chairs that squeaked when anyone shifted their weight, and filing cabinets that contained enough classified information to probably get her court-martialed if the wrong people decided to conduct a thorough review of her activities.
She settled into her chair and pulled up the database interface, scrolling through recent vampire attack reports.
Residential area incidents were up twelve percent from the previous month. Commercial district attacks had remained stable.
The usual concentration of activity in the older parts of the city where the sewer systems and abandoned buildings provided convenient hiding places for supernatural predators.
Nothing unusual. Nothing that suggested coordinated vampire activity or the kind of systematic hunting that marked the presence of powerful Originals in the area.
But her mind kept drifting away from the data scrolling across her screen.
Kaine.
'He doesn't trust anyone. Not even me. A year ago, I would have been offended by that assumption. Now... now I'm not sure I can blame him.'
She reached for her phone to order a soft drink from the building's commissary, then remembered that her phone was currently a collection of broken glass and twisted metal in her apartment's trash bin. The desk phone would have to suffice.
While she waited for the delivery, her gaze drifted to Colonel Steele's office across the hallway.
The blinds were drawn, but she could see the glow of fluorescent lighting through the gaps, suggesting he was at his desk dealing with whatever administrative nightmares occupied someone at his level of the organizational hierarchy.
Steele had been the one to approve the mission parameters that had gone so catastrophically wrong for some years now.
The same mission that had supposedly killed Kaine.
'Sending recruits on solo missions. Approving operations with insufficient backup. Intelligence reports that turn out to be incomplete or deliberately misleading. How many of these problems are incompetence, and how many are something worse?'
The soft drink arrived—cola in a plastic bottle that probably contained enough caffeine to keep her alert through whatever remained of the afternoon.
She twisted off the cap and took a sip, the familiar burn of carbonation doing nothing to clear her thoughts.
Movement in the hallway caught her attention. Through her office window, she could see someone walking past with the kind of purposeful stride that suggested someone heading to a specific destination rather than wandering aimlessly through the building.
Jemima Carson. Field technology specialist, responsible for remote analysis and tactical support during supernatural operations.
The only person who had walked away from the mission that had supposedly killed Kaine Cross.
'She said she couldn't remember what happened. Complete memory loss from the time the team entered the building until she woke up in a Shadow Guard medical facility twelve hours later. Convenient amnesia that perfectly explains why she can't provide any useful information about how everything went wrong.'
Gwen watched through the window as Jemima disappeared around the corner.
'What if they made her say that? What if she remembers exactly what happened, but someone with sufficient authority convinced her that forgetting was the safer option?'
The urge to follow Jemima, to corner her somewhere private and demand honest answers about what had really happened during that mission, was almost overwhelming.
But confronting a potential witness without proper preparation was the kind of mistake that could backfire spectacularly if the wrong people found out about it.
Better to take things slowly.
Gather more information before making any moves that might alert whoever was responsible for the problems that seemed to be plaguing Shadow Guard operations.
The afternoon passed with the kind of sluggish momentum that made every minute feel like an hour.
Gwen found herself staring at reports without really reading them, checking her watch every few minutes, and generally feeling like someone who would rather be anywhere else doing anything else.
By two o'clock, she'd had enough.
She logged off her computer, locked her filing cabinets, and grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair. The hallway was mostly empty—most of her colleagues were either out on assignments or buried in their own administrative responsibilities.
"Leaving early today, Patricia?" asked Detective Martinez, emerging from his office with the same stack of files he'd been carrying that morning.
"Not feeling well," she said, which was true enough if feeling frustrated and restless counted as a medical condition. "Going home to rest."
"Hope you feel better. See you tomorrow."
She made her way through the building's exit procedures, nodding to the same security guard who'd been working the desk when she'd arrived.
The afternoon sunlight felt harsh after hours of fluorescent lighting, and the city noise seemed louder than usual as she walked toward the nearest electronics store.
The new phone was a simple model—nothing fancy, just reliable communication and basic internet access. She had it activated and programmed with her essential contacts within twenty minutes, then caught a taxi back to her apartment building.
She heated up leftover food and settled onto her couch with the gaming console she'd purchased six months ago during a particularly stressful period when normal stress relief methods hadn't been sufficient.
She turned it on and started to play Undead City.
The game was a supernatural combat simulator that let players fight through various scenarios involving vampire attacks, demon incursions, and other supernatural threats.
It had been designed by someone who clearly understood the realities of supernatural warfare—the movements were accurate, the weapons behaved properly, and the enemy AI was sophisticated enough to provide genuine challenge.
Usually, she could lose herself in the game for hours, working through combat scenarios and tactical problems with the kind of focused attention that made everything else fade into background noise.
But today, even the ritual of virtual vampire hunting couldn't hold her attention.
Her mind kept drifting back to Kaine, to the questions that had been eating at her since she'd discovered he was still alive, to the growing suspicion that Shadow Guard's problems went deeper than simple operational difficulties.
After some hours of distracted gameplay, she turned off the console and stared at her new phone.
It was seven o'clock in the evening. Late enough that most people would be finished with their workday, early enough that calling someone wouldn't seem like an emergency.
She'd stared at Kaine's business card long enough to memorize every detail, including his phone number.
Her fingers moved across the keypad with the muscle memory of someone who'd dialed the same sequence dozens of times in her mind.
The phone rang twice before he answered.
"Kaine Cross."
His voice was different—strained, with the kind of controlled tension that suggested someone dealing with immediate physical danger.
Background noise filtered through the connection: wind, distant sounds that might have been combat, the electronic hum of communications equipment.
"It's Patricia," she said, not bothering with formal introductions.
"I recognize your voice. What do you need?"
Straight to business. No small talk, no casual conversation about how their respective days had progressed. Whatever he was dealing with required his full attention.
"You sound like you're in the middle of something."
"Work," he said, and she could hear the sound of movement, possibly him changing position to get a better view of whatever situation he was monitoring. "The kind that requires focus."
"Need some help? I'm bored down here."
"You shouldn't bother. I've got four hands on this, including Marcus."
She could hear the dismissal in his voice, the automatic assumption her assistance would be more hindrance than help.
But there was something else, too—a subtle undertone that suggested the situation might be more complicated than he was letting on.
"I'm not exactly civilian assistance," she said. "Drop me the location."
Silence on the other end of the line, broken only by the sound of wind and what might have been distant cries.
She could picture him weighing the options, calculating risks and benefits with the kind of tactical thinking that had kept him alive through God knows how many years of operating without official backup.
He knew she was good in combat. They'd worked together enough times that he understood her capabilities, her tactical instincts, her ability to handle herself in situations that would overwhelm most people.
And whatever he was dealing with tonight, it was clearly significant enough to require careful consideration of all available resources.
Through the enhanced vision that came with his system, Kaine could see the heat signatures of multiple vampires moving through the abandoned warehouse complex below his position.
More than he'd initially estimated, moving with the kind of coordinated behavior that suggested either experienced predators or someone with the authority to command their movements.
Too many for two people to handle safely, even with Marcus's supernatural abilities and his own enhanced capabilities.
"Ahhh... Fuck it."