"Anything else, sir?" Ana asked through the blasted beepless contraption on my floating desk. I leaned over to push the button but it just emitted an obnoxious tone. "It's not an intercom, sir."

"Nothing else...wait...no, get me out of the meeting with that leech tomorrow. I've got a country to protect, and I'm not wasting another minute of it listening to people begging for Senator Irenside's table scraps."

"Very good, sir. That leech would be…?"

"The bastard from intelligence. You know the one."

"Very good, sir. Good night."

I pressed the button to hang up, the one I was most familiar with. And to my continued disappointment, it still failed to make any kind of noise, whatsoever. Frustrating, that we could huck grenades that shot lightning, but couldn't build a simple phone that you could slam into its cradle like in the old days. I considered putting the R&D boys on it for a minute.

Instead I muttered cantankerously under my breath for a spell at the nonsense of it all, before opening up a report on my desk.

More information about our friend Liev. The more I thought about it, the worse this guy seemed. We'd been pursuing him for weeks now, and he was an embarrassment to the entire organization. While at first we'd operated with a somewhat restrained response because his events never seemed to cause too much collateral or public damage -- beyond those he was targeting, obviously -- it was becoming apparent that the morale devastation was worse than the physical damages.

And of course, we knew that already. A lot of the Exhumans we'd been dealing with recently were no doubt inspired by his perseverance as a symbol of failing XPCA control. A failure I denied, and would battle until my last breath, if it came to that. Any Exhuman who thought the agency was on its back foot was welcome to tell that to my face, and we'd see just how long they lived.

But I was changing my opinion on them, too. They were a symptom of Exhuman Liev's sickness. He needed to be excised, and then the others would quiet back down. It wasn't an ideal arrangement, but we could spend the rest of our time and especially our dwindling arms just putting out fires without ever once arresting the main cause. That was a sucker's game, and not one I intended to play.

Which is why I'd reversed my previous order, and declared Liev, and not Pulverizer as the nation's foremost threat. Our attention needed to be focused his way, and the others could come after.

Besides, we'd just tangled with Pulverizer, and the damages had been staggering. Even at a quarter of their strength, we were getting an earful from the Pentagon about just how many VTOLs 'we'd allowed' one woman to drop. They didn't like it when I told them she wasn't even Exhuman and so this buck-passing game of theirs flew as well as their VTOLs, but I doubt I made any friends. Not that I wanted any. Keeping America safe was a surprisingly unpopular job.

Still, one I'd managed for the day. I undid my cufflinks and left them in my desk, doffed my cap and waited for the elevator. When it arrived I had a moment with the glossy black reflection that was so prevalent here, and furrowed my brow.

I turned around and saw nothing. Trick of the light, I supposed. The door was open and I was going home. Thursday used to be pot pie night, but ever since the missus became concerned with my sodium levels, it was more like pot pile. I told the woman, I'd rather taste things and die, but apparently that wasn't a choice of mine to make.

One of the most powerful men in the free world, couldn't even pick his own dinner.

I jumped into the back of the car and the driver waited another few moments with an odd look on his face before closing it up behind me. Felt like the car was riding lower than usual, maybe the missus was onto something.

He slid into the driver's seat and met my gaze through the mirror. "Where to, sir?"

"Home. Where else?"

"With all the others?"

I looked around the empty cabin with me. Some kind of fat joke? If so, the man needed a humor adjustment. "Just take me home, Alan."

"Yessir." His eyes flickered troubled in the mirror but he knew better than to play dumb with me. The wheels squeaked as he turned the car on the slick cement of the vehicle bay, pointing us towards the sliver of dusk through the distant tunnel.

We got more than halfway back before my mobile rang, on important business. I closed the partition and picked up and listened.

"Yes. Of course I know about Karu's escape. Don't you read reports?" I asked.

The flustered major insisted that there had been no report, but that was impossible because I knew about it and I remembered...I was pretty certain a report about it, somewhere. It would have been pretty big news. But also private.

"There was some manner of trap as I recall," I mused. "An explosion in the Extracts Labs examining her equipment. Created a security breach? No. No, go read the report yourself. What do you mean you can't find it? Use your eyes, man. If you can't find it, you must not be cleared for it. I don't care if you're in charge of Extracts Lab Security or the President's bathroom, I saw that report so it exists."

I frowned as I listened to him scrambling an explanation I really didn't have the patience for. This wasn't nearly as complicated as he was making it sound. If there were a breach in the most secure parts of the Raven's Nest, the whole building would have gone up in lockdown, and I certainly wouldn't be casually driving home tonight, or even tomorrow, likely.

I suddenly had an idea.

"Look, just...tonight, figure out who knows anything about this and we'll have a meeting with all of them in one place tomorrow. We can sort everything out then. I'm telling you, I read a report on this already, maybe you're just the last one to find out. What?...Well yes it was a report, I certainly wasn't there myself. Good night."

I hung up. Man seemed confused beyond any reasonable quantity. I made a note to pull his file for mental instability. People unravelling at the slightest hint of stress weren't the kind I wanted rising through my XPCA.

Finally we were...we? I was home. Well, me and the driver anyway, though he was still a long way from home. My home was far from a palace, but still outside his pay grade.

I gave him a brief wave as he let us out and he watched us go with much less concern than when he'd let us in. Seemed like he'd come to terms with whatever situation he'd imagined before. Fine man; flexible, but vigilant. The kind of personality I thought we'd be seeing a lot more of in the XPCA soon.

"I'm home," I called. We had a four-bedroom house, tiny, I heard, by the standards of many of the previous directors, but I both hadn't been director long, nor had the inclination to trap myself with gilded bullshit as many others did. Enough room to put up my feet and have the kids over from time to time was good enough for me.

"Dinner's almost ready," I heard Frances call from the kitchen. Lovely, abiding woman, even after nearly thirty years. I sought her out with the intentions of kissing out her daylights and generally being a menace in the kitchen.

When I showed up, she turned and smiled to see me, apron on, pot pie on the counter, steaming away, just chopping up some salads.

"Welcome ho--" her smile froze. "Who's this?" she asked, her face full of concern.

I turned to look behind me, but saw nobody. She stood, wavering and blinking and then simply fainted on the spot.

Which...felt like it should have been a big deal. She'd never fainted before. But somehow I felt assured that this was fine, so I simply moved her out of the kitchen and finished prepping the salads myself, making sure to wash my hands first so I didn't catch an earful.

My hands were more suited to a pistol than a cleaver, and even I recognized the salad as ungainly-cut, pieces of all differing shapes and sizes, and I had to wonder just how Frances could do it and seemingly anything else in the kitchen with such speed and precision. Years of practice, I knew, same as keeping a gun in my hands. But still, I was a lucky man.

She came to after only a minute, and seemed inclined to ignore her fainting spell and the strange outburst which preceded it as I was. Though when I went to the fridge for a couple fresh tomatoes, I did feel like I saw the reflections of some figures in the brushed stainless steel door. Again, when I turned, they were gone. And again, after a moment, I felt my worries slip away. I had remembered the tomatoes. Everything was alright.

Frances got to work cooking even more, and I watched her go as a proud man. It was like having the kids back in the house again, as she broke out the largest pots and pans, dredging up piles of food from the freezers and pantry. I sat down nearby and she began to talk about her day and ask me about mine. When she had a break, she washed out the pot pie pan and put it in the dishwasher without skipping a step.

Dinner was simple mac & cheese with our salads, and nothing of note had happened at work today, so we turned on the holo and watched the news like old fogeys. It was a bit depressing, the news on every channel just playing the incident in Louisiana.

"So what happened there?" she asked.

"Pulverizer and Justice ran into each other," I said, putting down my spoon. "Media's up in arms that they're conspiring, but that's not how it looked to me. As soon as the navy began shooting, Justice was nowhere to be seen, leaving Pulverizer high and dry. That's not what working together looks like."

"You're not afraid they were scheming?"

"I'm always afraid every Exhuman's scheming," I laughed. "But if all it takes is chasing 'em around for a minute for their schemes to fall apart, standard protocols are enough."

We finished up and prepared for bed, moving the couches into the bedroom with some effort and preparing to spend the night in one of the guest bedrooms, a twin bed formerly of our eldest, long since through college and married now.

"Been a while since we slept in such a small bed," Frances said, edging over to give me space. "Are you going to be alright?"

I wrapped my arms around her, nuzzling the back of her head and finding her familiar scent calming and exciting at once. It had been a while.

"I guess we'll just have to make do," I said, gruff as I could manage. "Having you in my arms all night won't be the worst thing in the world."

She sighed contentedly and turned out the light, pressing her back against my chest with a comfortable warmth. "I'm a very lucky woman," she said.

"And I'm a very lucky man."