With an eye on the silver clock that sat on his desk, the head of the regional SuTSU office was reminded about how little he liked to wait. Making others wait, well that was different. To be left waiting, however, and for your own subordinate at that, was something that he found rather unpleasant.

His office was similar to Ormain’s, although it was slightly larger and sat at the corner of the floor. Any space that had a window was valuable, and the head had ensured that his space had maximized his exposure to the grim outdoors on offer. Instead of ornate tapestries, his walls were decorated with an array of certificates, awards, and photographs from his earlier days. Anyone who stepped in here would have the immediate impression that he was successful, and that would mean that the desired effect had been achieved.

His composure cracked as he watched the Captain stride through the door with a carefree swagger. If he had dashed in and profusely apologized, maybe the head would have felt a little better. Being on the receiving end of a groveling apology wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe it was even worth it if he was only left waiting for a few minutes. But this time it seemed as though he had waited for too long and had also ended up with nothing to show for it.

Like all staff at SuTSU, the head had black hair and a coat which was draped over his shoulders. Unlike most of the staff at SuTSU though, he needed to have his hair dyed at regular intervals to push back the signs that his age was catching up to him. As his sunken black eyes watched the Captain flop down on the sofa in the centre of his office, he decided that like usual, he would need to put his foot down.

“You better have a good excuse for this Ormain,” he said as he rose from his desk. Stepping around it, he moved over to the sofa setting before sitting opposite the Captain. The fact that the Captain had skipped any formalities wasn’t lost on him, but he knew that Ormain wasn’t stupid either. Before he could even ask what was going on, the Captain flashed him a smile before sliding a single slip of paper across the coffee table that sat between them.

“This isn’t the report I asked for,” the head growled as he looked over the printout. It was a profile of a woman, a recently abducted calldown. It was a relatively rare occurrence, but chasing them up had always been essentially impossible. The fact that the Captain had handed this to him in combination with his smile had left the head intrigued though. There was only one reason that he would have done this, and like the Captain, the head understood the implications.

“So, where is she?”

“I don’t know,” the Captain smiled as he leaned back. “That’s what we’re going to discuss, Grant.”

Not many people had the nerve to call him by his first name, and almost all of them were either above him in the SuTSU hierarchy or family members. It was bold, but Grant decided to ignore it for now as the Captain had brought him something good. It wasn’t the time.

Ormain chuckled at the lack of response. “I did see her though, today actually.”

Grant sighed. If this woman was anywhere near as smart as her file suggested, she would be long gone by now. He wanted to ask the Captain why he didn’t pull her in the second he had the chance, but understood that he would have done so if it were possible. The woman was a walking promotion, and if you could use her to dig even deeper into how a calldown disappears, the sky was the limit.

“Where?”

“Glass Heart, outside the party that we crashed earlier today.”

“She wasn’t arrested?”

“They were outside,” Ormain sighed. “Three of them, probably just leaving now that I put two and two together. We could have stopped them but I decided that it was more important to get on with the job, not to stop a woman I had a vague recollection of.”

“Oranges?” He asked referring to their armbands.

“Yeah, which is the hard part. I didn’t get a good look, which was probably intentional on their part.” Picking up the printout that his superior had dropped back onto the table, he looked at the picture. “We can find her though. No, I’ll find her.”

Grant had a wry smile on his face as he stood up and walked to a cabinet against the wall, taking a bottle of liquor and a pair of crystal glasses from behind the glass door and bringing them back to the sofa. Sitting down, the sound of liquor on crystal filled the silence as they both thought over the situation.

“You need manpower,” he finally said after the second glass was poured. Setting the bottle down before taking a glass for himself, he took a casual sip. “But you don’t want to advertise internally that you’ve found her, do you?”

“Keeping it under wraps would be the hard part,” Ormain agreed. “If other captains get wind of it, it’ll be a race to find her. She could even be in a different jurisdiction by now and we’d just be giving someone else a head start.”

“And so?” Grant raised an eyebrow as he watched Ormain take a sip of the liquor without a word of thanks. Sometimes he felt as though the Captain had been born for such a role. When to push, when to pull, and when to let go, he always seemed to get it right. If it was anyone other Captain that was acting like this, he would have punished them by now and thrown them out. Ormain was different though. Grant could see the spark in his eyes when something caught his attention, and once the fire in him was lit, it was impossible to put it out. “How are you going to find her then?”

He was sure that the idea was probably going to be overboard, but decided to humor him. He needed people to search, but at the same time he needed to keep the knowledge from spreading too far. They would be in this together, and if Ormain ended up having the woman snatched out from under his nose, he would suffer too. After all, keeping this kind of information off the table so that you could pursue your own interests was asking for trouble with the top brass.

“I’ll take the lieutenant and do it with my own team, I don’t need anyone else.”

“You’ll never find her,” Grant laughed at the idea. Ormain had a team of five, including himself. Even when you added the lieutenant who wasn’t officially part of the squad, combing thousands of towers with six people? Even if they did find themselves in the right spot, the locals probably wouldn’t cooperate with them either.

“You’re thinking about this the wrong way,” Ormain smiled. “We have smaller haystack full of people who would do anything for a few credits or weapons right below our feet. We can advertise it here and let everyone else do the hard part.”

Grant paused as he processed the words for a moment until the realization hit him. He thought that Ormain would come up with something outside the box, but this wasn’t just outside the box. It was a gamble that would either go well, or very, very wrong. He leaned back and sipped the liquor as he thought about the probability for success. The chance was there, but he didn’t know if it was high enough to lose one of the best teams under him for an undetermined amount of time.

“And say you do find her,” Grant mused. “What will you do? Are you going to drag her kicking and screaming all the way back?”

Ormain smiled before he drained the rest of his glass. Placing the crystal on the coffee table, he stood up. “If I find her, I won’t have to drag her anywhere because she will come with us through her own choice.”

“You’re going to charm her into a cell?”

“No, I’m going to offer her a job,” Ormain laughed as he walked to the door. “Think about how we can make this work, and sort out Shalan’s probation because I need her. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Grant sighed as the door closed. He was the superior here, but Ormain made it feel as though it was the other way around. He’d have to ignore it, however, because this wasn’t the time. Ormain was right, this was something that needed their attention and he was going to have to work out the fine details. If the plan did succeed, he could start to think about how to take the limelight away from Ormain as his superior when the time came.

At least things would be getting interesting. He wasn’t pleased that the plan would require Ormain to be out of reach for a while, but that was a sacrifice that he’d need to make. While the Captain had been described as a loose cannon earlier in his career, his ability and newfound maturity had fixed that up when the time called for it. While it was also true that his squad was made up from his old troublemaking friends, getting them mostly into line had turned out to be one of his finer achievements. It would be a shame, after all, to see great talent wasted by a lack of discipline. Ormain’s team was his trump card, and he didn’t want to lose it.

Grant finished his own glass as he ran his eyes over the page that he now held in his hand. They hadn’t even discussed the report concerning the operation earlier in the day, but like the Captain, he didn’t feel like it anymore. There was something big in front of him, and once you had your eyes set on a grand prize, routine operations and paperwork didn’t seem to cut it anymore.

He knew that this plan suited Ormain. It would be dropping him out of sight where nobody could control him, leaving him and his team to do as they pleased. Although it sounded like a terrible idea, it was something that he was just going to have to take responsibility for while crossing his fingers that the group of suits didn’t stir up too much trouble.

He didn’t like it, but he was going to have to cut the leash and see what the Captain brought back for him at the end of it all.