Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 974: Fed Up Kaiden

”Alright,” Kaiden said, when it finally let him talk. ”Rook, can we answer all of it tonight? Annex, contract, case law, the whole stack certified. I want our answer on record before his report is.”

”With pleasure.”

Vespera came forward off the doorway, took the tablet out of Rook’s hands, and worked down the citation stack once, top to bottom. She gave it back squared into Rook’s palm and went inside, and the doorway got out of her way.

”He didn’t close the file, though,” Doug said, to his clipboard, mostly to himself. ”There’s no determination, so there’s nothing for us to appeal. Hobbes read his out loud before he left the lot.”

...

The ops floor at seven that evening still smelled like the day, coffee gone stale on three desks and somebody’s cold dinner abandoned on a fourth.

Kaiden stood at the map table without doing anything useful, and the floor worked quietly around him and left him to it.

He had been reasonable since eight that morning.

He had told the whole compound to be boring, he had stood in his own mess hall while a stranger wrote down the words his family used for each other, and he had swallowed every single thing he wanted to say.

He stopped being reasonable at about ten past seven.

The call went up on the floor speakers, the way the Lazarus call had. Grace picked up on the second ring, with the preliminary summary already in front of her.

”Guild Master Grey.”

”Grace. You know why I’m calling, I assume.”

”I do.”

”Then tell me you can stop it.”

”I can’t.”

”Then who can?”

”Nobody, and I need you to hear that instead of deciding I’m hiding behind it.”

Papers moved on her end.

”The Bureau is a department. So are we. We sit next to them, not above them, and on their own paper they spent today doing their job.”

”The Chairman can’t order them off it. Neither can the President. Anyone who tries is a powerful man telling an investigation to stop, and that headline is worse than anything in their file.”

Kaiden put one hand flat on the map table.

”My guild is a week old.”

”I know.”

”We haven’t run a single gate together. Not one.” His voice was climbing and he let it climb. ”Four hundred people signed with me to fight, and every day since they got here has gone to men with clipboards. Half of them still don’t know their own team’s names.”

”Kaiden-”

”Do you know what we should be doing tonight? Drills. Rotations. Getting them ready for whatever comes next, because something always comes next, and when it does nobody is going to check whether my kitchen had the right laminate.”

”They cited the lemonade,” Nyx said from her desk, without looking up.

”A jug of lemonade, in a federal file, about our house,” Luna added for good measure. Just in case it wasn’t clear.

The floor had gone quiet enough to hear the pump under the stairs.

”So I’m done being dull. I did dull all day and they still wrote my house up like a labor camp.”

Grace was quiet long enough that Luna raised her head from her seat on the stairs.

”I have been telling people to keep their heads down for as long as I’ve had this desk,” she said, ”and they cited your lemonade. You don’t have to sell me on angry.”

Calypso’s tail stopped moving against the floor.

”But angry doesn’t come with a lever, and I’m not handing you a promise tonight that I’d have to break by Friday. I can’t stop it. I can make it expensive.”

”Meaning what.”

”Meaning the Chairman sees the routing of that order before he sleeps, and by tomorrow somebody is asking out loud how a complaint from five poached employees turned into a six-person deployment in a day.”

”They cleaned it last time,” Nyx said. ”Everything I reached had been touched before I got there.”

”Then they clean it again, and cleaning leaves a smell.” Something scraped on Grace’s end, a chair or a drawer. ”It’s what I have.”

”How long?”

”...I don’t know.”

Kaiden looked at his mother across the table. Vespera looked back and said nothing at all.

”Right,” he said.

The line closed, and the whole room loosened at once, shoulders coming down at desks that had been rigid since five.

”WELL.” Calypso’s voice arrived at full volume, the demoness having no other setting for relief. ”That was excellent! The office woman is angry on our side! I like her. Darling, when she wins, we should invite her over for dinner.”

”You’d feed a fucking burglar,” Luna scoffed, but her boots had dropped off the railing.

”I mean, if they earn my respect...”

Alexandra was already going through the room with the teapot, pouring for anyone who hadn’t asked. In her language, that was applause.

Bastet had drifted over and settled against the table’s edge close enough for her arm to rest against Kaiden’s, and she let the contact do the talking.

”Grace’s under pressure herself,” Doug offered. ”It looks terrible on the Awakened Association that another department can do this to a guild.”

”Somehow that doesn’t make me feel better,” Kaiden exhaled. He was extremely, extremely dissatisfied with the government right now.

Ms. Rook’s tablet chimed.

She had it open where she stood, and the room stopped around her, chairs halting mid-roll.

”Notice of supplemental review,” she read. ”Pursuant to preliminary findings, the Bureau is scheduling an expanded joint assessment. Financial audit division. Entity classification task force. Interagency participation pending. They’re coming again tomorrow.”

”...What?” Doug said, already crossing to her.

”They want advance access to member compensation records, the guild’s loan instruments, and-”

Ms. Rook stopped reading.

”A supervised assessment of the unclassified resident.”

The floor knew which resident.

”They-” Luna was off the stairs. ”Grace hasn’t even hung up yet and they’re back at our throat again!”

Alexandra set the teapot down on the nearest desk, very carefully, the way people do when they have just understood that they might drop something.

Grace’s promise was less than a minute old.

Kaiden did not say a word.

That was what turned the room. Aria came off the glass to stand at his shoulder without touching him. Bastet pressed her arm harder into his, ears flat back against her hair. Luna, who had been shouting a second ago, stopped shouting.

”Kai.” Nyx had come around her desk. ”Say something. I would genuinely rather you threw the table.”

He stood there and waited for the anger, honestly expecting it. The day’s heat went out of him instead, from the chest down, and what it left behind was flat and clear. The notice slid straight off it.

”Rook,” he said. ”I’ve got a legal question for you.”

”Guild leader.”

”Is there any statute, regulation, or clause anywhere in that stack that requires me to be physically in this country while they review?”

Ms. Rook opened her mouth to answer fast, then actually thought about it for four full seconds.

”...No.”

Kaiden turned to his mother.

”Can the guild run a few weeks without me in it?”

”Yes,” Vespera said. Her tone was surprisingly warm, her eyes shining unnaturally in approval.

He straightened up off the table with something else running in him now, and Luna felt it land before anybody else did.

He looked his girls over, slowly, one by one.

Then, he grinned.

”Ever wanted to see Japan?”