The Chief didn’t wait for a reply. He turned and strode out of the briefing room, a man with a city to save. The weight of his final order, the quiet intensity of his concern, settled on my shoulders. It was heavier than any gear. His trust felt less like a vote of confidence and more like a lead weight in my gut. He was pointing us at the heart of the storm and telling us to send back a weather report. No pressure.

  We followed him out into the hallway. The other captains had vanished, probably to go huddle somewhere and complain about the Chief listening to a lowly patrol officer. The rookie, Peters, was still standing by the door looking like he’d just witnessed a conversation between gods. He snapped to attention as the Chief emerged.

  “Peters,” the Chief rumbled, not breaking stride. The kid nearly jumped out of his skin. “Go get Officer Stormson’s rifle, Officer Ashwood’s shotgun, and both their go-bags from where they left them. Bring them down to the south gate. Have two cruisers, fueled and running, waiting for them there. They’re on a priority tasking. Move.”

  “Yes, sir!” Peters practically saluted before sprinting off. The kid looked like he’d just been handed a holy quest. Better him than me. I had enough purpose to last a lifetime, and most of it was just about not getting killed in the next five minutes.

  The Chief gave me a final, grim nod, then turned and headed for the stairs. We started to follow, and I almost made it to freedom.

  A reedy voice cut through the air, stopping us cold. “Stormson.”

  And the day just keeps getting better. I stopped and turned slowly, Kira halting beside me, her hand resting near where her shotgun would be if she were wearing it.

  Captain Howard stood a few feet away, his arms crossed, a smug, self-satisfied look on his face. He thought he had me cornered.

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  “I don’t know what kind of bullshit story you just spun for the Chief,” he began, his voice dripping with condescending authority, “But I am still a Captain in this department, and you are still a patrol officer who looks like he just crawled out of a sewer.”

  I kept my face a blank mask, focusing on a crack in the linoleum and tracing its path with my eyes. His voice was a nasal drone, the words themselves less important than the bitter, impotent anger behind them. Disciplinary hearing… disgraceful state of your uniform… Did he really think any of that mattered anymore? I was wearing a roadmap of the day’s horrors. The blood, the dirt, the monster guts… this was the new uniform. He was just a ghost in a clean shirt, yelling at a man who’d already died once today.

  “You will listen when I speak?” His voice was sharper now, laced with indignation. “what did you talk about with the chief?”

  Finally I met his eye. His beady, ugly, black holes of contempt. “That’s between the Chief and I. If he wanted you to know, he wouldn’t have kicked you out of the room.”

  Captain Howard’s face began taking on an ugly shade of red. “ When you get back from whatever little excursion the Chief has you on,” he sneered, “I expect you to report directly to me. You will respect me, is that clear?”

  I finally looked at him. I let my gaze travel up from his pristine, mirror-shined shoes that had never kicked in a door, over the starched uniform that had never been stained with anything worse than a coffee drip. He was a relic. A fossil from a world that had ceased to exist about twelve hours ago. He just didn’t know it yet.

  “I respect officers who’ve earned it, Captain,” I said, my voice flat and cold. “Not… whatever you are.”

  His face went from red to a blotchy, furious purple. His mouth opened and closed a few times, making him look like a fucking goldfish. Sorry that’s disrespectful to goldfish, I am sure even they have more brain cells than this cretin. Before he could find the words for the aneurysm he was clearly having, I turned my back on him.

  “We’re done here,” I said to Kira, and started walking.

  As we headed for the stairs, Kira glanced back over her shoulder and gave him a silent, eloquent middle finger.

  I almost smiled. It was pathetic, really. We had actual monsters to fight, and this guy was worried about a dress code. It was like watching two cockroaches argue about who owned a specific crumb while the whole damn kitchen was on fire.