The office was already awake by the time Nicholas arrived.

Monitors glowed across the operations floor. Analysts drifted between desks, mugs of coffee balanced precariously over stacks of reports, while a distant printer whined as it disgorged another thick bundle of paperwork.

Nicholas barely noticed any of it. He crossed the room without slowing, dropped a file onto Oriane's desk, and pulled up a chair beside her.

She looked up from her screens, her gaze sharp and assessing. "...You look terrible."

"I know."

"No," she corrected, studying the dark circles carved deep beneath his eyes. "You look terribly lost."

Sure.

He hadn't slept last night.

And as for his knowledge Avinash hadn't either.

The last seven days had settled into an unsettling routine that looked almost normal from the outside. Avinash went back to university. He attended his lectures. He came home, cooked dinner-sometimes enough for two, without ever asking whether Nicholas would actually be there to eat it-and then he'd disappear straight into his bedroom with a beer. His workstation stayed entirely dark, the laptop barely ever opened anymore. Nicholas didn't even know what he was doing behind those closed doors.

Oriane watched him for another quiet second. "...He still isn't talking?"

Nicholas rubbed at his forehead creases.

"...No."

"You?"

"...Trying."

She sighed softly, a touch of sympathy softening her usual crisp demeanor. "Not very successfully, judging by your face."

...No." Nicholas looked away, cutting off the line of questioning. "Did you look into what I asked for?"

"Yeah," Oriane nodded, pulling up a tab. "Employee records look normal though."

"Get to Payroll."

She stared at him. "...Payroll?"

Nicholas finally met her gaze, his expression deadpan. "Dead people leave paperwork."

Silence stretched between them. Then, Oriane slowly turned back toward her workstation. "...That's either brilliant or severe sleep deprivation."

"We'll know in five minutes."

The office settled into the familiar, rapid rhythm of clicking keys as she pulled up the profile.

William Cornwell Dias. Twenty-two years of service. Promotions. Performance evaluations. Security clearances. Annual leave. Payroll. Insurance.

Nothing.

Oriane clicked into another archive layer. "Everything stops on the day he-" Her voice faltered.

Nicholas leaned in immediately. "What?"

She enlarged the employment summary.

Employment Status: Deceased.

"That's normal," she muttered, quickly clicking through to the financial tab.

Final Salary Processed: 13 June 2019. Benefits: Closed.

"Pension released. Insurance settled," Oriane read aloud, tracking the digital trail.

Nicholas nodded absentmindedly, his analytical mind churning. "So they processed the death. They did."

Oriane leaned back, gesturing to the clean logs. "...Looks immaculate, Nick."

Nicholas didn't answer. He kept reading, his eyes scanning the technical sub-headers. Once. Twice. Then his gaze snagged on a minor line item. "...Wait."

Oriane glanced sideways. "What?"

Nicholas pointed a finger toward an obscure section of the system profile. "Open that."

She frowned. "The IT records?"

"Just open it."

Another window bloomed across the monitor. Employee Credentials.

Neither of them reacted immediately. Then, Oriane slowly sat forward, her eyes widening. "...Nick."

He was already processing the data line by line.

Building Access Badge: Disabled - 13 June 2019. Normal. Email Account: Active. Normal enough; companies forgot to deprovision mailboxes all the time.

Then came the anomaly.

Corporate Credentials: Active.

Nicholas's brow furrowed. "...No."

Oriane clicked again, expanding the account parameters. Password reset history. Authentication policy. Access permissions. Then, a single, damning line near the bottom of the log.

Last Successful Authentication: 15 June 2019 - 09:17.

The room seemed to lose all sound. Nicholas felt his heartbeat slow instead of quicken-a cold, clinical focus taking over.

Two days. Someone had logged into his father's secure corporate account two days after he'd been murdered.

"...Open the authentication log," Nicholas said, his voice dropping an octave.

Oriane clicked. A stark red box flashed onto the screen.

ACCESS DENIED

She frowned, her fingers flying. "Again."

Another routing pathway. DENIED. Another bypass attempt. DENIED. She pulled up the system audit mirror. DENIED.

"The login exists." She highlighted the persistent timestamp. "But whoever authenticated is entirely hidden behind executive-level encryption. It's restricted access."

"So somebody with executive clearance logged in using his terminal."

"Either that..." Oriane opened a secondary metadata panel, her face paling slightly. "...or they logged in as William."

Nicholas stared at the glowing monitor. His father's credentials hadn't been forgotten by a lazy IT department. They had been deliberately preserved. Used. Then scrubbed.

"...Pull the audit history."

Oriane did. The fields came back entirely blank. "The logs are gone."

"Gone?"

"They've been purged from the active directory." She clicked through three separate offline archive mirrors, but each one ended exactly the same way.

Authentication confirmed. User identity unavailable. Log deleted.

Oriane slowly leaned back, the gravity of the situation settling over her. "...That's deliberate."

Nicholas nodded once, his eyes locked on his father's name. "They weren't hiding a murder," he said, his voice dangerously, frighteningly quiet. "They were pretending my father was still alive."

A heavy silence settled over their corner of the room. Phones continued to ring across the distant operations floor. Someone laughed in a nearby breakroom. A printer started whining again. None of the ambient noise reached either of them.

After nearly a minute, Oriane broke the quiet. "...What now?"

Nicholas didn't answer immediately. Instead, he looked back at William's employee profile. Twenty-two years of immaculate service. A perfect record. And one phantom authentication after death.

His father wasn't the only executive who had held that level of system access.

"...Pull every employee who died while working for Riggers who held executive-level clearance."

Oriane turned sharply in her chair. "...Nick?"

"If somebody kept my father's credentials alive..." His eyes never left the monitor. "...I highly doubt he was the only one. I doubt he was special."

She didn't argue. Her fingers immediately began moving across the keyboard, setting up the recursive query. Three filters: Employment status, security clearance, and date of death.

The query had barely begun processing when a soft knock came on the lab door.

Both of them snapped their heads toward the door.

A young analyst stood awkwardly in the entrance, clutching a blue incident folder against his chest. "Sorry to interrupt, Detective."

Nicholas's patience, already frayed by a week of sleepless nights and dead ends, was wearing thin. "What?"

The analyst shifted his weight nervously. "Narcotics needs you downstairs."

Nicholas frowned. "I thought Reeves had primary coverage today."

"He did." The analyst stepped forward and held out the folder. "Possible fentanyl distribution network. Out of the Westbridge University district."

Nicholas let out a sharp, frustrated huff.

"...Go," Oriane said softly.

Nicholas hesitated, looking between her and the loading bar on the monitor. "I can stay. I can tell them-"

"No." She gestured dismissively toward the screen. "I've got this. I'll monitor the query."

"And if you hit another wall?"

"I'll call you the second it populates." She offered him a tired, supportive smile. "You still have an actual day job, Detective."

Nicholas looked once more at the digital timestamp frozen on the screen. 15 June 2019. Somebody had assumed the digital ghost of William Dias forty-eight hours after his body was cold.

He reached out and took the blue incident folder from the analyst. "I'm keeping my phone on."

Oriane was already turning back to the keyboard, her fingers poised over the keys. "I'd be worried if you didn't. Go."

Nicholas turned and left.

+++

The interview room smelled faintly of stale coffee and industrial bleach.

Nicholas slid a thin case file onto the metal table. Across from him sat a twenty-year-old dealer, his wrists cuffed to a heavy steel ring bolted into the center of the tabletop.

He was barely older than Avinash. It was the exact reason Nicholas detested pulling university cases. The kid didn't look dangerous; he just looked exhausted. Hollowed out.

Nicholas flipped the file open. "Three hundred and twelve grams."

No answer.

"Enough fentanyl to kill half the city."

Still nothing. The kid just stared at his own lap.

Nicholas sighed softly, leaning forward. "You know the funny thing?"

Silence.

"You weren't carrying any cash when they picked you up."

The kid finally frowned, looking up. "So?"

"So, dealers carry cash," Nicholas said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. "Couriers don't."

The kid's eyes flickered, a sudden, sharp spike of anxiety visible in his pupils. There it is. Nicholas didn't let his expression change.

"Who gave it to you?"

"I want a lawyer."

"You should," Nicholas agreed with a calm nod. "I'd highly recommend one. But you think you're sitting in this room because of the drugs." He folded his hands on the table. "You're actually here because somebody trusted a college sophomore with enough raw product to spark a gang war. You know what that tells me?"

Nothing.

"It tells me they don't expect you to survive the week. You're a disposable buffer."

The kid swallowed hard, his throat convulsing. Nicholas watched him closely. It was pure, unadulterated terror. Not guilt. Not defiance. Just fear.

The wrong emotion for a hardened supplier, but the perfect one for a puppet.

Nicholas closed the folder with a quiet snap. "I'm not asking you for names. I'm asking who you're afraid of."

Five minutes later, the cuffs came off. Nicholas didn't unchain him because he believed the kid's innocence; he did it because he believed the fear was real enough to keep him running straight into hiding.

Outside in the corridor, Lovi, Reeves's eager young intern, looked up from his clipboard. "Nothing?"

Nicholas shrugged, passing him by. "He's too low on the food chain. He doesn't know anything useful."

Lovi frowned, hurrying to keep pace. "But you let him walk."

"I let him breathe," Nicholas corrected quietly, looking toward the heavy doors of the evidence locker. "The people above him won't."

Nicholas turned, fully intending to head straight back to his desk, check his phone, and see if Oriane had cracked the Riggerz archive yet. He wanted nothing more than to unravel his father's ghost or go back to the stifling, complicated silence of his apartment to check on the Raccoon.

The precinct, however, had other plans.

Every time he tried to make a break for the exit, another fire demanded his attention. He was pulled into a briefing on a warehouse raid. He had to sign off on three separate asset seizure reports. Then came two emergency search warrants that required his specific authorization, followed by a frustrating, twenty-minute argument with Property Control over missing evidence bags from a case that wasn't even his.

By the time he finally managed to extricate himself from headquarters and walk out into the crisp air, the afternoon had already begun bleeding into a dull, bruised evening. The precinct doors slid shut behind him, sealing away the harsh fluorescent lights and the relentless, ringing phones.

Nicholas unlocked his sedan and climbed inside, the engine starting with a familiar, low hum.

He drove.

Traffic thinned as he left the business district behind, giving way to tree-lined streets and quieter neighborhoods. The road curved gently along the edge of the lake, its surface reflecting long, fractured streaks of amber from the setting sun. Beyond the water, rising above the rooftops, the familiar red-brick buildings of Westbridge University caught the last light of the evening.

Nicholas's eyes drifted toward the campus.

Wonder if he's already gone home.

The thought arrived so naturally he almost missed the weight of it.

Or maybe he had evening lectures.

Did he even have lectures today?

Nicholas frowned slightly. He had absolutely no idea. For someone who had been sharing an apartment with Avinash for nearly two months, he knew embarrassingly little about the kid's actual routine. What time he left. When his classes finished. Whether he skipped lectures. Whether he actually ate lunch on campus or just forgot entirely. Whether Wednesdays looked any different from Mondays.

Was that normal? He honestly couldn't tell.

Before Avinash, the longest he'd consistently shared a living space with another person had been the Agency's training barracks. That hardly counted. Thirty recruits living shoulder-to-shoulder wasn't companionship; it was a test of survival with bunk beds.

Before that, he'd lived with his parents.

After that, he'd been completely alone.

For years.

He wasn't entirely sure what roommates were supposed to know about each other. Or whether they were supposed to know anything at all.

His fingers tapped an absent, restless rhythm against the steering wheel. The traffic light shifted to green, and he kept driving.

It wasn't until he shifted the car into park that he finally looked up.

Westbridge University stood directly across the road. Students poured through the front gates in loose, laughing groups, backpacks slung over their shoulders, their conversations spilling into the cool evening air.

Nicholas blinked. "...Huh."

He hadn't consciously meant to come here. Apparently, his subconscious had other ideas.

Letting out a quiet breath through his nose, he reached into his jacket pocket and unlocked his phone. He scrolled down.

Avinash.

The newest contact in his phone. He pressed call.

A ringtone echoed somewhere outside the car. Nicholas looked up through the windshield.

About thirty feet away, Avinash froze mid-conversation with his friends, patting his jacket pocket before pulling out his phone. He looked around the crowded sidewalk, visibly confused, until his eyes finally tracked across the asphalt and found the dark sedan parked at the curb.

Avi narrowed his eyes, squinting into the shadow of the driver's seat. He lifted his left hand in a small, hesitant wave.

"...Nicholas?" Avi's voice came through the receiver.

Nicholas answered with a brief, sharp nod of his head. "Yeah."

"...Hold on," Avi murmured into the phone.

Behind Avi, Kai groaned dramatically, throwing his head back. "Oh, come on, Avi. You've been ditching us all week."

"It's literally one hour," Maya added, her tone exasperated. "You don't even have to play. Just come sit with us."

"I'm heading home."

"You always say that," Kai grumbled. "A little socializing won't kill you."

A heavy pause hung over the line.

Then, Maya let out a sigh of pure resignation-the kind that only came from repeating the exact same argument one too many times.

"...Fine. Tomorrow?"

Another beat of silence from Avi.

"...We'll see."

The line went dead as Avi cut the call. He slipped the phone back into his pocket, exchanged a few final words with Maya and Kai, and stepped off the curb to cross the street toward the sedan. Behind him, Kai watched him leave with both hands shoved deep into his pockets, looking thoroughly defeated. Maya smacked Kai lightly on the arm, shaking her head as she watched Avi walk away.

Avi reached the passenger side of Nicholas's sedan, walked around the hood, and stopped right beside the open driver's window.

"...Stalking me now?"

His tone was dry. Automatic. Familiar.

For the first time in a whole, suffocating week, he actually sounded like himself. Nicholas found himself falling into the rhythm just as automatically.

"You wish." He paused, clearing his throat. "I was working a case nearby."

Avinash glanced around at the looming campus gates, a skeptical brow arching. "...Sure you were."

Nicholas didn't bother defending the lie. Because somewhere between the precinct and the university, it had stopped being one.

+++

The drive back settled into an easy silence.

It wasn't awkward anymore. Quiet, sure. But not necessarily awkward. Nicholas kept his eyes on the road, both hands resting loose on the steering wheel, while Avinash leaned against the passenger door, absently watching the crowds of people rushing home.

Neither of them spoke for nearly ten minutes. Then, Nicholas began to slow.

The sedan's indicator clicked rhythmically before he pulled into a narrow parking space directly outside a small, unassuming storefront squeezed tightly between a laundromat and a florist.

Avinash looked up, blinking against the storefront's warm light. "...What are we doing?"

Nicholas unbuckled his seatbelt. "Five minutes."

He climbed out and disappeared inside the shop before Avinash could ask anything else. From the passenger seat, Avi watched him through the glass. The interior was lined with dense, floor-to-ceiling shelves. Movies. Rows upon rows of physical plastic cases.

Avi stared. "...Seriously?"

Exactly five minutes later, Nicholas emerged carrying a small, plain brown paper bag. He slid back into the driver's seat. Avinash immediately reached over and snatched the bag straight out of his hand.

"Hey," Nicholas protested.

"You said five minutes."

"I was five minutes."

"You were six."

Nicholas snorted quietly, shifting the car into gear. "Close enough."

Avinash ignored him, already digging through the paper bag. "...You've gotta be kidding me."

He pulled out a DVD case. Actually, three of them. He turned the top one over in his hands, studying the slightly faded cover art, then shifted to the next, and the next. "...People still buy these?"

Nicholas started the engine, the car humming to life. "Some of us remember life before streaming platforms."

"You voluntarily watch movies in four-hundred-and-eighty pixels?"

"They're restored."

"They're ancient."

"They're classics."

"They're plastic."

Nicholas glanced sideways.

"You sound twelve."

"You sound seventy."

"I'm twenty-four."

"Like I said. Fossilized."

Nicholas reached over and flicked the edge of the DVD case.

"Watch your mouth."

Avinash smirked.

"No but seriously, why are you buying them?"

Nicholas was quiet for a second.

"...Dad used to."

The words slipped out before his internal filter could intercept them.

"...Huh."

Avinash looked down at the cases resting in his lap. He traced his thumb over the worn edge of the plastic jacket before placing the movies carefully back into the paper bag, setting it gently on his knees instead of tossing it onto the dashboard.

Nicholas watched him for a moment as he settled in and pressed down on the gas and kept driving them home.

+++

By the time they reached the apartment, the sky had darkened completely, turning the windows into vast plates of black glass.

The familiar routine resumed almost automatically. Shoes off by the mat. Keys dropped with a familiar metallic clatter into the ceramic bowl by the door. Lights flicked on, casting a warm, amber glow across the living room.

Avinash wandered straight into the kitchen, drawn by habit. The heavy magnetic seal of the refrigerator gave way, followed immediately by the sharp hiss of a bottle cap being pried off.

"One for me too," Nicholas called over his shoulder.

The refrigerator door paused halfway shut. Nicholas heard the distinct clink of glass and the crack of a second bottle cap being popped off.

He walked over to the old TV. Dropping into a crouch in front of the console, Nicholas pressed it on. Another button press and the mechanical tray slid outward with a low, whirring whine. He pulled the glossy disc from its plastic case, holding it carefully by the edges so as to not smudge the data side, and laid it perfectly into the circular groove of the tray before pushing the button to slide it back in.

A moment later, Avi padded back into the living room on silent bare feet. He held two sweating bottles of beer by their necks, extending one toward Nicholas.

Nicholas straightened up, his joints popping slightly as he stood to full height.

"...Wanna join? I'm gonna watch The Bourne Identity."

Silence. It stretched long enough that Nicholas almost regretted asking, the heavy quiet of the past week threatening to creep back into the room. The carbonated foam in Avi's beer sizzled and hissed softly against the glass in his hand. He slowly slipped one off to the younger man's hands.

Avi's eyes wandered towards his bedroom. Then back toward Nicholas. He let out a slow, deflating sigh. Then, a faint shrug.

"...If you insist."

Nicholas watched as he slowly trudged over to the couch and dropped heavily onto the old cushion. A small smile crept up his face despite himself.

He grabbed the television remote from the coffee table, hitting the input button to switch the screen over to the DVD channel. The disc spun up inside the machine, a soft hum vibrating through the console as the laser read the menu.

Nicholas settled onto the cushions beside him, leaving what he considered a perfectly reasonable, non-threatening amount of space between them.

"I wasn't insisting."

"No?" Avi murmured dismissively as he took a sip from his beer.

"No."

"...Sounded like it."

Nicholas rolled his eyes, pointing the remote at the screen to skip past the unskippable anti-piracy warnings. Avinash squinted at the flickering monitor.

"...Please tell me this isn't black and white."

Nicholas didn't even look up as he cracked open his beer. "It redefined modern action thrillers."

"...That's not a no."

"It builds character."

"I don't want character," Avi muttered, taking a slow sip from his bottle.

"You need character."

"I need better roommates."

"Too late," Nicholas countered smoothly.

The loud, explosive opening studio logo filled the television screen, washing the dim living room in blue and white light, finally drowning out the silence.

The explosive action on screen filled the dim room, accompanied by a frantic orchestral score and the rapid-fire thud of a high-stakes pursuit.

Neither of them spoke much after that. Every now and then, Avi would offer a dry, alcohol-softened observation.

"That man has been knocked unconscious three separate times in forty minutes."

"He's highly resilient," Nicholas murmured.

"...That's not how concussions work."

Or Nicholas would quietly add a bit of unnecessary context.

"He's in Zurich right now."

"I didn't ask."

"I know."

Slowly, the empty beer bottles began to accumulate on the coffee table. The apartment settled into an easy, comforting quiet-one that, for the first time in an entire week, didn't feel like a physical weight pressing down on them.

About halfway through the film, Nicholas noticed the running commentary beside him had abruptly stopped. An entire high-speed car chase passed through the streets of Paris without a single sarcastic remark from the other end of the cushions.

Nicholas glanced sideways. Avinash's head had tipped back against the top of the couch, his long eyelashes casting shadows against his cheekbones. His eyes were closed, his breathing deep and even. One hand remained loosely wrapped around the neck of an almost-empty beer bottle resting precariously on his thigh.

Reaching over with practiced, steady fingers, Nicholas carefully slipped the glass bottle out of Avi's grip before it could tip over. Avinash didn't even stir.

Up close, without the sharp defenses or the forced smiles, the kid looked completely run ragged. Just plain exhausted. Nicholas let out a quiet sigh, setting the bottle safely on the table, and turned his attention back to the screen.

Five minutes later, something warm bumped lightly against his arm.

Nicholas froze, his entire frame locking up.

Slowly, almost cautiously, he lowered his eyes.

Avinash had shifted in his sleep, drifting toward the warmth. Without realizing it, he had leaned sideways until the full weight of his head rested securely against Nicholas's shoulder.