I knew Donal ever since we were kids.

Saving kittens, stealing candies, hiding in cardboard, fighting with other kids, acting our favorite books in fake voices and making up stories and theories about movies and about the world... I have countless memories with him.

He probably is the only one person on the continent who has known me before the war.

I hadn't really warned him when I had signed and left for the islands... Something I had felt guilty for years. Something I still feel guilty for.

Especially when I think about the genuine happiness I had seen on his face when he'd welcomed me back at the airport. I had expected him to hold a grudge.

He hadn't.

He had made room for me on his sofa despite me trying hard to leave and get a hotel room.

He had held onto me when I had felt lost and useless and he was actually the very reason I had applied as an officer of the law at all.

It had been Donal's dream to become one. When I had walked back in his life after the war, he'd been in the middle of his exams and had, innocently, asked me to help him study.

For hours. In a recorded simulator.

It hadn't been innocent at all.

At the time, I didn't have any plan for my future and I hadn't believed I could do much.

I wasn't a good student, I hadn't believed I could be of any help to Donal, but I had really wanted to do my best for him so I had somehow found a way to apply everything I had learnt in the army to get him out of the simulated situations imposed to him.

And we'd both realized I was quite good at it, if maybe a bit too radical.

Next thing I knew, Donal had pulled my name inside the candidate box, faking my signature and posting the simulator's recorded session as a kind of CV.

He'd been proud to announce it to me a few days later, holding my appliance letter.

I had felt both cheated on and grateful at the same time.

Donal had found a plan for me and one that actually wasn't bad at all.

That always reminds me why he has been my best friend all these years. Why I would most likely do anything for him, wether he asked or not.

But he's still a friend I dearly like to tease.

« That could be easier you know." I reply to his comment about using telepathy. " Think about it : you think about typing the words and they appear right there. We could fill the reports as we spoke or drove around. No, wait, even better : no more report writing, they could directly watch through our eyes or review through our memories if needed. And no more sleepless night sitting in front of those screens. »

I'm about to add that, at their rate, we wouldn't need interviews anymore because all we'd have to do would be to plug inside people's head to see. End of boundaries, end of privacy, end of fantasies, thus end of freedom.

I'm pretty sure there would be people to advocate for such a thing happening, arguing it would be for the greater good while completely missing, or dismissing, the fact it would screw humanity and turn us into a huge connected mass of controlled slaves but whatever.

Donal sighs at me and puts a coffee on my desk, keeping one cup in his hand. He shrugs my joke off. I had practically forced him to learn to write and read with me so we could exchange secret messages as kids, so of course he knows I definitely ain't into technologies at all.

I don't use their typing device unless I absolutely have to, meaning all of my observations, my thoughts and reflexions, even my last minute messages left on the fridge, my congratulation cards for joyful events and my support notes in hardships, all of them are handwritten. And colorful sometimes. The guilty sheets are right beneath my fingers and palm at the moment, covered in my small black writings of what happened yesterday and why.

I love the feel of pen on paper even though I know it's been decades since anyone used real pen and paper for anything. Especially for police reports.

The sleepless nights I talk about are mostly on me for writting the reports by hand while Donal drives, and then typing it when back at the desk for special cases.

But in my defense, I love being at my desk at the station at night. The soft noises, the dim lights, the leather of my chair cracking under my weight, my huge desk that I can cover up with sheets, photos and schemes about my cases so I can think on it for hours without interruption.

My bad. My little pleasures.

« The chief needs us anyway. » Donal casually says. « You might want to let that aside. He wants us on the grill. »

I had picked up my coffee cup and I stop myself from drinking, playing Donal's last word again in my head.

« Us ? On the grill ? Why ? »

Donal sits against my desk. He usually doesn't do that. He usually doesn't drink coffee on the job at his desk either and now that I think of it Donal is NEVER late and his name wasn't listed up when I had checked mine right on time. Something I definitely should have noticed but suddenly, as I see him turning his back on the others, leaning an elbow on his large thigh, I realize he's trying his damn best to look casual. To look like someone who hasn't been called on the grill at all.

Some part of me realizes he's trying to look a bit like me when I don't really care.

It could have worked. If Donal wasn't trying so hard.

« You might want to drop the act before someone notices, Don. » I tell him.

He shakes his head. His fingers are shaking around the cup that seems quite tiny in his palm. I see him cupping it with two hands to try to steady himself.

« Ain't an act, Boss. »

I don't like him calling me that. First, because that's one of the many little things that makes me so unpopular here : an outlander like me who made it as a chief of staff so quickly, right after the police test ? They hate me for the sheer thrill of it. You can't like the man who never was a rookie. They didn't know me and when they HAD to know me I was already above them all. Can't blame them. Donal likes to tease me with it. Sometimes, I wonder how much it is teasing and how much it is truth. It had been HIS dream after all. Donal had worked twice as hard as me and never made it farther than his actual position : my second in command. I did recommend him as soon as I could but considering how close we are, my intake about him isn't really in high regard.

Who wouldn't recommend his best childhood friend ?

Yet, right now, what bothers me the most is that Donal keeps referring to me as his boss for an entirely different reason : he needs me to be the boss. Something has shaken him hard. I can see it.

« What's the plate ? » I ask. If we were to be on grill it meant we had a plate, also known as a case.

« An unusual one. »

I wish I could have said I didn't like that answer but it only got me to wonder what could that be. Unusual means a lot of things and right now it means anything but boring usual stuff and paperwork. Unusual right now means exciting. So yeah, my friend is shaken and I am excited. And a slightly bit worried. Am I bad ?

« What's the plate's number? »

Aka it's code. A 36 meant murder on police officer. A 38 meant a gunshot. A 49 was a riot. And so on. Almost every reported situation had a code. A very long and hard code to remember that we, officers, had shortened up and slightly bent for our needs.

Donal looks at his huge giant feet and then at me.

« Never seen before. »

« What is it you never saw before? » suddenly asks Nick.

I had heard him coming and I lift my head in time to see him pulling his crossed arms above my screen.

« Hey. » I protests.

« You're not typing Blender you don't need that screen. Nice bracelet. So Donal, what were you saying ? »

I want to protest again yet I know it's useless. Nick knows me too much by now. I had met him here, right when I was introduced as his new chief. He definitely hadn't liked to see me, the lost guy he had pushed through the station's corridors and straight to the meeting room, outranking him.

I don't blame him.

Nick could have been my father. I do the math and realize I might be quite exaggerating. Something to do with his behavior maybe. He is probably, like, fifteen years older than me, give or take, considering I don't have a clue how old I am exactly. Doctors thought I was four when I was found, which would make me twenty five now, maybe. The point is : he is a lot wiser.

And he is a lot more qualified than I'll never be.