Chapter 13: A decade ago.
The water was a precise 101 degrees. Jesse stood beneath the rainfall showerhead, letting the spray hammer the tight muscles of his shoulders. He counted to sixty, a ritual, then turned the dial to cold. The shock was instantaneous, a burning-cold slap that stole his breath and sent a jolt straight to his brain. He endured it for a ten-count, teeth clenched, before shutting it off.
He toweled dry in the vast, echoing bathroom, the marble floors cool underfoot.His reflection in the smoked-glass mirror was lean, already hard-edged for twenty. His hair, cropped short even then, needed no styling. The blue eyes that would later calcify into ice were merely cool, assessing.
In the kitchen, all brushed steel and matte black, he moved with economical grace.Two eggs cracked into a ceramic bowl, whisked with a fork. The cast iron skillet heated on the gas range.He poured the eggs in, watching them bubble and set. Two slices of whole-grain bread slid into the toaster. The coffee machine, a complex Italian contraption, hissed and gurgled, filling the space with the rich, acrid smell of dark roast.
He ate standing at the island, facing the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked a sliver of the Potomac and the dawn-grey sprawl of Arlington.The eggs were bland, perfect. The toast dry.The coffee black and scalding. He flicked on the wall-mounted TV with a remote.The local news anchor’s practiced cheer felt abrasive.
“…continuing operations in the Syrian theater,” the anchor said, footage of blurred, sand-colored vehicles rolling across the screen. Jesse chewed, uninterested. The next segment was local: a chaotic scene outside a bank in Silver Spring, police tape, a reporter shouting into a microphone. “…believed to be armed and still at large…”
The weather came on. A smiling man in a bright blue suit pointed at a map showing a high of seventy-eight.Mild.Sunny.
Jesse rinsed his plate, his cup, placing them in the dishwasher with methodical care. He was tying the laces of his polished black Oxfords when the news returned for a final, breezy note.
“And in international health news,” the anchor said, her smile dimming a fraction into something more appropriately somber. “Reports from Delhi indicate a cluster of patients presenting with a severe, yet unidentified, respiratory virus. Health officials are urging calm, stating there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission at this time, and the illness remains localized. The virus has not yet been named.”
Jesse paused, one lace in each hand. He looked up at the screen. A grainy, silent shot of a hospital hallway, figures in white coats moving quickly.It lasted three seconds.Then the channel cut to a commercial for a luxury sedan.
He finished tying his shoes. He shrugged into his suit jacket, a cheap, off-the-rack charcoal grey.He checked his wallet, his keys, his federal ID badge. The virus in India was a ten-thousand-mile-away problem.A footnote.His phone buzzed on the counter. A text from Michelle: U up?Door’s unlocked.He slipped the phone into his pocket. He had forty-five minutes before he needed to be at the Hoover Building.Enough time.
Michelle lived two floors down, in a corner unit paid for by a divorced hedge fund manager in New York. She was twenty-four, a paralegal at a K Street firm, with the sharp, glossy look of someone playing a part.Their arrangement was straightforward, wordless. It had begun in the building’s gym three months ago, a held glance too long at the squat rack, and had settled into a pattern of early morning or late-night visits.Her door yielded silently. The apartment was dim, the blinds drawn.The air smelled of perfume and last night’s wine.
“In here,” her voice called from the bedroom, husky with sleep.
He walked through the living room, past a sectional sofa littered with throw pillows, and into the bedroom. She was propped against a mountain of white bedding, the sheet pooled around her waist. She was blonde, artificially so, with small, high breasts and a spin-class leaness he found aesthetically pleasing but which held no visceral pull. Her nipples were already hard in the cool air.
“You’re dressed,” she said, a pout in her voice.She lifted the sheet. “I’m not.”
“I have to be at work,” he said, his voice flat.He didn’t remove his jacket. He sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over her, his mouth finding hers. Her kiss was hungry, eager, her tongue pushing into his mouth.She tasted of mint toothpaste. Her hands came up, clawing at his back, pulling him down.
“Fuck me before you go,” she whispered into his ear, her nails digging through the wool of his jacket.“I’m so wet. I was thinking about your cock all night.”
He said nothing. He pushed the sheet down, exposing her fully.He didn’t kiss her again. He unbuckled his belt, the leather sliding through the loops with a soft hiss. He unzipped his trousers, pushing them and his boxers just low enough to free his erection. He was already hard, a biological response to the available, willing flesh.“Like that,” Michelle breathed, watching him.“Just like that. Don’t even get undressed.Use me.”
He positioned himself over her. He didn’t touch her with his hands, bracing himself on his elbows beside her head. He guided the head of his cock to her opening.She was slick, as advertised. He pushed in, a single, smooth, deep stroke that made her back arch off the bed.
“Oh, God,” she gasped.“So deep.”
He began to move, a mechanical, powerful rhythm. The bedframe knocked softly against the wall with each thrust. He kept his eyes open, fixed on a point on the headboard behind her.Her legs came up, hooking around his hips, pulling him deeper.
“You feel so fucking good,” she moaned, her head thrashing side to side. “Pound that pussy.Yeah, just like that.Give it to me.”
Her words were a script. He tuned them out.He focused on the sensation, the tight, wet heat, the friction. It was a release of tension, nothing more.He thought about the paperwork waiting on his desk. The mountain of FD-302 forms to be scanned and logged into the digital system. The petty rivalries between the agents whose coffee-stained reports he processed.The mind-numbing bureaucracy of it all.
“Touch my clit,” she demanded, her hand fumbling between their bodies. “Make me come.I wanna come on your dick.”
He ignored her. He drove into her harder, faster, the slapping sound of skin on skin filling the room. Her pleas escalated, turned into sharp cries.He felt the coil tightening in his own groin. He chased it, his breathing becoming harsh, ragged grunts.Michelle was screaming now, a high-pitched, performative sound. He didn’t care if it was real.It was just noise.
With a final, grinding thrust, he buried himself inside her and came. It was a blunt, physical expulsion, emptying into the condom he’d had the presence of mind to put on at the last second. He held himself there for a moment, his body rigid, then pulled out.
He stood up, tucking his softening cock back into his pants, zipping up.He smoothed down his jacket.
Michelle lay sprawled on the bed, breathing heavily, a sheen of sweat on her chest. “That was amazing,” she sighed, a sated smile on her face.“I have to go,” Jesse said. He didn’t look at her.“Tonight?” she asked, rolling onto her side.
“Maybe.” He walked out of the bedroom, through the living room, and out her apartment door. The click of the latch behind him was a full stop.In the elevator, he adjusted his tie. The memory of the newscast flickered in his mind.An unidentified respiratory virus. No evidence of human-to-human transmission.Localized.The elevator doors opened on the garage. His used BMW coupe waited, clean and efficient.He got in, started the engine. The radio came on, tuned to a sports talk station.
As he navigated the morning traffic towards Constitution Avenue, the image of that hospital hallway in Delhi superimposed itself over the taillights of the car in front of him.A cluster.A virus without a name.It was a data point.Isolated. Irrelevant.But somewhere, in the deep, analytical recess of his mind, a subroutine triggered. A flag was raised, quietly, on a file not yet created.He didn’t dwell on it. He parked in the underground garage, swiped his badge at the security turnstile, and rode another elevator up to the windowless cube farm where he spent his days turning the chaos of fieldwork into orderly digital records.He logged into his computer. The screen glowed, a portal to a vast, internal network.He opened his daily queue. The first file was a witness statement from a drug informant in Baltimore. He began to type, his fingers flying over the keys, translating scrawled handwriting into cold, legible text.
The world outside, with its unnamed viruses and its bank robbers and its wars, receded into a manageable hum.It was all just paperwork.It was all just filing. He was good at it. He was very, very good at putting things in their proper place.
He was very, very good at putting things in their proper place.
The antiseptic scent of the Hoover Building’s lobby, a mix of floor polish and recycled air, filled his nostrils.He scanned his badge at the security turnstile. The mechanism clicked and buzzed, releasing the metal arm with a dull thud. A couple of armed guards he knew nodded from their station behind bulletproof glass.“Morning, Jesse.”
“Morning,” he said back, the word a flat, automatic emission.
His cubicle was a gray fabric cell, identical to dozens of others in the vast, low-ceilinged room. He set his backpack on the clean desk, extracted a small external hard drive, and plugged it into his desktop. The system chirped, a window popping up on the monitor.Estimated file download time: 15 mins. He let it run. The coffee from his apartment had worn off, leaving a dull residue behind his eyes.He decided to go to the break room and grab some more.The usual suspects were in there.
First, there was Jones.That wasn’t his real name, just what he went by. He was a fellow document technician, a lanky black man in his late twenties with a perpetually amused expression and wrists that seemed too thin for his hands. He was leaning against the counter, stirring a pale beige liquid that was mostly creamer.
Then there was Russell, a puddy-faced, middle-aged lifer from Records Management. His short-sleeved dress shirt was strained across his belly, the pocket protectors filled with an array of pens that never got used. He was methodically pouring hot water from the industrial machine over a tea bag, watching it steep as if it held the answers.
Lastly, Carla from the graphic design pool for internal presentations stood by the sink, wiping a smudge off her bright red glasses. She was in her fifties, with a severe silver bob and a collection of chunky turquoise jewelry that clacked softly when she moved. She always looked mildly offended by her surroundings.“There he is,” Jones said, spotting Jesse. They slapped hands, then bumped fists. “How was the thrilling world of constitutional rights this fine Monday?”
“A blast,” Jesse said, pouring black coffee into a chipped FBI mug. “You look pleased with yourself.”
“Man, met this girl Saturday at that spot in Adams Morgan.Latvian, I think. Could barely speak English.” Jones’s grin was wide and wicked.“Didn’t need to. Fucked her in the bathroom stall. Twice.”
Russell made a soft, disapproving noise into his tea.Carla left without a word, her perfume lingering.
“Your weekend?” Jones asked, his eyebrows dancing.“You see Michelle?”
Jesse took a sip of the scalding, bitter coffee. He looked at Jones, his face impassive. “I guess she would be my one morning stand.”
Jones barked a loud laugh that echoed in the small room.Russell winced. “Cold, brother.Ice cold. She’s fine, though.”
“She’s convenient,” Jesse corrected.He leaned against the counter, the Formica cool through his shirt. A beat of silence passed, filled by the hum of the refrigerator. The image from the TV news resurfaced, the grainy hospital footage. “You hear about this virus they found in India?”
Jones blinked, thrown by the non-sequitur.“No.Why?”
Jesse shrugged, looking into his mug. “I don’t know.Just saw something about it on the news this morning.Cluster of cases. No name for it yet.”
“They always got something popping off over there,” Jones said, dismissing it with a wave of his spoon.“Bird flu, super TB. Nothing a few bucks and some antibiotics can’t fix.”
“Probably.” Jesse pushed off the counter. The download would be done.“Gotta get to work.”
“Later, man. Don’t let the paperwork bite.”
Jesse returned to his cubicle.The hard drive light had stopped blinking. He ejected it, stored it in his locked desk drawer, and opened the primary database. The screen filled with a list of case numbers, a waterfall of digital bureaucracy.
He cracked his knuckles, placed his fingers on the home row.
And started filing.l
And started filing.
It was the usual appeals and complaints. Someone’s rights were violated during a no-knock warrant in Phoenix. A drug possession charge from an FBI-assisted DEA raid in Louisville was being challenged on procedural grounds. It was mundane, but it was easy, and it paid well. The rhythmic click-clack of his keyboard was a metronome for the morning, measuring out his life in digital increments.
He processed a Form FD-515, a request for telecommunications records, then cross-referenced it with a case number from the Counterterrorism Division. The work required a specific, detached focus, a talent for seeing patterns in the dry legalese of affidavits and the frantic scrawl of agent summaries. He was good at the detachment. The memory of Michelle’s staged cries or the grainy news clip from Delhi could find no purchase here. This was order. This was control.
Jesse’s alarm on his phone chimed softly. It was noon. He filed one last report, a 302 from a bank fraud interview, and closed the window. He stood, his chair rolling back silently on the cubicle carpet, and grabbed his suit jacket from the back of the chair.
His supervisor, Nolan, a man with a permanent frown etched into a face the color of weak coffee, stepped into the aisle as Jesse emerged. “Jesse. You got a minute?”
“Headed to lunch,” Jesse replied, not breaking stride.
“It’ll only take a minute.”
Jesse stopped. He looked at Nolan’s tired eyes. “Yeah. Okay.”
He followed Nolan’s rounded shoulders to the corner office, the biggest one on the floor. The blinds were half-drawn, slashing the room with bars of fluorescent light. Jesse walked in without waiting for an invitation and sat in one of the stiff visitor’s chairs. “What’s up?”
“We have a guest today.” Nolan closed the door, the click feeling disproportionately loud.
“A guest?” Jesse asked, his voice flat.
“Someone high up. She’s coming to do an inspection of our document processing protocols. I don’t know much, I just got a call this morning from the Deputy Director’s office.”
Jesse leaned back, the cheap leather creaking. “Why are you telling me?”
“She asked to speak with a cross-section of personnel. I mentioned you.” Nolan shrugged, a gesture of helpless bureaucracy. “You’re reliable. You don’t cause problems. Your metrics are clean.”
“Why?” Jesse pressed, a faint flicker of annoyance breaking through his practiced apathy. “Are they CIA or something?” He said it as a joke, a hollow one.
“No,” Nolan replied, missing or ignoring the sarcasm. “Just people from the FBI. Above me. Way above me. Probably some OPR efficiency review. Just answer her questions honestly. It’s bureaucratic shit to make sure we’re dotting our i’s.”
Jesse held his supervisor’s gaze for a second longer than necessary, searching for a tell. Nolan just looked tired and mildly irritated. “Okay,” Jesse said. He got up.
“Thanks,” Nolan said to his back as Jesse opened the door.
Jesse headed out, the bureaucratic haze already dissipating. He stopped at Jones’s cubicle. The man was staring at his screen, chin propped on his hand. “Going to lunch. You wanna come?”
Jones looked up, a smile immediately breaking through his glaze of boredom. “Sure. Get me out of this tomb.” He stood, stretching his lanky frame until his knuckles brushed the ceiling tiles. “Let me guess… The Sub Station?”
“Of course,” Jesse replied.
It was a really nice sub sandwich shop, and popular with the building’s rank-and-file for its speed and massive portions. The line was already out the door. They took their place at the end, the smell of baking bread and roasting meat cutting through the D.C. street smells of exhaust and wet concrete.
“So what did Nolan want?” Jones asked, eyes on the menu board even though he always ordered the same thing.
“Some bullshit,” Jesse said, watching a pigeon fight a scrap of foil. “We have an inspection today. Some suit from upstairs.”
Jones’s head swiveled back. “An inspection? Like, what, from OPR? Internal Affairs?”
“He didn’t say. Just said ‘high up’. A she. Wants to talk to people.” Jesse’s voice was a monotone. “Nolan volunteered me.”
“That’s weird,” Jones said, his eyes narrowing slightly. “We’ve never been inspected. Not in the three years I’ve been here.”
The line moved. They shuffled forward. Jesse felt the first, faint prickle of something at the base of his spine. It wasn’t alarm. It was the sensation of a previously unnoticed variable entering a calculated equation. A virus without a name on the news. A high-level inspection from a mysterious ‘she’. They were likely unrelated data points. But his mind, trained to file and connect, held them both in suspension.
They reached the counter. The guy behind it, a kid with a lip ring and tired eyes, nodded at them. “What can I get you?”
Jesse didn’t look at the menu. “Turkey on wheat. Mayo, tomatoes, black olives. Salt and pepper.”
Jones leaned in. “Pulled pork, extra BBQ sauce, coleslaw on top. And a pickle spear, my man.”
They both got bags of chips and bottles of water. They paid in silence, took their numbered receipt, and moved to the crowded waiting area by the soda machine. The roar of the meat slicer and the shouted orders filled the space.
“What do you think she wants?” Jones asked, picking at the label on his water bottle.
“To make sure we’re doing our job,” Jesse repeated Nolan’s words, his tone implying how empty he found them.
“Nobody cares if we’re doing our job,” Jones murmured, leaning closer. “Our job is to make the paper go away. Who inspects the janitors?”
Their number was called. Jesse collected the two wrapped submarines, the warmth of the bread seeping through the paper. They found a small, wobbly table by the window and sat. Jesse unwrapped his sandwich with methodical care, aligning the paper. He took a bite. The flavors were exact, predictable.
He chewed, swallowed. “She asks, I tell her the truth. The system’s outdated. The backlog is six weeks. Half the agents’ handwriting is illegible. We’re putting band-aids on a bullet wound.”
Jones laughed, a short, sharp sound. “You gonna say that?”
“It’s the truth,” Jesse said, taking another bite. “It’s what she’d see if she looked for five minutes.”
“Truth ain’t always welcome, brother,” Jones said, peeling the top bread off his sandwich to inspect the contents. “Especially from our pay grade. Just smile and say the system works fine.”
Jesse didn’t answer. He looked out the window at the stream of government workers flowing back to their concrete hives. The prickle at his spine hadn’t gone away. It had just settled in, a tiny, cold needle of anticipation. A guest. High up. A she. He finished his sandwich, folded the paper into a neat square, and crumpled it in his fist.