“And you’re sure—?“

  “Yes. That’s everything,” Sylvia gritted out, crossing her ankles under the table. She knew that Darryl was just doing the job assigned and that involved asking her and Cecelia to describe everything they saw in the most detail possible, but they’d gone over everything twice now, and, no, she really didn’t have anything else to add. Plus, the fact that Wilma had been chosen to go back to the scene… The agent sighed. She held nothing against her fellow agent, but it was irksome to not be picked for the assignment she wanted. ‘Suck it up,’ Silvia scolded herself. ‘It doesn’t matter who does what as long as the problem gets solved.’

  (Sitting between the two adults, Cecelia was leaning closer and closer to Darryl, attention constantly switching between his spyed-out notebooks and open computer. The agency’s nerd, however, was scooting away an amount equal to what the kid was trying to lean.)

  “Alright then,” Darryl said, reaching over his ptop to scribble something down in the farthest notebook. The conference room was small enough that the hint of sound echoed. “I guess that’s everything I need from you two regarding the airship, and I do have a project to get back to.”

  “To the history books and files then,” Cecelia muttered as she stood up. Sylvia grimaced; the task didn’t sound much better than regur paperwork.

  “Well…” Eyebrows raised, Sylvia waited for Darryl to continue. It took him a moment, scrolling aimlessly up and down on his ptop. “I know Ms. Echo didn't think the events were reted to the airship, but if you two find out anything more about what happened at the apartment….”

  Ah, yes. As Cecelia had (annoyingly) pointed out at the time, something like multiple events over a short period of time would usually be considered an important case, never mind the man who’d been so violently pulled. “You think the three events are connected?” Sylvia asked. “Or that they’re driven by simir causes?”

  (The kid suddenly looked down at the table, uneven bangs falling over her eyes.)

  “I think it’d be a shame to pass the first two over,” the nerd replied. “It can’t hurt to look into the situation more. Look up that apartment building or lot online; maybe in the records, too.” He closed his computer and gave the intern a side gnce. Right, there was something else Sylvia needed to talk with the man about.

  “Kid.” The intern’s head jerked up. “Go get a head start.”

  Cecelia’s eyes darted between the two adults. “S-Sure. Should I be worried?”

  Sylvia rolled her eyes at the attempted joke. ‘It’s not sass or sarcasm,’ she told herself. 'Take what little victories you can get.’ “No more than you should be already.”

  The kid stumbled as she rose from her chair - clumsy interns. “I’ll, uh, just be outside then.”

  ~

  “She did have the missing separator,” Sylvia told Darryl a few moments after the conference room door had shut behind Cecelia. She didn’t speak with the man on a regur basis, but if anyone would be able to guess what the kid had been doing, it should be him. “And quite the mad scientist set-up in her room, including generators and an old-school projector.”

  Darryl hummed, tapping his fingers on the circur table. “That’s actually somewhat impressive,” he said. “Depending on what she was doing, it’s not unreasonable to think that her little experiment briefly destabilized the dimensional boundaries enough for a small event or two. If she was trying to reverse engineer her own version of the separator, for example.”

  “But why?” Sylvia asked. (And, thinking back to the mess in the intern’s room… the agent might not know a lot about technology, but wasn’t ‘reverse engineering’ just taking a device apart to learn how to build it yourself? That didn’t sound like something that required any of the things Cecelia had gathered.) “And even a brief disturbance seems like a lot for a single separator.”

  “In theory, you could do a lot of damage with the right modifications and enough energy. What little we know about the multiple worlds is that they aren’t nearly as separated as would be comforting.” ‘That’s not a reassuring reminder,’ Sylvia mentally groaned. Darryl busied his hands with collecting his notebooks and papers. “That’s why the separators can only be used for short bursts along with other regutions. This whole area of study is new. There’s a lot even I don’t know. Including that first question of yours.” Once all his notes were stacked on top of the closed ptop, the man adjusted his fingerprint-covered gsses. “I take it you haven’t reported everything yet? I doubt Ms. Echo would let Cecelia walk around if she knew.”

  ‘Only because of the potential bckmail.’ “Because I can’t figure out a motive,” Sylvia expined. So much for the researcher having answers. “It’s only for a few days or until we figure out what caused the two events at her apartment. After that, Ms. Echo and whoever else is above her can deal with the kid.”

  Darryl hummed in thought. “If you say so. Curiosity killed the cat. Or got the cat fired and put in prison.”

  Frowning, Sylvia bit back a response. Science nerds, they always rubbed her the wrong way. “I have everything under con—“

  The door banged open and Cecelia rushed back into the room. “We’re free from desk work and research!” she cheered. Then the kid paused, gncing between the two adults. “Right. You guys were talking about me.”

  Damn, the girl could be irritatingly sharp. “What did you run in here to tell us?” Sylvia asked, ignoring the observation. “It better be something important.”

  The intern nodded as she pulled out her phone, tapping on the screen. “A shooting at ‘The Glowing Fme’ - you know, that super fancy pasta pce by the old mall - just happened, like, ten minutes ago, and Ms. Echo wants us to go check it out.”

  Sylvia did know the dinner, she’d met up with some friends there just st week. It wasn’t too far from P.A.R.A.L.L.E.L…. or from the area where the airship had been, now that she thought about it. ‘Location alone doesn’t prove any connection but can narrow things down.’

  Darryl, who had jumped at the kid’s interruption, still had one hand over his heart. “And why would she ask you two to do that?” he asked with a tired, exasperated voice. “Today’s mass shooting isn’t something for us to deal with.”

  “Because.” The kid shoved her phone in Sylvia’s face, showing the map application. The agent swatted the bright screen away. “It didn’t happen in this world’s version of the pce.”