Young Writers Society

Chapter Two

When You Get a Notification from That One App You Forgot Was There

(Serafina)

Serafina did her best to keep pace with Mr. Sanders. For someone who always looked like he was about to sit down and have a cup of tea while reading a book of poetry, he could walk with quite a bit of purpose.

As they walked through the halls they’d just come through to reach the room, Serafina chanced a glance back at Safi. She’d been very silent ever since they’d successfully broken into that room and Serafina wasn’t sure if she should be worried or terrified. She hadn’t spent nearly enough time around the girl to get to know her properly in the academy but if there was one thing she knew, it was that Safi knew how to get things done.

Safi had seemed a bit shy in their brief interactions, but surely, she wasn’t one to be that quiet during a meeting that important. Either something was wrong on a level Serafina could not see, or Safi had something planned to cement her place, one that maybe wasn’t going to involve Serafina keeping her own place. Part of her suggested that all of these thoughts were clearly just Serafina being more paranoid than she had a right to be in this situation, but those instincts had kept her alive this long. She couldn’t dismiss them just because Safi was incredibly good at looking perfectly harmless.

She did her best to throw those thoughts on the backburner as they took a turn that Serafina didn’t recognize. There were heading away from the general lobby now, to areas where the public wasn’t allowed to be in. The décor surprisingly didn’t change too much. It seemed no one had bothered to actually get an interior designer for any of this if the flat colors and unflattering lighting was anything to judge by.

In fact, the lighter oddly seemed to get darker and darker the deeper in they went. As much as the lack of decorations could be explained away by the fact that this organization had a lot more on its hands than hanging nice paintings on the wall, the lack of light was a little startling. Surely a place like this would prioritize the ability to see. The only positive about the increasingly dimmer blue lights that lit up their path was their color. Serafina was pretty sure blue was universally considered a color best suited to letting you focus and think clearly. Either that or whoever designed this was incredibly attached to the color blue.

She didn’t get too much longer to think on that however, because after two more turns into the unfamiliar corridors, Ray popped open a door, thankfully this one opening with the handle like any normal door should and gestured for them to follow.

Serafina rushed to hold the door before it slammed shut. Give their previous experience it was best not to let a door be shut until it was completely confirmed that they were actually going to be able to join this agency.

Pushing it open a little further, she held it for just a second longer than necessary as she walked in. She wasn’t going to hold the door open for Safi, but then she wasn’t cruel enough to let it just shut in her face, at least not yet. Safi hadn’t exactly done anything to suggest she had nefarious intentions.

“Thank you,” came the now increasingly familiar voice from behind her. Serafina nearly cursed. She tries to be subtle and nonchalant and immediately there’s Safi thanking her, and it was the sort of tone that just would not let you walk away without acknowledging. This girl really could be a terror if she wanted to.

Serafina turned, smiling slightly at her. “Of course.”

The resulting smile surely didn’t need to be as large as it was. She’d just held a door open for like half a second, not saved her life. Doing her best to tear her eyes away from those blues eyes that somehow reminded her of a soft summer sky and a storm at the same time, Serafina turned towards Ray.

“Welcome to the situation room,” said Ray. “And before you say it, yes, we all know it’s a bit of a lazy name, but its direct so it works. Also, this is of course one of several and the lowest tier one to boot because naturally we want to start y’all off on something smaller to test your affinity for this job. Nothing to worry about. Just standard procedure that as Vankous likes to put it is to avoid the.” Ray paused for air quotes. “Legal pish posh.”

“That seems like a reasonable reason for that, “commented Serafina. She had absolutely no idea what that reason was supposed to mean or imply, but that seemed like the safest answer for the situation.

“Perfect,” said Ray, “so if you’ll well just sort of get in there and get accustomed to the area, that’d be great. Since you are a bit early, there’s…. well as you can quite clearly see… no one else here yet so you a great opportunity. I will be hanging around for a bit myself to introduce you to the rest of the team. Of course, I say team, but really there’s just two more people here. This one of our smallest situation rooms, which just had pretty much half of its original squad transfer up to the next tier so y’all are the replacements.”

“Great. Thank you, Ray.” Serafina tried to avoid showing the surprise in her voice as she used the nickname. That had escalated far quicker than she’d ever thought possible. What sort of special agent just goes by Ray to the new recruits.

“Brilliant. Ms. Vialena, anything you want to say or ask?” asked the man. Serafina instinctively turned towards Safi again. Surely the girl was going to respond to that. Ray sounded if anything like a college professor at the very worst. There was no reason for Safi to be too shocked to answer that.