Aruna has been keeping her door open recently, as a test to see if she's ready for unexpected visitors. So far things are going well, but so far she also hasn't actually had any unexpected visitors so results are, overall, decidedly inconclusive.

One interesting side effect, that she's still deciding if she enjoys or not, is that she can now hear conversations and movement outside her office where she couldn't before, so she's picking up on a lot more office gossip. She also, as she discovers one Saturday morning, is going to hear a lot more from the Hunter's side of the room, which her office is situated next to.

"Alright guys, gather in, we've got major trouble." She hears Hugo say, and she pauses her reading of a fourth year law textbook (she needed to refresh on something before approving a proposal Landon had given her last night that he wants to pitch to Parliament). Hugo, as she's learned lately, is a relatively laid-back guy, so hearing the undertone of tension in his voice makes her stop and take notice. Obviously whatever this is is big, and the Initiative will probably need to know about it anyway.

"This isn't public knowledge, and it stays inside this office until you're otherwise informed, are we clear?

"Does 'public' include the Initiative?" Someone asks, and Aruna recognizes Jack Abbott's voice and she instinctively gets a bit warm. Even though he's been incredibly respectful of her boundaries since the night she'd humiliated herself in front of him she still feels awkward tension when she so much as glances at him. It's officially annoying since she knows logically nothing will happen and he's not expecting anything to happen, but her hormones haven't caught up with her brain yet, apparently. Her therapist says it will come in time.

She shakes her head and tunes back in - if Hugo says 'no' then she should probably close her door so that she doesn't overhear something she's not supposed to. The Internal Investigation still shows up around the offices now and then to remind everyone that that's still an ongoing thing, and Aruna thinks that if she's caught eavesdropping on secret Hunter meetings it will probably make her look pretty suspicious.

"It does not - they're going to be told on a need-to-know basis by their leaders, but so long as they're able to keep it quiet it's probably better they all be made aware of the situation." Hugo replies, and Aruna leans forward. Obviously this impacts integration then, and knowing now instead of possibly being blindsided by it later is definitely preferable - if it's really terrible then she wants some time to process everything before having to talk about it with anyone.

Once Hugo is done explaining, Aruna is glad she listened - this is absolutely going to be something she needs time to process. The United Arab Emirates may not technically be an active war zone, but she's not at all surprised to learn that there was a group of (so-called) paramilitary people planning to bomb the UAE version of the Initiative. The implications of what could have happened if that went through are terrifying, but what actually did happen may just be worse. If Muggles start the fighting then the magical world can choose to not respond, but if magic starts it? Well, things never go well when a minority group starts in on violence - the reaction is usually swift and brutal. If this gets out and is pinned on the magical world as a whole, cooperation could quickly become impossible - both sides would have semi-legitimate reasons to be furious with each other, and people, Aruna knows, tend towards anger since it's a very easy, and very overwhelming, emotion to have.

She groans and decides to close her door for the rest of her morning, so she can process what she heard and work out if she'll end up having to get involved or not, so she can mentally prepare for that as well.

It's about thirty minutes later that she realizes she won't be able to tell her therapist anything about this - Hugo had said it wasn't to leave the offices. The discovery sends her into a bit of a spiral - what if this becomes a major part of her work? What if it negatively impacts her development and she can't talk about it with the only person who's actually helped her improve at all in the past two - almost three now - years?

She catches herself starting to hyperventilate, and she forces herself through her breathing exercises, re-centering and manually relaxing each of her muscles until she's slumped back into her chair. Good, no panic attack - that's a good sign, that she handled that alone. She'll worry about if things are going to get worse if and when it happens - for now she should get back to work and wait and see before freaking herself out over hypotheticals.

The hypotheticals become reality that afternoon, when Mrs. Morgan enters her office with a heavy frown.

"Aruna, we have a new task for you." She says without preamble, and something drops in Aruna's stomach even as she sits straighter and nods. She can do this. She has to do this. "Are you familiar with what occured in the United Arab Emirates last night?"

"I admit I overheard the Hunters being briefed." She confesses, "So I am aware, yes."

She's relieved that Mrs. Morgan doesn't look upset at the admittance. "Excellent, then we can get right to the point: we need any and all information on the legalities of treaties and alliances in the Muggle world - we need to know what to brace for if this turns into a worst case scenario. Who UAE is allied with, what their treaties actually say, we need anything and everything related to such matters."

Aruna frowns. She knows some people who specialize in that sort of law, but.. they know about her ex. She can't talk to them, not yet. She can't...

"I have some contacts I can give-" She starts, but Mrs. Morgan cuts her off firmly.

"Ms. Kandasamy, we need you to handle this." She insists. "Rose and Landon are both thoroughly occupied with their own focuses, and you're the law expert on our team - this is your jurisdiction and so we need you to tackle this one. We've been lenient with letting you only take on what you wanted to prior to this, but we no longer have that luxury. A genuine act of war has been made - we need to be prepared for every possibility."

Aruna swallows hard. She can't do this. She can't - she's not ready to do this. Her therapist says to not push herself past her boundaries and this is definitely-

Mrs. Morgan looks somewhat apologetic, but she leaves the office before Aruna can work out how to explain that no, she can't do this and they need to figure something else out. Aruna stares at the closed door of the office, her mind a panicking swirl of activity before it finally settles on one particular phrase her boss had used.

"We've been lenient... we no longer have that luxury."

They'd noticed. They'd noticed her failing to live up to standards and they'd allowed it. Would keep allowing it except now the literal fate of the world is caught up in the balance, and here Aruna is putting her feelings over the possible continued existence of humanity.

She's a mess.

Taking a deep breath and clenching her fist she pushes up from the desk- if she's going to do this, she needs to be able to move freely.

She hasn't used her cellphone at work in a while, and she'd forgotten how awful the reception is. It takes two attempts to connect, but once it does a cheery female voice picks up on the fourth ring.

"Hello, you've reached the University of Liverpool Law School offices, what can we do for you today?"

Aruna swallows hard. "Hi Stacey, it's Aruna." She says, hoping her voice isn't shaking. "I actually am calling to ask-"

"Aruna? Holy we haven't heard from you in years!" The woman interrupts. Stacey Smith is supposedly a student at the school who works as the Departmental secretary, but she's been there as long as Aruna can remember and she knows for a fact Stacey should have graduated years ago. She's not sure if she's relieved or not to hear a friendly, familiar voice on the other end of the line.

"Yes, well, I've been busy. I'm now working as a legal consultant with the Muggle Integration Initiative and I needed to speak with Professor Rodnick at his earliest convenience. I require his expertise on my most recent project."

Stacey squeals. "Oh that's wonderful to hear Aruna! So glad you're getting back up on your feet, I can't even imagine-"

"Stacey." Aruna interrupts angrily before the woman can start talking about The Death. "Professer Rodnick. Please have him call me back as soon as he's able."

"Oh, okay. Sorry." Stacey sounds apologetic, but not hurt which is good. "He's in his office now - I'll check if he's free to talk?"

"Please." Aruna agrees steadily, acutely aware of how tightly she's gripping the phone. George Rodnick was a former colleague of... of her ex's, and she's been doing everything in her power to avoid anything even distantly linked to him, so she's honestly not sure what's going to happen when she hears George's voice for the first time since the funeral.

She kind of hopes he's too busy to talk - if her reaction to hearing Stacey made her uneasy and snappish, how much worse will it be to hear someone she so closely associates with him?

"He's actually available now!" Stacey reports a moment later. Well great.

"Excellent, then if you could put me through?" Aruna says, attempting to sound cheerful through her gritted teeth.

Stacey doesn't say anything else, and Aruna hears the transfer sound a moment later. Odd - Stacey usually tries to keep talking as long as possible. Obviously Aruna failed to act natural, which really doesn't bode well for this next conversation.

"Aruna?"

She freezes. She expects to feel hollowed out, empty, miserable. She expects to start crying, or hang up entirely, unable to handle hearing George's voice because it brings back too many memories with him.

Instead she feels... nothing. Normal.

"Hello?"

"Sorry, terrible connection down here." She manages to get out. "I actually wanted to ask you about something - you teach the class on treaty law, correct? I wanted to refresh my memory on how those work. I don't know if Stacey mentioned what I'm doing now, but-"

"She did." He assures her. "Congrats on that, by the way. It's good to know they've got a great law consultant helping out there, honestly makes me feel a bit better. So is there something specific you were looking into?"

She debates how much to tell him - they're obviously trying to keep the attack away from the public awareness for now, so she should probably be as vague as possible.

"Honestly we're starting to brace for a potenial worst case scenario." She says after a moment. "So I was hoping you could recommend the best case laws on treaty law - what would happen if either side were to attack the other? We want to see if there's a way to deescalate a full war, even in that scenario." Hopefully that's vague enough that he doesn't suspect they need that information yesterday.

"Ah, makes sense. The US is really rumbling. And with all that stuff about Nina and the Deatheaters going on right now I don't blame you all for bracing. Tell you what, let me get everything I can together for you and forward it to the Ministry of Magic - would that work?"

Aruna exhales slightly. "That sounds good George. Thanks a dozen."

"No problem, what are friends for. Oh, and Aruna?"

She freezes. Is he going to bring up-

"It's good to hear from you, and you sound good. If I'm in town, or you're ever in Liverpool again, we should catch up."

"Oh, um, sure. Just ping me - my number is the same." She replies without actually thinking about it, then regrets it immediately after hanging up. Why would she agree to that? Seeing him would be even worse than hearing him and-

She stops. But hearing him... hadn't been bad at all. She actually hadn't thought of her ex even once during the conversation, outside of the very end when he hadn't even come up. It had been all business, just like how she used to be.

She should be proud of herself, but instead something ugly settles into her stomach. What does it mean, that she handled that so easily? Is she forgetting about him now? Was her love so shallow that she'd forget him after a few months at a new job? 

She's starting to hyperventilate, and she curls up in her chair and just lets herself panic for a moment, trying to prove she's not betraying the only man who ever took the time to love her.

Maybe she really can't do this. If losing her love is what it takes to be the way she was before, is it really worth it? Her therapist's voice in her mind tries to tell her something but she shuts it out, curling tighter on her chair.

Eventually she unfolds and slowly turns back to her desk. She should... she should at least finish her work for today, before making any decisions. That's what her therapist would probably say.

She doesn't get much done.

Veena, Miles, and Petra have all been put on semi-permanent media monitoring duty for the moment, and none of them is complaining - it's where they're needed. Veena especially is intense about constantly and consistently refreshes all of their pages waiting for new comments or messages to pop up. Part of this is because she's in charge of the new blog (it was her idea to do, after all, so it's only fair) but part is because she's still waiting for the catastrophic fallout of the Muggle conference she'd held the week before.

So far people are back-and-forth on the issue - they want to trust Nina, which is fair enough, but at least a few of them are willing to be critical. A few are digging in though, and there have been some less than polite comments about Healer Caldwell and Max in particular. As someone very familiar with being insulted and belittled for no reason other than someone dislikes her opinions and has decided to blame her skin color, Veena isn't thrilled with most of those. The number of times she's seen "white trying to cover her skinny " as an attempted defense for why Yurina is perfect and the Initiative are liars is honestly getting ridiculous. At least have a more original insult if you're going to be like that.

Miles at least seems optimistic about the magical end of things - he'd returned from his conference saying it had gone flawlessly - more than flawlessly, even, and Veena had been glad that at least half their attempt had likely worked.

She's hoping to maybe reach out to Celine and see if the reporter has a better pulse on the Muggle public response than what angry Facebook comments would indicate - Veena has learned enough about social media to know it's mostly the angry people who show up there to scream about their opinions, so it's not exactly the most representative source of information. She's not sure how to actually contact the reporter personally though, and she doesn't want to go through their usual channels in case someone intercepts and uses the question to frame the Initiative as weak, or "obviously hiding something," which is another popular accusation by the trolls. Petra has officially created a copy-paste answer for that accusation it crops up so often.

Their third team member is both the most efficient with the comment responses and the one most prone to semi-complaining about things. Never outright - Petra knows as well as Veena and Miles why doing this is extremely important right now - but in more subtle ways. Mainly she talks about things she could be getting out of the Archives that might be of help, which ironically isn't really helping. Yes, some of what Petra has scrounged up has proven very useful, but right now her effort is best used here - everyone including Petra knows it, so the ever-increasing number of comments about the sub-basement tend to move well beyond the point of being annoying by the time lunch rolls around.

It's halfway through their fourth afternoon that Veena officially can't take it anymore - either her teammates' stress or the comments themselves. "That's it, mental health break." She declares, pulling out one of Fergus's most popular techniques. "Let's talk approach and close the laptop for a bit. I don't know about you two but I'm about ready to vibrate out of my skin these people are pissing me off so much."

Petra doesn't verbally reply, but does slam the laptop shut immediately and shoves it across the desk, which really is answer enough.

Miles opts for a spoken response, because Miles not talking for longer than a minute is unheard of and will probably indicate the world has ended. Not that Veena has been getting annoyed with his peppiness. Not at all.

"Yeah, that would be great! We could talk about what stories to put in the blog this week!"

And that at least is actually a good idea, even if Miles and Petra aren't really supposed to be in charge of the blog posts. It's at least something semi-positive but still work related to distract themselves with for a few minutes before going back to the grind.

"That sounds like a plan." Veena agrees. "I'll grab the ones owled from the magical world - Miles, why don't you pull up the files sent by Muggles?"

Miles nods happily and grabs the laptop away from Petra, who doesn't protest it at all, just leans back in her chair and closes her eyes. Veena heads over to the recently installed mailbox for their floor, which is where they've been letting all the blog-related post sit for the moment. She lets herself move slowly, not really in any hurry to get back to her desk, and she looks around the offices idly as she goes.

Everyone is busy (well, presumably - Aruna has closed her door again so it's impossible to see what she is or isn't doing) so Veena doesn't stop to chat with anybody. Landon and Rose aren't even present, which isn't surprising, and the specialists are all scrambling about as well - each of the four of them is trying to get a win in time for the June update conference (they hadn't had one this month, for obvious reasons). The leaders had made clear after the conferences that they're essentially in defcon one right now - no distractions. If something goes wrong now, everything will be over - possibly including humanity.

Veena isn't sure why, but she has a hard time really conceptualizing the death of all humans. The idea doesn't even scare her, if she's honest. No, what she focuses on is that if this goes badly, her son will grow up in a war torn world - if he grows up at all. It's that thought that keeps her moving, not want for peace or cooperation or anything noble like that. She's not ashamed of it either - even without the comments during her last conference discussing how people react differently to intense situations, Veena has long learned to not let social conception of what the "right" way to feel about something impact how she views her own reactions to things.

She collects the submitted stories and wanders back to the desks, taking her time once again. The Hunters are all out of the office today, which is quite rare - even Pup is missing, so that entire half of the room is almost unnervingly quiet next to the desperate chaos of the Initiative's half. She knows something happened recently that they're worried about, but no one has told her or the other two media specialists, and she honestly isn't going to worry about it until someone tells her to, considering they already have more than enough on their plate to deal with. Let the Hunters actually do their job for once.

"Alright, here they are." She says as she returns to her desk, dropping the files onto it and taking a seat. Miles is eagerly scrolling through the stories on the laptop while Petra is lying on the desk, cheek pressed to the wood and eyes half-lidded. "I'm thinking there should probably be an equal number of stories from both sides in each post - maybe one and one?" Veena suggests. "That way even if submissions peter out in the next few weeks we'll still have enough material to go through to August."

Miles frowns. "Only one? But there are so many good ones! Maybe four just for the first one?" He asks hopefully.

"We should pair them up." Petra suggests, finally opening her eyes and fully focusing on the other two media specialists. "You know, post stories that are complimentary to each other? That can highlight how similar the two worlds really are in addition to giving unique insights and whatnot."

"That's actually a really awesome idea Petra." Veena observes. "Though some stories might not have perfect pairs."

"For now." Miles puts in, obviously excited about the new proposal. "But more will come in, right? So we just start with the ones that pair up well and then go from there!" He says excitedly. "We can find four good matches easily! There are so many stories already!"

"There are seventeen total, counting both magic and Muggle." Veena points out gently. "It's not all that many, so I really think we should stick to one from each pile per week, at least to start out. Maybe more will come in and we'll be able to increase that number, but right now that doesn't make sense to do."

Miles pouts for a moment, but quickly recovers. "Alright. Then let's pick out matches!"

It actually proves to be a surprisingly fun task, though it also drags what should really have only been a half hour break into a two hour distraction. It's still techincally work, but Veena knows that she should be doing this on her own, and Miles and Petra should have gotten back to the social media pages a while ago. But none of them especially want to go back to the cesspit of the internet, and really, most of it is just more of the same. They can check in again once they have this sorted out.

This decision ends up getting them all into trouble about two hours before the end of the workday, when Mrs. Morgan comes to check on their progress.

"We've almost completely paired all the stories submitted so far!" Miles says proudly, even as Petra visibly shrinks and Veena her lips nervously. The two women share a look, knowing Mrs. Morgan isn't going to be too happy with them.

Sure enough, one eyebrow arches up suspiciously. "Is that so? I wasn't aware you were running the blogs, Mr. Taylor." She says. "I suppose it was Ms. Clark who was watching our social media pages and monitoring the ongoing response to the latest conferences?"

Petra presses her lips together tightly and sinks even lower in the chair. Mrs. Morgan hums. "Ms. Harris, then? Though as the person actually responsible for the blogs I can't imagine you haven't been involved in this process."

"We've been doing a lot though." Miles interrupts, and Veena attempts to tell him to shut up with on her expression, but he's not looking at her. Instead he's watching Mrs. Morgan with genuine confusion. "We took a mental health break, but we kept doing work - we accomplished a lot! The blogs-"

"Are not your job, Mr. Taylor." Mrs. Morgan replies tiredly. "I understand that you accomplished a lot there, and that is good, but we need people watching the interweb discussions far more than Veena needs help coordinating the blogs. How long have they been left unattended?"

Veena takes a deep breath - as the one who instigated the break, she knows she should take responsibility for their failure to manage the time properly. "A little over two hours, ma'am." She admits. "I apologize, we lost track of time."

Mrs. Morgan sighs. "Just... stay on them for the rest of the afternoon, please. We need to know immediately if public opinion starts clearly listing one way or another, so we can respond as quickly as possible."

They put the blog materials away once the leader has departed again, but the atmosphere has soured considerably. Petra is openly sulking, and even Miles looks upset.

"It's one day." He grumbles aloud. "What's the big deal?" 

"There could be a ing war happening, that's the big deal." Petra snipes, yanking the laptop away from Miles so she can plug it in and switch back to the social media pages and away from the private messages. "Honestly, how you're still this oblivious is kind of pathetic."

Miles just stares at her for a long moment, obviously hurt, and Veena can see the moment Petra gives up on pretending she doesn't feel bad about what she'd said and sinks even further into her chair, shoulders up around her ears.

"Sorry." She mutters, but the damage is done. Miles is mopey, Petra is defensive and guilty, and Veena is just tired for the rest of the day. Luckily there's only an hour and a half left before their bosses are unable to keep them longer, so as soon as the clock hits five Veena packs up for the day.

Even though war hasn't broken out, and people aren't all immediately flocking to "Team Nina" as they had feared, Veena doesn't think today really counts as any sort of victory. Maybe tomorrow won't be so miserable - but somehow, she doubts it.

Fergus had been expecting a message from his Handler ever since the dual conferences responding to Yurina's latest attack, but despite it having been a week already, there's been absolutely nothing. His reports aren't even being acknowledged anymore, which is... really unnerving. He's pretty sure the fact he semi-revealed his situation to the leaders and the other two Underground people (and the Internal Investigation - he hadn't been thrilled with that decision, but Audrey had assured him Clary was trustworthy and would only share the information on a need-to-know basis) hasn't been discovered - he assumes he'd be dead if it had been - but he doesn't know why else there would suddenly be radio silence.

He wishes he could just tell Audrey and Cadi about the situation, but it's not like he can do that without breaking his Vow, and also outing himself to the rest of the Initiative as well. He honestly is falling a bit behind in his work because of it, despite knowing that now more than ever he needs to pull out a win for the Initiative.

He wants to figure out a way around it though - how to tell the leaders something seems to be up without freaking out the kids? Probably talking to her in her office, obviously, but what could he say?

He frowns at his desk, quill tapping thoughtlessly against the parchment in front of him (which is actually the specially charmed communication parchment that connects him with his Handler - he wants to know the moment a message comes through, even if it's at work. He'll feel better if he knows right away) and leaving a smattering of inky splotches across it. He'll need to clean those before his report tonight - thank Merlin for ink erasure spells.

He puts the quill down to prevent any further mess, and replaces the tapping with drumming his fingers on the arm of his desk chair.

They should work out a coded system, so he can more easily communicate when things like this are happening. The Vow doesn't say anything about secret codes being disallowed, and it could also be nice to just be able to ask about the progress on breaking the Vow every now and then as well. He knows Claire is working on it - or rather, has a friend who she says can work on it - but that was nearly a month ago now so he doesn't know if any progress was made, or if the friend even agreed to help, or was even able to. He wonders if there's a way to suggest the code system to Audrey without technically breaking the Vow - he adds that to the swirling mess of half-plans in his mind.

He ends up giving himself a headache by the time lunch rolls around, and he still hasn't come up with anything (he's going to assume it's because he hasn't really slept - due to stress - or eaten today, which certainly isn't helping his thought process). He decides to put things down for now and get something to eat - hopefully food will clear up his head somewhat and help him find a decent solution to the situation.

Sure enough, when he's back at his desk an hour later he's feeling much better, and also almost immediately comes up with a game plan. Just like last time, he can use 'Nina' instead of Yurina, and he can just say it's been a while since he's heard from her. That should work fine.

Why that was so dang difficult to figure out before eludes him, but it's pretty embarrassing. Now if only coming up with a way to suggest a secret code communication system would pop into his mind the same way that had and he'd be set.

Unfortunately, thirty minutes later he's still drawing a blank on that front, and he decides to head into the leaders' office with what he has - telling them there might be an issue is more important than getting updated on the Vow situation, technically. He doesn't like it, but what else can he do? And maybe they'll volunteer the information without him asking for it - hopefully they'll have some empathy for how stressed he is about the entire situation, or at least offer him some indication in return for his sharing this... well, not newest development, really. Lack of development?

He knocks twice, and it takes a minute or so before he gets the call to come in, which means Audrey and Cadi are probably busy. Which makes sense, but he thinks they won't mind this particular interruption.

Sure enough, Audrey's annoyed look fades when she sees him. "Oh, Fergus. Is everything alright?"

"Decent enough. Haven't heard from Nina in a while though, which is odd. She's usually very big on sending mail." He responds lazily, and Audrey tenses. It's only now that he notices Cadi isn't even present, which is too bad. Between them, she tends to be the slightly more empathetic one, so she would be more likely to offer him some information in return for this.

"That is strange." She replies. "Especially considering everything that's happened. You haven't been told about the UAE?"

He frowns. "The what?" He replies, genuinely caught off-guard by the question. He's used to having more information than everyone else, not less.

"United Arab Emirates. There was an incident a few days ago." Audrey explains, and proceeds to fill him in on the details, which frankly he could have done without. He's not a fan of gore.

"Good gracious." He mutters. "That is... that's something."

"Combined with what you just told me? I'm starting to think it's something desperate." Audrey says, the spark of something undefinable in her tone - resigned and determined all in one. "We may just have the upper hand here..." She trails off, frowning. "We're still waiting on Aidan to work something out on your situation, but it's his primary focus, so hopefully we'll get something on that sooner rather than later."

Fergus nods, wishing he could push for more information but not wanting to risk saying much more than he already has. He has a name now at least - Aidan - though that's really a common enough name so doesn't actually give him too much to go on. At least he knows the issue is being worked on, which is certainly better than nothing.

Audrey eyes him for a moment, and then nods firmly, seemingly to herself more than to him. "We need a better way to communicate - I imagine Nina has been abnormally quiet for at least a week now, and you've been unable to determine the best way to share that without risking your Vow. We need that sort of information faster than that. Give me a day or so to create something - I'll modify the code phrases the Underground used to use for this particular situation. I'll call you in when it's ready. For now you should get back to your usual work - when is that Floo system going to be up?"

Fergus grimaces. "Every time we think we're ready to start planning something new pops up. We're trying to set up a meeting with the Muggle version of the Department of Transportation to get our 'permits', but they keep coming up with new reasons to change the date or send us even more forms to fill out. It's blatant stonewalling and I'm pretty sure they just don't want the Floo Network set up for Muggles at all despite the fact preliminary tests at Mungo's confirms that form of travel has no impact on Muggles whatsoever."

Audrey hums, frowning. "Well, keep at it. I'll tell Percy to set up a meeting with the other Transportation Heads sometime this month to see if we can make any pushes into those areas - I know we started with the Floo since it seemed the easiest, but I think we can see now that's definitely not been the case."

Fergus chuckles tiredly. "Fair enough. Thank you for your time."

"Of course Fergus, any time." She waves him out and he heads back to his desk to continue doing nothing and stressing himself out over it. Standard fare.

It's two days before he's called back into the leaders' office, and this time Cadi is present and looking haggard. He gives her a questioning look but is waved off, so he turns to face Audrey instead.

"Alright, I've managed to work some things out I think. I didn't make this code system and frankly it's clunky but Saundra was obsessed with this Muggle book I guess." She shrugs. "So anyway, I've written out each phrase and what they mean. A few have responses as well, so we can easily tell you how Aidan is progressing, if at all. Memorize it and burn it - only a select number of people know these codes and I'd honestly prefer-"

Fergus interrupts her, hands clenched tightly around the parchment in his hands, eyes flying over the codes, reading and re-reading them in hopes that somehow they'll change. "I already know these." He can't tell her how, can't tell her these are the exact codes given to him when he was sent to infiltrate the Initiative. That this is the same system his Handler had given him

Audrey freezes. "...What? How? Did you read the book?"

He shakes his head numbly, swallowing hard. "No. I'm guessing theses are the Underground codes?" He says, and Audrey stares at him for a long moment before hissing out a series of swears.

"Your Handler is Underground." She says dully, slumping into her seat. "The only people who knows these codes are former Underground members - I'm beyond sure of that. If you already know them..." She doesn't finish. She doesn't have to.

They're in trouble. If the Underground has been compromised, then there really is no one they can trust - and no way of knowing if they've already told that person everything, thinking they were a friend.

Author's Note: Is anyone really surprised that things are this miserable this chapter? Yurina wouldn't allow them to actually relax and have a win! Also... well, that last little snippet may cause some problems from here on out... >~< (Also for anyone in the States, have a safe Fourth!!)