Agent #2 chewed on the end of a pocky stick, the many security screens reflected in her glasses in the darkened room. Her legs were stretched across the console spread before her, but something....black, in the corner of the room caught her eye. She lowered her legs at once, her heavy boots thudding on the linoleum floor as she turned to face it, but the shadows faded like smoke in the corner of her eye before she could even see it directly.
The security director narrowed her eyes and bit the side of her lip. He was back. Again...That bastard. This couldn't be a good sign. Shadow Men never were.
She slowly put her feet back up on the console, keeping an eye out for the shadows in the corner of her eye for him again. She gave herself a brief moment to let her heart still, sip her tea, and consider just how this...whatever it was, got in.
Her doors were always locked and runed with every physical and magical means possible; no one could get in but the Lady Magistra herself (who she went where she pleased). But as she slurped the burning liquid, she felt...something, no, someone, standing beside her.
She spit her tea across the screens and flailed out of her chair.
"Agent #18?!" she coughed, scrambling to her feet. "How on earth did you get in? You--you're--..." she stammered. Agent #2's face fell as she looked the woman up and down. She bit her lip and gave a heavy sigh. "Weren't you investigating the Lenoir residence?" she whispered.
Agent 18 looked around confused, she was sure she was searching through the house but that was the last thing she remembered. "I-I don't really know how I got here, they had some complaints about their daughter's room, so I was looking around for clues."
"I think I saw some sort of figure, a black mass of some type, and the next thing I know I'm over here back in the headquarters which is about seven hours away!" Her eyes were wide, and her voice slowly raised itself to a pitch that was bordering on hysterical.
"I swear if this is one of the teleports playing a trick on me I'll...." she trailed off.
She took a deep breath to calm herself, "That house gave me serious creeps too. There was something there, but I couldn't clearly identify what it was. The complaint had put us in a real pickle too. The little girl kept seeing a shadow of some sort in her room at night. Do you think it had the ability to bring me here?" she asked, confused.
Agent #2 stared at her, unblinking and jaw-dropped. "I..." she stammered. "Well...." She took a deep breath to collect herself and pushed out her apprehension in a slow exhale. "Alright. Come here, we'll figure this out. So you saw a shadowy figure, right?"
She waited for Agent 18 to nod, then opened her arms to beckon her closer. "What else can you tell me about it?"
Agent 18 was silent for a moment, her brows furrowed in concentration. "I'm not sure how to explain. It was something...at the same time it felt like looking at nothing. I know I'm not making much sense but-" She cut herself off trying to find the right words.
Thinking back to her last memory, she shuddered violently wanting to claw all traces of the memory out of her mind, "I think in my entire career, this was the most terrifying thing I came across. There was a staircase that lead up to the child's room, I was halfway up there when I saw it. It looked human-" she hook her head, "No, only the shape was human, its body was like a bottomless pit. A sense of complete lack of existence"
"If possible, it was darker than any night or shadow I had ever seen."
"A void." She whispered her face paling and she buried it into her hands unable to continue. What she had seen would haunt her for a long while.
Agent #2 slowly approached Agent 18 and pulled her into a hug. "It's okay. We're...safe here," she said, though there was a hesitancy to her voice.
