Noctura

three

A new, different group?

"Your newest assignments will be given as necessary," Director Hamada informs. "You're all dismissed. Thank you for attending."

People begin standing up, gathering their things, and leaving the meeting room after Director Hamada does.

I hang back as everyone files out of the room. Then I walk over toward the girl, who's gathering her paperwork in her manila folder.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."

She looks up at me, startled. "Well," she says, putting a piece of her auburn hair behind her ear. "No one asked me for it."

"I'm asking now," I tell her with a small smile.

She returns the smile out of politeness. "Teagan Evans. I just transferred here from the second division."

"Second division, huh? So you were up north?"

"Yeah." She nods. "You didn't tell me your name."

"Ah, right." I lean against the table. "Lee Seunghoon. Rank three officer. I've been here at your finest AAN division my entire career."

"You grow up here?" She grabs her folders and holds them against her body.

I stand up straight and gesture toward the door. "I did. Parents had me here and raised me here. They were never part of the AAN, but they were ecstatic when I told them that's what I wanted to do. They're a little disappointed I don't do as much field work as I'd like to, but it happens."

"You're a rank three officer and you don't do field work?" She asks.

We step out the door and move down the hallways toward the offices.

"You got it," I tell her with a grin. "I don't mind it too much, but I do wish I could be out there more."

"Have you ever been on a field mission?"

"Yeah," I answer. "Just a few times. But they weren't very interesting. Usually just tagged along to investigate some stuff. Chased a fake call once, but that's about as interesting as it gets."

Teagan nods. "Back in the second division, sometimes officers in rank two would be out in the field. It was common for rank three."

"You been on missions?"

She blushes and shakes her head. "Oh, me? No. I'm still just a rank one."

"Rank one?" I ask. "Why'd you get transferred then?"

"I'm good at desk work," she responds. "They said I could do better work here and I thought moving sounded like a good idea. I mean, Director Hamada spends almost all of his time in the fourth division, so I thought it was cool I was going to work with him directly. Turns out he doesn't really care about my ideas like I thought he would, though."

Teagan stops at a desk and moves around it, putting her folders and things away.

"Yeah, about that, I was actually wondering what you were going to say."

Teagan looks up and gives me a small smile. "Well, thanks, Seunghoon, but I've got to get back to work."

"Right," I tell her. "You work late nights?"

She nods. "Yeah."

"Early mornings."

She sits down in her chair and pulls up her computer.

"How about coffee?" I ask. "After you get off work?"

"I'll be here until midnight," she tells me. "What time do you come in?"

"Nine," I tell her. "I'm supposed to get off around five every day, but as you probably know, that rarely happens."

I glance over at the clock on the wall, seeing that it's already almost twenty past six.

Teagan smiles and this time it's more genuine. "How about tomorrow morning, then? We can go get coffee around eight?"

"Sounds good to me," I tell her.

She nods. "We'll go to Hinansho, the one just a couple blocks from here?"

"My favorite place." I grin. "I'll see you there tomorrow at eight."

She gives me another slight smile before going back to her work.

I leave and swing by my own desk, grabbing my jacket before heading out the door.

I descend the steps of the AAN building and head right, moving toward my apartment.

The sky is gray, per usual, but it looks like it might rain soon.

Taxis and cars move around in the street. There are some people walking or waiting to cross the street. I see a mother and her young daughter heading into a small bakery.

Kraephis seems like such a normal place from the outside.

But once you're on the inside, you see all the bad stuff. All the evil things that happen here.

I was never too interested in history class, but I do know that there used to be many countries across the world. After so many wars, though, and natural devastation, the land on the earth slowly decayed until there were only small islands littered throughout the oceans.

Now, we have Kraephis, the largest city in the world. It's really an island, but since every island is pretty much its own city, we call it a city. Kraephis is actually the only city that's really inhabited anymore. All the other cities are too run down and out of natural resources or out of access to technologies. So, mostly everyone lives here, in Kraephis.

Unfortunately, that also means the Nocturas live here too.

Nocturas are creatures that we humans have had to live alongside for centuries. They look just like humans and act just like humans, but they aren't human. They're soul-sucking creatures who have to kill for food.

And what do they eat?

Humans.

I mean, they don't really eat humans. They just feed off of the life essence inside humans.

Basically, we all have this essence inside us that allows us to breathe and move and live. When a Noctura "eats" a human, what they actually do is drain a human's life essence and take it for themselves. It satisfies their hunger, keeps them strong, and keeps them living.

Obviously, in this process, the human is killed. If there's no more life essence in them, how do they live?

So, the AAN, or Association Against Nocturas, hunts these creatures and kills them.

We can't have murdering creatures running around killing everybody around us. The AAN is here to stop that from happening.

Within Kraephis, there are nine sectors, from north to south. In four separate sectors, there are divisions of the AAN. The name of the division is based off of the sector it is stationed in. Since we're in the fourth sector, we're the fourth division. There are also divisions in the second, fifth, and ninth sectors.

The AAN does everything we can to protect people from Nocturas, but it's a hard task.

We have officers who do desk work, research, and some investigations. Then we have senior officers who do most of the investigating and fighting. Soldiers are the big guys who lead the others in battles against the Nocturas and work up there with Director Hamada himself. His father, grandfather, great grandfather, and so on, have been the lead directors of the AAN ever since it was created.

Honestly, I love working for the AAN. I don't mind doing all the desk work, because I know I'm so close to being promoted to a senior officer. And once I'm a senior officer, I'll be able to fight the Nocturas. That's really what I want to do. I want to fight Nocturas on the street and kill every last one of them. They can't get away with murdering people.

I hate the Nocturas. And I would give anything to see them perish.