"Fletcher, stop laughing about!" Daniel groaned, turning around to glare at the boy behind her. Blythe Burns and Grayson Fletcher were shoving one another around. They were goofing off, when they should've been paying attention to the case at hand. "We've got a type two to deal with, stop." The brunette seethed, rolling her eyes as she turned back to the musty room in front of them.
"Do you feel the source, Aiken?" Lilith Kennedy, the team's supervisor, and the only adult present, placed a careful hand against the younger girl's shoulder and looked to her.
Daniel took a deep breath, closing her eyes and focusing in on her talents. Even with her eyes shut, she could see the bright death glow in the corner of the room, it was blinding. Though, at the same time, it didn't feel like it was from this floor. It felt like it was from the roof of the floor below, which only made it that much stranger. The girl walked forward, dragging her hand across the wall as she went. Daniel stopped, feeling a shot of pain run through her hand and all the way to her heart. She could sense it. Not specifically the source, not yet. But the spirit itself. "It's a. . .It's a poltergeist, I think." As if on cue with her words, the door behind the team slammed shut. Daniel's entire body temperature dropped, her blood running cold as ice. She heard overlapping voices, they were angry, scared. The words were unintelligible, bouncing off her skull like a hammer in a bell. She gasped, stumbling back from the wall. Her eyes shot open, looking around. "Something's wrong."
"Daniel, what do you mean? What's wrong?" Grayson looked down to the girl, his light and airy attitude dropping. He knew better than to distrust Daniel Aiken's instincts, they all did. She was too good at her job to second guess her.
"They-" She froze, her eyes going wide as she saw six apparitions forming behind her team. Daniel drew her rapier, pushing in front of the other three.
"Oh, shit-" Blythe breathed out, drawing her own rapier. The four of them sliced through the spirits, warding them off temporarily.
"Find that damn source, Aiken!" Lilith shouted, her voice breaking. Daniel looked wearily between her teammates.
"Just go, for God's sake!" Grayson nodded, throwing a salt bomb at one of the poltergeists, and making it release a deafening shriek.
Daniel took a heavy breath, letting a tight nod slip. She returned her rapier to it's sheath, scrambling over to the wall. She slid both her hands on the old floral wallpaper. She tuned in, feeling the burning sensation increase as she got further from where her team were fighting off the poltergeists. She could hear the three yelling to one another. Yelling at her to hurry up. Daniel recognised the way her hands stung and smiled. The source. She was in the exact spot she had been originally drawn to, the place she had first stopped. She wanted to scold herself for not realising it sooner. Daniel looked down and saw an old dresser, the tracks rusty and probably would squeak when she tried to pull the drawers open.
"Daniel!"
The brunette snapped around at the sound of her teammate's cries. Her eyes went wide with tears when she saw Lilith grabbed by one of the phantoms, Grayson had been ghost locked, and Blythe was barely holding them off.
"I've almost got it, Burns!" Daniel turned back around, digging through the drawers of the old dresser. She nudged an old looking box, opening to find an array of fanciful jewelry and watches. They looked expensive. She saw flashes of a party, the members were lavish and happy. They were dancing in the main room that the Fittes team had just gone through downstairs, a ballroom. And then a candle fell over, the entire room engulfing in flames. Daniel felt a sharp heat race across her spine, burrowing itself deep against her nerves. Her knees buckled, knocking her to the ground. She hurried to pull the silver net from where she had tucked it into her belt, wrapping the book in it. She twisted around, smiling. "I got it! I got. . ." The brunette's smile fell, seeing that Blythe had impaled herself on her own rapier, blood trickling out of her mouth and pooling underneath her. Grayson was no longer ghost locked, instead his torso was sliced through, splitting him messily in half.
Daniel let out a screamed sob, tears racing off her cheeks. Her entire team was dead. Lilith had been ghost touched, her skin still emitting that broken blue and white glow. Grayson was cut down the middle and Blyth had been impaled through the heart. Their death glows were already forming underneath them, Grayson Fletcher's the brightest. Daniel must have been zoned in on the box of sources for longer than she realised for the ghost touch to have full effect. Either that or she was grabbed multiple times. Daniel took in a shaky breath, walking over to her dead team and kneeling beside them. "I'm sorry." She muttered, her tears mixing against her trousers with the blood of her fallen teammates.
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Daniel Aiken was sitting in the Fittes offices, waiting for them to be ready to talk to her. She held her teams' Fittes officer pins in her pocket, toying with them in her pocket. She couldn't just leave her whole team with nothing to commemorate them. It felt wrong. When they finally called her in, Daniel was prepared to go over the accounts of the night. She had been preparing herself to relive the tragedies for the two hours since she learnt they wanted to hold this meeting with her. It hadn't even been twelve hours since she left Fittes' Furnaces to drop off the sources. "Agent Aiken, how are you?" Penelope Fittes asked, opening a manila folder on her desk and pulling out a picture of the source that Daniel had brought in to be destroyed.
"A bit shaken, but unharmed." The brunette nodded, sitting up properly in the seat that was just in front of Penelope Fittes's desk. She took note of the fact that Agent Quill Kipps was stood in the corner of the room. Attempting, and failing, to meld into the shadow of the bookshelf. She could feel his sticky gaze on her like a sickening plague.
"Good, good. You brought the box to the furnaces, yes?" The older woman asked, looking at Daniel with a sense of annoyance.
"Yes, of course." The agent nodded.
"Good. You are dismissed." She waved, literally waved, Daniel off. As if shooing her to leave as fast as possible.
"You- You don't want to know what happened?" Daniel stammered, shaking her head slightly to rid her mind of the disbelief.
Penelope Fittes put the photo of the source back into the yellow folder, sliding it shut and placing it securely into a drawer. "No. I see no need to."
"But- My entire team died." Daniel scoffed, standing up from the chair.
"Agents die on assignments every day, Agent Aiken. There is no reason to dwell on their passings." Penelope Fittes explained her point of view, folding her hands together and placing them delicately under her chin. The woman leaned forward on her hands, allowing the weight of her head and shoulders to be held against her elbows instead. "Now, please go get your next assignment. I believe you have a new team to meet. You may join Agent Kipps's, if you please, he has had his eye on you for a while." Penelope's words made Daniel sick. No reason to dwell? She just watched her team die, her friends. Not because of anything they did wrong, but because she wasn't fast enough. There was too much to dwell on. She couldn't just forget it and move on, pretend it never happened. She wouldn't. She also would not join Quill Kipps team, she'd rather have died with the rest of her team.
"No. I- I can't work for you anymore. I appreciate the opportunity, but I'm afraid I must resign from Fittes." Daniel shook her head. She pulled her Fittes pin from her uniform, placing it carefully onto the woman's desk. She ignored the fact she had the rest of her teams' in her pocket, not letting those be taken from her. That was all she had left of her team.
"I understand. Please have your resignation paperwork in by tonight and it will be filed tomorrow. Some people simply can't handle the pressure. Especially someone so young." The woman sighed.
"Ms. Fittes, with all do respect, I am one of your highest ranking agents and I graduated with my fourth year at the age of fifteen, two years ahead. I am not resigning because of the pressure." Daniel snarled, turning around and heading for the door. She hovered her hand over the handle, turning to her right to look at the agent. "Won't miss seeing you, Kipps." He rolled his eyes, opting not to say anything so he wouldn't get in trouble from the agency's supervisor.
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Word Count - 1,528
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Published - June 17, 2023
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