i ate all the agents. sorry. *third trumpet sfx*

[BEHOLDER UNDERSTUDY] Colombier: Come in.

My contact is lead through the door to my office, nervously wringing their hands in the presence of the Claw next to them. As he departs, they remain idle in the doorway, seemingly afraid to approach. I wait for about one minute.

[BEHOLDER UNDERSTUDY] Colombier: If you have nothing to say to me, then I must demand you leave and allow me to get back to work.

That seems to get through their skull, and they finally make their way to where I am stationed.

Screens surround my every angle, showing different surveillance feeds from across the district. Dozens lining the walls and ceiling showing households, alleyways, underground hideaways, nooks and crannies spanning from the Nest to the Backstreets. Letting someone in here is a major risk of all sorts, and I would rather they say what they need to say and leave.

TERRIFIED WHISTLEBLOWER: I... um... [BEHOLDER UNDERSTUDY] Colombier: I was told you contacted the authorities as to disclose important information that was too dangerous to confide in the Fixer offices in your area. [BEHOLDER UNDERSTUDY] Colombier: I must remind you that by stepping in here, you are under oath to speak, otherwise false alarms will beget severe punishment. TERRIFIED WHISTLEBLOWER: --! TERRIFIED WHISTLEBLOWER: Y-... Are you really the Beholder here? [BEHOLDER UNDERSTUDY] Colombier: ... [BEHOLDER UNDERSTUDY] Colombier: Not the Beholder, no. I'm an administrative assistant. A middleman. [BEHOLDER UNDERSTUDY] Colombier: Regardless, I'm still to take any incoming calls. So speak.

The words flood out like water, and I am to do my job; recording and communicating for the actual allseeing eyes above me on the company ladder.

It's not exactly glamorous, sitting at a desk all day, taking calls and writing down documents to forward off to the actual staff. But it's something, a better position than my last one. Few can say they've made it into the good graces of the Head. The most I can do is bide my time until I'm promoted.

The little whistleblower yammers and rambles, and I click my pen idly as I impatiently wait for them to get to what needs to be disclosed.

-

...Antoine, Simone, and Berriau are going to be visiting soon. I should prepare for that later. I'll have to arrange reservations somewhere. We can go somewhere expensive; I'm sure by now I make more than they do, so there's no need to shirk on indulgences. I imagine they'll want to talk about how things have been going at our careers. There's not much I'll be able to disclose from where I am. I'm not exactly supposed to speak of what I see.

WOUNDED FAUVIST: Ghghhh--!

I am rudely dragged from my thoughts by the scent of blood, beast, and chemicals, with the shake of a pillar connecting with its target behind me.

Right. I am at work.

As it turns out, the informant did have worthwhile information for something dangerous enough to step into. The true Beholder of the district instructed me to go in their stead. I took the opportunity; it was a good enough time as any to try and pad out my achievements. Employee of the Month goes a long way, and all.

The Ring branch in the southern Backstreets of the District, the Fauvist school sect, was aiming to do something utterly, unfathomably stupid; an attempt at smuggling in creatures from the Outskirts within city lines for their next exhibition. The idiocy of the Syndicates in this place knows know bounds.

A City Taboo has been broken, and as such, the protocol is as usual: all witnesses and participants of the crime must be eliminated. Any stragglers of the crime that cannot be terminated must be relocated out of the City. It is a tried and true method that has become muscle memory by now.

I hear screams as the Claw brought with us tears into the tacky displays behind me in search of the offenders. We only needed to bring one to take care of the human culprits; it's overall a tiny day job. A blip in my schedule to pad out my shift.

In time, the room goes completely silent as all remaining contraband is shred and destroyed. This building will be collapsed and paved over, and all inside will be forgotten.

As we leave, I idly think about what I will do for tomorrow's lunch.

-

There is an extent to which I have always been cognizant of the things I am doing.

It is incorrigible to pretend that some part of me has truly never been aware of the nature of it all; that it all passed over like a gust of wind before dissipating into the air around me. That part of me, naive and young and looking to move up in the world, must have conceptualized it as the natural state of things. The sun comes up in the morning. Water is wet. The City is cruel.

But cruelty can't be ascribed to inherent processes. Would you call a predator cruel for just trying to survive? That is where my thoughts diverged that day, when I saw the true scope of my role in the world. Nothing in the city is blameless, and I am no exception.

The city is not a force of nature. In all its irony, it is a machine, a carefully managed mechanism that is fueled by blood and manned by faceless forces. It was not born, it was built. It is no hunter, it is an incinerator that fuels itself on what is thrown inside of it.

Without the light from the furnace, we may as well be stumbling around in the dark, trapped within our human sensibilities, scared of what we cannot see and frozen from the cold.

And so, the fire cannot go out.

Ultimately, this is how the world is meant to work. The City is the axis civilization revolves around, every little sect of society accounted for the balance in its weight. Gladly, I slot myself into the cogs of it, turning on that axis, keeping it in motion, keeping that society intact and humanity where it should be. I keep it running. I fuel the flame.

Maybe if things could be different, the thought would be worth entertaining. But this is how the world simply works.

Until the day I am proven wrong, I simply just do what is asked of me.

I enter the room, my office.