Desks of Doom and Dying Cacti: Apparently My Interview Just Went Prehistoric? (Definitely Ask!)
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Author Note: Okay, so maybe I should have Googled "Red Desert surveillance footage" before agreeing to this meeting. My bad. Also, someone water that poor cactus. It's giving me existential dread.
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Joe's office was unexpectedly vast—a cavernous stretch of space that seemed at odds with the quiet, no-nonsense demeanor of the man himself. Sawyer had, perhaps unconsciously, imagined something much smaller and tidier. Maybe a narrow room with shelves lined with organized files, a modest desk, and minimal flair. Something that mirrored Joe's measured voice and unflinching eyes.
But instead, he stepped into a room that breathed authority. The floor was wide, almost too wide, the way a throne room might feel to someone unaccustomed to court. It was the kind of space that said, This man makes decisions that affect lives. And yet, despite its scale, it felt hollow in a way that unsettled him. Too clean. Too empty. Too curated.
Sawyer's footsteps echoed faintly as he moved further in, the sound bouncing off the polished wood floor. The air held a faint scent of disinfectant and old paper—sterile, clinical. Impersonal. He couldn't help but feel like an intruder, a guest in a place where personal warmth had been stripped away in favor of control and distance.
At the center of it all stood a large, mahogany desk, its rich wood polished to a near-mirror sheen. It looked more like a museum piece than a functional surface for work. Save for a single notepad, a tightly stacked file, and a pen placed with almost obsessive precision, the desk was barren—devoid of clutter, life, or history. No scattered papers. No framed photographs. No coffee cup with lipstick stains or tired rings.
There were a few chairs positioned strategically around the room—thin, upright things with stiff backs and untouched cushions. They didn't seem designed for comfort, just presence. As if the very suggestion of conversation or company had been accounted for, but never genuinely welcomed.
The walls stretched high and bare, a dull gray that made Sawyer think of waiting rooms and hospitals. The only decoration, if it could be called that, was a single certificate in a dark wood frame, hanging just left of the door. It was crooked. Slightly, but noticeably. The fact that no one had fixed it only added to the strange sterility of the room—as if appearances mattered, but meaning didn't.
Sawyer's eyes drifted to the window. Broad and spotless, it allowed light to flood in, casting long, clean shadows on the floor. On the sill sat the room's lone hint of personality: a small cactus, its spines dulled, its once-proud body now sagging pitifully in a plastic pot. It leaned to one side, half-wilting, half-defiant, like it had been forgotten a long time ago and stubbornly survived out of spite. There was something oddly poetic about it.
And somehow, standing there in that vast, echoing space with its sharp corners and silent stillness, it was that little dying cactus that made Sawyer feel the most uncomfortable. It reminded him that even in powerful places, things can be left behind. Neglected. Withering quietly.
"Zara, would you be so kind as to pull up the surveillance footage from the Red Desert from last week?" Joe's voice carried across the expansive room, bouncing gently off the high walls. Though casual in tone, there was an underlying current of control, as if even his simplest requests were more like commands delivered with a velvet glove. He leaned back into his high-backed leather chair, the soft creak of the worn material the only reply for a moment. The chair, sleek and obviously expensive, groaned beneath the shift of his weight, its dark finish matching the somber elegance of the desk before him.
The room fell into a brief silence, punctuated only by the distant whir of the central ventilation system. Joe exhaled slowly, eyes lingering on the screen embedded into his desk as he added, "And while you're at it, could you bring us some coffee?" He turned toward Sawyer then, his expression composed, his smile appearing out of nowhere like a mask slipping into place. It was the kind of smile that came from years of negotiation rooms and long hours around people he needed to impress—but there was something mechanical about it, something that fell just short of sincerity.
Sawyer blinked, caught a little off guard. He'd been too busy absorbing the surreal sterility of the room, still feeling like he was in a corporate lobby rather than someone's office. The absence of clutter, of personality—except for that damned cactus—made everything seem staged, like a room in a catalog. He tried to push that feeling aside.
"Uh… no cream, two sugars, please… or…" Sawyer hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck, "maybe another one of those bubble teas?" His words came out slower than usual, betraying the nervousness he felt. His gaze flicked to the desk, then to the massive screen on the far wall, unsure if he was supposed to be looking anywhere in particular. He didn't want to seem unprofessional, though he wasn't sure if this meeting even followed any kind of professional structure.
Joe's smirk deepened, the edge of it curling with a faint amusement that was almost too well-practiced. His eyes glinted—less with warmth and more with calculation. "And Zara," he called again, his tone more playful this time, "while you're at it, get him a large donut too—you know, for the… uh… 'magic infusion thingy' cravings."
He threw in a wink at the end, the kind that tried to bridge the gap between boss and buddy, though it lingered just a second too long to feel natural. It was a wink that said, I know more than I'm saying, with a pinch of mockery under the surface. Not cruel, just… detached.
Sawyer gave a sheepish half-smile in return, unsure if he was meant to laugh or just nod. "Right… the cravings," he muttered, his voice barely above a mumble. A part of him felt seen, but not in a way he liked. It was like Joe was constantly several steps ahead in a conversation Sawyer hadn't even realized they were having.
The tension in the room didn't ease—it only shifted into something quieter, something harder to place. Beneath the polished surface of Joe's charisma, Sawyer could feel it: the cold efficiency of a man who rarely made mistakes and never forgot details, even ones you wished he had.
Zara, ever efficient and eerily graceful, was already on the move before Joe had even completed his sentence. Her black pencil skirt shifted just enough with each step to suggest precision rather than haste, and the sharp, rhythmic click of her heels echoed crisply against the polished mahogany floor. The sound briefly filled the cavernous office before dissolving into the sterile quiet of the hallway beyond, like a clock ticking away in a place where time didn't seem to matter.
Sawyer watched her go, only half aware of the way her figure receded down the corridor like a shadow being drawn back into the light. There was something in her stride—unapologetically confident, cool, and composed—that hinted at more than just administrative prowess. She didn't just walk like someone who belonged here; she walked like someone who owned every space she entered, even if no one dared say it aloud.
Joe let out a small sigh, almost too quiet to catch. It slipped from between his lips like the tail end of a thought, a fleeting moment of vulnerability that contradicted his usual composure. He gave his head a slight shake, an expression crossing his features too quickly to name—equal parts amusement and weariness. Whatever it was, it passed as quickly as it came.
He turned back toward Sawyer then, his previous smirk gone, replaced with a steadier, more focused gaze. His eyes narrowed slightly, not with suspicion, but with the kind of sharp interest a professor might show a promising but unruly student.
"Now then, back to you, kiddo," Joe said, his voice softer now, but laced with a firm undercurrent. "We've got a few things to discuss."
As he rose from his chair, the leather emitted a low, reluctant groan, echoing the subtle tension thickening the air. Joe stretched slightly as he stood, the movement casual but deliberate, as though he was both relaxing and preparing himself for the weight of whatever conversation was about to unfold.
In one hand, he held a sleek black remote—minimalistic and glossy, like something that belonged in a high-end showroom more than a workplace. He tapped it idly against his palm, the soft, rhythmic sound building anticipation.
Then, with a subtle press of his thumb, the enormous screen mounted on the far wall sprang to life. Sawyer blinked. He hadn't even noticed it before—his initial impression of the office had missed the tech nestled within the minimalism.
The screen flickered with static for a moment before the company's logo appeared: a stylized eye encased within a geometric hexagonal frame, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat. The symbol seemed to watch them, almost sentient in its design, before dissolving into a live video feed marred by occasional static lines.
Sawyer instinctively leaned forward, eyes narrowing as he tried to make sense of the hazy visuals. A blurry, sun-drenched landscape came into view—red sand, swirling wind, and distant shadows moving just out of focus. The Red Desert. Even through the low-quality transmission, something about the scene sent a prickle down his spine. It was both eerily quiet and charged with invisible tension.
"What does all of this have to do with—" Sawyer began, but his words faltered mid-sentence, as a slow knot of unease began to twist in his stomach. The mood in the room had shifted—subtly but unmistakably. Where there had been a casual air just moments ago, now there was weight. The kind of weight that settled heavily on the chest and made your thoughts race ahead of your breath.
The screen, the size of a small wall, glowed with silent urgency. Joe's earlier warmth, that feigned friendliness wrapped in charisma, had evaporated like mist. In its place stood something colder, more focused. Sawyer felt the shift deeply—not just in Joe's tone, but in his posture, in the way his eyes no longer wandered but locked onto the screen with clinical precision.
"Just watch, man," Joe said, cutting off the question gently, but firmly. His voice dropped into a tone that allowed no room for argument. Whatever was about to unfold, he believed it needed no introduction. He motioned toward the screen with a flick of the remote, his hand steady, his gaze unwavering.
Sawyer turned his attention to the feed. What he saw pulled him further into the growing unease curling in his gut.
The Red Desert was exactly as Joe had described it—vast, brutal, and indifferent. A raw, sunburned expanse of nothingness, its cracked red sands shimmered beneath the weight of a relentless sun that seemed determined to burn every inch of life from the surface. The camera's angle remained fixed, capturing the harsh terrain from a slightly elevated vantage point. Nothing moved. No birds, no wind. Just heat, haze, and the oppressive stillness of a place forgotten by nature itself.
In the center of the frame stood a lone man, dressed in matte-black tactical fatigues that blended harshly with the scorching reds around him. The gear was heavy—military-grade, with reinforced plating and a complex, metallic device strapped across his chest. It looked too bulky to be practical, yet it was worn with practiced ease, suggesting he had done this before. A small, rectangular screen on the device blinked rhythmically, displaying alien symbols and rapidly shifting numbers that meant nothing to Sawyer but clearly mattered deeply to someone.
Two other figures stood just behind the man, similarly dressed. Soldiers, most likely, judging by their alert stance and mirrored equipment. Their voices crackled through the audio system in faint, fragmented bursts—but none of it made sense. Disjointed syllables, patches of static, and the occasional harsh breath gave the sense that something was happening—but not what.
Sawyer frowned. He leaned in slightly, straining to hear, to decipher, to find meaning in the silence of the man's movements. The lead figure on-screen was speaking now, gesturing urgently as his lips moved—but the sound was missing. Completely absent. The disconnect between what he saw and what he didn't hear felt jarring, surreal.
He turned instinctively to Joe, eyebrows raised in quiet confusion.
Joe didn't look back at him. Instead, his eyes shifted subtly to the side—towards Zara.
"Did you remember to activate the audio feed, Zara?" Joe asked, his tone a mixture of resigned patience and mild exasperation, like a teacher pointing out a mistake for the third time.
Zara, already anticipating the problem, was halfway across the room. Her earlier smooth composure had returned; there was no fluster now, only silent efficiency. She moved swiftly to a sleek console embedded in the far wall, her fingers gliding over buttons like a pianist setting a rhythm. A thin cord was pulled out from a drawer, and with a few practiced motions, she connected it to the main system.
A soft click. A green light. A second passed.
"You always forget to turn on the audio, Zara," Joe muttered, exhaling with the weight of someone repeating an old complaint. But there was no real sting in his words—just familiarity. A routine exchange between two people who had worked together too long to be formal, but not long enough to always function flawlessly.
Before Zara could respond, the screen came alive with sound—harsh, sudden, immediate.
Sawyer jolted slightly in his chair. The silence was gone, replaced by the sharp wind of the Red Desert, the crackle of comms, and the low, tense voice of the man in black as he gave precise, clipped orders.
The moment no longer felt like surveillance. It felt like a warning.
"Area 61 checked," the man on the feed announced, his voice sharp and clipped, the kind of tone honed through repetition and field experience. His words carried a calm urgency, cutting through the ambient rustle of dry winds and the occasional whir of the recording equipment. "Magic fluctuations increasing by approximately 1.2 knots over the established frequency. Current projection indicates a potential dimensional break by the end of the month. Do you copy?"
He stood steady, feet shoulder-width apart, posture rigid with discipline. Despite the staggering heat and the strain that clung to every breath, he reported with the detached focus of someone trained to prioritize precision over emotion. The sun glared off the desert sand around him, a silent testament to the hostility of the Red Desert—hostile not just in terrain, but in what it seemed to be hiding.
Behind him, the atmosphere could not have been more different. The other two soldiers, both clad in matching tactical gear, seemed untouched by the gravity of the report. Their voices drifted through the open comms, warm and careless, as they exchanged crude jokes and rated the office secretaries back at headquarters. Their tone was flirtatious, juvenile even, tinged with a kind of carefree arrogance that suggested they had either grown too used to danger—or no longer believed it was real.
Sawyer stiffened at the contrast. It wasn't just inappropriate—it was disturbing. The way their laughter echoed over a live feed that predicted a dimensional rupture was like hearing a joke at a funeral. It didn't belong. It scraped against the inside of his mind, unsettling in a way he couldn't quite explain. The realization that these were the people monitoring a potentially catastrophic anomaly only made his anxiety twist tighter.
He glanced briefly at Joe, hoping to find some kind of reassurance or perhaps even shared concern.
Joe didn't say anything at first, but his body language spoke volumes. He leaned forward slightly, elbows resting on his desk, fingers steepled in front of his face as his eyes narrowed at the screen. A soft cough escaped him—controlled, deliberate—almost like a cue for composure. His jaw tightened subtly, and the beginnings of a frown pulled at the corners of his mouth.
The silence between them seemed to stretch, filled only by the dissonant sounds of the desert and the inappropriate laughter of the soldiers. And then, in that stillness, it became painfully clear to Sawyer: whatever was happening in Area 61, it was bigger than a joke. And Joe was no longer amused.
"Sorry about that last part," Joe murmured, more to himself than to Sawyer, his voice low and colored with something between regret and resignation. His eyes never left the screen, as if he already knew what was coming—like he'd seen this happen before, or worse, had expected it. His posture remained stiff, jaw clenched tight, the remote in his hand now forgotten, limp against the polished surface of his desk.
Sawyer didn't respond. He couldn't. His entire focus had narrowed to the screen, to the tension tightening his chest and the cold weight settling in his gut. The light in the office felt suddenly too bright, too clean—an impossible contrast to the growing dread that crept up his spine. Every sound from the feed seemed to echo louder than it should, like it was invading the space around him, dragging the Red Desert into the heart of that sterile, impersonal room.
Then it happened.
The shift in the scene was so sudden, so violent, it felt like the footage had skipped several frames. One moment, the soldiers were still bantering, still relaxed and unaware. The next, chaos.
Something massive—colossal—swept across the sky like a streak of living shadow. Its form was hard to define, as if the camera itself struggled to capture its shape. Wings? Claws? It moved too fast. The sun flared off its surface just long enough to hint at scaled armor, a sinewy, predatory body built for speed and destruction. Its arrival cast an enormous shadow over the desert floor, and for one heart-stopping moment, everything stood still.
Then the screaming started.
The creature struck without hesitation, snatching up the largest soldier—the one with the shaved head and broad shoulders, still grinning from his last joke. There was no time to react, no time to scream. It seized him like a doll, lifted him effortlessly into the air, and with an almost bored flick of its body, hurled him into the far horizon. The sound of his body hitting the sand, distant and dull, was followed by silence that lasted a fraction of a second—just long enough for dread to become horror.
The sand erupted next, violently torn open from beneath as more nightmares emerged—grotesque creatures with the gnarled, armored bodies of overgrown reptiles, their scales a gruesome, wet red that shimmered with something too thick to be sweat. They moved in a pack, like wolves with muscle and mass to rival bears, eyes gleaming with something ancient and hateful.
They didn't hesitate.
They surged toward the fallen man like bloodhounds on the scent, limbs pounding against the cracked earth, teeth bared. Sawyer watched—frozen—as they descended upon the body. What came next unfolded in the raw, unflinching detail of real violence. Teeth tore through flesh. Claws raked bone. The man's screams, high-pitched and agonized, were abruptly cut short in a sickening, wet crunch.
Sawyer recoiled in his seat, hand clamping over his mouth, bile rising uninvited in his throat. He tried not to look, but his eyes stayed locked to the screen, transfixed by terror. He had never seen anything so gruesome, so animalistic. It wasn't just a killing—it was a desecration.
The cheerful banter that had filled the audio moments before now seemed grotesque in retrospect, a mocking prelude to carnage. All that remained was the echo of snarls, of wet tearing, of limbs being ripped from sockets like paper dolls in the jaws of monsters.
The screen flickered slightly from the dust, but the feed continued.
And still, Joe said nothing.
The two remaining soldiers froze—utterly and completely—as if the sheer weight of the horror before them had shackled their bodies and stolen the air from their lungs. The cocky banter, the bravado-laced laughter that had filled the air moments earlier, died with brutal finality. It wasn't just silence now—it was dread. Thick. Suffocating. A terror that wrapped around them like cold, wet cloth, choking all rational thought. Sawyer could feel it too, gnawing at the edges of his mind, a clawed whisper urging him to run, to hide, to pray.
One of the soldiers let out a strangled, broken scream—not of pain, but of disbelief. His eyes, wide and glassy, stared ahead like they couldn't fully register what they were seeing. Something in him had snapped. His fingers scrambled over his assault rifle with clumsy desperation, trembling so hard they barely found their mark. He yanked it up to his shoulder, not aiming so much as pointing, and squeezed the trigger. Bullets sprayed blindly into the thickening wall of scaled monstrosities surging toward them.
Each muzzle flash lit up his face like a strobe, revealing a ghostly pale mask streaked with sweat and grime. His jaw hung slack, teeth clenched only out of habit. His whole body shuddered with each pull of the trigger, and when the ammo finally ran dry, the clicking of the empty chamber was deafening.
Still shaking, he fumbled for a new magazine. His breath came in short, erratic bursts, loud in the thick quiet that followed. The tremors in his hands made every movement a battle of its own, his fingers slipping, failing. He glanced up briefly, eyes flicking between the incoming creatures and the too-distant horizon as if searching for salvation that would never come. With trembling hands, he tried again to reload.
Then—it came.
A sound. Low. Guttural. It didn't roar or thunder. It groaned. A deep, vibrating note, ancient and ominous, rolling through the air like the first tremor of an oncoming earthquake. Sawyer flinched before he even realized it, his whole body tensing involuntarily. The sound didn't just pass through the room—it entered him. It slid through the speakers like oil, vibrating straight into his bones, into the marrow. He felt it in his chest before he registered it in his ears, and every instinct he had screamed that whatever had made that noise was not only massive but wrong—something born long before men and guns and war.
It was the kind of sound that didn't just echo—it lingered. Like it had a presence of its own. Like it knew it was being heard.
"Shit! Oh, sweet shit!" the man cried out, his voice breaking mid-sentence, sharp and raw with a fear so intense it barely sounded human. He spun around toward the source of the grotesque sound, movements jerky and wild, as if every nerve in his body had been lit on fire. The camera in his hand, still managing to stream a trembling, disoriented image, briefly caught a glimpse of something that made Sawyer's heart skip a beat—and then plummet into a cold, tight void inside his chest.
Standing behind the soldier was a figure—no, a nightmare given form. It towered, an unholy blend of human anatomy and reptilian monstrosity, a creature of scale and sinew. Its skin was thick and blood-red, shimmering like wet leather under the unforgiving blaze of the desert sun. Muscles shifted beneath its hide like boulders rolling beneath fabric. The air seemed to ripple around it, as though the heat itself bent away from the thing's presence in reverent fear.
Its face was a brutal, predatory mask—part man, part crocodile, all menace. Eyes like molten gold, slit down the center with vertical pupils, stared unblinking at the man before it. There was no mercy in that gaze. No trace of empathy or emotion. Only a glint of deliberate, intelligent cruelty. Something that understood what fear was and took pleasure in it.
And then it smiled.
A slow, grotesque stretch of its mouth, teeth barely peeking from beneath its thick lips, forming a grin that was less expression and more... announcement. This wasn't just hunger. It was delight. Mockery. A beast that knew the power it held—and savored the helplessness it caused.
The soldier didn't move. He couldn't. His body betrayed him completely. His eyes were wide, glassy, glued to the monstrosity in front of him. His rifle dangled at his side, forgotten, its weight meaningless against the crushing terror that had seized every muscle in his frame. It wasn't just that he was afraid—it was that his brain had simply shut down. Overridden. Replaced by pure, animal horror.
The creature's jaw began to open, and the sound it made sent Sawyer's skin crawling. The joints cracked with audible, gruesome pops as it stretched far beyond what any normal creature should be capable of. Inside its mouth were rows upon rows of serrated, knife-like teeth, each one slightly curved, like nature had sculpted them specifically for tearing through flesh and bone in one smooth, final motion.
And then, it struck.
No pause. No wind-up. Just motion—blisteringly fast and brutally efficient. The soldier never even screamed. One second he stood frozen in place, and the next he was gone. Swallowed whole in a single, horrific lunge. Him, the camera, the very air between them—all disappeared into the gaping maw of the reptilian terror.
The video feed stuttered, the image blurring into nonsense before cutting to static.
White noise hissed in Sawyer's ears as the screen trembled with digital snow, a sharp, sudden end that left the room in eerie silence. He could only stare, breath shallow and chest tight, as the realization settled in.
That man was gone.
Not lost. Not dead in the conventional, explainable sense.
Erased.
"Fuck," Sawyer muttered, but the word felt hollow—too small, too fragile to carry the weight of what he had just witnessed. It wasn't rage, not even anger. It was disbelief. A numb, rattling kind of shock that rooted itself in his bones and left his chest hollow. He slumped backward into the leather chair, the cushion swallowing his weight like it, too, understood that something in him had broken.
His face had gone pale, the color drained completely, as though his blood had abandoned him in protest. A thin sheen of cold sweat clung to his forehead, and his breath came in uneven shudders. His hands—shaking without rhythm—lifted to his face, and he gripped his hair as if anchoring himself would somehow make the memories retreat.
But they didn't.
The image was carved into his mind, merciless and vivid. The towering reptilian monster. The soldier's silent scream. The sound of bones—crunching, swallowed whole. The feed cutting to static. It all replayed in his head, over and over, like a curse he couldn't wake from.
A wave of nausea churned in his gut, thick and sickening, and he leaned forward slightly, afraid he might actually vomit. But nothing came. Just the cold. Just the shaking.
Across the room, Joe let out a long, deep sigh—a sound that carried years of weight, like a man too tired for the kind of world he lived in. He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, fingers kneading the tension buried beneath his skin. His expression was drawn, haunted even, his eyes not quite meeting Sawyer's.
"Sorry you had to see that, kid," Joe said quietly. There was no dismissiveness in his voice. No pretense. Just a low, tired remorse, like someone who had seen far too many things that no one should have to witness.
He leaned forward and pressed a button on the remote, switching off the massive screen. The glow that had cast its eerie light across the office disappeared, and the room dimmed, settling into a softer, more shadowed stillness.
"Listen, Sawyer," Joe began again, his voice gentler now, the kind people use when trying to ease someone into understanding something terrible. "About what we were discussing—"
The door to the office flew open with a sharp bang, cutting Joe off mid-sentence.
Both men flinched at the sound, the sudden intrusion snapping the heavy silence like a brittle twig. Sawyer jerked upright, his breath catching in his throat, heart pounding before his brain had even registered the source of the noise.
"Breakfast time!" Zara's voice rang out with jarring cheerfulness, light and sing-song, completely at odds with the heavy atmosphere that had suffocated the room just moments before.
She stepped in, back to them, as if nothing in the world was wrong. Then, with a theatrical spin, she turned to face them, a bright smile on her lips and a silver tray balanced perfectly in her hands.
The tray was almost absurd in its perfection. Thick slices of golden-brown toast stacked neatly in a tower. Scrambled eggs fluffed to perfection, still steaming. Juicy sausages sizzled with just the right crisp, their aroma rich and savory. And beside it all, a tall ceramic mug, the steam from the herbal tea curling upward like incense—warm, soothing, familiar.
The smell filled the room, rich and nostalgic, wrapping around Sawyer like a blanket pulled over open wounds. For a strange, fleeting moment, he forgot where he was. The scent of breakfast—simple, homely—felt so distant from the nightmare they had just witnessed that it was almost laughable.
Almost.
But no one laughed.
"Thank you, Zara," Joe said, his voice noticeably softer than it had been a moment ago.
A small, almost reluctant smile curved his lips—genuine, but fleeting—as though he were briefly remembering what it felt like to be part of a world where people smiled for reasons that had nothing to do with survival. For a second, the hard edge in his usually stern features eased, and the man behind the Commander emerged: tired, but still human.
"That looks… substantial," he added, nodding toward the tray, his tone straddling the line between appreciation and distraction. His hand moved in a vague gesture toward the outer offices, where the muted murmur of conversation and occasional clink of utensils hinted at a communal breakfast underway. "We'll take ours with everyone else, I think."
There was something deeply strange—almost surreal—about the idea of breakfast now. Toast and tea didn't belong in the same world that held monsters with blood-red scales and razor teeth. And yet, that very normalcy, so stark in contrast to the horror they'd just witnessed, offered a small lifeline. Something human. Something grounding. A reminder that the world hadn't completely lost its mind.
A soft, theatrical groan escaped Zara's lips as she rolled her eyes skyward with exaggerated exasperation.
"Honestly," she muttered under her breath, turning to leave the office with the tray still balanced effortlessly in her hands, "I told the staff weeks ago that we should start doing group breakfasts, you know? Build some team spirit, foster a little camaraderie."
She didn't wait for a response—didn't need one. Her tone was light and playful, laced with mock drama, like someone reenacting a speech they'd given more times than they could count. It was familiar—comfortingly so—and had the odd effect of chasing some of the residual coldness from the room.
"But does anyone ever listen to Zara?" she continued as she reached the hallway, glancing over her shoulder with a smirk. "No, of course not!"
The click of her tall black boots echoed rhythmically as she walked away, her confident stride unaffected by the grim tension she was leaving behind. The rich scent of the food she carried lingered in the air like a memory, mingling with the silence that followed, leaving Sawyer and Joe suspended in a fragile in-between—between death and toast, between horror and habit.
Joe chuckled softly, the sound low and gravelly, like the gentle roll of distant thunder. It wasn't forced—wasn't the hollow kind of laugh people gave when they didn't know what else to say. No, this came from somewhere genuine, even if it was wrapped in weariness. There was something about Zara's antics, chaotic as they could be, that seemed to pierce through his hardened demeanor, pulling a flicker of warmth from deep beneath the surface.
He shook his head slowly, a faint, tired smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. The lines on his face, usually etched deep with tension and responsibility, relaxed ever so slightly. For a fleeting moment, he looked less like the weight of the world sat on his shoulders and more like a man simply sharing a quiet moment with someone younger—someone still learning how heavy that weight could become.
"Don't pay too much attention to Zara, Sawyer," Joe said, his voice softer now, more conversational than commanding. "She can be a bit… dramatic at times. A real handful, as you might say."
He paused, his eyes drifting toward the door she had disappeared through, as if picturing her in motion—boots clicking, tray in hand, monologuing to anyone and no one. A flash of fondness crossed his expression.
"But beneath all that flair and fire," he added, "her heart's usually in the right place. Loyal to a fault. Annoying, sure—but I wouldn't trade her for ten of the straight-laced ones."
Joe straightened up slightly, brushing a bit of invisible dust from his sleeve as he turned his attention back to Sawyer. With a subtle incline of his head toward the now-quiet hallway, he offered a silent invitation.
"Now then," he said, gesturing gently with his hand, "breakfast?"
His tone was casual, but there was meaning behind it—a deliberate shift, a conscious choice to move forward. Maybe it was an attempt to tether them both back to the rhythm of routine, to the illusion of safety that even something as simple as a shared meal could offer.
"It looks like Zara, despite all her complaints," Joe added with a wry smile, "has managed to orchestrate a communal meal after all."
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Notes:Knots, in this context, likely refer to a unit of magical energy fluctuation, not nautical speed. Though, frankly, at this point, I wouldn't rule out sentient sailboats.