ACT I: The Trail For Beasts

The office smelled like new paint and fresh laminate. It had belonged to a previous site director, and another director before them, stretching back to when they laid down the concrete pad the original building once sat on. That building, like so many other systems within the Foundation, was now buried underneath a growing network of structures and bureaucracies that stretched out around it, the epicenter of a web spun by a great invisible spider. Here at its heart, Yoshihide could see every twist and tangle, every humming thread, each unknowing participant walking across the latticework. He wondered if the last director had seen him, as well, slowly working his way inwards towards this office.

The last director had, like many other directors, left suddenly when a new appointment was selected for them. Yoshihide remembered a time early in his career when a fellow researcher, one several years his senior, had cautioned him about the nature of careers in the Foundation. "Don't get thinking you have any say in the matter," he had said, a smoldering cigarette clutched in his fingers. "The Foundation offers you opportunities like you'd never believe, but the choice you have is an illusion. They'll put you where they want to put you, and make you think it was your idea. You get to think you're the master of your own destiny, but they will get what they want. In the end, they win either way."

He couldn't help but feel, though, that he'd somehow broken the mold. The bookshelves, the desk, the engraved nameplate on the door. Akutagawa Yoshihide - Site Director. The trappings of success, certainly, but all of them every bit his own. He was a containment specialist - the best containment specialist, he often heard his peers say, and this was his reward for that talent. In this site were teams of doctors, researchers, clerks; all of them answering to him directly. There was no longer a medium he needed to answer through, no more taskmasters who had to be compelled to action. Sure, there were faceless directors and overseers above him, somewhere - but as he'd climbed up the ladder to this office those names had become less and less tangible, and further away. He reported to someone, somewhere - but did it matter? If you never saw them, did they even exist?

This rise hadn't come without sacrifice. Choices he had been forced to make to reach the room he now sat in. He'd felt a keen sense of cameraderie with his coworkers at the beginning - assistants and junior researchers who had all come up in the Foundation around the same time as he. Back then the world had seemed so much bigger than it was now, and that companionship had been a life raft on a wild and uncertain sea. Over time his work had filled more of the space where those friendships had lived, until one day he woke up and realized they were all gone. Yoshihide didn't mind it, though. The cost of his success, he reasoned. If the worst of it was losing a few drinking buddies, then that wasn't the end of the world.

There had been other costs, though, greater and lesser. He had been away when his father had died, at a conference about staff reorganization. They had never been close, but as he'd gotten older his old man had begun opening up more and more to Yoshihide. "Making up for lost time, if you'll let me," he used to say through a crooked smile and missing teeth. They had shared a few moments years before, after his mother died. He had always intended to go see him before the end, but those meetings seemed so important at the time. "This will look very good to senior leadership," an executive personnel manager had told him, so he went. When he got the call from the hospital that his father had passed, he had his affairs managed remotely to avoid having to leave the conference. He didn't have the heart to ask the nurse if his father had died alone. He knew the answer.

The worst, though, had happened long before he had ever walked into his new office. She was an agent assigned to the local branch of the Global Occult Coalition when Yoshihide had been stationed in a little research site outside of Okazaki. He was taken by her immediately - she was clever, funny, sharp. Her eyes were cutting; he used to say that there was nothing he could hide from her that she couldn't just see through. Her laughter was a song and her touch a warm breeze in summer. When they were together, Yoshihide made excuses to get away from work - something unthinkable now - so they could spend the afternoons together. They had plans to get a place in the city, to start a family. Plans that didn't include the Foundation. When their daughter was born, Yoshihide thought he might have finally found something that filled the hole in his heart.

Then she was killed - of all things, in a car accident - and Yoshihide was alone again. In the days and weeks that followed her funeral, he convinced himself there was no deeper pit of despair a man could suffer, no lower agony. Eventually he threw himself back into his work - a welcome reprieve from his despair that helped to silence the screaming he heard when he closed his eyes at night. He took his daughter, only a child at the time, and moved to Europe. He found the pathway to promotion ready and available, and seized after it. At no point had he ever noticed the strings pulling at him, or the hands on the marionnette. He was too busy looking forward to ever look up.

So no, he thought, that old researcher had been wrong. The Foundation had opened doors for him, undoubtedly, but he was the one who chose which to walk through. It had been his own efforts that put his name on the door, and it would be by his own hand that he climbed to even higher offices than this.

His meditations were disrupted by a knock on the door. A secretary - he hadn't learned their names yet - poked his head into the office.

"A visitor for you, Director," he said. "O5 clearance."

Yoshihide sat up straight in his chair. This wouldn't be his first encounter with an O5 liaison, and he knew enough to never let your guard down around these people. Liaisons were vipers, persons who had abandoned all career ambition in order to offer total subservience to a single person. In doing so they were allotted authority beyond their station, but at the cost of their agency. They made his skin crawl.

The figure who passed through his door, though, was not a liaison at all. In fact, it wasn't anyone he'd ever seen before. It was a man, relatively tall but otherwise nondescript, in a sharp black suit with matching tie over a white shirt. Behind his dark glasses Yoshihide could just barely make out his eyes, keen and aware - like a raptor. Something about him felt queer.

"Director!" the man said, extending a hand and complementing it with a wide grin. His voice was rich and genial, and Yoshihide was caught off guard by it. "Welcome to your new station. Sincerest apologies on my delay in getting here - I wanted to come offer my congratulations before you'd broken the place in, but business being what it is, ah. Couldn't be helped."

Yoshihide took his hand. It was firm, and abrupt, but not inconsiderate. "I appreciate the consideration, nonetheless," he said. "I have to beg your apology, though. I don't believe we've met."

The man helped himself into a chair opposite Yoshihide's desk, and the director followed suit. He paused for a moment, surveying the room.

"Ah, yes, well, that's where I must apologise. I like to try and get out ahead of these things, make inroads as early as I can. Our working relationship is of paramount importance, you see, but my schedule has gotten the better of me again." He tapped the side of his chin with an extended finger. "I am the Administrator. Think of me as a go-between for Directors and Overseers. The grease that keeps the wheels moving. I'm here to help facilitate your transition to this new post, as well as make sure your interactions with our esteemed O5 Council are as seamless as possible."

Yoshihide instinctively raised an eyebrow. "Really? I didn't know such a position existed."

The man's smile didn't move an inch. Yoshihide could feel the hair on the back of his arms standing on end.

"Oh yes," the Adminstrator said. "I've been at this for some time now. My job here, aside from ferrying tidings of goodwill down from Overwatch Command, is to ensure a sort of linearity in our ideals. The staff of our Foundation, the researchers and task forces, they have their own goals and objectives. There are too many of them to address individually, so we rely on our site directors to maintain that sense of direction. Once you get to this level, there's an expectation of… call it synchonicity. The Overseers set the line, the directors are expected to stay within it, and I help to make sure everyone knows where the line is. It is a narrow path, but it's one we all march together. We are, after all, here for the same reason, wouldn't you say?"

Yoshihide's brow furrowed. "I suppose. But humor me, if you would - what reason would you say that is?"

The Administrator placed his hands on the edge of Yoshihide's desk and leaned forward slightly. "Containment, Director. We are the keepers of the box. There are things in this world that, as you know, simply should not be. Were we gods, it would be enough to simply make them vanish, as if they were never there at all. There are some in our ranks who would seek to do just that, to use the mechanisms of man to accomplish a task ordained for God alone. They fail, of course. Every one of them. We are not gods, Director. So we must do what we can while we wait for God to act. The irregularities in our world, the things that go bump in the night - we put them into boxes, and then we watch the boxes. We do not discriminate; we've learned too many hard lessons to know how badly that can go. If we do this, we achieve our goal. It is thankless, certainly, and never-ending. But it is important, and it is right. I'm sure you agree."

A bead of sweat began to run down Yoshihide's back. He knew the Administrator could not see it, but it did not change the fact that he felt as if the man somehow knew it was there all the same. He straightened up and nodded curtly.

"Indeed," Yoshihide said. "That is the Work, after all."

The Administrator sat back in his chair. His smile softened somewhat, but not in a reassuring way.

"I am glad to hear it. My job and yours becomes so much simpler when we have a good sense of synergy." He laughed. "I hope you'll forgive my corporatism. Old habits die hard. But the truth of the matter remains - if I continue to illuminate the path, and you stay on the path, and your subordinates follow your direction, then we will be a successful unit, all of us."

He looked down at his watch. "Ah, and there's my time. Apologies for departing as quickly as I arrived - my schedule is a fickle puppeteer, and I am just another marionette dancing at the end of a rope." He stood, and Yoshihide followed suit. The Administrator extended a hand and Yoshihide shook it. The hand was strangely warm.

"We will be in touch, Director, as you settle into your new role. I am excited to see you rise to this new challenge!"

He turned to leave, but as he opened the door he stopped and turned back over his shoulder. "Just don't forget - containment is our ultimate purpose. At whatever cost, yes?"

Yoshihide said nothing, but nodded slightly. The Administrator grinned, and then closed the door behind him as he left.

---

"You didn't tell me you were going to be in the city this month," Yoshihide said, a scowl desperately trying to mask his happiness at seeing her face. "You need to be better at communicating your schedule, I could have arranged to have you stay at a nicer hotel."

She laughed as she idly poked at her lunch. "You would think after all your hard work to be a Director you could stand to finally relax a little bit."

He sighed. "Ahhhh, but don't you see! That's how they get you. You dream of freedom, but each new rung on the ladder is another shackle! More responsibilities, more meetings, more phone calls. It never ends. Even now, I have had to block out a whole hour to spend time with my inconsiderate daughter."

"Inconsiderate!" She turned up her nose and jabbed at him with her fork. "Here I thought I was doing you a favor, getting you out of that stuffy office. If you stay there too long you're going to end up pickled, or worse."

Yoshihide snickered at the thought. "Pickling might not be the worst outcome, if I'm being honest. It would do wonders for my skin."

He paused for a moment, taking her in. She was every bit the picture of her mother - a blessing, considering the alternative. Her laughter was music and her presence was light. When she was with him he could almost forget about the burden of his work, the time spent endlessly poring over notes and reports and files. Those thoughts consumed him, but whenever she was near she seemed to so easily cast them away. She was clever, as well - almost too clever. While he could not help himself but feel pride in her when the Foundation had come calling for her expertise in exotic high-tension metamaterials, it was cocooned in stifling, suffocating dread. It must have shown on his face, and she frowned.

"What's wrong?" she said, surveying him with her mother's eyes. "Are you having indigestion? Do you need a laxative?"

He wanted to laugh, but the moment was lost on him. "No, Yuzuki. I'm fine. I just worry about you, is all. You need to let me know if you're ever in trouble, I can help you out. More now than I've ever been able to before - but I won't know if you need it unless you say something."

She snorted. "What is there to say? I have a great job, a comfortable home, I get to work on some of the most fascinating projects I've ever seen in my life - and my father is only a couple hours train ride away; when he can find time for me, that is." This time he laughed, but only a little. "What are you worried about?"

He closed his eyes, and saw another pair looking back at him from behind dark glasses. "You need to stay aware, all the time. This is dangerous work we do, you know. There are always people watching, waiting to take advantage of us in our moments of weakness. We can't afford to be caught off guard."

She popped a grape in her mouth and spoke while she chewed. "I have a hard time imagining someone starting trouble with the daughter of a Site Director. Even if she is inconsiderate."

He heard her mother's voice again, in her words. They were so similar. "It's not just about starting trouble. It's just about being aware. You need to promise me, if you see anything suspicious or hear of anything that makes you uncomfortable, you let me know, alright?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, yes, very well. If it helps you sleep better at night, then I promise. Last thing I need is for you to keel over dead now from the stress."

He relaxed for a moment, until he looked at her hands. She had picked up her fork and held the tines between her thumb and middle finger. With a firm but gentle motion, she pushed against the metal, and the metal danced under the pressure of her fingertips. It spread out, connecting with the other tines until they were a solid piece, and then she pushed into it with her thumb. The metal bent backwards like it was soft clay. When she released it, she was holding a spoon. His eyes darted to meet hers, but she was looking across the restaurant, hardly paying attention at all.

Panic gripped him in an instant. His hand darted across the table and grabbed the spoon out of her hand, stashing it in his jacket pocket as quickly as he could. She jumped back in alarm, her other hand trying to slap his away.

"Hey, what was that for?" she shouted at him. "I'm not finished with my food!"

"Quiet!" he hissed as he frantically scanned around the room. "What have I told you about doing that, daughter? And out in the open like this?"

She blinked twice, stunned at his sudden turn. "What are you so worried about? It's just a fork, and there's nobody around to see it. Saves me the trouble of getting up to have to get another-"

"It's not just a fork," he said, his voice quiet and viscious. "It's never just a fork. Don't for a second think that there aren't always people watching. Even if they're not watching you right now, they will be soon. Don't you understand?"

She grabbed a spoon from his side of the table and glared at him. "You worry too much, father. Nobody cares about a fork, or a spoon. It's helpful to me, sure, but it's not important."

Dark glasses. Piercing eyes.

"You need to make another promise to me," he said, his voice quivering now. "You must promise me that you will never do this again. Now more than ever, it is important that nobody knows what you-" he hesitated, "what you are capable of. They can't know, do you understand me?"

Her stare could have cut him to his core. Just like her mother. "Are you worried them finding out I can… can change things… will disrupt your career progression? Is that what this is? God, am I that much of an embarrassment to you?"

His heart broke. He saw her as a child, taking a little brass monkey and turning it into a snake, and then back again. She laughed, and looked at him for approval. He had smiled. Why had he smiled? He had to have known better then, why hadn't he done something sooner?

He straightened himself and looked across the table at her. She seemed about to speak, but the indignation caught in her mouth.

"I need you to promise me," Yoshihide said in short, measured words. "You need to promise me that you will give that up, forever. It is not about me, Yuzuki. It is about your safety. You may feel comfortable now, and you may very well be safe - now. But all it takes is the wrong person noticing, or saying something to someone else. The only way you can be safe is if they have no reason to suspect you are capable of anything other than the great work you do." He paused. "I love you, daughter, and I want you to be safe. I will continue to work to keep you safe, even if I must climb all the way to Overwatch Command to do it. But I need your help. Please help me."

She held still for a moment, as if determining whether or not she wanted to lash out at him again. Then the moment passed, and she relaxed. She smiled a little smile, and reached across to take his hand. He hadn't realized it was shaking until just then.

"Don't worry," she said to him. "Everything will be alright. I'll be alright."

Blood coated his hand as he felt hers go cold. Even as she lay dying in the dim light of the headlamps, her eyes saw straight into his soul. She smiled a little smile. "Everything will be alright. I'll be alright. Don't worry."

---

Months passed. The days, if they ever had a notion of individuality before, abandoned it entirely now as they blurred together in a ceaseless barrage of new tasks and obligations. He would, at times, laugh at the naivety of his youth, when he had imagined himself rising to the level of Site Director to have his pick of great and important projects to work on. He had been among the best containment specialists when he was younger - the best, some had claimed, and he knew it every bit as well as they did. He saw intricacies and subtleties that the others missed, and knew how to exploit them. He was occasionally able to convince himself that his rise to the chair he sat in now had been for noble reasons, but deep down he knew the truth. Containment was what he did well.

But now his time was filled with endless approvals and reviews, inspection and training. Periodically he would have moments where he was asked his thoughts on a new process, or had a chance to investigate a problem that was troubling his subordinates. Through it all, he began to feel a terrible gripping thing - this was not the work he should be doing. Pushing papers and sorting files was administrative work, surely the Foundation had people who could do that? The chair he sat in, the office, the desk - what was it, actually? Was it a position for him to exert influence? Was it a means by which to change the world? Was it a cage?

So it was that a mere three years into his residency as a Site Director, Yoshihide found himself requested to fly out to a place he knew nothing about at the behest of the Overseers. He studied this location as much as he could, but all he gathered was that it was a small, unimportant house deep in the forests of Eastern Europe. Yet, the Overseers would not have called on him for something so meager. There had to be something there that required someone like him. A task that needed his keen intellect and judicious hand. Actual work, he thought. He left within the day.

It was, as he had presumed, not much more than a tiny wooden house in the middle of the forest. It sat in a small clearing at the end of a long, narrow drive. The clearing was cleared, and a small stack of firewood sat outside the door of the house. The trees stretched tall in all directions around it, and in the dying light of day he almost felt like they were bending in above him, choking off what little of the sun was left before opening up to a deeper darkness. There was a light on inside, and smoke from a chimney. He entered the house.

It was modestly furnished. Wooden furniture, woolen rug. Pictures hung on the walls. The most striking thing, aside from the person sitting across from the doorway near the fire, were the many taxidermied heads of animals that filled every other possible inch of wallspace that was not treasured family heirloom or window. Not just taxidermies, either - skulls, in many cases. Some he had never seen before. The animals themselves, whatever was left of them, were strange. Eerily magnificent. Deer, elk, ram, wolf, and then skulls and skins of things he could not name. They stared out with glassy black eyes. Not at him. Not at anything.

Then, of course, was the Administrator. Yoshihide had almost forgotten his face from their meeting years before, though his words had never been too distant. He was looking into the fire, his hands folded neatly in his lap. He did not speak as Yoshihide entered, but gestured to another chair beside him. The scene was so bizarre, Yoshihide's mind was too busy racing to realize his body was acknowledging the courtesy and sitting down.

"I realize my offer may have left you with expectations that are not currently being met," the Administrator said. His voice was soft, not nearly so bright and genial as it had been that day in his office. "I apologize for any discourtesy, I had only meant to not raise the concerns of anyone who might intercept the message. This place is, by my own design, not a place that one can be so easily followed to."

Yoshihide moved to speak, but the words were absent. He had questions, endless questions, and growing concerns, but something in his better nature held his tongue. He distinctly had the feeling as if he was in the presence of something very dangerous, and needed to be very careful.

A few moments later, the Administrator continued. "I have been watching your work for some time, Director. You have risen to the challenge of your station, and your staff are dutiful in their fulfillment of the goals of the Foundation. I have no reason to feel anything but satisfaction in your selection to this position."

He felt the other man looking at him now. He dared not look back.

"And yet," the Administrator said, "I cannot help but feel as if you are not reaching your full potential. I don't mean this as a criticism, of course. The limits of your office are such that, perhaps you are not in the position to best carry out the work at which you are the most capable. Would you agree?"

It was a trap. Yoshihide knew it. He saw the snare and felt the tension humming on the line. But the gnawing inside him suddenly flared and he saw a long life lived sitting behind that desk, mindlessly rubber stamping the better work of better men. He was good at what he did. The best, some had claimed. The gnawing consumed his growing apprehension.

"Yes," he said quietly.

The Administrator smiled again. "That's what I thought. Come with me. Grab a jacket if you have one, it's cold out there tonight."

---

The forest around them was still. The energy of distant cities and all the lights of mankind were foreign to a place like this - none of the noise permeated the tall trees and the dense growth below them. The path they walked on was well maintained, though, and the only sound at all was the soft padding of their shoes on dirt. The Administrator carried a lantern, "an antique, if you can believe it," he'd said with a laugh. The light was sufficient to see their path but little beyond it. The forest was everything.

"My grandfather always said, hell is the dark." The Administrator lifted the light up slightly higher. "He hated these woods. Hated the things in them. Hated the dark. He was paralyzed by the fear of it. This lantern was his, back when the house was as well."

He paused for a moment at a large tree. He ran his hand across its surface. The bark was broken - something had been by here. An animal, maybe, something with antlers that had brushed against it.

He continued. "He only came out here when he needed food for his family. He would hunt, though he loathed it. The best hunting was at dusk, and if he was out too late, well. Then there was the dark."

"Why live in a place like this, then?" Yoshihide asked. "Surely he could've had somewhere closer to a town?"

He couldn't see his face, but he knew the Administrator was smiling. "I asked myself the same question, Director. But then, men are drawn to their antithesis, I think. They find comfort in believing they are exposing themselves to something frightful, to them. It makes them feel strong."

He took a breath. "My father said hell is dying. He didn't mind the dark. Embraced it, actually. He was a hunter, you see - not in the way my grandfather was, out of necessity. My father hunted because he liked it. He enjoyed the chase, enjoyed pitting his wit against the instincts of a beast. He would come home from a hunt - successful or not, with such a look on his face. He's been gone for many years, but I can still see his expression. It was rapture. I think he found religion in these woods."

He halted, gathering his thoughts, and turned to Yoshihide. "But my father realized what you and I both know. The chase is thrilling, no doubt, but the joy is in winning. It's not enough to just follow the beast. A beast can follow a beast. To be able to have the life of something in your hands, well. That's something altogether different, isn't it? That was his work."

He turned back to the trail. "When I was very young, I remember being in town with my father when a woman came screaming into the square. Her child had gotten lost in the woods, and some manner of creature had found them. A jackal, maybe, or a wildcat. Maybe even a great boar. Whatever it was, the child had only just survived the encounter, with survived being a choice word. The thing, the beast, had chewed off most of the face and much of the skin on the arms raised to defend itself. The soft meat - though I suppose at that age most of the meat is soft. They had managed to escape and run, and by luck had blindly found their way back to their own home. Can you imagine that? Knowing your child is lost in the forest and then feeling the joy at hearing them running back, and then…"

He broke off, his gaze turned towards the trees around them. "The thing that came out of the forest was not her child anymore. Not really. It had been changed by the beast. It was a heaving, wretched thing. One ruined eye staring out in horror from behind a face that was little more than strips of meat clinging desperately to shattered bone. A mouth that would have screamed if it was not full of blood. A miserable thing."

They carried on in silence for a while longer. After a time, the Administrator paused and knelt down. He picked up something from the path below them - a tooth, something cervid. He put it in his pocket.

"My father carved this trail after that child was attacked," he said. "It stretches far and wide across these woods. He spent days, months, years, studying how the creatures in this forest move throughout it. From his hunting posts he watched them, and he noted their behaviour. He kept extensive records. Truthfully, it was how we spent most of our time together, growing up. Together, in silence, up in a tree. Watching the beasts move." He held out his hand and moved it around, as if tracing something in his mind.

"They were blameless, of course. Beasts are just beasts, they can't reason the same way you and I can. They aren't evil, certainly. But they are dangerous. One of them got a hold of that child, just one, and changed its life forever. I remember seeing it years later, no longer a child but a ghastly, haunted thing. They died young, as I remember, but lived long enough to know true agony. Not just the pain of their injuries, though I'm certain it was severe. No, I believe the greatest pain they felt was the loneliness that followed. They were horrible to look at, and were avoided by neighbors, friends, family. The beast did kill them, in the end, but the dying was not the worst of it. Death is not hell."

They came to a fork in the path. The Administrator lifted his lantern again, looking in both directions. "So my father cut this path. He found that they tended to follow on the edge of cleared spaces, and would follow these trails to wherever they would lead. In his mind, I believe, my father had always intended to just shephard them away from the town, somewhere deeper into the forest. But this trail is just a box without a lid, Director. It is not enough to put them in a cage if the cage has no door."

They turned left at the fork and continued forward. "One night he was maintaining this trail, and a bear found him. I wonder sometimes if, in his last moments, he regretted simply delaying what had suddenly become inevitable for him. It was not as if he did not enjoy hunting. Maybe he thought this simply was not sporting. I doubt the bear cared either way."

He let out a sigh, pausing briefly. "Do you see now, Yoshihide? Do you understand? We are all the children of our fathers. He learned from his father, who learned from his before him. All of them flawed men. My father had vision, but lacked execution. He cut this trail for beasts knowing they would get caught in it, but did not live long enough to realize for himself the true fulfillment of that vision. That's what we are. We are that fulfillment-"

They came to a clearing. In the dark he saw nothing, but felt something moving in the space in front of him. Something writhing. Something foul. The Administrator lifted his lantern, and Yoshihide gasped.

"-and this is the lid on the box."

A mountain of corpses. Some old, some new. Some still wriggling in agony from their butchery, desperately clinging to the meager life remaining in them. All of them stacked together in a groaning, heaving pile. Eyes that stared out at nothing. Beasts of all shapes and sizes, but not just beasts - men as well, white jackets stained with blood that soaked into the groundwater. Some of them gunned down, perhaps. Others cut apart by cruel instruments. A tower of torment and despair, of misery that could not be understood, and across the entire forest not a single sound to be heard.

"In the end, we are just problem solvers," the Administrator said. His voice felt very far away, and every bit of the geniality of their first encounter had long fled. "The problem is that the world is sick. For my father, for this town, it was beasts. Beasts that can devour a mother foraging for food. Beasts that can bite and poison you until you long for a quicker death than you are afforded. Beasts that tear the soft meat off a child's bones. But for us, the beasts are more insidious. They are not always beasts we can see. But we are careful, and we are patient. We have cut our own path in the woods. We lead them to the clearing, and then we solve the problem."

He lowered the lantern, and the light cast over the high grave retreated. "There have been others like you. Like me. Those who could not handle this knowledge. Presented with the scope of what we must do they would quake and quiver and beg to return to their meager lives of tepid normalcy. They were a problem, too - in their own way. You are very good at what you do, Yoshihide. There is no questioning that you are competent. What I want to know is whether you are capable." His voice was barely a whisper now. "This is how we keep the world safe - we complete the work of our fathers. They were men of limited vision. We are not. We will preserve the world - that is our Work."

He was suddenly in front of Yoshihide. His face was a mask and behind it was something with intention. Yoshihide felt his skin go cold.

"We cannot make exceptions, Director," he said softly. "Exceptions lead to pain, and horror. A rabid dog must still be put down, regardless of whether or not it once came when you called. We do not have the luxury to choose. We can only perform the task in front of us." He paused, considering the director. "I asked you once if you were prepared to do the Work, and you said you were. You have performed your task. Now, look at what we must do. See what is required for us to keep this world safe. I ask you again - are you prepared to do the Work?"

Yoshihide felt the panic rising inside him again. His heartbeat quickened. His vision began to swim and shimmer, but something else now rose within him to accompany the anxiety. He would have felt sick, but this new sensation overwhelmed all else. The fear slipped away, and then he thought of nothing but the desk, and the papers, and the chair. Despite himself, he was lost in his own grim desire.

"Yes." He had never meant anything more in his life.

"Let's go back, then," the Administrator said. "I have something I need you to do."

They turned back down the trail. If Yoshihide had been aware of anything other than the sea of thoughts he was lost in, he may have noticed the Administrator staring at him from behind. His skin may have prickled at the malice radiating off him.

He might have felt the tension in the line.