If Sylvia hadn’t known the truth about ghosts, she would have easily described the worn-down apartment complex she was in as haunted. The community area on the bottom floor was empty except for an elderly man who didn’t respond even when she was right in front of him, waving her hand between his eyes and the newspaper. The wooden floorboards creaked and groaned under each step; the stairs even more so. She ft-out refused to enter the obvious death trap that was the elevator. The paint on the walls was chipping away, showing multiple faded yers of ugly colors underneath from decades of overpainting attempts. Apartment doors had twisted out of their frames, leaving little to stop the noise within from echoing into the halls. Not that there were many residents to echo in the first pce.
She would bet a decent amount that the ‘historical building’ pque hammered onto the cracked brick exterior was an excuse so that the city didn’t have to undertake the impossible task of fixing the pce. Why the building wasn’t on the to-be-demolished list, Sylvia had no idea.
Honestly, P.A.R.A.L.L.E.L. paid its interns, so why one would choose to live in a decrypted pce like this was beyond her. The nearby public transport couldn’t be worth the risk of falling through the floor every day.
Yet, this was the address said intern had written down; if it turned out to be fake, Sylvia was going to drop the potential case on someone else’s desk when she returned to the office.
Finally, she reached the fifth – and top – floor, strolling past the numbered apartments until she reached the one on the file. The door beled five-twenty-four wasn’t as worn down as some of the others, although the dark stain along the bottom edge was a reassuring sign. With a sigh (she had much better things she could be doing with her time than dealing with this), the government agent knocked twice on the wooden entrance. After a few seconds of audible ruckus, the door creaked open, revealing a young woman peering through the crack.
“Hello?” the girl asked, untching a second chain lock as she opened the door wider. Sylvia made a quick mental comparison to the ID photo on her phone: Cecelia Byrd – a medium-height figure with short, somewhat greasy brown hair that looked like it had been cut with scissors, pin brown eyes, and pale skin that suggested that she didn’t go outside more often than she had to. Her thin-sleeved shirt had too many colors for Sylvia’s taste, though her gray sweatpants that cinched below the knees looked fairly comfortable. “Oh! You’re… uh, Miss, no, sorry, Agent…” the college student winced. “Fish-something?”
“Sylvia Fisher. I work in the response section of the state’s P.A.R.A.L.L.E.L. agency.” Which the girl should already know, given that was also the department she was an intern for and Sylvia was there five days a week.
“Right, my bad.” The intern nervously bit her lip. “Is this because I accidentally filled out a form in blue ink and then went over it with bck instead of re-doing the whole dam- dang thing?”
‘That’s not a half-bad fix,’ Sylvia couldn’t help but think. But it wasn’t why she was standing here instead of finishing up dinner at home. “I think it would be best if you invited me in.”
~
The inside of the apartment was moderately better than the outside, assuming that the overall messiness of the pce was an individual quirk. Books were piled on every surface in the small living room area, ranging from the regur fantasy to physics to computer code; history textbooks to memoirs to printed-out sheets of paper stapled together. ‘Odd,’ Sylvia thought, remembering the ‘well-organized’ and ‘neat’ comments on the intern’s file. There were only two other rooms according to the building’s blueprints, a small bathroom and then a single bedroom. The tiny kitchen was clean, in the sense that it was practically empty.
“Are you going to tell me what this is about?” Cecelia asked, drifting over to the half-finished microwave dinner on the cracked and stained counter.
Sylvia didn’t respond at first, continuing to take in the apartment. The walls were mostly bare aside from a few posters and the furniture looked decent, if not second-hand. Outside the dirty windows, the lights of the city sped through the evening. “What made you choose to live here?”
“Cheap,” the intern began to list after taking a bite of her food (though her raised eyebrows made it clear that she knew Sylvia didn’t care about her personal life). “Bus stops to both campus and work. Bunch of old people, so no parties.” Another forkful of some sort of pasta. “Plus, this pce is supposed to be haunted. Not that I’ve seen or heard anything aside from maybe some imprints.”
The agent paused in her scan of the room. “And you consider that to be a positive?”
“We both work in what’s basically the government’s ghost-hunting team.”
Sylvia sighed. It seemed like the girl’s previous nerves were being covered up by small amounts of snark. ‘As long as it doesn’t devolve into sarcasm.’ There was a reason the woman disliked working with the agency’s interns, despite the current two being only the third batch since Miss Echo had the brilliant idea to scout recruits from nearby universities.
Which made the current situation all the more annoying. The kid had the record to get into a highly selective agency and stayed under the radar for two months; the fg that had sent Sylvia knocking on her door had been a lucky catch. Why Darryl had decided to check the inventory today, she had no idea. P.A.R.A.L.L.E.L. was run by a small group and it was generally assumed everyone just put things back. Especially the equipment.
Sylvia picked up one of the books at random, noting how her actions made the girl tense, (though that could simply be due to having someone moving around her belongings). “Where’s your computer?”
The intern shoveled the st few bites of her meal into her mouth and downed half a cup of water as she tossed the tray in the trash. “Charging,” she finally answered. “It’s – Hey!” the kid rushed to block Sylvia’s path to the bedroom. “You can’t just come in here and – !”
“As you previously mentioned, we both work for ‘the government’s ghost hunting team,’” the woman ftly stated, hating the misleading description. “I think you have a good idea of what I am and am not allowed to do. Especially when it concerns interns who have signed multiple non-disclosure agreements.” Said intern gred but didn’t put up any more of a fight as Sylvia marched past her. She opened the squeaky door, having to push with much more force than should be necessary. “This is a horribly run-down apartment,” the woman muttered under her breath.
“You’re welcome to leave.”
Sass. Wonderful.
The bedroom was as much of a mess as the living area, but one of cords, cables, and a collection of machines. What appeared to be two dumpster-salvaged, medium-sized generators were set up at the foot of the twin bed (pin white and blue sheets, Sylvia noted, which matched the overall ck of decor). The generators were hooked up to multiple other things, but the main cables ran to an old-school projector facing a bnk wall. Sitting on the bedside table was a gray ptop. As well as the reason she was here instead of home.
“And this is?” The agent inquired, giving the kid a chance to fess up. The stolen tech – a single silver canister-shaped object that showed signs of being tampered with, given the open port on it – was beside the computer.
Cecelia, a bit paler now, attempted to casually lean against the door frame. “Would you believe an art project?”
Sylvia crossed her arms. “I didn’t bother to bring handcuffs; you’re a smart kid, so you should know how this is going to go. You’re not going to fight, or try to run, and –“
A hoarse scream echoed through the walls, worn, old lungs desperately reacting to something terrifying. The intern’s head jerked up. She shouted a name, then turned and ran out of the room… before turning back around, grabbing the stolen dimensional separator, and then darting out of the room again.
“…I just said no running.” Yes, the girl hadn’t left in a ‘flee-the-scene’ style, but she had still ignored Sylvia’s order. Following the ghost of the intern’s steps at a quick pace, the woman reluctantly accepted that this would not be a simple in and out. ‘Someone better be dying.’
