The Impossibility of Keeping the Lid On It
Agent Dahlia Rimes removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. The headache behind them was a dull tapping that had gone on for hours, despite three supersized Ibuprofen tablets. At the moment, it was difficult to imagine her work situation getting much worse, but she knew never to speak such thoughts aloud.
Project Integration wasn't an effort her brain was behind, but she had given it her heart because she was a patriot. Now it was in serious danger. The public knowledge of that van full of demons wasn't all that threatened the Project's security. Word came from Washington today that her superiors were considering replacing every Agent on the Project (except those Special Agents recently recruited). The axe hovered over the heads of people like Ballantine, Markowitz, Sparrow, Purvis, Jenkins ... even Rimes herself. Their oversight of the Project was being referred to as 'gross mismanagement'.
On her part, Rimes couldn't see much proof to support that claim. It wasn't that she felt herself infallible; more that the Project's design was flawed, and that was something over which she had little control. What Dahlia could control was Interrogation and Intake. She watched her Agents with the eyes of a hawk, making certain no extraordinary means (read: torture) were used. To allow such was lawless... She wouldn't have it on her watch.
Too bad her watch might soon be over. Washington had sent a special team of consultants. As Dahlia sat there in the break room, they were rummaging through her office files. Looking for someone to blame. Despite finding the murdered body of the transport van's original driver, they weren't satisfied.
While that hand of the government acknowledged the Project's presence and devoured every detail of her work since January, the rest of the behemoth pretended ignorance. The press conferences were all slight variations on one theme:
No knowledge of such a project. No knowledge of such species. No evidence to support the reporter's claim. The footage was being investigated as fraud. And the reporter, David Fuller, had been taken into federal custody for questioning until his lawyer made a big stink on television and demanded his release.
Despite understanding government protocol, Dahlia felt betrayed. She knew in her heart that they would throw their Agents on the sword. She'd probably be first. Then what? Banished to some basement file room to finish out her years of public service as a paper pusher.
There was talk... Talk that worried Dahlia more than her personal problems. A similar Project in Canada was buckling, not under the weight of demon footage, but of Agents who wanted to go public. One got so far as a rinky dink television station before he was apprehended and taken into custody. He would never see his family again. She understood how the government could make its problem children disappear.
What next?
"Agent Rimes!" Callihan burst into the break room, out of breath and sweating. "There's been another leak! Not about the Project, about demons!"
And there it was, on a satellite feed of a major television network. A person in full vampire face, doing an autobiographical tell-all on Oprah for the bargain price of $1 million.
Dahlia reached for her bottle of headache medicine.