by Eddie347
Junior Site Administrator Reynolds has never, as a matter of personal decorum, used vulgar language while acting in his professional capacities. His forbearance from doing so, he feels, belies a more coolheaded demeanor and stoic unflappability as compared with his peers and even as compared with, dare he suggest it, a good many of his superiors.
But Junior Site Administrator Reynolds very nearly breaks his self-rule when he first encounters the sculpture. For the sculpture is, in the considered opinion of Junior Site Administrator Reynolds, such a drab and uninspired specimen in virtually every respect as to be unseemly, nay, offensive to the perceptive aesthete:
Having neither texture nor polish, it is a dull flat grey like ordinary concrete. Its proportions are cloyingly literal, yet at the same time frustratingly haphazard and inexact. Here and there the work betrays an inconstancy of intention as well: the texturing of skin around the fingernails shows an uncanny degree of detail while the wrinkles on the knuckle of the thumb are inexplicably incorrect, too many and extending too wide along the length of the digit. Gallingly, for all that visual clumsiness, the sculpture is entirely too big. Ostentatious. Gaudy, even, for the presumptuousness of its scale juxtaposed against the tepidity of its artistry.
It is, in a word, atrocious.
Junior Site Administrator Reynolds wants it desperately.
“For Site Director Gerhardt’s office, of course,” he remarks over his shoulder to Captain Davids, who stands noncommittally a meter or so behind him with her arms folded. She acknowledges his remark with a pop of her gum.
Tactically, scientifically or administratively speaking Junior Site Administrator Reynolds has no real function to perform at this moment in proceedings; the raid on the now-former Marshall Carter & Dark facility has gone according to textbook, the containment teams have secured the most significant objectives and the research teams are well underway with their examinations. All around him are highly qualified people getting on with important business, including a junior forensics agent attempting to extract a sheaf of documents Junior Site Administrator Reynolds has chosen to insist on pretending he hasn’t noticed he is standing directly on top of.
But Junior Site Administrator Reynolds has never let a lack of usefulness preclude his self-involvement in important happenings.
As a nominal member of Administration, Junior Site Administrator Reynolds naturally has the right to request a tactical escort for offsite business. He has made the request despite being briefed that his request is not, at this time, a prudent use of command resources and that his presence on site is not, at this time, necessary or wanted. Fortunately for him Captain Davids has cultivated a keenly refined sixth sense for chaos after nearly a decade of MTF fieldwork and so, having spent the last several weeks preparing and executing a full slate of tactical operations and sensing the potential for entertainment in this supervisory excursion, she has volunteered for this escort mission as her last before her well-earned R&R.
At the present moment Captain Davids is amusedly watching this strange small man who has strode like a colossus of competence through the facility, seemingly with no awareness that from the site entrance to this point he has stepped directly through and catastrophically disrupted no fewer than four separate forensic zones.
Meanwhile, Junior Site Administrator Reynolds has not only reached a decision but has furthermore exercised his prerogative to make it an executive one: that this extraordinary piece would be singly at home in the space where his own desk resides, i.e. the waiting room of Site Director Gerhardt’s office.
Junior Site Administrator Reynolds snaps his fingers, again over his shoulder: “Captain. Have this brought around front.” He keeps a businesslike tone, but has to suppress a chuckle.
Oh yes, this is a good stroke indeed!
It can only reflect well on him, after all, that he has taken the initiative, that he is such a go-getter as to have brought this anomalous piece back to the Director’s office.
And such an impressive recovery, for someone with so little field experience!
But as a reflection on Site Director Gerhardt, someone so senior and highly respected?
What a travesty! And impractical, too, the way it takes up nearly the whole waiting area. Maybe it’s a sign the Director’s instincts just aren’t as sharp as they used to be, so sad!
Junior Site Administrator Reynolds moves his hands to his hips and shakes his head, marveling at his own cleverness.
Oh yes, I’ll play the games! I’ll hop every checker piece on the board, eventually. It is just a matter of time, oh yes…
Then he notices nothing has happened.
“Too wide.” With lethal quiet Captain Davids has moved directly next to him; Junior Site Administrator Reynolds tries to parley a startled yelp into a cough. “Need a second set of hands.”
“Well! That’s no, ah, can anyone…?” Junior Site Administrator Reynolds looks around haplessly for a lackey, but unfortunately for him everyone else in the room has become keenly aware of exactly what he is trying to do and is therefore much too focused on what they are doing to hear him.
Captain Davids has meanwhile moved to one side of the sculpture. “Come on, then, let’s not keep the Site Director waiting.”
Junior Site Administrator Reynolds resignedly grasps the other side and heaves, huffing and grunting but eventually managing to get his side to just below knee height.
Captain Davids lifts casually. “Ready?”
Junior Site Administrator Reynolds wheezes in reply.
Junior Site Administrator Reynolds has insisted on commandeering a transport van that had up to this point housed a remote research workstation, the instruments of which now lie scattered hazardously on the MC&D loading dock to be retrieved, the researchers have been reassured with an absent handwave, at some indeterminate point in the future.
I suppose Junior Site Administrator Reynolds, Captain Davids muses as she pulls up to a red light and grabs a Jammy Dodger from the bag in the seat next to her, is more an ideas man than a details man.
Had she been asked to do so Captain Davids would, of course, have agreed to accompany the sculpture in the rear of the van. But Junior Site Administrator Reynolds has valiantly preempted any such obligation on her part by insisting that the the item is, he reminds her, technically in the custody of Site Administration and that he would therefore be remaining with the sculpture himself, secluded behind the divider that completely separated the front seats of the van from the cramped rear hold.
She eases into a left turn. From the back, she hears a thunk against one wall of the van which is followed by an angry “Ow!” and indistinct muttering.
“Sorry,” she calls back. “Left turn now.”
“Could you please, Captain,” the muffled voice barely carries over the air conditioning blowing loudly in the cab, “Call out the turns before you begin them.”
“Right,” she said between sips of a Coke, “my mistake.” She approaches another light, moving into the right lane this time.
She still isn’t sold, Captain Davids reflects, on Junior Site Administrator Reynolds as, say, a person she’d enjoy sharing a beer with. But she admits to herself that she is coming around in regards to his tenacity and - what would you say? - conviction.
She pulls forward as the light turns yellow, slipping the right turn just before the light turns red.
Thunk. “Augh!”
“Sorry,” she calls back. “Right turn now.”
Junior Site Administrator Reynolds is standing just outside the door of the freight elevator, which has been blocked from closing by the very tippiest tip of the middle finger. Captain Davids is leaning against the back wall of the elevator, holding up her end of the sculpture with one hand and working her way through a pack of Nutter Butters with the other.
Junior Site Administrator Reynolds is, at present, doing a poor job of keeping the pain of physical exertion out of his voice. “I know it would fit long ways, you blithering fool, but we can’t just turn it long ways, that’s the whole reason we’re having this conversation!”
Custodial Manager Kallen methodically finds a cleanish spot on his work cloth to wipe his brow, speaking calmly over Junior Site Administrator Reynolds’s exasperated sputtering:
“Look, sir, I’m not doing nothin’ to these elevators. No cutting holes, no taking off walls, no overriding safety protocols. Not without clearance from the Director themself. That’s it, that’s the last answer I’m giving you.”
Junior Site Administrator Reynolds, red in the face and clearly burning with the exertion of carrying a heavy object for the last 15 minutes, begins to whimper.
Having whined at every corner, step and landing Junior Site Administrator Reynolds has been loudly and plainly miserable for nearly the entirety of the past hour. But by the time they have navigated the sculpture through the stairwell to the floor of Site Director Gerhardt’s office, Captain Davids has had to admit to herself a certain admiration for Junior Site Administrator Reynolds.
… Well. A grudging respect. Fondness, maybe even.
She has thus far observed no evidence that he has dug deep for inner strength, or that he has accepted the task before him with stoicism and grace, or that he has learned any humility from the choices that have put him in this circumstance to begin with. But for all of that, she has never had to pull him along.
And - she has to give him - he hasn’t quit. Just maybe there is a bit of something in there, a bit of grit. Maybe even the spark of a future leader.
Captain Davids grins. “Well, Reynolds, just a few more steps. Chin up, we’re in the home stretch.”
Junior Site Administrator Reynolds answers with something between a moan and a wail.
Captain Davids, looking over her shoulder as she takes a final backward step, stops just in front of the doorway. She frowns. “Huh.”
“… what is it?”
“You won’t like it.”
The other end of the sculpture sags but doesn’t drop. “Just tell me.”
“Well. Turns out this hallway goes east-west.”
For the first time in his professional career, Junior Site Administrator Reynolds exclaims several certain four-letter words.
Item Description: A slate sculpture of a human hand and a section of forearm, standing approximately 0.5m tall and weighing 50kg. The object's orientation cannot be changed and acts as a perfect compass - the thumb always points due magnetic north.
Date of Recovery: ██-██-2012
Location of Recovery: Raid on a Marshall, Carter & Dark Ltd. warehouse in London, UK.
Current Status: Staff gardens at Sector-25.
Notes: Accompanying recovered documentation indicates that MC&D was having difficulty finding a buyer for the object.