Sebastian sat in a corner of the room when Karen entered, his shoulders hanging as he watched the interrogation room through the one-sided mirror.
Inside sat a woman, both hands cuffed and linked to the table. Karen glanced at her sitting there calmly, while she slowly stepped towards Sebastian.
"Stephanie sent you, didn't she?"
He didn't look at her while speaking, his voice awfully sad compared to his usual cheerfulness, which caused her to feel a knot forming in her chest.
"Yes. She mentioned you were having… trouble, with the interrogations."
A scoff escaped his lips, and he turned to face her. His eyes weren't teared up like Stephanie had mocked, but there was a sense of defeat in them.
"Troubles… yeah, I'm sure that's the word she used."
She took herself a chair and sat beside him, putting her hand on his.
"What is it then? I don't remember seeing you like this before."
His hand felt warm in her own, albeit a little tense.
"The interrogations were mostly fruitless, except one."
Sebastian nodded towards the woman in the room before them.
"Bianca noticed some contradictions in her testimony and asked me to take a look at her. So I did and surprise... I can feel from here that she has traces of Demon magic on her."
Karen looked at the woman with a newfound sense of curiosity. She seemed fairly young, perhaps thirty, grey business outfit and a rather calm attitude for such an unordinary situation she was in.
Dark brown hair in shoulder length, grey eyes, but nothing at her seemed suspicious. A cold shudder ran down Karen's spine at the thought that this thing looked so awfully human to her.
"Then what is the problem? You've dealt with these… Demons before, didn't you?"
He breathed calmly before answering.
"Of course. Yet,… after Bianca couldn't get anything out of her… Well, Stephanie decided we should… resort to more… drastic measures. Considering the gravity of our situation."
Sebastian stood up, his head hanging.
"She gave me order to threaten and… torture her if necessary."
His hand wandered over his face, hiding his mouth in a worrisome position.
The thought didn't bother Karen as much as she expected it would. It was not the first time they had resulted to such measures. She had read the files of the first demon invasion right after she had the rights to do so and although the methods seemed absolutely inhumane at first; they had ultimately saved Earth from an even more cruel fate.
Sometimes the goal justified the methods, right? And they weren't even human to begin with. Yet the thought that Stephanie would ask specifically Sebastian to do it, a father of two and the most cheerful and compassionate man she knew, she couldn't understand how she could ask him to do something so… detestable.
Whatever happened between the two, that went too far. Karen tried to find the right words to describe her disappointment towards her boss and show Sebastian the compassion he needed right now.
"I am shocked… you have to refuse that. I don't think I'd be able to do this either. Just what did Stephanie think? Didn't we have experts for this kind of situation in the war? Cold-blooded sadists specifically trained, so no normal people have to deal with this… stuff."
He looked at her in surprise, seemingly in disbelief, like she had disappointed him greatly.
Karen knew she had hurt him somehow with her words, yet his expression changed before she could ask him.
"No,… you are right. We have experts for this. I just hoped… I would never have to do this again."
And suddenly she knew what bothered him, like a last puzzle piece completing the picture. She stood up hastily, regretting her earlier words, and held him back.
"Wait! That's what you were doing back then? I didn't… know. You never talked about… the war. I didn't mean to… you don't have to! I… I'll try to get something out of it."
Karen was about to rush outside to go to the interrogation room and rectify her mistake when it was Sebastian's turn to grab her arm.
"I know you didn't mean me with… Cold-blooded sadist. You don't have to… I'm… ready to do whatever necessary."
She saw the genuine gratitude in his eyes for her attempt, yet the guilt in herself won over pushing her to do this so she could forgive herself.
"No, it's fine. I'll try my best, and if I can't get anything useful, then you can still… do your thing."
Her own eyes locked for a moment with his light blue, and she replied his forced smile with her own. His hand let go of her, and the atmosphere lit up.
"I think Bianca has the file still in her room. I will get the evidence and we meet back here. Okay?"
Karen nodded, agreeing to his plan, and went off. She had almost run directly into the interrogation room, unprepared and still shaken from their exchange. That could have ended poorly.
[---][---][---][---][---][---][---][---]
The office itself looked like a battlefield, stacks of files everywhere she looked, and Kristof's desk, opposite of Bianca's, was the source of this chaos that spread throughout the room.
Her breath faltered at the sight of so much disarray and she carefully cleared herself a path through the littered floor.
It might have been less on any other day, but Georg's supplies had given his desk the final death blow. The way it made noises, Karen thought it might break each moment.
Some files had dropped onto the other desk, so she had to seek for the right documents under the additional ones. Seeing so much work gave her a feeling of guilt, knowing that she had her last day here, while her colleagues had to deal with all this stuff.
Digging through piles left her enough time to calm down from that unexpected emotional exchange and she found herself questioning how much there was from his past that he hadn't shared with her.
Karen's train of thoughts stopped when she finally found the right documents and, her shoulders raised, elevated from the concern she might have to look at Kristof's desk, and she expressed her joy loudly.
"Got you!"
As if she had triggered the ancient trap of an Egyptian tomb, moved the giant pile of paper on Kristof's desk, dropping parts of its content onto the surrounding area.
Karen's blood froze in her veins, while a living corpse rose from below the piles, giving her the scare of a lifetime.
"Jesus Christ!"
Its pale face bore two bloodshot brown eyes that were sunken into its skull, covered by a pair of glasses that sat aslant on its nose.
A mess of brown hair covered its tired face, and Karen grab the nearest tool to defend herself against this supernatural foe.
The freshly awakened Kristof got greeted by a flying stapler that she had thrown. Hitting him on the shoulder and dropping him from his chair.
Her unlucky colleague landed luckily softly on a layer of paper, only groaning slightly and that probably more from exhaustion than pain.
"Ugh… morning Karen… I wasn't sleeping, I swear…"
She blinked twice, recovering from the scare, and thanked God for not having her gun with her.
"Tsk… obviously! Haha… I should have known you were just headfirst immersed in your work."
Relief settled that she hadn't hit him in the face, either, and she couldn't help but chuckle. That might have been harder to explain later on.
"Sorry, you got me unprepared. I just want to take the files from the interrogation this morning, is that alright?"
He nodded with his head while pulling himself back up on his desk.
"Yeah, sure. I'll tell Bianca when she's back."
Dipped by his weight moved the pile on his desk akin to an avalanche and Karen could only clench the file to her chest while Kristof disappeared under it.
She hesitated for a moment, unsure how to react, before a single arm popped up from the mountain, giving her a thumbs up.
"I'm fine…"
Kristof's weakly whisper and the whole situation took its toll as Karen struggled to keep herself from laughing at her unlucky colleague.
[---][---][---][---][---][---][---][---]
She met Sebastian waiting back in front of the Interrogation room with a strange cylinder in his hands.
"You have Bianca's file? I got the Mana canister from the evidence room that my team found by her when they caught her."
Karen's fingers closed in on the file in her hand, feeling nervous before her first interaction with a real Demon.
"Yes, I got it. She won't miss it either. I told Kristof about it after I helped him out with his… problem."
He reached her the metallic container, covered in an evidence bag, and added a reassuring smile.
"You got that, Karen. No worries. She's chained up with suppressive handcuffs, nothing can happen and I'm right behind the mirror should you need me."
The cold canister weight heavy in her hand, and was almost large enough that she needed both hands. It had a cylindrical shape, looked quite futuristic, and she could feel something flowing inside it.
"Ugh… isn't that supposed to be empty? What if that Demon gets its hands on it?"
Fear sneaked involuntarily into her words and she felt herself tense up.
Sebastian laid a hand on her shoulder, his fingers gripping her firm.
"It's locked. No chance to open it without the key. And you can still go back to your office, if you want to. It's my job to deal with her, anyway."
She shook her head. As much as Karen wanted to go back on her word, it felt not right to leave Sebastian alone with this.
"No, it's fine. I can do this. Just one thing. Why do you call that Demon not by what it is? Especially you… someone who lost so much to them. Why do you sympathize with them?"
His eyes moved away from her, avoiding her gaze.
"We can talk about that afterwards. I think you will have many more questions anyway…"