Amanda saluted the Director before she turned on her heel and left. She tried to ease the door shut behind her, but the mana hadn’t completely left her body, and she had far more strength than she realized. The door slammed shut with a loud bang.

Heads popped up from cubicles and stared at Amanda. She gritted her teeth and forced herself not to pay attention to the whispers exchanged between her colleagues. Her feet, almost like they acted of their own will, carried her to her office.

With a sigh of relief, she pulled the door to her own office closed behind her. She fell rather than sat down in her worn chair behind her cluttered desk. As a senior special agent, she was allowed a private office and her own desk and computer. Her room even had a tiny, grimy window that looked out onto a fire escape and two massive heating ducts on the building opposite. Not exactly the Director’s office, but at least it was better than sharing a desk with the others out in the main workspace.

Amanda kicked off her shoes and slumped back in her chair. A click of the mouse brought her computer to life, and the muted live streamed news feed she kept open constantly in a browser window stuttered twice and then began to play.

A journalist was on screen, talking excitedly into a microphone in front of the Capitol Building in Washington. The banner headline streaming across the bottom of the screen caught her eye, and she tapped the keyboard to unmute the feed.

The reporter appeared to be breaking a story about a criminal organization of hackers who called themselves the Seraphic Key.

“It’s now beyond doubt that the Seraphic Key group, long considered a terrorist organization by the US government, has successfully gained access to PentaTech’s databases,” the reporter said. “PentaTech is well known as one of the biggest providers of magitech in the industry. The company started as a designer of enchanted bank vault entry systems in London, England in the 1950s. Today they are providers of secure encryption systems to a dizzying range of government and private clients across the globe. PentaTech supplies encryption services for everything from personal mobile banking to high-security prison monitoring systems and secretive government projects. It is unknown how much—if any—of the private data of Pentatech’s two billion corporate and private users has actually been compromised, nor if any data has been stolen or destroyed. It’s expected that a spokesman from PentaTech will be making an official statement from their headquarters here in Washington later this afternoon.”

Amanda had heard enough. She reached over and pressed Alt+F4, killing the browser window that displayed the livestream before she powered off the monitor. The reporter’s voice was immediately cut off, and Amanda was left staring at her reflection in the blank monitor’s dull, black surface.