CAD4-006
Barista: Nick Langley
Date: Dec-2-2019
Receipt: CAD4-006
Subject: Business as Usual
I always figured I’d be the last twin standing.
Nikki… she was always reckless. Always throwing herself headfirst into danger, like she was chasing some kind of inevitable martyrdom. And I guess—right up to her final breath—she was no different. She made sure everyone else got out alive. Classic Nikki. Mom and Dad… they’re taking it hard. Not just because she’s gone, but how she’s gone. They spent our whole lives bracing for a hundred and one different ways we could die. But not this. They never saw this coming.
The only silver lining—if you can even call it that—is that since Nikki was one of the Baristas who died, she falls under my parents’ X-Ray care. Which means Division X-Ray is stepping in to help with the clean-up at the Third Cafe and Diner. Even so… from what I’m hearing, not even X-Ray can handle a mess this big. They’re sending a mix of Indias, Juliettes, and—unfortunately—a couple of Zulus. The Indias I can live with. Field agents. Muscle. We’ll need them. The Juliettes make sense. The nature of this incident is exactly their domain.
But the Zulus?
Nothing good ever comes from working with the Zulus. And to be honest? I doubt we actually need them for the clean-up. No—they want something. Something from the wreckage of the Third Cafe. But what? Of course, if we’re going to work with the Agency, we don’t get to pick and choose which agents they send. We take what they give us. Including the Zulus. But I wish the Agency would just cut them out like the cancer they are. But then they wouldn’t have a full Alphabet, would they?
We’re still hammering out a date for the clean-up. Should be sometime before Christmas. Before the New Year, at the latest.