Omnis Exitus Initium Est

[Squad]

The glass of watered-down gin clinked gently as the massive Shukensha undocked from Tsukishima under her own power for the first time in several years. Preston gently traced his right hand around its rim as what remained of the ice settled at the bottom of the glass. The viewing windows in what had been his primary office space for decades did little to mask the blindingly cold white light of Shikoku's sun.

Behind him lay boxes of electronic communication pads, data storage devices, and in some cases, even paper. The last remnants of his work over the sector selectively spread throughout Interspace's various stations where they would never be singled out for inspection by any but the most scrupulous data clerks. All except the cache from Roppongi. For months Preston's sleep was troubled by the utter lack of control he felt at the station's complete-yet-not-complete destruction. If only it would have been vaporized in its entirety.

His left hand rested on a comparatively ancient tome, a cracked leather-bound bible he had purchased for a sum that would make his ship blush had she emotions. And in many ways, she did. the Summary Judgment was well-traveled and had seen Preston through danger at home and abroad. Her open bow reminded many of a wide smile. She had hosted all from the rough, beaten miners of Dresden to the orange sisters of Kusari. However, even their feigned elegance did little to hide the stigma of their addiction, and their almost blind devotion to those who did not value their lives, as much as they hoped otherwise, gave him a cold sense of dread. His addiction to control was unabated, and the thought of giving it up voluntarily...sacrilege.

The irony of the thought while his index finger stroked the leather binding of his treasure wasn't lost on him. Was he religious? Did it matter? He absently tapped the floor with his right and left toes, one after the other. His way of making himself feel grounded when there was none.

You're happy, right? He almost expected the liner to answer.

The book covered a picture of three young faces, two of which he adored. A woman and two children. It was the only image he had ever kept in his most sacred of spaces, but he never looked at it. In his less-affluent years, when the Boadicea was all he had, a young gang member from Colorado managed to pluck it from a small drawer sitting atop a large stack of barrister bookcases. While they spoke, Preston remembered the absolute fury that boiled within him, but none showed, nor could it. Emotion meant weakness, and weakness meant ceding control. All a facade for those dregs of society his clients sought to manipulate in the shadows for fear that others would discover their base natures.

The wrinkles at the corners of his mouth were deeper now, a result of forced formality and friendliness. In many ways, he lied to himself that he could be that person, but that image his book held to the desk was evidence of his real failures in life. The last time he felt that he had no control to keep the ones that mattered to him most close and together.

They are alive, he whispered to himself as his gaze through the liner's windows turned into a glassed-over blur. He had forgotten to blink. They are alive and happy.

Only without you.

He backhanded the glass of gin across his desk and into the floor before putting his head in his hands. He wished he had the fortitude to do it to himself.

And so now with his life's work around him, or at least that which he and his contacts were able to salvage, Preston was humbled to realize it could all fit in an office. An overly-large, domineering, and some would say resplendent office, but an office nonetheless. The layers of dust on the shelves of untouched books, pedestals of artifacts, jewels, statutes...what did they matter if there were none to see it. Dust did not touch the image on his desk.

The ambient lighting along the base of the walls slowly increased in intensity giving the space an unwelcome glow as the door hissed open.

"The dark does not become you." A figure stood silhouetted against the foyer lighting beaming through the rectangular portal.

"We have located Ted's datapad."

"From Roppongi?"

"From Roppongi."

Preston raised his head and inhaled sharply, pursing his bottom lip in an expression that could indicate sadness as equally as anger. No longer would he be a puppetmaster with his own strings attached to puppetmasters he could not see. The Division and its assets would now serve his purposes alone.

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