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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/lex_kenosi on 2025-11-10 16:01:00+00:00.

The silence after Reba's declaration stretched like a wire pulled taut.

No one moved. No one spoke.

Yarrow’s breath came shallow beside me. Behind us the whole Bureau staff stood rigid, hung over and already doing the arithmetic on survival.

Reba turned from the bodies with the deliberate grace of someone who knew every eye was on her. Her armored boots made no sound on the carpet as she approached us. Behind her, the grey-clad guards moved to flank the doorway, sealing the office from view.

"This is a tragedy," she said. "A double homicide. In a locked room. Within Bureau Headquarters itself."

She let that sink in. Let us all feel the weight of the implication.

"The entire Compact would be justified in questioning this institution's competence," she continued. "To believe this was anything other than an inside operation would be... incompetence of the highest order."

Yarrow stiffened. "Now wait a damn minute—"

"Chief Yarrow." Reba said. "You were the last person to speak with both victims. Publicly. In front of witnesses. During an altercation that, by multiple account you were inebriated"

Yarrow's ears flattened. His mouth opened, then closed.

"Exactly," Reba said. "We are all suspects. Every single person in this room had motive, means, and opportunity. The killer is among us, or someone among us facilitated their entry."

She paced slowly, her eyes scanning the assembled detectives. We were still rumpled, bloodshot, the stink of stale alcohol clinging like evidence.

"However," she said, and her tone shifted, became almost magnanimous, "I understand the... delicacy of this situation. The political ramifications. The damage to interspecies relations if handled poorly."

I caught Yarrow's eye. His expression told me everything: Here it comes.

"Therefore," Reba announced, "I am implementing an immediate review protocol. My forensic team—experts I have brought with me from the Scyline Investigative Corps—will process the scene according to Compact standards. No one enters that office until they have completed their work."

She gestured to the grey-clad guards, who immediately began stringing up barrier tape across the doorway.

"In the meantime," Reba continued, "all Bureau detectives will utilize available resources to compile preliminary reports on the events leading to these deaths. Timelines. Witness statements. Background on both victims. I want comprehensive analyses on my desk by end of shift."

Someone in the back cleared his throat. "Ma'am, that's... we're supposed to be investigating this collectively. Standard protocol for internal—"

"Standard protocol," Reba interrupted, her voice dropping to permafrost temperatures, "died in that office. What I'm offering you is an opportunity. The most thorough, most insightful report will be taken into serious consideration for future advancement within the restructured Bureau."

The temperature in the room shifted.

I watched it happen. Eyes slid toward each other, hands drifted to terminals, decades-old alliances cracked under self-preservation.

She'd turned us into competitors. Into rivals. Into suspects investigating each other.

"Dismissed," Reba said. "I expect excellence."

The bullpen erupted into controlled chaos.

Detectives scattered to their desks, some already pulling up files, others huddling in suspicious clusters. The camaraderie of last night's party had evaporated like morning dew under a killing sun.

I stood at my desk, staring at the spot where Kazen had placed the crown.

The stack of files still sat there: neglected case reports, repair requisitions, the usual clutter of a detective who ignored image standards. The crown was gone.

"Dibble."

Yarrow materialized at my elbow, his voice low and urgent. He was holding two cups of the terrible coffee, which meant he was serious. He only drank the terrible coffee when he was serious.

"Walk with me," he said.

We moved to the far corner of the bullpen, near the broken vending machine that had been "pending repair" for three months. It was the closest thing we had to a dead zone—no terminals, no active surveillance feeds, just the constant electric hum that might cover a quiet conversation.

Yarrow handed me the coffee. I took it without comment.

"She's turning us against each other," he said, his grey ears twitching with barely suppressed anger. "That 'review' is bullshit. She's creating chaos so we'll be too busy fighting for scraps to ask the real questions."

"What questions?" I asked, though I already knew.

"How did she arrive so perfectly timed?" Yarrow's voice was tight. "How did she have a full security detail ready to go? How did she know to come straight to Ras'Al's office?" He took a long pull of coffee, grimaced. "And most importantly—why is a Scyline, supposedly non-aligned, suddenly in charge of a Bureau investigation?"

I glanced across the bullpen. Reba stood at the center of the room, conferring with her forensic team. They moved around her like satellites, efficient and silent.

"She wants us distracted," I said. "Fighting each other while her people control the scene."

"Exactly." Yarrow's eyes narrowed. "Which means we need to find what she doesn't want us to see before her team 'finds' whatever they're planning to plant."

I sipped the coffee. It was, somehow, worse than usual. "You think she's framing someone."

"I think she's framing you," Yarrow said bluntly. "You noticed the crown, didn't you? Where Kazen left it?"

My hand tightened on the cup. "On my desk. After his little speech about the Bureau's image."

"Right. And this morning?"

"Not there."

Yarrow nodded grimly. "I noticed it too. Saw it last night when I was getting drinks. That stupid golden thing sitting on your paperwork like Kazen's personal 'fuck you' to your filing system." He paused. "Question is—where did it go?"

We both knew the answer. We'd both seen it in that office, cracked in half between two bodies.

"Someone moved it," I said slowly, working through the implications. "After we passed out. Before morning. Someone took it from my desk and placed it at the crime scene."

"To make it look symbolic," Yarrow added. "Kazen’s crown, broken between the old leader and the new. A message about power, succession, institutional collapse." He shook his head. "It's too perfect. Too staged."

"Which means the crime scene is theater," I said. "Someone's trying to tell a story."

"The question is whose story." Yarrow glanced toward Reba again. "And why she's so eager to control who tells it."

I set down the coffee cup. My hangover was receding, pushed back by the sharp clarity of focused anger. "We can't get into the office."

"No," Yarrow agreed. "But we can investigate everything else."

I returned to my desk and logged into my terminal.

The Bureau's database held decades of cases, logs, personnel files, intel reports. Most of it opened to senior detectives like me; a few sections asked for codes I technically lacked.

Technically.

I pulled the external Compact diplomatic archives and filtered for Scyline representatives. The list was short; Scylines shunned high posts and worked through proxies and quiet trade deals. Websingers prized subtlety.

Reba's name appeared three years ago, listed as a junior ambassador during a minor trade dispute in the Outer Systems. Standard career trajectory, nothing noteworthy.

Then, one year ago, everything changed.

I found it buried in a public communiqué from a tense shipping-route negotiation: marked resolved, archived, ignored—exactly the record no one reads unless they’re hunting.

The dispute involved Ras'Al.

I leaned forward, scanning the document. The language was diplomatic, carefully neutral, but the substance was damning. Ras'Al, acting in his capacity as Bureau Director, had exposed a Scyline smuggling operation. Not massive, not particularly illegal by most standards, but embarrassing. The kind of thing that gets ambassadors recalled, careers derailed, reputations destroyed.

And Reba had been the public face of that operation.

The communiqué ended with a formal response from Reba, logged by a neutral third-party observer to ensure authenticity. It was brief, professional, and absolutely chilling:

"Director Ras'Al, your commitment to transparency is noted and will be remembered. A spider may weave a complex web, but it is the silent spider who survives the storm. Your day of reckoning will be one of quiet efficiency, not loud scandal. This matter is concluded."

I read it three times.

Quiet efficiency. Not loud scandal.

I looked across the bullpen to where Reba stood, perfectly composed, directing her team with minimal gestures and maximum control. Silent. Efficient.

"Yarrow," I called softly.

He was at my desk in seconds. I angled the terminal so he could read.

His ears went flat against his skull. "Oh, that's a motive," he breathed. "That's a personal motive."

"It's more than that," I said. "It's a threat. Logged, witnessed, and specific enough to match exactly what just happened."

"She planned this." Yarrow's voice was barely a whisper. "A year ago, she was already planning this."

I sat back and let the facts line up. Reba had not simply arrived on time; she had stage-managed the whole play: amendments rammed through Compact Congress, Ras'Al ousted, Kazen installed, and now both corpses in a locked room while she stepped in before anyone could object.

It was elegant and terrifying, the exact move of a silent spider.

"We need to...

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