“Ciaran, did you nick my pen? The lightsaber. It was here yesterday.”
Ciaran Tigh looked up from his screen on the other side of the tiny Cyber Threat Analytics room. There were only three desks in the CTA unit office — one each for Ciaran, Bridge, and Monica, who was currently in a briefing — yet it was still too small for them. Bridge had once stood in the centre of the room and swung a two-foot piece of string around her head, just to test the theory about dead cats, and it was a pretty close thing. Almost took out the holiday calendar on the back wall.
“First, what would a Trek man like me want with a lightsaber? Second, how the hell can you tell?” Ciaran’s desk was immaculate, a sanctuary of order, precision, and calm. Every notebook squared off, every document tray in alignment, every pen and pencil arranged in parallel and accounted for.
By contrast, Bridge’s desk was, well, a contrast. She liked to think it reflected a creative mind, and was working on a desk-tidiness-correlation theory about Star Trek fans like Ciaran vs Star Wars fans like herself, although Monica’s desk (somewhere in the middle, not as neat-freak as Ciaran’s but tidier than Bridge’s) threw the whole thing for a loop. Monica preferred Aliens.
Besides, where everyone else saw nothing but a mess, Bridge saw a system. She might be the only one who understood it, but she was the only one who had to, and she always knew where everything was. Except, at this precise moment, her favourite pen.
She stood at Monica’s desk, scanning the surface, but it wasn’t there. She knew it wouldn’t be. Why would Monica need to take someone else’s pen? Why would anyone need to? This wasn’t high school.
Ciaran had resumed reading, already lost in the morning’s wires and scan alerts from GCHQ as they scrolled up his screen. Bridge returned to her own desk and flopped in the chair, which belched an ergonomically-designed pneumatic sigh in response. “Only ten-thirty,” she sighed. “How much worse can today get?”
Giles entered, smiling. “Bridge, there you are. Broom Eight, please, in five minutes.”
Without looking up from his monitor, Ciaran smiled, but said nothing. She scowled at him anyway. “Will I need to take notes?” she asked, opening her pen drawer. “Only I’ve — ah.” Her lightsaber pen stared back at her.
Giles, still in the doorway, shook his head. “No notes. Problem?”
It took all of her self-control not to slam the drawer shut.