Evenfall (48 page)

It seemed like Cedrick had done well for himself in his young life. He'd gotten a position at a good newspaper fairly young and went on to dedicate his short career to focusing on political intrigue. He'd done a surprising amount of investigative work considering he was fairly early in his career, but apparently some of his first stories had blown the top off a lot of scandals and impressed a fair share of important people.

There was a video attached to one of the files, and Sin started to bypass it before pausing. After a moment he decided that he was curious enough to watch and opened the file.

In the video, the camera was at an angle from the corner of a closed room, catching the back half of the person doing the interviewing. All Sin could see was a woman's dark hair that had turned largely grey, pulled back in a complicated braid rolled into a bun. She had a clipboard in front of her and a pen in her hand. Sin couldn't see much of what was written on the sheets of paper but he did see that she'd been making notes.

A young man who Sin assumed was Cedrick sat across the table from her.

He was young, maybe twenty years old, and wore a plain black shirt under a slightly ill-fitting jacket. His brown eyes were alert and a darker shade than Boyd's honey brown ones, but their shapes were similar. He was a little older than Boyd was now and some similarities could be seen. Still, where Boyd was lean and had blond hair, Cedrick had thick, short brown hair, a stockier build, and none of the androgyny that his son would grow to have.

It quickly became apparent to Sin that this was an interview for an internship, and that Cedrick was still in college. Cedrick seemed to alternate between an easygoing demeanor and seeming nervous as he tried to do his best in the interview. He kept straightening his back after seemingly realizing he'd started to slouch. Although a genuine smile easily lent itself to Cedrick's lips, his eyes had a haunted quality to them that wasn't uncommon at that time, not long after the war had started.

The interview started with a few questions that were only partially interesting.

The woman asked Cedrick about his qualifications. He mentioned how he'd been the recipient of multiple awards, including a prestigious award in Canada that had allowed him to travel to Europe for a week to attend a press conference in Brussels. When he mentioned that he'd direct enrolled at Centre de Formation des Journalistes in Paris for awhile, the woman's face had been tilted at just the right angle for Sin to see the way her eyebrows raised in interest. He talked about how two of his main focuses of interest had been covering elections and being a journalist in conflict zones. He also mentioned how he'd wanted to work at a newspaper for a long time and he was excited about the opportunity to interview for an internship at this one.

The woman asked a few other cursory questions. She noticed that according to his resume, much of his earlier schooling was in Canada and France, so why was he in the United States now? He'd mentioned the nearby university and how he'd wanted to take some classes there. She asked about how it was better than Centre de Formation des Journalistes and he said a lot of it had come down to personal choices for where he and his wife would raise a family.

The woman gave him a strange look at that. "You have a family?" she asked doubtfully.

For the first time, all shadows of nervousness disappeared from Cedrick's face. He broke into a wide grin, looking proud with a faint flush to his face that hadn't been there before. "I do," he said happily, leaning forward and pulling out his wallet. "Do you want to see? My boy was just born a few months ago. I have a beautiful wife and an adorable son-- despite everything that's happened, I feel like the luckiest man alive."

He pulled out a picture but the woman held her hand up. "That won't be necessary." Her tone was curt but not cruel.

Still, there was a definite note of disapproval when she continued, "We are only interested in serious applicants that may grow to become full time members in the future. However, we have multiple locations and the very nature of our more enterprising journalists requires travel. If you were to get the internship and if you were to be hired full time after you graduated, what would this mean about the possibility of relocation in the future?"

Cedrick looked down at the picture in his hands and smiled. It was an enigmatic look that seemed neither happy nor sad. "I would love to have this internship, and one of my dreams is to work at the Sun. I want nothing more than to have the chance to be part of this organization and represent journalism the way it was meant to be."

He looked up and met her eyes, his expression set. "But for all that, my family comes first. I could go on trips or do short stints in other places but I can't move. My wife came with me from France. We're both relatively new here and still settling in, and my son needs as much stability as he can get as he grows up. Especially with war at our doorstep. I would give anything for this position, but I won't give up my family's needs. They're too important to me."

There was a beat of silence as the woman stared directly at him and he returned the stare, unwavering. She sniffed and looked down at her clipboard, making several notes. It was hard to tell whether she was approving or disapproving of Cedrick's response. He seemed a little uncertain about the reception himself but he didn't take it back. His fingers lingered on the picture before he pushed it back in his wallet and returned the wallet to his back pocket.

"What area of interest do you have for the paper?" the woman asked without looking up.

"Politics," Cedrick said without hesitation.

"In what way?"

"I want to expose corruption." Cedrick leaned forward against the table, his brown eyes intent. "Did you know that in the last twenty years, nearly fifty percent of the people in Congress have been proven to be corrupt or have taken part in criminal scandals on some level? So many people are completely disingenuous. They promise one thing and then get into office and do the opposite. All these 'family men' who cheat on their wives and rape young men make me sick. The worst part is so often the proof of that and other scandals goes missing or gets buried. The apparent inability for grown adults to take responsibility for their own actions is astounding."

He shook his head, clearly disgusted. As he got more into his response, his hands started moving around to emphasize points and ideas. "Money, power, famous names... S
o many people in office take advantage of the system and twist it all to their own benefit. That isn't right. And nearing fifty percent corruption is not only insane, it's pathetic. I want to have the chance to do exposιs of the truth, based on actual fact
s rather than opinions. I want to look into political corruption, especially at a time like now with the war underway and all these questions in the air. If I had my way, eventually it may be interesting to do comparisons to other countries. The US could stand to be improved in a number of ways. Maybe there could be an article that alternated showing the truth and showing how it could be done. My family back home--"

"Where is back home?" the woman interrupted.

Cedrick blinked, looking slightly startled. There was passion for his beliefs in what he said and the way he spoke; in the intensity of his eyes and his voice. He likely hadn't realized how into the answer he'd been getting until she cut him off.

"Quebec City," he answered absently. His eyebrows drew down. "But my mother is American and my wife is French so I've had these conversations at the dinner table before."

"What conversations?"

"About the different options out there," Cedrick insisted. "You know, the United States prides itself on being a democratic nation but it's not the most ideal democracy. It's a federal constitutional republic with representative democracy. The founding fathers didn't even care for democracy. Although some states have different aspects, as a whole the United States government can easily be skewed. Look at the electoral college alone; it doesn't matter what the people want. Even if everyone in a state wanted to vote Republican, if the elector for the state wanted to vote Democratic than that's what they do. It's hard to believe it can really be a government 'by the people, for the people' when you look at it like that. But if you take Switzerland's model, for example..."

The interview continued for awhile longer with Cedrick expounding on his view of politics, government, and how things could be improved upon. Rather than seeming critical, he seemed genuinely interested in the topic and seemed to view it almost as a cultural study of the world. He started to cite examples of comparisons of actions governments had taken and consequences that could directly or indirectly be tied back to them.

He mentioned that one of the biggest problems he'd noticed with governments in general was that they all seemed utterly incapable or uninterested in admitting their own wrongs. That, he said, was why he was so interested in revealing political corruption; because when left on its own, the situation would never be revealed. Or, if it was, it would be skewed by the opinions of the people reporting it. There was a passion and intensity to him that showed he could devote himself fully to an idea and would have the energy to see it through.

The interview continued with some more back and forth questions. After fifteen minutes it concluded with the woman telling Cedrick she would be in touch with him.

When Cedrick stood to leave, he smiled and thanked her for her time. He shook her hand with enthusiasm and seemed genuinely pleased to have had the opportunity for the interview, regardless of how it would turn out. When he left the room, the woman leaned back in the chair and tapped the pen against the side of the clipboard while she stared thoughtfully at the door. She made a soft, contemplative noise in the back of her throat and then stood to turn off the camera. The screen went blank.

Sin stared at the screen for a moment before shaking his head. Cedrick was like the antithesis of everything Agency. Of everything Vivienne for that matter. It was bizarre that two such different people had been together. It was also highly ironic, especially considering that if Cedrick had continued on the path he'd been on he'd have likely been on the Agency's radar for all of the wrong reasons.

In addition to that, it was now even harder to picture the idealistic young man in the video as someone who would ever marry someone like Vivienne. Perhaps she hadn't always been such a stone cold bitch.

Somehow he found it unlikely.

Then again, he had no idea how normal families functioned or how people formed relationships. The extent of his knowledge in that area stemmed from watching his mother interact with johns and his father fucking every attractive human that passed him. Neither of his parents had been very interested in family-life before they died.

 
Sin went back to his research and found a subfolder labeled Louis "Lou" Krauszer. It seemed like an anomaly and Sin clicked it, baffled as to why some random individual was included. He barely glanced at the main document before moving on to the others, wondering about the connection to Boyd.

After a few moments of perusing it, he realized that Lou was a childhood friend of Boyd's. His parents had been liberal politicians before the war and they'd both perished during the bombings that came after it.

There were several police reports and mug shots of the teen. It appeared that after his parent's death he'd begun to participate in petty crime as a means of survival. There were several stills of surveillance videos on city streets that depicted him and Boyd walking together, his arm thrown casually around Boyd's shoulders most of the time. Sin studied the images and noted that although the teenaged Boyd in the images had begun to adopt his usual style of all black attire and a generally serious expression, his eyes were much more animated than they were now and his mouth was often spread across his face in smile.

Sin's eyes narrowed slightly and he stared at this Lou person with a slight frown. He had a long slender body, unruly masses of curly blond hair and grey-blue eyes that seemed to perpetually twinkle with mischief. He was attractive and had a devil may care quality to his body language and clothing style in the images.

The dates on the images were as recent as four years ago, which meant that Boyd was most likely still acquainted with the boy. The idea made Sin frown further. He wondered why Boyd had never mentioned a childhood friend hanging around. What did this person think about Boyd joining the Agency-- did he even know? That actually brought to mind another question that Sin had wondered about recently-- what cover story did Boyd use on the outside world, anyway?

He idly flipped through files as he tried to find recent data on the mop headed teen. His search came up short and he made a face at the computer before going back to the main document on Lou.

Louis "Lou" Krauszer

Occupation: None

Status: Deceased

Birth: 3/14/2000

Death: 5/23/2016

Sin stared at the words for a moment and decided that this was interesting. It was an abrupt end to a teen who had looked relatively healthy. Although it was possible that he'd been suffering from the lung disease which had taken out a lot of young people after the war. Curious despite himself, Sin kept looking to determine what had actually happened.

After several minutes of searching he came up with nothing. Frustrated, he growled at the computer and flipped back to the main folder. He went through every folder and every file and finally found one that was labeled "police-hospital reports, surveillance."
His eyebrows rose and several files appeared on the screen. He opened each one, pouring over them thoroughly. It seemed as though Boyd had been involved in a mugging where he'd been injured and his friend Louis Krauszer had been slain by the attackers. Further reading described an inept and somewhat crooked police department who did very little to catch the gang that was involved.