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Here in the basement lived the tangled roots of the FBI itself.

The Intelligence Department. The Bureau’s brain stem.

Funny how that worked, because this place was Ella’s roots too.

She’d spent five years here, and while some people got nostalgic about returning to their roots, Ella just got itchy skin.

Not out of any hatred for her old job, but because the first thing that came to mind were the endless nights with dry eyes and stuffy air for company.

But today she needed what this place had always been good at – cold, hard facts.

Her fingers brushed the metal railings as she descended the stairs.

Walking into this office always felt like visiting an ex after they’d forgotten to return your favorite sweater.

This was a place that knew her secrets but no longer kept them.

Some agents treated Intelligence like the Bureau’s stepchild; that weird kid who lived in the basement and knew a little too much about things they shouldn’t know about.

But that was the thing about roots: they weren’t pretty, but they kept everything else from falling over. Just like Intelligence kept the Bureau’s arteries flowing with data while the glory hounds upstairs took all the credit, and she included herself in that group.

Her old desk was her first port of call.

She passed by a few familiar faces en route and gave them the nod.

She found her old monitor staring back at her with its black, vacant eye, and the layer of dust on her keyboard suggested that nobody had claimed her territory after she’d moved upstairs.

Either out of respect or, more likely, because the Bureau’s legendary bureaucracy hadn’t processed the paperwork to reassign it.

She popped open the desk drawer, found it unsurprisingly empty save for a paper clip and what might have been the desiccated corpse of an old pencil.

She took a moment to admire the emptiness, but then the sound of tortured furniture snapped her back to the present day.

The chair next to her desk released an ungodly screech as a mountain of a Hawaiian-shirted man descended into it. Physics protested, then surrendered.

Roadrunner had arrived.

‘Do my eyes deceive me? Ella Dark? Somebody piss-test me, quick.’

‘Right here in the flesh.’

Roadrunner’s beard had grown sentient since the last time she’d seen him. Either he was going for the terrorist look or he was hiding a nest of squirrels in there.

‘What are you doing down here? Is it 2021 already?’ he asked.

‘More like 1991 with that shirt.’

‘This is a classic. I got married in this.’ Roadrunner placed two energy drinks on the mess that was his desk. There were trinkets, action figures and what looked like a duck wearing tactical gear.

‘You look like Ace Ventura.’

‘He couldn’t do what I do. You get off at the wrong floor or something?’

‘Maybe. What makes you think I don’t miss this place?’

Roadrunner smashed his keyboard with his palm and jolted his three monitors to life. Two of them displayed lines of code. The third was a children’s cartoon on pause. ‘Because you never come back here. I mean, if I got promoted, I wouldn’t either, but you know what I mean.’

‘You can graduate the basement, but the basement never graduates you.’ Ella nodded at his third monitor. ‘Why are you watching cartoons?’

‘Why aren’t you watching cartoons? That’s a better question.’

‘Speaking of better questions, I’ve got a good one for you. Remember when I came down here a few months ago?’

‘Barely. Give me specifics.’

‘It was around October. I’d lost my cell phone. I came hunting for it down here.’

‘Hmm. Vaguely. Why?’

‘Well, I thought you might remember the exact date. I need to figure out what I was doing that day.’

Roadrunner chuckled. ‘First, the old Ella would already have those details backed up in her brain. Second, if you don’t remember the date, then I sure as hell don’t.’

It was a long shot, but worth a try. Ella conceded defeat. ‘Figured. I just thought you might have a reference point or something.’

‘Hold up. I might not remember it, but someone else down here might.’

Ella’s heart rate picked up. She glanced around the room. She didn’t remember talking to anyone else last time she was down here.

‘Really? Who?’

Roadrunner pointed at the tactical duck watching over his workstation. ‘Herbert. He sees all.’

Ella cocked a brow. ‘Uh. That’s a wooden duck.’

‘Herbert’s my new pal, and he’s not just your average wooden duck in riot gear.

’ Roadrunner grabbed him and presented its backside to Ella.

There was a USB stuck in there. ‘See this? Herbert records every conversation I have at this desk. 120 hours per week of pure, inane drivel. Well, most of it. Some of it turns out to be useful.’

Ella took the novelty item and turned it over in her hands.

Of course Roadrunner had a surveillance duck.

If there was a Bureau award for eccentric genius, Roady would take it by a mile.

‘First question’s first, why do you have a duck that records everything?

That must violate several codes of conduct. ’

‘Three, but Herbert pays for himself. Marshall came down here back in spring, demanded I make some headway on this terrorist cell situation by May. He came back in the first week of March, asking me where his report was. I told him he’d said May, not March. Marshall disagreed.’

Ella inspected the duck’s butt. There was a hundred gigabytes of detachable data lodged where the sun didn’t shine. ‘And Herbert proved him wrong?’

Roadrunner patted Herbert’s wooden head. ‘Yup. This duck’s my insurance against selective memory. You know how bad that is around here.’

‘Fair point. Then what do you do with the files? Is he recording right now?’

‘Every word. Once the USB hits max capacity at 120 hours, I transfer all of the recordings to my hard drive.’

‘So you’ve got, what, a terabyte of office gossip on your computer?’

‘It’s compressed, so about a hundred gig. It’s all saved by date too. What’s the point of having a big-dick hard drive if you’re not going to use it?’

‘Makes sense. And you said it goes back to at least spring?’

‘Yup.’

Ella handed the duck back to its rightful owner. His paranoid data-hoarding might be exactly what she needed. Trust Roady’s twisted genius to accidentally create the perfect solution.

‘Would you be able to find the date I came in here? In October?’

Roadrunner snapped his mammoth fingers. ‘I can do exactly that. Might not be today because I’m up to my ass in paperwork. Might take me a few hours to zip through all of the recordings too, but you can leave it with me.’

‘Road, you’re a lifesaver. Your compulsions might actually save my ass.’

‘Just doing my civic duty. And you know what the best part is? No one’s ever asked why I’ve got a wooden duck on my desk.’

‘No one?’

He shrugged. ‘Nope. They just assume I’m having a midlife crisis, which I am.’

For all his eccentricities, Roadrunner’s brain operated with a precision most agents could only dream of. The Bureau bred conformity, but occasionally it let a true original slip through the psychological screening. Thank God for bureaucratic oversights.

‘You’re a hero. Let me know what Herbert coughs up.’

‘Should be with you by Wednesday, unless the world ends.’

Two days. Ella could work with that. She pivoted to make her exit, but Roadrunner’s voice made her spin. ‘Ells, you ever miss this place? For real?’

The question caught her off-guard. She’d never really thought about it. Never had time to. She always thought that just putting one step in front of the other was preferable than planning out your potential career path step by step.

‘Like I said, the basement never graduates you. If I end up back here one day, I’d be fine with that.’

‘Good to hear it.’

Her phone buzzed. Ripley was en route to the airport.

Florida awaited, with a dead profiler with stones for eyes.