Shadows in the Concrete Jungle Book One: The Grey

Chapter Twenty-Five

Noah had accidentally woke Kendra up when he woke up a few hours after they finally fell asleep. They changed positions, Kendra curving her body along the back of his, her fingers sliding into his hair, rubbing his scalp.

"I had a dream about... him," Noah whispered into the dark room.

"Who?" Kendra asked, her fingers unfaltering. It took a few silent minutes until he replied, his voice heavy with sleep again.

"My old partner."

Kendra didn't pause but her eyebrows arched up. Noah never talked about his old partner; none of them ever did. And even when Kendra scoured the intranet of the SDA, she couldn't find a single thing about his old partner. It was like the slate had been cleaned of him, everything mentioning him had been removed or redacted.

She couldn't fall back asleep, even though her body was so tired. And after nearly an hour of listening to Noah's even breathing, she carefully left their bed, slid on sweatpants and Noah's hoodie like she always did, and stepped from their bedroom.

She heard the quiet voices of Nicholas and Jolly as she carefully walked down the stairs into the overcast day, and rounded the corner into the kitchen.

"Can't sleep?" Jolly asked, looking at Kendra from under his eyelashes, his fingers stuck in four different parts of his book while he wrote something down in his notebook.

"Not anymore," Kendra said, heaving herself onto a stool at the counter. She didn't bother to pull any papers towards her, or books. She just crossed her arms and laid them down on the countertop, her head resting on them.

"Tea?" Nicholas asked, turning to the cabinets and pulling Kendra's K mug from it, and pouring hot water into it.

"Sure, something fruity," Kendra said, watching Nicholas as he reached up into his cabinet dedicated to only tea boxes, and flipped through boxes, containers, and bottles of tea. He settled on one, nodded at it, and opened it up.

"This one tastes exactly like fruity pebbles," Nicholas said, handing Kendra her mug after he threw a sachet into the water. Kendra watched the tea seep into the hot water, turning it golden brown. She knew Nicholas and Jolly exchanged a long glance before Nicholas looked back down at her. "Something on your mind?"

"Nope," Kendra said, lifting one hand to dunk the teabag in the water. She could see the incredulous look Nicholas gave her past her moving hand.

"Spill it," Nicholas demanded. She continued dunking for a few seconds, telling herself to not ask, it would open a can of worms, everyone would be upset, and yet-

"What happened to Noah's old partner?"

Silence fell in the kitchen and only then did Kendra lift her head, throw out the teabag, and take a sip as she looked between Nicholas and Jolly. Each had a look of surprise on their faces, their eyebrows raised up as they watched her.

"Well?" Kendra said, setting her mug down after a hot sip, smacking her lips because the tea really did taste like fruity pebbles.

Nicholas sighed. "He and Noah got overrun by demons, and while Noah tried to fight them off so they could get away... his partner was stabbed in the chest and bled out in Noah's arms. That's it."

Kendra looked from Nicholas to Jolly, then back again. "Why does no one talk about him? Why can't I find anything about him on the intranet, no name, nothing?"

"We don't talk about him because he was very close with us, closer still to Noah," Jolly interjected, and Kendra turned to face him. "It still hurts Noah to this day, a year and a half later. He struggles with it. He was the last agent to die, before Cooper. He's missing because it was all redacted, everything about that investigation was removed. The SDA covered up some shit with the government, and forbade anyone to talk about it."