Black Scales, Want and the Foolish Dreams of Human Beings

“Thanks, Zoe.” went a brusque woman’s voice. 

It’s monday, and she’s just fetched coffee for her boss. This isn’t her real job, but she does it anyway. Mind you, this isn’t the petty distinction made by an overworked secretary.

Though she is one. Her real job doesn’t generally work if you aren’t privy to the lifestyle you're trying to infiltrate.

Zoe Haumann is a spy. Though, to name her true intentions, position, or affiliations would be counterproductive. In a world where such a job role could vary from criminal to corporate, there was surprisingly little to worry about in regards to specialisation.

Espionage wasn’t really a group activity, in that she wasn’t much in need of a partner, but it did require some level of support staff. Handlers, Semi-informed cohorts, and willing informants.

Which was half of how she ended up vouching for Sandy Lewin, the company intern and her ignorant informant. Miss Lewin was a fun girl, she just didn’t have the sense allotted to a box of rocks.

Drowned in a glass. Really.

All together, her job was to keep tabs on her boss. Which in the case of Aeron Corcoran, meant playing the ‘classic-secretary’ to an intensely bored woman, who thought a cork board desk was avant garde. The fact that anyone in her organization thought the woman was up to anything was as laughable as it was wasteful of resources and time.

It didn’t help that the woman- nope, Zoe didn’t need to have those thoughts about a target.

“Are you going now?” Aeron’s calm voice snapped her out of her thoughts, she’d been looking through her work, and had only looked over when it became clear that Zoe wasn’t leaving the office.

“Ah, excuse me. I dropped out on you.”

“That’s quite alright dear, I was about to say it’s a good look on you.” still so calm, with a mocking smirk.

“A lot of things are, I still don’t need your comments.”

“Now that was clever. I could really just eat you up.”

“I’m going now.” she waved the woman off.

She could feel the other woman’s smile, as she walked out the door. Luckily this was something she could leave out of her reports rather easily. It was funny how much paperwork there was in spywork, there wasn’t a movie out of hollywood that was as thoroughly boring as the real thing.

That might’ve been the draw with Aeron.

Zoe wasn’t about to say she was her type, Aeron was a lot of things she liked, but she was also under suspicion. She was a target, and very weird.

“Wow, who! Are you with me? You're on break.” Sandy pointed out, having memorized Zoe’s schedule. She did arrange herself for that, couldn't beat that brain funk without lunch after all.

“Do you ever feel like you're trapped having the same awful realization every day of your life?”

“no.”

Yeah, I thought not. This realization was of boredom, and disinterest. It was the fact that even her real job was becoming dull, dull enough that a drowned turkey of an intern was telling her when to eat. This would be the holding pattern for only a while longer.

It would be her boss’s hobby that changed things. Conspiracies would make her restless, and the mystery would make her frisky. And since Aeron wouldn’t dare make an object of her own curiosity, it became her hobby as well.

Henry Kneller was a lovely host, he was a normal looking man, with a mustache that matched his head hair perfectly. Though he had the general manner of a man who’d fake both.

Watching the videos on her off hours had become her passtime, as much as Aeron's. Zoe was almost ready to admit to something, considering her debut appearance on ZetharUnited’s web shows. 

Zoe may’ve had some qualms about playing out any kind of office romance, but Aeron’s presence on camera was exquisite.

One thing that was strange about the content on ZetharUnited was that it lacked the facade of moral or political neutrality, it was a weird thing to find, considering the commodity that was the alternative.

Most media producers, especially the ones that peddle conspiracy theories seem at most, a few inches from arguing that political inconsequentialism of their prattle is proof of concept rather than the result of shoddy editing and historical ignorance.

“What are you watching?” she heard during her lunch break, she’d been watching the later half of an episode on what the soft evidence for Alien colonialism would be and she’d missed the segment on blood typing.

“Nothing.” She stopped the video, and Zoe could hear the smile in her gaze. How annoying.

But it was a late night of paperwork that started their real affair.

It wasn't a very interactive night, not really, definitely not at first. They were the last two people in that night, and Aeron was alone in her office signing some papers she’d neglected that week.

Which was inconvenient, at least for Zoe, as that meant her work was gonna be in backlog rather than finished when she got off. 

It had been getting late, and Zoe would’ve probably gone without dinner if not for Aeron’s request.

“Can you go fetch something for me? I’m placing an order from this damned little Greek pop up, and they don’t deliver. You can go get yourself something too.” She then handed Zoe her gold card, a bit too forcefully.

Now upon reflection, this should've been strange, but Aeron was richer than some monarchs and had all the sense of a box of rocks so it didn’t come off as such.

The trouble was that the little pop up had had a line out to the street, and seemingly no preorder policy, which left Zoe making an informed guess. 

She’d apparently come back much quicker than was expected, as she came back to the Agamid form that was her boss only a little earlier.

If she could say anything about the moment it would be this, how does a giant lizard manage such a slim facade?

And if she weren’t forced to remain silent for want of privacy with her thoughts she'd have said, ‘really? Now she's dating material?’

Cause that was just what she was without her disguise. Every little thing about her made sense, it may as well been pinned to her corkboard desk the linchpin assumptions made about her.

But Zoe couldn't tell anyone, because the premise was idiotic, and she'd finally started to like her fake boss. She also didn't want to be liquidated by the agency for her apparent break from reality.

“Hey, are you still alive?” Zoe made a nuisance of herself, enough that the other woman reapplied her skin, before exiting her office.

“Mostly, it’s terribly late isn’t it?”, Aeron said, her eyes had a glare that would’ve made Zoe wince if she were less enchanted.

“yes.”

That’s how her loyalties shift ostensibly toward Aeron’s goals, as insensible as they seemed on the onset, her mission had become obvious. The trouble was that she didn’t trust it anymore.

She wanted to be by the lizard’s side. That was the holding pattern for about a month before everything fell apart. She’d had an open invitation by then, at least on certain hours, and they’d taken to watching ZetharUnited together on what nights they shared.

That night they broadcasted an Expose.