Chapter Text
God, it felt good to have his own desk—his notepads and calendar situated at perfect right angles, blue and black pens divided into separate cups on either side of his dual monitor.
Shane wasn’t usually this concerned with the way his desk looked, but he needed to make a good first impression. Being called into the Cyber Division was a pretty big deal for a newly minted Special Agent. His time as a new agent trainee had been spent in a Michigan field office, where he must have impressed his SAC enough to constitute a recommendation to make the jump to CyD in D.C.
He missed his parents, who lived in the Upper Peninsula, but he was lucky that his bunkmate from Quantico, Hayden Pike, was just a desk over.
Pike leaned over then, tossing a greasy breakfast sandwich wrapper into his already overflowing wastebasket. “You might as well take a picture because it’s not going to look like that for long.” He gestured to his own desk, covered in file folders and old coffee cups.
“Fuck off,” Shane said. “Not all of us—”
“Hollander,” a voice called out from behind and above them. Shane turned to see Rose Landry, his Supervisory Special Agent, motioning to him with a file folder from her desk on the level above.
The bullpen, as they called it, contained a single level of desks for the runts and grunts—the trainees and new special agents—with the surrounding upper levels dedicated to more senior agents. Shane couldn’t help but compare it to an inverted panopticon, but he shouldn’t be surprised considering this was the FBI. “Giddyup.” Pike smiled. Shane flipped him off and started up the steps.
***
“Nice to finally meet you, Agent Hollander. Second in your class at Quantico, and Hawkins complimented your work in system security architecture,” Landry greeted as Shane approached her desk.
He stopped with his hands grasped behind his back. “Thank you, ma’am.”
She scrunched her nose, scrolling through some documents pulled up on her monitor. “No ‘ma’ams’ please.”
“Sorry, uh, Miss Landry.” He knew he’d messed up as soon as it left his mouth.
She paused her work and turned in her chair with an assessing glance. Shane froze.
“I can’t tell if you’re just being a little shit, or if you're scared of me?”
Shane floundered. “I’m not being a shit.” She raised her brows. Fuck. “I’m not scared of you, either.” His tone was a bit defensive, and he silently cursed himself. So much for making a good impression.
She pursed her lips, but Shane thought maybe it was to hide a smile. He couldn’t be certain though. He resolved to say as little as possible from that point forward.
“Well, I just wanted to get some face time with you before you start on your orientation packet. I’m supposed to tell you that you can come to me with any questions, but don’t. Ask Pike, and if you think his answer is wrong, ask J.J. If they’re both wrong, you’re probably fucked.” She glanced his way and winked.
Okay. Was that a good sign? It seemed like a good sign.
“I just sent it to your inbox. It will probably take you a while to get through, but try to have most of it done by lunch on Wednesday. You’ll meet with the SAC then and get your first case assignment. Any questions?”
Shane shook his head.
She smiled, and it transformed her face. “Good boy.” She dismissed him with a wave, and he rushed back to his desk to get started on his first official assignment as a Special Agent.
***
“Fuck you, man. No, seriously, fuck you!” J.J., who Shane had just met when he sat down to eat lunch with Pike in the cafeteria, had a thick accent that Shane thought might be Creole. He couldn’t be sure because he’d never been to Louisiana. “You’re not supposed to finish that shit so quickly. You’ve been making us all look bad." He leaned forward, lowering his voice. "It’s all about being a team player, Shane." He tossed a straw wrapper at Hayden. "Pike, you should have said something to him, you’re right there!”
“I’m not on babysitting duty. And how was I supposed to guess he’d finish it in four hours? That shit took me two full days and kept me in the office all night!”
“It’s not a big deal,” Shane muttered. The orientation packet had a lot of instructions about setting up his computer and cloud folders and signing in to the different software programs he’d need to use when working cases. He guessed the mock case was what had taken them the longest, but Shane was able to identify the malware and cut the Trojan off at its metaphorical knees, so he didn’t even need to spend a bunch of time tracing it in the system.
“I mean, it’s impressive, don’t get us wrong,” Pike nudged Shane’s shoulder. “But you’ll probably be twiddling your thumbs until Wednesday. Unless they send you to purgatory.”
“Purgatory?” Shane asked, swallowing his bite of salad.
“The help desk. It’s a nightmare. I had to help reset the Director’s password three times in one day, and he kept trying to use different variations of his girlfriend’s name and birthday.” J.J. rolled his eyes.
***
Shane didn’t get sent to purgatory, but he did spend a long hour with nothing to do at his desk after lunch. He didn’t like having nothing to do. It gave his mind too much time to worry and overanalyze shit. He was about to ask Hayden to let him reorganize his desktop when Agent Landry walked by on the upper level, noticed him sitting there, and called for him. Shane practically ran up the steps.
“Since you’re an overachiever, you can come sit in this meeting and take notes for me. Don’t say anything, obviously.” She shoved a legal pad at him, and Shane was glad he’d kept a pen in his jacket pocket. Just in case.
SAC Thomas Grady and ASAC Henry Abrams were at the head of the conference table, with a few other supervisors and another special agent. Shane felt out of place, but he kept his head down and uncapped his pen, ready to take notes.
The meeting seemed to consist of all the supervisors standing to provide status updates on their open cases. Shane couldn’t really follow most of the conversation, but he made meticulous notes, making sure to include a running list of to-do items for each team.
Agent Landry had just finished her updates when SAC Grady got a call to a cell phone that was clipped to his belt. He already had one phone on the desk, and seemed surprised to hear the ringtone. He answered quickly.
A hush fell over the room as his brows furrowed and he didn’t speak for a long minute.
“Hold on,” he said to the person on the other line. “I’ve already got everyone in here for a debrief. I’ll put you on a conference call.” Abrams leaned forward to the machine at the center of the table, pressing a few buttons while Grady tapped on the phone.
“You should be connected. Go.” Grady ordered. He stood and crossed his arms. Shane abandoned his notes as the voice of DHS Deputy Secretary Greta Song came through the phone.
“The DoE notified us moments ago that they’re undergoing a significant cyberattack of unknown origin. This is on a bigger scale than we’ve ever seen, so our teams are still catching up on the situation. The CIA’s incident response task force is being briefed by Secretary Lyn, but we need your teams to head down to DoE right now. Secret Service is setting up road blocks on 9th street to clear your path, and the VP will meet you there within the hour.”
“What kind of attack is this?” SAC Grady asked.
“Oh, uh, we’re still not sure. This just began moments ago,” she responded defensively.
“She wouldn’t know a Trojan horse from a phishing scheme,” Landry muttered under her breath.
Voices could be heard indistinctly on the other line. “Wait, we’re just getting word. This could be a DDoS attack.” Except she’d pronounced it ‘dee-doss.’ A few people glanced around the room, and one person audibly groaned.
“Alright, we’ll update you when we arrive at Forrestal.” Grady pressed the button to hang up before Song could reply. “Okay, assemble anyone with clearance,” he said to the room. “John, get the runts to the motorpool and have the vans ready to roll out in 10 minutes.”
ASAC Abrams piped up for the first time, “You all keep this need-to-know until you hear otherwise. No leaks this time, please.”
Shane had to scramble to keep up with Landry, who was already walking out the door. She had her phone to her ear and was speaking quickly with someone. “—and get dressed. No, I can’t tell you what’s happening, but I’m 89 percent sure you’ll get a call about it in the next 5 minutes.” She paused. “And set Tony’s feeder, please. It’s going to be a long night. I’ll call my mom if she needs to stop by tomorrow morning.” Pause. “Told you. Love you.”
She hung up and glanced over at Shane. He avoided eye contact, but she threw her large workbag at him, so he had to look her way again.
“Hold this open, and don’t drop anything. Since I can’t unbrief you—”
Shane couldn’t stop himself from coughing out a laugh.
She rolled her eyes, and Shane turned red. “You’re already here so I’m keeping you with me. Just act like you belong and hopefully Grady doesn’t notice I brought a fresher.”
The next few hours were a blur of people talking over each other and lots of bodies packed into small, hot server rooms. Shane mostly got coffee and met food delivery drivers at the entrance gate, but it was still electric, being part of something so exciting. Then Shane felt bad, because this was actually a pretty dangerous situation, and he shouldn’t feel happy about it.
He was in the room when one of the analysts identified a string of code with a recognizable signature used by some Russian cybercrime groups.
“We’ll need to get Volkov’s team here,” Abrams spoke up, sounding annoyed. His body language said that was the last thing he wanted to do, but he already had his phone at his ear.
Shane’s stomach twisted at the mention of Volkov. Because he knew who had recently been moved onto Volkov’s team. Not that he, like, kept tabs or anything. But they moved in the same circles. People talked.
Landry dismissed him at 7 p.m., laughing when he asked if he should meet her there the next day. No need, she replied. He’d report back to HQ for another case assignment.
At least he wouldn’t need to cross paths with any of the CIA agents. It was a good thing, Shane thought on the metro home.
He definitely wasn’t pissed about that. Not at all.