Chapter 1
“As you can see”, I said, “the three spikes intersect almost perfectly with the dates of the State of Origin and then incidents gradually increase towards the end of the NRL season.”
I sat in Briefing Room 4B staring at a PowerPoint slide that showed a graph of unregistered shifter incidents in South East Queensland for the quarter. The line was trending sharply upwards, like a jagged canine tooth.
“It’s no different to what we used to see with assaults before 2020.”
“Other than the fact this lot are furries,” someone mumbled to my right.
I turned to see a young field operative receive a stern look from the woman sitting beside him, who corrected him through clenched teeth, “Shifters.”
“Rates haven’t changed overall,” I moved on. The Duty Officer would deal with the guy later, “it only looks like there’s been a drop since we started separating Pret incidents from human ones for our reporting. People are all idiots, irrespective of whether or not they have a tail.”
A few of the other FOs shifted in their seats. They liked the idea of high-stake hunts, silver-plated handcuffs and license to carry real firearms, but it was clear that they didn’t like the reality: that most of the time, a ‘Monster Attack’ was nothing more than a drunk bloke from Caboolture with a family who had forgotten to take his suppressants before a night out with the boys, and putting a bullet in his head without deescalating the situation was a fast track to immediate dismissal and a prison sentence.
“Are we looking at a Public Safety variance?” My Director was a man ten years younger than me named Adrian who looked like he was wearing his father’s suit. He pushed his glasses up his nose and looked back at the report, “Do we need to issue an alert for the Origin decider or grand final? Heaven forbid we wind up with another ANZAC day fiasco like they had in Melbourne.”
I sighed, remembering how the annual ANZAC Day Collingwood vs. Essendon AFL match had dissolved into chaos this year. It had started as a disagreement between fans, and devolved into what had been dubbed “Cronulla 2.0” on the news later that night, “No, Adrian. It’s a bender, not an uprising. We just need to push for an ad campaign. You know, social media, radio, billboards, TV, YouTube. Remind people to take their meds and maybe get the pubs to carry tranqs if they need to control the rabble. Being proactive is the best way to stay on top of this.”
“Smart thinking,” the woman from earlier had said, “Hopefully less cases will keep the HPL from turning it into an excuse to keep pushing the Containment Act.”
I nodded along with everyone else in the room. The Human Purity League had been a thorn in the side of the Department of Preternatural Affairs for longer than I’d been on the team. The Commissioner of the AFP had told a press conference with a patronising chuckle that they’d have the group “put down before smoko”, but that was five years ago. Now, they were less of a fringe group writing manifestos on 4Chan and more of a systemic infection, fueled by the kind of “Biological Integrity” rhetoric that sounded reasonable if you didn’t think about it for more than five seconds..
“Right,” Adrian put his palms on the table, “Any more for any more?”
The room was silent except for a few laptops snapping closed, including my own. The screen at the front of the room went blank.
“Wicked. See you all on Monday. And if you can’t be good, don’t get caught.”
Nobody laughed at the line Adrian used at the end of every Friday briefing.
I checked my watch. Two hours till I needed to pick Nick up from the International airport. He’d been on a three month stint in Butterworth with the Army. I’d spent last weekend scrubbing the house in Ashgrove until my knuckles were raw, because his mother Bev had a bad habit of timing her own arrival from Tamworth before I got home from the train station, and her idea of ‘helping’ was pointing out dust on the skirting boards and asking when I was going to give up this ‘dangerous’ job to focus on ‘the family’.
My job was far from dangerous: I was a desk jockey. An analyst. I’d moved here from Canberra three years ago for Nick. I’d traded the glass walls of Home Affairs for the sticky, unpredictable chaos of the Department of Preternatural Affairs in Brisbane. It hadn’t been all that big a change; if anything, it was much of the same thing, just a different demographic. And I wasn’t sure how I was meant to conjure a baby out of thin air while Nick was half way across the world for half the year.
I hit the elevator button, leaning against the mirrored wall just as my phone buzzed in my hand.
Bev: just arrived. guest room was a bit bear last time I stayed so I brought some tings to liven it up. see yuo soon!
I closed my eyes and let out a long, slow breath.
