The Night is Young

[superduper]

The hum of fluorescent lights buzzed over the quiet lobby of the Sterling Tech building. Midnight had come and gone, and the only movement was the flicker of the surveillance monitors and the slow orbit of the janitor’s mop in the hallway.


Officer Trey Marsh leaned back in his chair, his feet crossed at the ankles, half-watching the monitors and half-watching Officer Lila Chen as she stirred her coffee. She always added exactly two sugar cubes, stirred exactly five times, and blew across the surface before sipping. Trey had counted. Many times.


“You ever think we’re ghosts?” Lila asked, sliding into the chair next to him, her tone low and dry like most of her jokes.


“In what way?” Trey didn’t look at her directly, just enough to catch the way her uniform jacket tightened across her shoulder blades when she moved.


“Nobody sees us. We haunt these halls all night, watch everyone else live through a screen. We don’t exist until a door alarm trips.”


He chuckled. “Poetic.”


“Or maybe just bored.” She sipped. “You bored, Marsh?”


His eyes flicked to her, finally meeting hers. The corner of her mouth curled — the barest twitch — but he saw it.


“Maybe,” he said. “Depends.”


“On?”


“What we do with the boredom.”


The silence stretched between them. Outside, a raccoon tripped the loading dock motion sensor. Neither moved.


“We still have four hours,” Lila murmured, not breaking eye contact. “You sure you're not too tired to, you know… patrol?”


“Are we talking about actual patrolling?”


She stood, slow, deliberate, smoothing her uniform. “That depends,” she echoed, already heading for the west wing. “On whether you're actually coming with me.”


Trey didn’t hesitate. He grabbed his flashlight, locked the monitor feed to loop for ten minutes, and followed her — footsteps echoing in sync down the empty hall.


They disappeared into the quiet corridors, partners in more ways than one — not just keeping watch, but savoring the rare kind of tension only the night shift could offer.

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