"Oh right i forgot to tell you, koshva you should get to the authority before they notice your absense" elias was too happy to point out.
Koshva's hands dropped from his face.
He stood there for a moment with the expression of a man who had just been reminded that he still had a job, a legal identity, and a supervisor who was presumably wondering where he'd been since yesterday morning.
"Right," he said. To nobody in particular. Just to the air in front of him, processing.
"Your shift started four hours ago," Wrench said, not looking up from her wrist display. "You've missed two check-ins. One more and they flag it."
"I know when my shifts are," Koshva said, with the dignity of a man who absolutely had not known that.
"Your cover is bereavement," Dokja said. "You were processing the loss of Anomaly 734. Whom you were personally responsible for and who died on your watch. That's not a lie. It's just incomplete."
Koshva looked at him. "You want me to go tell my supervisor I'm sad about the dead god."
"I want you to go tell your supervisor you're sad about the deceased Class 2 Deviation you failed to contain and whose body has since gone missing from the morgue under circumstances currently under investigation." Dokja tilted his head. "Which is completely true. You are sad. The body is missing. There is an investigation."
"You're the investigation."
"Nobody needs to know that."
Koshva was quiet for a moment. Then he looked around the room. At Vance standing in his corner being pleasant and unsettling. At Wrench already pulling up schematics on the wall. At Jax sitting on the good bed with the good pillow looking completely at home. At Riko, who had finally moved away from the door and was examining the ceiling with the focused attention of someone mapping exit routes.
"You'll be here," Koshva said. Not a question exactly.
"We'll be here," Dokja said.
Koshva picked up his jacket from where he'd set it down when they came in. Shrugged it on. Straightened the collar with the automatic habit of a man who had worn a uniform for twenty two years and couldn't quite stop caring about it even when everything else had gone sideways.
He pointed at Dokja. "Don't die again."
"Working on it."
He pointed at Jax. "Don't touch anything."
"No promises," Jax said cheerfully.
He pointed at Riko. Nothing. Just the point. Riko nodded once, which seemed to satisfy whatever Koshva had meant by it.
He looked at Vance last. The look lasted slightly longer than the others.
Vance met it with his usual pleasant patience.
Koshva said nothing. Turned and walked out the door.
His footsteps faded down the corridor. Then silence.
Jax broke it first, because Jax always broke it first.
"I like him," he said.
"He's the most normal person in this room," Wrench said.
"That's why I like him."
Dokja watched the empty doorway for a moment. Then turned back to the room, to the bed and the equipment and the too-high ceiling and Elias Vance standing in his corner like he'd always been there.
'One problem at a time,' he thought.
"Wrench," he said. "Tell me about the equipment."