Elise stands before the conspiracy board in her dimly lit studio apartment, now turned evidence board—evidence of little consequence. Behind her was company that had arrived moments ago in the early hours, seated cross-legged on the unmade bed, quietly observing from her travel bag beside her. What Elise had been fighting to uproot had done so on its own. The story she crafted to inspire scrutiny in the colossal institute scrutinises itself, even inviting it from others. The path chosen is what many would consider the right path, but none of it added up, not with her understanding.

"The past year spent trying to prove that they'd never do this and yet..." Elise furrows her brow in conflict. "Why Grimm? Why am I not relieved?" Elise complains to the guest.

"Blanchette!" the guest corrects.

Elise waves dismissively, "I should be relieved, Blanche!"

Blanchette rolls her eyes; it beats being called by her online handle. "Is it because they proved you wrong?" Blanchette questions, her voice carrying no judgment. Elise gives her a piercing side eye. Blanchette lifts her arms in surrender, "I didn't mean it like that, it's a year I ain't getting back either," she placates. "It's the worst part of the job. But for me, I'm more surprised they didn't opt to cover up like any other organisation on the verge of a scandal."

"That's what I'm trying to make sense of," Elise unravels the board, removes the photo of Patrice Wess, the former commissioner of France's Interpol Agency. "They just... took accountability," Elise says, the words tasting bitter. "Like it was that easy to uproot everything, national security, public trust, international relations."

Blanchette walks up behind Elise, reaching out for her board. "So long as no one brings it up publicly, then it is still recoverable, I suppose", Blanchette said uncertain. She takes the newspaper clippings. "And there were signs already, signs of an internal investigation brewing," she shows the clipping of his last public statement made earlier this year, in March. "So maybe there is some intentionality to this."

Elise's suspicions now contextualised. "Even so, they were only able to get an interim. They didn't have a replacement planned after all this time."

"With practically the whole agency involved, who could they have replaced him with? Plus, Trafalgar is the court's wet dream of a commissioner," she says, putting the newspaper clippings aside. "Obedient to their every beck and call, and the Rhine has been seeing syndicate activity dwindle," she says, reaching out for the picture of the Agency Null logo. " But I'd take that with a grain of salt given the precedence set by Nichts."

The guest sees Elise gazing at the void in the middle of the left side of the board. She gives Elise a curious look. "That's for when I had my suspicions on the Asian Agencies, but they're too occupied wrestling their syndicates to be involved in this."

"All that smoke and no fire, at least in this case." She says as she looks at the network of blue string, showing the prolificness of the American Syndicates. "Always up to something with them." Blanchette breathes a sigh of exhaustion just recalling them.

Elise begins untangling a section of the blue string, her fingers tracing the connections between surveillance photos and location markers. "With the forums, I was able to more or less map out their personnel activity across Europe, but the official reports seemed to match what was on the site like for like." She unpins the amateur shots taken by indie journalists.

Blanchette watches as Elise pulls at another strand, revealing how the network spreads from Porto to Milan to Vienna. "As if to fit into the public narrative, adding nothing new. But it's even stranger that there has been no activity reported in France despite the agency's involvement."

"It's not like the reports really explained anything. Keeping things vague, downplaying the scope of their corruption." Elise's fingers pause on a cluster of blue string that forms a conspicuous gap where France should be.

"I mean it isn't that long ago that French prisons reported as full and to make room, they would..." Blanchette pauses, Elise's disgust twisting her face. "And for an organisation of this scale, the outcome is what matters," she says simply, watching Elise's agitation with placidity. "For them it's: 'to hell with the little guy so long as we're still standing'."

"What an easy way to think when you aren't the one feeling the consequences," Elise speaks with scorn as she places the string and pictures on her desk with surmounting frustration.

The absence of the string uncovers the remaining United States agencies. "It's crazy how uninvolved they are in the scandal." Elise grasps at the logos of Agency Zero and Agency None, with some agitation leftover, holding them side by side. "You'd think the ones meant to be keeping a leash on the syndicates would do something about it, but I guess in a way they were playing a role by doing nothing about it, probably offshoring their problems to us." Blanchette catches herself, almost falling into a rant. "That's just me, though. How about you?"

"Why would they offshore? Don't they have the child agencies exist to support the parent agency?"

"Maybe because they were too much. That's why they founded Agency None earlier this year."

Elise clicks her tongue, "What even is this naming scheme? Nichts, None, Null, all different ways to say the same thing." She almost tossed it aside with the other newcomer agencies, but her mind felt heavy with the weight of realisation, something about its formation. "Grimm—"

"Blanchette!" she corrected.

"Blanche," Blanchette rolls her eyes, but it beats being referred to by her online persona. "When was None founded?"

"Feb, why—" Blanchette catches on.

"Right before Nichts's silence. Coincidence?" Elise, seemingly grasping at threads. "I think not!" she declares as she makes her way to her desktop, her heart racing as she verges on an epiphany. "They had to have known way before February, way before his silence, before the formation of None. They could have set up the new agency in France to take over the now-defunct agency, or even in a neighbouring nation like Spain or Italy, taking care of the syndicate's growing influence.

"And yet they, instead, set up another across the ocean, leaving an imbalance in Europe." Blanchette gets up to research behind Elise. "It has to be intentional, unless they have other plans with the United States agencies."

They began digging into None's background, particularly that of the commissioner. Only to find that his background, having worked at the national level, was more suited to the job than the others. "If he's so suited, why not transfer him over and have him integrate alongside?" Elise wonders.

"He has been having a strong domestic focus since taking charge. I doubt he'd be as effective while trying to learn a whole new continent."

"But—" Elise's brain running at speed. "He has never been promoted past captain." Scepticism in her tone. "Such a leap of authority had to be substantiated somehow, unless foul play was involved," she deduced as theories started flying around in her head.

"Most of the other commissioners didn't come from the policing system. Why's he getting the special treatment?"

"Most of the commissioners were appointed before the organisational ladder was in place. They aren't so desperate for new commissioners as before."

With the current situation in mind, "Well, I'd beg to differ." Blanchette counters before heading to the bathroom, the shower turning on.

Elise continued to dig, with time seeming to blur, her eyes began straining as she delved deeper into news articles after police reports, looking for justifications for his role. Then she clicked on another article, from a few years ago, which had scrolled to its end. She scrolled up slightly to read it, only to find herself at another unrelated article, not remembering how she'd got there.

With Blanchette finishing her shower, Elise began, "Blanche, something's off about—" but the words caught in her throat as a dull headache settled in the back of her head.

"What's wrong?" Blanchette asked, stepping closer, holding her towel up.

"I don't know, I just..." Elise tried to focus on the article, but then something caught her eye —a name, five letters, ordinary enough. But when she tried to highlight it, her selection kept slipping. She tried again. The letters seemed to shift slightly, as if the text were trying to obscure itself. "Can you see that? The text, it's..."

Blanchette leaned over Elise's shoulder, examining the name. "Yeah, —" her voice distorts into a hollow whisper as she said the name, "—what about him?" Her voice carried the same casual tone as before. She strolled to her travel bag for a change of clothes

The headache sharpened. Her heart rate picked up. Returning to the original article, the letters now transfigured openly, five becoming seven, then three, refusing to hold still. The distortion writhed in her head, but curiosity drove her to copy and paste the unreadable name. The query went through at her request.

Pages of information were displayed, but every last pixel rendered incomprehensible. With a surmounting headache forming at the back of her head, she switched tabs to something else, finding that it was being presented flawlessly; the issue lay with information related to the name. The more she thought about the name, the more the headache panged, like her brain refusing to comprehend the fog growing thicker and clouding her mind.

She got up from her chair and felt lightheaded. She tried to catch her breath, but it felt empty. Her chest felt empty, and her heart was absent. Her hollow breaths hastened.

"Elise?" Blanchette's voice sounded distant, concerned.

Her legs gave out beneath her, and she reached for Blanchette, but her arm fell through her as if incorporeal. Her body was struggling to restart her absent heart. Through her fading peripheral vision, she caught Blanchette dropping her clothes and moving toward her.

She gazed at the Blanchette hopelessly as a misty figure behind her sat in bed, swinging their feet in the air carelessly, watching the light fade from her with its white, haloed eyes, as if nothing was wrong. Lifeless exhaustion kept her from reacting to its presence as her eyelids flickered and grew weaker, hearing a faint organic thump grow faint; instead of her eyes sealing shut, they felt lighter as they flickered open.

Her eyes adjusted to the dimly lit room where she stood before her board, her heartbeats reverberating in her eardrums, the logo of Agency None in her hands.

Elise's head filled with whispers and murmurs in her voice, some of them from Blanche. Her thoughts collided with the recollection of moments prior, making her mind hazy. Her hand, with a lazy fatigue, loosely clutches her shirt in the position of her heart. It was beating, but the sensation felt weak. Her body felt weak. She fell to her knees, where she stood, letting go of the image, as the hollow whispers washed over her until they settled as memories. Blanchette drew her attention to her with only her shirt on, and she held Elise upright as she struggled to keep herself upright.

Elise felt lucid once more, but still fatigue overcame her. The memories restored the events leading up to her supposed death. The memories felt as real as any other, and too vivid to be a dream or hallucination. "What... happened?" Her voice came out weak.

Blanchette's voice sounded dulled out, "You were just standing there, staring at your board..." Elise couldn't spare the energy to continue listening. Her eyes felt heavy as she collapsed into slumber.