Gareth Glenross kept his office exactly the way he liked it.
A clean desk. A single lamp. A stack of reports tied with a ribbon that did not match anything else in the room. He had tried, once, to make the place look lived in. A framed photograph, a leather chair that creaked respectably, a small decanter for when the week earned it. None of it lasted. Too much clutter made him itch, and itch turned into distraction.
Distraction killed at least in his line of work.
There was a quill on his desk. To remind him of what he was working for. He smirked toward it and took a pen. He started to write the heading for the weekly summary to Buckingham Palace.
He did not write every little detail. Not the full shape of it. No one wrote the full details of the reports. He wrote a summary of the situation in Wizarding Britain.
The magical world remained quiet. The old families remained arrogant. The Ministry remained a museum that pretended it was a government. He put a neat line beneath that thought and allowed himself a thin satisfaction.
He had spent years building his network.
He started to recruit them when he was not recruited. Other Muggleborns whom he encouraged to get into the Ministry. A clerk here, another there. The so called Sacred Twenty Eight did not spot a shadow if it introduced itself and bowed. This he witnessed himself after graduating and applied to work in the Ministry. The pureblood scoffed to his face, called him a mudblood and sent him back.
Gareth tapped the tip of the pen against the paper and began the paragraph about the current Minister for Magic.
He paused.
A prickle crawled over the back of his neck. Not the usual sense of danger, not the clean instinct that saved lives. This was wrong in a different way. A pressure, like a hand set behind his eyes.
He looked up.
The door was closed. The wards were silent, yet he was feeling like he was going to be devoured. A flash of red cut across his vision.
There was no pain. There was a bright emptiness, followed by a sensation of falling without moving.
When he opened his eyes again, the paper was gone. The desk was gone. His office was gone.
Stone surrounded him.
It was not the damp stone of a cellar, nor the polished stone of a government holding cell. The blocks were old, fitted too well. A strip of light leaked beneath a door. Somewhere beyond it, he heard footsteps, then silence, then footsteps again.
Gareth pushed himself upright.
His hands trembled, not from fear, not yet, but from a sickening sensation that his thoughts were not private. Something was wrong with his mind, like a finger testing a bruise.
He tried to stir his magic just a little, just to see.
The moment he shaped the intent, the air snapped. Pain lanced along his chest as if someone had tightened a wire around his bones. The magic failed. The wards answered with a quiet, cruel certainty.
Gareth swallowed and forced his breathing to slow.
The door opened.
A man stepped in wearing the uniform of the Royal Guards, immaculate, pressed, and too clean for the corridor outside. He had the Captain's posture, the Captain's chin, and the Captain's eyes.
Gareth felt relief hit him hard enough to make him dizzy.
Then his stomach turned, because relief was too easy.
The Captain looked at him as if reading a file.
"We suspect you to be a double agent wizard," the Captain said.
The phrase landed wrong. The Captain did not speak like that. He never used the word wizard to friendly units. Wizards were the enemy.
Gareth rose slowly, keeping his hands visible.
"You are mistaken, sir," Gareth said. His voice came out steady.
The Captain's gaze stayed flat.
Gareth talked.
He spoke of the contract, the one the Captain himself had witnessed him sign. Ink, blood, and an oath that burned for a second behind the ribs. He spoke of weekly reports and the channels used. He spoke of the squibs and their payments. He spoke of his team, of Ministry departments, of which door led to which corridor, of which owl was trained to fly where.
He expected an interruption.
He got none.
The Captain listened with an attention that did not match the uniform.
When Gareth finished, he was aware of sweat cooling on his back.
The Captain nodded once.
"You are good, Agent Glenross. We will clear you in a moment. Stay here for a little while."
He turned and left.
The door closed.
Gareth stared at it.
He walked the length of the cell, then back again. He tested the wards twice more, and twice the pain punished him for the thought. After the second time, he pressed his forehead to the stone and waited for the ache to fade.
Minutes passed. Or hours. The light under the door did not change.
The pressure in his head returned.
Not a thought, nor a voice, but a presence. A slow rummaging.
Gareth clenched his jaw and tried to remember the contract's clauses, the ones that were supposed to protect him.
His mind slid.
There was a wall where the memory should have been, a smooth blank, a professional block placed by someone who knew what they were doing.
The presence touched the wall.
Gareth felt it, clear as a blade against skin.
A spell pressed.
His vision blurred. His heart stuttered. The blank wall in his mind cracked, not with sound, but with sensation. Images spilled. The signing of the contract. The Captain's hand. The taste of ink. The hidden addendum that Gareth had never been shown, because he had never needed to see it.
He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood.
The presence did not care.
It dug deeper.
Names came unbidden to his tongue, and Gareth hated himself for how quickly his mouth betrayed him. He hated the soft, distant calm that settled over his panic, smoothing it down as if fear was an inconvenience.
Confundus.
It was not a guess. It was the feeling of being steered.
Gareth tried to fight it.
His thoughts slowed, then softened, then began to line up into tidy little answers.
The door opened again.
This time, the man in the Captain's uniform carried a wand.
The Captain did not carry a wand.
Gareth's throat went dry.
The wand moved with a practised ease. Gareth's limbs went heavy. His mind turned slick.
"You have done well," the Captain said.
It was praise, and it sounded like mockery.
Gareth's stomach dropped.
He saw it then, not with certainty, but with the clarity of a pattern. The uniform was bait. The voice was bait. The phrase wizard was bait. The contract was not protection. It was a leash, and someone had learned how to pick the lock.
Gareth forced his eyes to focus.
"You are not him," he managed.
The Captain smiled without warmth.
"I am close enough."
The presence in Gareth's mind tightened.
Behind the false Captain, a second figure stepped into view. Tall and broad shouldered. His eyes were turquoise silver. The air around him carried the sterile scent Gareth associated with hospitals, but it was wrong too, mixed with old parchment and something disinfectant.
The tall figure raised a hand, and Gareth felt his memories peel open like a book.
He heard himself talking again.
He heard names of offices, names of handlers, names of contacts, names of people who would never know what hit them until the cold found their spine.
The tall figure gave a small nod.
The false Captain turned and left.
The other wizard stayed a moment longer.
Gareth's eyes watered. Not from tears. From the strain of being invaded.
"What are you?" Gareth whispered.
He tilted his head, considering.
"A solution," came the answer.
Then the door closed.
Gareth slid down the wall until he sat on the stone.
He had always believed he lived in the real world.
Now he understood he had been renting space in someone else's.
Corvus read the parchment again.
Gareth Glenross.
Muggleborn wizard. Embedded in the mundane side's monitoring structure. Useful, loud, and confident enough to believe he could mock a world he did not understand.
Corvus watched him through the viewing slit.
Glenross paced like a caged rat, then stopped, then paced again. His shoulders were tense. His eyes were sharp, but the sharpness was already fraying at the edges.
Corvus let the sight settle into his mind and weighed the man the way he weighed ingredients.
Rookwood waited at his shoulder, silent, hands behind his back. He cast Finite Incantatem to reverse the changes Corvus did to his robes.
On the far side of the corridor, two of the Muggle doctors stood with clipboards, pretending they were calm. Their coats were spotless. Their pupils were not.
Corvus folded the parchment and tapped it once against his palm.
"Third team," he said.
Rookwood inclined his head.
Corvus did not look away from the slit.
"Send him and all the others to the third team. Let us see if we will succeed in extracting the core of a magical this time."
Rookwood hesitated for half a breath, then moved.
Corvus stayed.
The core was not a heart, not a liver, not a lump of flesh to be cut out and weighed. It was an ethereal knot that decided who could bend the world and who could only watch. His third team was working on creating artificial Magicals. It has been over a year now, and still, there has been no development. It was so far the only project he was dissatisfied with.
The process of extracting the core of a witch or a wizard was nearly impossible based on the experience of the third team. They have tried many ways. Thanks to Glenross, now they had new 'volunteers'.
The females they caught were all sent to Wilmut; there was always a need for broodmothers. The males, on the other hand, if not extremely powerful like Dumbledore, who was downgraded to a renewable ingredient, were sent to the third team.
With Glenross, they were going to try to cut off the region where the magical lines in the body converged. He ordered some of the unspeakables to use some of his personal spells to make sure the subjects would live long enough to see if they were right or not.
Now that the Muggle side has thrown the first rock, it was time to increase the production rate of the Wizards. He remembered Father Manard and the excitement in the eyes of the enchanter when the two of them had managed to enchant around two thousand Rocket Launchers and Artillery units. After working for months, they managed to recall the launched missiles after up to thirty minutes. For short to medium range missiles, this time was shorter, ranging from seconds to some minutes.
After that step, all they needed was to get enough artillery units, short, medium and long range missiles and their launchers. Grigori came in. Russia was a heaven for lost weapons. They even managed to get their hands on some ICBMs, and they managed to get enough units not only to enchant but also to understand and produce as well. He smirked, thinking about what the Muggles think when some Missiles will appear out of nowhere.
Now all Corvus needed was a couple more months, and he could simply order a march on.
His mind returned to his third team and Magical Cores. Working on them was delicate work. It was impossible to find volunteers. Corvus watched Gareth Glenross turn, as if sensing eyes on him.
Their gazes met through the slit.
Gareth did not see Corvus. Not properly, all he saw was that turquoise silver gaze.
Corvus, on the other hand, was reading him like an open book.
A small, cruel glint settled in his eyes, and it stayed there as the corridor filled with footsteps.