Case File 005 — Personal Log / Field Notes, Agent Nocturne
Location: [REDACTED]
Date: [REDACTED]
Status: Field Suspension / Intervention Overridden
The file on Briar Glen's Orchard came across my desk with a terse note: Intervention suspended. Local minors reportedly neutralized situation.
I stared at it for a while. Minors. Reportedly neutralized.
The orchard is old—older than the Briar Glen records, older than the town itself. Rows of gnarled apple trees lean against one another like tired soldiers. Locals say they hear whispers at night, see figures moving among the branches, and find fruit that rots from the inside out in the morning.
I never went. Not officially. The field report had been stripped from my assignments before I could even request transportation. My supervisors cited “safety protocol” and “adequate containment by local parties.”
I don’t know if I should feel relieved or irritated.
Part of me is—yes, I’ll admit it—impressed. Teenagers, with flashlights and half-formed courage, managed to resolve what Dead End couldn’t even schedule a proper field response for. I’ve seen grown agents falter under less. The report doesn’t explain how they did it. Maybe it’s better that way. Some stories, like some trees, are meant to remain tangled.
I imagine the orchard at night. The wind in the branches, the faint hum between roots. The sort of place that doesn’t mind being watched, as long as you keep your distance. And perhaps, somewhere in that hum, the orchard knows what those teenagers did. And maybe it remembers.
I’ll keep this file open. Not because I have a mission, but because I like knowing it exists. A little anomaly left intact. A reminder that sometimes the world solves itself—or that others can rise to meet it when I can’t.
End log.
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