The Kingdom Beneath the Kingdom

I wandered down into what could only be described as the deep, dark dungeon of the station—the tech team's lair, their domain, their kingdom beneath the kingdom. Buried in the bowels of the old building like some secret the architects had tried to hide, it felt a world apart from the clean, humming order of the upstairs offices with their windows and natural light and sense of being connected to the actual city outside.

Down here, the light was perpetually dim—not quite dark enough to need a torch but never bright enough to feel comfortable, always hovering in that grey twilight that made you squint without realising you were doing it. The air was colder than the rest of the building by at least five degrees, carrying that particular chill that came from being underground, from concrete walls that never saw sun and air circulation systems that worked overtime to keep the equipment from overheating.

The atmosphere hummed with quiet electricity—not metaphorically but literally, an audible vibration that came from dozens of machines running simultaneously, from servers and routers and backup systems all processing data at speeds that would make my desktop computer weep with inadequacy. You could feel it in your teeth if you stood still long enough, that subsonic throb that suggested more power flowing through cables than seemed entirely safe.

It always struck me as slightly ironic that the most advanced tech in the entire building—the cutting-edge forensic software, the data recovery systems, the analysis tools that cost more than my annual salary—lived in what looked like a retrofitted Cold War bunker. Like someone had found an abandoned fallout shelter and decided it was perfect for housing the digital nerve centre of modern policing.

The aesthetic certainly supported that impression: exposed concrete walls painted in institutional beige that had yellowed with age, pipes running overhead like mechanical veins, the occasional water stain suggesting the building's plumbing had opinions about its basement location. Flickering fluorescent lights that buzzed with a frequency just annoying enough to notice, casting everything in that particular sickly green-white glow that made everyone look vaguely ill.

Still, the team seemed to thrive down here—like bats in their natural cave system, perfectly adapted to conditions that would drive surface dwellers to distraction. Maybe the gloom reminded them of those post-apocalyptic video games they were always going on about during lunch breaks, the ones with names I could never keep straight that apparently involved a lot of scavenging and hiding from mutants.

To them, this wasn't a dingy basement that smelled faintly of damp and old electronics. It was sanctuary. A place where they could work without interruption, without the distraction of windows showing weather they weren't experiencing or colleagues stopping by for unnecessary social interaction. Down here, they were left alone with their screens and their code and their problems that could be solved through logic rather than human messiness.

And to be fair, they'd earned the right to it—earned the right to claim this underground realm as their own through sheer competence and indispensability. They wielded their keyboards like weapons, fingers flying across keys with the kind of speed that suggested either supernatural ability or way too much caffeine. Summoned secrets from dead hard drives that had been declared unsalvageable, recovered deleted files that criminals thought were safely erased, made miracles happen with the click of a button and a muttered curse when things didn't work the first time.

Not my cup of tea, though. I liked sunlight, fresh air that actually moved rather than being mechanically circulated, and the feeling that the walls weren't going to start sweating condensation on me like they were nervous about something. I liked being able to look out a window and see sky, to know what time of day it was without checking a clock, to feel connected to the world outside rather than sealed away from it.

But even so, there was something oddly comforting about stepping into this shadowy realm every now and then. The place had its own strange charm once you adjusted to it—like walking into the engine room of the whole operation, seeing the mechanisms that made everything else function, understanding that the flashy detective work upstairs was only possible because of the unglamorous labour happening down here.

The corridors were narrow, barely wide enough for two people to pass without turning sideways—another feature that suggested this space hadn't originally been designed for its current purpose. A maze of exposed wires ran along walls and ceilings, bundled together with zip ties in colours that probably once meant something to whoever installed them but now just looked like rainbow spaghetti.

Whirring fans provided constant white noise, some mounted in walls to keep air moving, others sitting directly on equipment to prevent overheating. And machines—Christ, so many machines—stacked like blinking obelisks on every available surface. Server racks, backup systems, mysterious black boxes with cryptic labels, all arranged with the kind of chaotic organisation that looked random to outsiders but presumably made perfect sense to the people who worked here daily.

Tiny LED lights flickered in shifting patterns—greens indicating normal operation, ambers suggesting caution or processing, the occasional warning red that made you wonder if you should be concerned or if that was just normal down here. Each one broadcasting its own quiet message into the void, a constant stream of status updates in a language of light.

To most people, they'd mean nothing. Just pretty lights, decorative indicators of mysterious processes. To the techs? Each was a heartbeat, a whisper in a language only they could understand. A story about data flowing or storage filling or connections maintaining or systems running exactly as they should—or not, which was apparently when things got interesting.

As I made my way through the labyrinth, following the path I'd memorised through multiple visits because there were no helpful signs pointing toward specific work stations, the sense of unseen purpose was palpable. Everything down here had a function, even if I couldn't identify what most of it did.

Routers buzzed with the sound of packets being transmitted at speeds I couldn't conceptualise. Relays clicked in irregular rhythms that probably had meaning if you knew what to listen for. And some piece of nameless equipment—a black tower with more ventilation holes than solid surface—let out a slow, ominous whummm as I passed, like a sleeping creature acknowledging my presence without fully waking.

I had no idea what any of it actually did. Couldn't have explained the difference between a server and a router if my life depended on it, despite James's attempts to educate me during one particularly slow afternoon. But I respected the hell out of it, respected the people who could look at this chaos and see order, who could diagnose problems by listening to the quality of a hard drive's spin or identify failing components by smell.

This was where the digital trail lived. Where data came to be dissected, stitched back together, turned into evidence that would stand up in court. Where deleted files were resurrected, where encrypted communications were cracked, where the invisible digital footprints people thought they'd hidden were brought into the light.

Magic didn't always wear a pointy hat and speak in mystical riddles—sometimes it came with noise-cancelling headphones and a hoodie, lived in a basement, and spoke primarily in acronyms that sounded like Star Wars droids having a conversation.

I rounded the final corner and found James, exactly where I knew he'd be: buried behind a semi-circle of monitors arranged in a configuration that probably made ergonomic sense to him but looked like the cockpit of something you'd need a pilot's license to operate. Each screen displayed something different—code scrolling past too fast to read, graphs showing data I couldn't interpret, what looked like surveillance footage frozen on a particular frame, a chat window with conversations happening in real-time.

He was surrounded by a tangle of cables that seemed to multiply like ivy, growing in density the closer they got to his chair. And snack wrappers—empty chip packets, chocolate bar wrappers, the distinctive foil from the granola bars that claimed to be healthy but were basically candy in disguise. Evidence of long hours spent down here, meals taken at the desk because leaving meant losing momentum, sustenance reduced to whatever could be consumed with one hand whilst the other stayed on the keyboard.

James barely glanced up as I approached, but the subtle twitch of his eyebrow was enough to acknowledge me—the minimal social gesture of someone deeply focused on work who recognised your presence without wanting to be pulled entirely out of their concentration. His fingers continued moving across the keyboard for a few more seconds, finishing whatever line of code or command he'd been entering before he paused and gave me his full attention.

"Hey James," I said, holding up the hard drive like an offering. "Got something for you."

Without needing much explanation—which was one of the things I appreciated about James, his ability to grasp context quickly without requiring lengthy exposition—he agreed to take the hard drive off my hands. There was no fuss, no endless questions about formats or encryption or whether I'd verified the chain of custody properly. Just a quiet nod and a simple, "I'll make it a priority."

The words carried weight because James didn't make promises he couldn't keep, didn't say things would be prioritised and then let them sit for days while he worked on whatever actually interested him. When he said priority, he meant it.

That was James. Quiet in that way that suggested depth rather than emptiness, comfortable with silence in a world that insisted on constant noise. Efficient without being rushed, thorough without being obsessive. Brilliant in that understated way that didn't need to announce itself because the work spoke louder than any self-promotion could.

And a blood relative, which made things a hell of a lot easier in terms of trust and communication. I didn't have to worry about him cutting corners or missing details or letting cases slide because they weren't interesting enough. Family meant something down here in the dungeon, created obligations that went beyond professional duty.

Our relationship worked because it didn't try too hard—equal parts family and co-workers, with an unspoken agreement that neither of us would make it awkward by trying to force connection outside of work or bringing up family drama that was better left unexamined. We saw each other at weddings and funerals and the occasional obligatory dinner, maintained the forms of kinship without the pressure of closeness.

It was comfortable. Uncomplicated. The way family relationships probably should be but rarely were.

"How long do you think it'll take?" I asked, more to fill the silence than because I needed an exact timeline. James worked at James-speed, which was generally faster than anyone else but impossible to predict precisely.

James squinted at the hard drive, turning it over in his hands with the careful attention of someone assessing a problem. "Couple hours, maybe less. Depends on the format and whether they encrypted anything. Ferry companies usually keep it pretty straightforward."

"You're a legend," I said with genuine gratitude, already feeling lighter knowing this particular task was in capable hands.

"Yeah, yeah," James replied, but his mouth twitched in what might have been a smile before he swivelled back to his screens, fingers already moving toward the keyboard to make notes about the new task.

Leaving the drive with him gave me an immediate sense of satisfaction—like ticking off a particularly large and irritating task on a to-do list, one of those items that had been sitting there for days growing heavier with each glance. The kind that always loomed larger than it should, casting a shadow over everything else until it was finally addressed.

Feeling lighter both literally—no longer carrying the physical weight of the drive—and metaphorically, I walked back down the long stretch of corridor leading to the lift. The symbolic gateway back to civilisation, back to natural light and temperatures that didn't require a jacket, back to the world of regular policing that happened above ground where normal people worked.

My footsteps echoed gently against the concrete, a low, rhythmic tap that matched the subtle lift in my mood. Each step bounced back slightly delayed, creating a doubled sound that made me hyperaware of my own movement through space. A little victory in a day already too full of questions and complications and things that refused to resolve themselves neatly.

There was a spring in my step now—actual lightness in my stride rather than the heavy trudge I'd been carrying most of the day. I loved this feeling, lived for it even—that moment when things shifted from inertia to momentum, when you stopped feeling stuck and started feeling like you were actually getting somewhere.

When a case stopped being a wall you were beating your head against and started becoming a path you could follow, even if you weren't sure where it led yet.

Reaching the lift, I pressed the call button and waited, hearing it groan somewhere above—the ancient machinery protesting the demand but complying anyway, cables straining to pull the car through the shaft. I could hear it coming, that distinctive grinding sound that suggested the lift was held together primarily through faith and routine maintenance, each journey potentially its last but somehow always managing one more.

As I stood there in the dim glow of the corridor—lit by a single overhead fixture that cast more shadow than illumination, creating a small pool of visibility in the surrounding gloom—I found myself thinking about what it really meant to be part of this job. About the ecosystem of skills and specialisations that made investigation possible.

The pieces didn't always come together easily. Most days, they didn't come together at all. Most days were frustration and dead ends and leads that went nowhere, hours of work that produced nothing but more questions. But every now and then, you felt the shift—when something clicked, even just a little. When disparate fragments suddenly aligned into something that might become a pattern if you squinted right.

A lead picked up. A favour called in. A hard drive delivered and placed in capable hands that would extract whatever secrets it held.

That quiet rush of progress was what kept me hooked, what made the frustrating days bearable. Not the big dramatic moments—arrests and confessions and cases wrapped up in satisfying bows—but these small victories, these incremental movements forward that suggested the chaos might eventually resolve into something comprehensible.

The thrill of the chase.

The strange, bruised beauty of the process itself—not the destination but the journey, not the answer but the hunt for it.

The way it all stitched together into something that felt, even briefly, like purpose. Like what I did mattered, contributed to something larger than myself, made some small difference in a world that often seemed determined to resist order.

While I was lost in those thoughts—standing in the dim basement corridor, surrounded by the hum of unseen machines, waiting for ancient machinery to drag itself downward—the soft mechanical whine of the lift still somewhere above, I decided to make use of the waiting time.

No sense standing around doing nothing, letting my mind wander further into philosophy when there were practical tasks that needed handling. Not when there was always another box to tick, another thread to pull, another piece of the investigation that required attention.

I pulled out my phone, the screen brightness almost painful in the dimness after my eyes had adjusted to the low light. Scrolled through contacts until I found Ellen's number—saved without any affectionate nickname, just her full name like the professional contact she was—and dialled with the kind of confidence born from low-level irritation and the certain knowledge that I was about to annoy her.

The phone rang twice before she picked up—surprisingly fast, actually. Either she'd been sitting at her desk or she'd taken her phone with her to wherever she'd disappeared to.

"Ellen, I'm glad you're back," I said, aiming for crisp professionalism, though I couldn't quite stop the smug undertone from slipping in like oil under a door. I had a strong suspicion she'd been on one of her signature, definitely off-the-books cigarette breaks earlier—something I suspected more from the conspicuous emptiness of her desk when I'd needed her than any hard evidence.

That desk had been utterly abandoned, papers scattered but chair empty, computer screen dark in a way that suggested she'd been gone long enough for power-saving mode to kick in. And Ellen loved her cigarettes more than she loved most people, snuck out for smoke breaks with the dedication of someone engaged in a serious relationship with nicotine.

"What is it, Sarah?" came Ellen's voice through the speaker, dry as dust, crackling slightly through the phone's compression in that way that made everything sound vaguely annoyed. Her usual blend of professional disinterest and unspoken judgment, the tone that suggested whatever you were about to ask was probably going to be inconvenient.

Straight to business. No pleasantries about how each other's days were going, no small talk about weather or weekend plans. Which was fine—I preferred it that way, appreciated the efficiency even if the attitude grated sometimes.

"I just wanted to check that you found the note I left on your desk. I need you to put in a request for Nial Triffett's phone records and issue an alert to all patrols to be on the lookout for his ute. All the details you need are on that note."

I'd made sure to write everything clearly, had printed rather than using cursive to avoid any claims of illegibility, had included all the relevant information Ellen would need to process the requests without having to come find me for clarification. Registration number, description, last known location, priority level—everything laid out in neat bullet points that even Ellen's legendary capacity for wilful misunderstanding shouldn't be able to circumvent.

There was a pause on the other end. Silence filled with faint rustling—paper shifting, drawers opening with that distinctive screech of metal on metal that meant they needed WD-40 but weren't going to get it. The sound of someone rummaging through chaos, searching for a specific piece of paper in what was probably an archaeological site of accumulated paperwork.

I pictured her clearly: squinting at her desk through those wide-framed glasses that were perpetually sliding down her nose, cigarette smell still fresh on her breath and clothes, rifling through a pile of documents she definitely hadn't filed properly. Probably muttering under her breath about people who expected her to keep track of notes and requests and all the tedious administrative work that made actual policing possible.

A small part of me prayed she'd find the note quickly, efficiently, without drama. I wasn't in the mood to pay her a second visit—especially not so soon after one of her smoke breaks when the tobacco smell would still be at peak intensity. The sour tang of cigarettes that clung to Ellen like a personal fog was something I always found particularly hard to ignore, one of those sensory irritants that bypassed rational thought and went straight to visceral discomfort.

It had a way of sticking in my throat like regret, making me want to breathe shallowly or hold my breath entirely until I could escape back to clearer air.

"Yeah," Ellen said at last, her voice deliberately slow, each syllable drawn out like she was savouring the moment of having found what I'd asked her to find. Like she was demonstrating through pace alone that she was doing me a favour rather than simply performing her job. "I found it."

Relief washed over me—subtle but satisfying, the feeling of one more thing going right. Another task that wouldn't require follow-up, another item that could be crossed off the mental list.

"Thanks, Ellen," I replied briskly, voice clipped with the efficiency of someone already moving on to the next thing, already angling to end the call before it veered into the terrain of passive-aggressive commentary or unnecessary chit-chat about whatever grievances Ellen was currently nursing.

I hit the red button with something approaching satisfaction, watching the call end screen appear before the phone returned to its home screen. Slipped it back into my jacket pocket where it settled with familiar weight against my hip.

The sense of achievement that followed was disproportionate to the task—Ellen finding a note I'd left on her desk wasn't exactly solving a murder or cracking a major case. But I didn't care. In this job, the smallest wins mattered. Had to matter, because if you only counted the big victories you'd spend most of your time feeling like nothing was working, like you were treading water rather than swimming toward shore.

I'd kept the momentum going. Another cog in the machine was now turning, another small piece of the investigation moving forward. Phone records would be requested, patrols would watch for Nial's vehicle, the net would tighten incrementally even if we didn't see immediate results.

The lift pinged—that cheerful electronic sound that seemed incongruous with the mechanical grinding that had preceded it, like the machine was pretending to be more modern than it actually was.

Doors slid open with a soft sigh of hydraulics, revealing the cramped interior with its scuffed walls and flickering overhead light that made everything look vaguely dystopian. I stepped inside, letting my weight settle on flooring that felt slightly uneven.

I hit the button for the main floor, watching it illuminate with that satisfying click of proper mechanical feedback. Leaned back against the panel, metal cool through my jacket, and let out a long, quiet breath that I hadn't realised I'd been holding.

The lift lurched slightly as it began its ascent—that momentary stomach-drop sensation that came from old machinery that didn't believe in smooth starts—then settled into its grinding climb. I watched the floor indicator above the door, counting upward from B to G with agonising slowness.

The lift dinged again as it reached the second floor, doors sliding open, revealing light and noise and the overwhelming sensation of being back among the living, among people who didn't spend their entire working lives in basement crypts surrounded by humming servers.

I stepped out into the corridor, leaving the lift behind, and headed back toward my desk with renewed purpose.

Time to see what else needed doing.

Time to keep the momentum going.

Time to find Jamie and Kain and Nial and whoever else had decided to disappear into Tasmania's stubborn landscape, thinking they could stay hidden in a place that—despite its wilderness and remoteness—was still fundamentally too small for anyone to truly vanish.