Flickers at Freshfields 1 by James Wylder

Flickers at Freshfields 1
By James Wylder

Katie Smithy had been woken up by a call from Flickers headquarters. She didn't like being on call — but they let her live in the backroom of the coffee shop, so it was a tradeoff she'd learned to deal with. Usually she'd be in full uniform for this kind of thing, but if they were going to wake her up in the middle of the night they'd have to deal with her being in her Kirby Pajamas and BTS bathrobe.
“We need you to transfer for the next few days to our branch near Freshfields.”
She rubbed her eyes. “...Okay?" Sure, why not.
“SIGNET is running some op there, we need you to monitor it.”
“Oh,” figured. At least it wouldn't be too bad if she could bring her co-worker Gwendolyn with her. “Is Gwendolyn–”
“No, she needs to run your location still.”
She grumbled while saluting.

* * *

"So you're the new transfer, welcome to Blue Candle Freshfields!" A cheery young man said. His nametag read "Fred :)"
"Yeah yeah, glad to be here." She put her apron on. "Have SIGNET come in yet?"
The boy held out a piece of paper with the faces of each member printed on it, below it there were tally marks for each one. It looks like they had each come in once.
"Wow, so you're part of the SIGNET monitoring duo? We've all heard so much about you."
She nodded, and got work cleaning some coffee mugs.
"Is it true you almost got eaten by vampire dogs after you started trailing them?"
"Yeah." This was going to be a long shift. 
"Did you— welcome!"
In through the door came Aoife SIGNET, as Katie thought of her. She came up to the counter. "One coffee with... how many shots of espresso can you legally put in the biggest cup?"
Fred and Katie exchanged a look. "Well there's no legal limit..." Fred said.
"The Inferno sized cup fits 24 shots," Katie said, her eye twitching.
"Great. Fill 'er up," Aoife said.
Katie fulfilled her order, screaming internally the entire time.
"Have a... nice day?" It came out as a question, but it was hard to imagine anyone ordering 24 shots of espresso was anticipating a good one. 
Aoife raised the cup in salute, and walked out.
Katie thought about how she was going to spend the rest of her day, and threw off her apron. "I'm tailing her, I'll be back when I'm back."
"Soon?" Fred asked.
"When I'm back."
She went to her bag, and pulled out a nondescript beige jacket, and threw it on as she rushed out the door.

* * *

Freshfields.
It sure was a store.
Katie spent the next six hours following various members of SIGNET around the shop floor. She'd meant to just follow Xana, but good god was it boring. So she followed Charles as he went around scanning things. Boring. She hid behind a support column and watched Olivia doing her nails on the job. Boring. Watching Jae-Sun catch a shoplifter was at least, for the first time that day, not boring, but then he got back to standing around with grannies pushing their trollies past him and it was once again boring. Finally she found Aoife, and also was bored.
"Report, agent Katie Smithy. Nothing is happening, over."
"Okay?" Fred said on the other end of the phone call. "Are you coming back soon? We're having a rush here..."
"Yeah, I'm bored as hell, over."
"This isn't a two-way radio, you don't have to say over."
"You're breaking up, over."
Fred sighed and hung up.
She headed back.

* * *

"I just don't get it," Katie said as she made her fifth Whammaccino. "They're just doing boring jobs there? They're supposed to be a secret organisation; we're supposed to be monitoring them, and they're just doing the most menial tasks. I mean, why did I join the Flickers? To avoid deportation for being half-alien? Mostly! But also I thought I'd be having adventures, you know? So what on Earth are they doing?"
Fred finished taking a customer's order, and turned to her.
"Maybe it has to do with the disappearances there?"
Katie froze. "...With the what?"