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A single thought sustained Taym as he attempted to slip through the barrier of arms and angry faces: he hated Mark, because he hated Caelius but hating Caelius was dangerous to act on, and the second he was able he was going to hurt Mark as much as he possibly could no matter what the consequences were.

Mustering up the last of his slippery-as-an-eel escape capabilities--and having flashbacks to a certain smiley-faced training course--Taym fought his way over to the portal and fairly fell through it, hand white-knuckled on whatever it was that Mark had told him to hang onto, and he scrambled upright and several steps forward without even stopping to see where he was.

He had a single goal: find Mark. And if Mark was there, it was entirely possible that Taym swung a furious punch in the direction of his stupid ugly smelly face.

It was probably for the best that Caelius was standing right there, because Taym's face when Mark mentioned pulling aggro (a term he was not acquainted with but immediately understood) suggested that perhaps if they'd been alone there would have been another punch or several and to hell with the consequences. He met Caelius's look with a flat, hollow stare, and was already reaching to pull his cigarettes out of his pocket when he got dismissed, pointedly ignoring Mark's existence because if he did otherwise he might be reduced to violence again.

He retrieved his coat, and his scarf, and he mechanically ingested about a half of an MRE before finishing off the day's duties and sleeping better than he had in weeks.

Getting himself "cleaned up" was only so possible, but when Taym showed up at the Death lead's office--two minutes early, per usual--he'd bathed in cold water and he'd shaved (but four hours prior, so there was already some progress being made by the ever-encroaching stubble) and found the cleanest shirt he had. There was nothing for the jeans. He had no others. He had a headache, he was starving, and he smelled like he'd just been smoking, but he'd done the best he could and, feeling no particular goodwill towards Caelius or the universe in general, he knocked.

Mechanically, numb and stunned by the news, Taym picked up the folder and half-turned to go after a quiet "thank you, sir." But he paused, and he glanced at the eye on Caelius's desk.

Probably it was best to go when Caelius said you were dismissed. Probably Caelius said "you are dismissed" as an order, not a courtesy. But Taym had laid up in his bed for an hour after waking, an hour before his alarm went off, and he'd been turning things over in his head.

"Sir," he said finally, his voice carefully neutral, his eyes trained on the wall somewhere just over Caelius's shoulder. "I'm asking this out of a genuine desire to be a better Hunter, and not out of some... misguided attempt at defiance. I want to do my job as well as I can."

He hesitated again, but not long--afraid that Caelius would break in with some snappy comment. His voice ran rough by the middle of the first sentence, as though he were unaccustomed to using it. "I was told this division was dedicated to the gathering of intelligence. If I am more valuable as an ignorant operative, I accept that and will act accordingly. It's just that, given our division's role, I'd feel more capable if I was permitted to arm myself with some basic information, and as such I'd appreciate an opportunity to ask you a few questions. If I am laboring under a misapprehension, sir, I'm happy to be corrected, and you'll have no further questions out of me."

He stood in silence for a long moment, jaw working, and he hated Caelius with the special hate that Taym reserved for people whom he felt were simultaneously very intelligent and very stupid.

He thought about the coin with the serpent on it, and about the note pinned to the body in the wall, and about the thousand and one things he wanted to ask but now never would.

He thought about DIANA.

"I'll take it upon myself to use my own eyes more effectively, sir," he said tightly, and he turned to go.