Henry Parker, Head of Department.

Kurt stares at the plaque on the door.

He was directed to go straight to this floor and office when he arrived, but now he's unsure of what to do. Does he walk right in? Knock? Wait until someone comes out and gets him? He runs his hand through his hair, taking care not to mess it up before deciding to walk in.

The sight that meets him is not an office, as he'd expected, but what appears to be a waiting room. A row of chairs lines the wall opposite a large, raised desk.

Kurt wrinkles his nose at the walls, which are painted distasteful shade of orange, before directing his attention to the desk.

Two pairs of eyes meet his. One pair belongs to a black woman with graying hair sitting behind the desk, the other to blonde man sitting on top of the desk and laughing at a joke Kurt must have interrupted.

"Are you Kurt?" the woman asks, smiling at him.

"Yes." Kurt shifts his messenger bag awkwardly and points at his identification card, clipped to his front pocket.

"You're new," the man says. "And young. What are you, twelve?"

The woman smacks the hand resting on the desk in front of her. "Stop it, Bradley."

"Twenty-four," Kurt snaps, "And you can't be more than five years older than me."

"I'm special," Bradley retorts.

The woman shakes her head. "He's not as special as he thinks. I'm Grace, Kurt, Mr. Parker's assistant. You can wait in one of those chairs until he's ready for you."

Kurt nods gratefully and sits down, crossing his legs.

Bradley stares at him. Kurt tries to avoid his gaze.

Bradley jumps off the desk to stand in front of Kurt. "We lost an intern. That means you're the new intern, doesn't it?"

Kurt is reminded very briefly of Finn. Bradley seems very overeager like his stepbrother. He glances around to see if there are any magazines.

"Well, there are six things you need to know about this place," he proclaims. "Do you want to hear them?"

Kurt shakes his head. Bradley ignores him.

"Thing number one. Grace is in charge. They're going to tell you Parker is in charge, but they're lying. Grace is Head Bitch here." Grace wads up a ball of tissue and throws it at Bradley's head.

"If you accidentally kill someone, come to Grace. If you lose any paperwork, come to Grace. If a coffee pot breaks, come to Grace. You got that?"

Kurt nods reluctantly. Bradley beams. "Okay. Second thing. Don't break the coffeepot, because unless Grace can fix it, we're not going to get a new one. This is technically still an experimental department, even though we've been around for forty years or something. That means our funding is absolute shit."

"It also means they change our name every three weeks or so," Grace chimes in. "And guess who has to do the paperwork for that?"

"You?" Kurt guesses.

Grace nods.

"Anyway," Bradley continues. "All we've got is this here building, a few hundred employees, one janitor, and the permission to beg off equipment from National Guard units."

"You need National Guard equipment?" Kurt asks, caught off guard. This aspect of his new place of employment is news to him.

"That brings me to point three," Bradley says, holding up three fingers and bouncing up and down to illustrate. "You never really know what they're going to make you do, and you never know who's doing what. We're basically the equivalent of the CIA's garbage disposal. If they can't do anything-"

"Or won't do anything," Grace adds.

"They hand it off to us. We don't have any control over what they give us, which is part of the craziness. The other part is that we're don't really belong to the CIA."

"The FBI uses you, too," Kurt tells him, feeling a small bit of smugness as Bradley raises his eyebrows in surprise.

"You're not supposed to know that. How do you know that?" He turns around to look at Grace. "How does he know that?"

Grace looks up from her computer, where she had been typing, and shrugs. "Parker knows though."

Bradley nods and turns back to Kurt. "Parker knows everything. Are you going to tell me why you aren't nearly as clueless as interns are supposed to be?"

"Maybe I'm special, too," Kurt counters.

Bradley laughs. "I like him. Grace, can I have him if he lasts the interview?"

"He doesn't belong to anyone."

"That's a lie and you know it."

Grace leans back in her chair. "Yes, it was. No, you can't have him. Parker wants to give him to Tilley."

Bradley wrinkles his nose. "Tilley. We'll make that thing number four. Nobody, and I mean nobody, likes Tilley."

"Great," Kurt huffs. "What's thing five?"

"I never finished number three. You interrupted thing number three."

"Fine then. What's thing three?"

"You're right, the FBI does use us, but they're not the only ones. If you think of basically any organization in the United States, public or private, that has to do with crime intelligence, someone there might know about us and use us."

Kurt knows this, but decides not to brag this time. He needs an ally in this place, and though he's obnoxiously rambunctious, Bradley might just be that ally.

"Only about ten people in the CIA even know about us, and they almost never use us. The FBI give us work most often. Every year the CIA tries to pawn us off to them, but it never works and they have to pay for us another year. Hence the funding."

"Hence the shitty funding," Grace corrects.

"Hence the shitty funding," Bradley agrees.

"Thing five is that you don't tell anyone. We're very selective about who gets to know about us. That means your family, your girlfriend-"

"Boyfriend," Kurt corrects.

Bradley is unfazed. "Anyone. If you don't have permission, you don't tell them. It's not a wink wink nudge nudge rule. They take it deadly serious here."

Kurt nods, and Grace's phone rings. She answers it and nods before covering the mouthpiece. "He's ready for you, honey," she tells him, gesturing to one of the doors.

Kurt picks his bag up off the ground and stands. His nerves start to rise as he walks towards the door, so he pauses to take a deep breath. "What's the last thing?" he asks, stalling.

Bradley laughs. "Thing six. They may have given you a badge and everything, but there's only about a fifty percent chance you'll still be an intern when you walk out of that office."