Backup: WIP Docs

Special Unit

Killinger meets Cate

001

When Killinger entered the office of the Special Unit, she paused in the doorway and raised both brows at the woman standing on the other side of the conference table.

The woman was petite, barely taller than five foot, with golden blonde hair and an impenetrably cool look of calculating disdain on her perfect features. She was stunningly beautiful and clearly had the classic Laskic curves and build, thick and a little broad but not at all fat. Hers was a face not only Killinger was familiar with but almost every resident of the city of Kishet and most of the entire continent.

“Catherine April,” Killinger named her coolly.

The face of the Rebellion, the woman who had stood at the front of treaty negotiations to lock the Thorn Republic out of half of their own territory.

She flicked an eyebrow and corrected to, “Cate.”

Her gaze flickered over the entire office quickly with an efficiency familiar to Killinger from when she had once audited military installations and programs for the Thorn Republic.

Cate tilted her head slightly, the calculation becoming clear in her expression. “Ilsa Killinger, registered situational empath, founder of the Special Unit, approved by treaty law for law enforcement against special type humans, married. Correct?”

Killinger studied this young woman for a long moment. For all the impression of professional adult she gave, it struck her that Cate was likely not twenty years old. “Are you trying to intimidate me?” she asked, unruffled by the exchange.

Cate shrugged, indifference clear. “You are not a woman easily intimidated.” She settled into a chair and leaned back, expression shifting again, flickering to a matter-of-fact practicality that was decidedly less irritating. “I am joining your unit because our people did not reach our quota for remaining in the business,” she said bluntly. “You were expecting a volunteer, but we have none available willing to do the dirty work you’re going to need. I know the law inside and out.” Having been instrumentally in drafting and negotiating it, that was doubtless true. “It will be easier for both of us if you know where we stand.”

“Do I?” Killinger asked calmly. “Are you loyal to this city, to its people? Can you put that above your people, as you call them?”

Cate studied Killinger for a long moment. “What you need to know about me is that I am a guaranteed missions operative. If you give me an objective, it will be accomplished,” she stated, flat and even, no room for doubt in the words. Her eyes hardened. “If you come after one of my own without cause, no authority on this earth will save you from me.”

Killinger acknowledged the admission with a nod. She came in the office, dropped off her things on the back counter where she’d taken to leaving them when going over profiles to recruit her team for the work ahead. She came back to the table with the printed updates from various law enforcement departments that would now require a passing inspection to ensure cases involving special type humans—those gifted with powers such as situational empathy—did not slip through the cracks. Treaty law demanded many protections for specials and limited who could prosecute them and how. That would be the Special Unit’s job in this city.

She looked at Cate and asked calmly, “And if I go after one with cause?”

Cate’s face went perfectly blank, not a microexpression breaking through. “That is why I am the one assigned to you. That,” she said without a trace of emotion in her tone, “has always been my job.”

002

Team Seven had been voluntary. When given the chance to escape, with the knowledge of what his team was tasked with, their leader Brushfire had elected to stay. His entire team would follow him anywhere he led, and they followed him in this.

Cate knew more about special human biology and genetics than most degreed scientists. She had tracked down theorist after scientist after program with the aim of creating supersoldiers and special abilities and stopped each one she was sent after. She had taken down rogue specials intent on causing harm. She had stopped telepaths and terrorists and more as if, and because, it was her simply her daily work.

She didn’t tell Ilsa Killinger this. She didn’t hand over a resume because the closest thing she had to one was the file carefully iterating the analysis of her natural abilities, her biological family, kidnapping, medical history, and military history as an involuntary then voluntary team member under the Projects. The information was classified, and Cate was content to have it remain so.

003

... rest of the unit ...

004

“What do you want me to do with these?”

Killinger turned to note Cate’s near expressionless professional facade. She frowned, wondering what about it kept bothering her. She held out her hand for the papers in Cate’s.

Cate arched her brows and quirked her mouth in perfectly architected amusement and passed them over.

The reports from the other law enforcement bodies within the city for review.

It struck Killinger in that moment what was bothering her. “Have you always been able to do that?” she asked quietly.

Cate tilted her head back, mild interest in her eyes as they unfocused and then honed in on Killinger and something sincere painted itself across her features. A soft ‘huh, how could you not know that’ and ‘why did you not expect that’. Her brows furrowed and her mouth formed a questioning frown as the space between them filled with palpable puzzlement. “You were there,” Cate said slowly. “You know what we were capable of.”

Did she? Ilsa Killinger was there when they were all still children, when she was part of the team who uncovered how terribly wrong the Projects had gone and how far off from spec. She’d known what had been done to the children, but not everything their training entailed. She had never seen anyone else control their facial expression so exactly to deliver an impression, capable of crafting every part of their own body language and omitting natural reaction.

It was not a conversation she thought she knew how to have, not with this expectation of Cate’s that she had known. It bore consideration on why Cate had walked in with such an expectation.

Killinger handed back the papers. “Go through these and determine which cases were handled correctly and which require our intervention.”

The amusement was back. There was something well guarded behind it, but it lacked the sharpness Killinger had seen on other team operatives’ faces. “Clinchers,” Cate said, naming them and going to work.

005

Cate was not slow. She couldn’t afford to be in the way she had played coverage for her team since she was a little girl. She couldn’t afford to be when her own power could go so easily out of control.

She stayed late at the office, waved off Marc, the last to leave, and knew perfectly well that he stuck around to make sure she wasn’t up to something dangerous. In a way, she was.

Cate dug up her transfer file in the ROD database, a computer system that tracked most of the operations truly top secret in the Thorn Republic and much that had nothing to do with Thorn, except that it wanted its fingers in the [TK: pie] and had figured out how to make that happen. Every team operative had a transfer file, available with minimal information on the use other departments and agencies could make of them. Depending on the requesting security clearance was how much information could actually be included on eligible mission types, languages, skills, and at the highest clearances, special abilities.

It had come to Cate’s attention that Killinger did not realize who she was dealing with, and Cate had always believed in consent and disclosure as able.

She printed the thin sheet, placed it in a top secret folder, and pressed it shut with a DNA print seal. She left it on the table where Killinger liked to sit.

“You can go home now, Rede,” she told the empty room, amused. His startlement spiked sharply against her mental senses, but she felt no guilt. At least she hadn’t spoken directly into his mind.

006

Killinger received the file in the morning and opened it to read a sparse datasheet on the most powerful known mindreader the Department had ever encountered. She looked up at where Cate stood looking out the window, eyes unfocused.

It jolted her then. Cate was scanning over the city in the same way Killinger walked it each morning to pick up the emotional traces swirling through the tense air.

“Can you turn it off?” she asked simply.

Cate looked over and answered as simply, “Can you cut off your own ears?”

The answer was yes, but I won’t.