She let her arms down, squinting. “Did he send you to find me again? He tried to take over my brain. Next time I see him—”
“Shh.” Aurora grinned. “Your former employer’s got you by the short and curlies. Yes, I’m aware you don’t have any. I’m rather fond of that style myself. It’s only a turn of phrase.”
Kate blushed.
The snow-skinned woman smiled. “Don’t bother wasting another moment worrying about Pryce.”
“What?” Kate looked up.
Aurora vanished in a cloud of silvery glowing fog.
“Fuck…” She shied away from traces of luminous smoke collecting in the curve of the seat and around her boots. Raising her legs, she cringed against the wall in an effort to get away from the mist.
A faint spectral laugh swirled around the car, though she couldn’t tell if she’d only imagined it.
The PubTran let her off at the Police Administrative Center twenty minutes later. The place thrummed with more activity than Kate had ever seen in one place. Holographic panel signs floated overhead, displaying directional arrows to help people find their way. Division 1 had the largest entrance, where two parallel corridors led straight into the facility opposite the door. Another sign pointed to the right for Division 5 and 6 barracks. Beyond that, a plain metal door flanked by a pair of men in long, brown coats bore a large numeral nine. As soon as she glanced at it, she remembered David mentioning them ‘dealing with’ El Tío. Kate looked away, feeling guilty at the mere thought of being indirectly responsible for his death.
She trudged to the left side of the main concourse where a large zero marked a pair of sliding glass doors. Behind them, a blinding white corridor led deeper into a side wing. Kate found it amusing that police officers, including huge men in heavy armor, reacted to her much like the civilians had. Most moved or looked away. Some tried to pretend she wasn’t there. Their surface thoughts betrayed their distrust of psionics; rumors had left most of them merely nervous, though a handful reacted with genuine terror. A number of men stared at her, not concerned enough about her psionic abilities to resist the desire to admire her skin-tight pants. One even seemed shocked that a ‘psionic girl’ could be so beautiful.
Score one for the assholes in lab coats. Exotic Russian goddess? Check.
She got bored about halfway to the entrance to the Division 0 wing, stopped eavesdropping on brains, and pondered learning the language—mostly to mess with people.
Another redhead sat behind a plain desk at the end of a short hospital-white corridor with lights glowing from all four corners. She seemed a little older, perhaps in her early-to-mid thirties, and wore her hair much shorter than Kate, off her shoulders.
“Good morning…”
“Kate.” She held out a hand.
The receptionist leaned up and stared at Kate’s chest. “Tac Officer Solomon?”
“Oh, yeah.” Kate smirked at her nameplate. “Still not used to this whole saluting thing.”
“Robin.” The woman accepted her handshake with a wink before glancing down at her one-way holo panel. “It’s not as bad here as the rest of the force. You’ll want to head down that hallway to the right. Looks like you’ve got a couple of light days ahead of you. Fourth door on the right, Lieutenant Drake is waiting for you.”
“Thanks.” Kate started for the hallway.
“Kate?”
She paused four steps later and glanced back. “Hmm?”
“Is it true?” whispered Robin. “That you’re off the charts?”
“Well, that could be taken more than one way.” Kate offered a sultry wink. “I’ll assume you mean my pyrokinetics.”
Robin blushed.
Kate summoned a fist-sized blue fireball over her palm, willing it to fly in an orbit around her hand for a few seconds before letting it dissipate. Robin made a face like a child awestruck by a magic trick.
“Seems I’ve gotten someone’s attention at least.” Kate stared at her hand for a few seconds, not sure how she felt about the police being so blasé about her life as an assassin. Maybe they’re not so different from the Syndicate after all. “I should go.”
“Best of luck to you, and welcome to the team.”
The hallway followed a gradual curve to the left. A tall, thin man with pale skin and battleship-grey hair looked down his nose at her as they passed. She twisted around to continue staring at him with an expression of ‘what?’ After a final, pointed glare, he walked off at a sharp stride. A door on her left slid into the wall with a faint hiss, revealing a boy of about ten in a smaller version of her uniform. Instead of a utility belt with a gun, he had a hovering cart with various electronic devices on it as well as a box of tools. His nameplate and rank insignia were silver, rather than the matte black she’d seen on everyone else.
“Hey,” he said, not really looking at her.
“Hi. Aren’t you a little young? What the heck are you doing wearing a uniform?”
“Cadet Gutierrez. I’m a techno, so they let me fix terminals and whatnot as a break from school. I live in the dorms.” He looked up with sudden alarm on his face. He, too, stared at her chest.
Kate felt awkward until she realized his attention focused on her name tag.
“Oh, whew.” He slumped. “I thought I’d forgotten to salute an officer again.”
She glanced at the empty hallway where the older man had last been. “Is that bad?”
“Not really since I’m just a cadet. I’m not enlisted yet. Worst I’ll get is extra homework.” He looked up, shrugged, and trudged off.
She continued to Lieutenant Drake’s door, marked by a plain silver rectangle with the name in black letters. It opened automatically as she approached, letting her into a small office. A large virtual window displayed a view of a nature preserve that bathed the room in false sunlight tinted green from trees. Shelves lined the wall to her left as well as the one behind the desk, filled with a mixture of trophies, plaques, holo-bars bearing pictures of smiling children, and a number of ancient, physical books.
The man behind the desk glanced up at her, eyebrow raised as if questioning her for walking in without knocking. His hair, buzzed short, existed as little more than a black smudge on already-dark skin. Where her nameplate had a sword impaling a large zero, his had a shield with a zero carved into it. David had mentioned it meant something significant, but she couldn’t place what.
“Morning. I’m Kate… Uhh, Tactical Officer Solomon.” She fidgeted, not sure what to do with her hands after he ignored her offer of a shake. “I’m new.”
Lieutenant Drake leaned back, pursing his lips as if appraising what he saw. Her attempt to read his surface thoughts met initial resistance, as if she’d walked face-first into a soft bubble. Perturbed, she pushed past it with relative ease. Indignation at her intrusion disintegrated, awe and fear at how easily she’d overpowered his telepathy filled in the space it left behind. Annoyance rattled around in his surface thoughts at whoever had failed to train her to salute officers, but it shifted to alarm at how casually she eavesdropped on his mind.
“Officer Solomon. Stop that at once.” Lt. Drake gestured at a chair facing his desk. “I understand you’re a bit of a feral rescue, so I’ll forgive you this time.”
Kate sat and crossed her legs. “I’m not that feral anymore. It’s been about ten years since I ate a deer with my bare hands.”
“Still, I see there are some nuances of ethics you have not been brought up to speed on. As a representative of Division 0, it is considered unethical for you to invade the secrets of everyone you meet. You are to refrain from using telepathy on others, especially individuals outside of Division 0, unless to do so represents an immediate and imminent need in the line of duty.”
“Why? It’s not like they’d notice.”
“Precisely. Look, Officer Solomon. I understand due to the nature of your early life, knowing the motivations of everyone you meet as quickly as possible became a survival instinct. The rules have changed. Not
only is there your legal status as an officer of the law, one of the responsibilities of our division is to safeguard psionics in the eye of the public.”
“PR bullshit.” Kate frowned.
“To a point. If you feel threatened or feel that a life hangs in the balance, by all means, use every talent you have at your disposal. The policy is intended to dissuade casual eavesdropping. Besides, telepathic evidence is not permitted to stand during Inquests.”
“Okay.” Kate held back the urge to roll her eyes. “I think I can handle that.”
His demeanor softened, and he smiled. “I noticed your lack of a salute when you barged in. Have you not been given the rundown on ranks?”
“I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, sir. Who’s ass to kiss hasn’t been very high up on my priorities.”
“Fortunately I’m not as hung up on it as some are”—he chuckled, tapping his nameplate—”but you’ll notice the shield. A shield signifies the wearer is part of Investigative Operations, or I-Ops.”
“Oh, right. David mentioned that. Detectives, right? All officers.”
“Correct. The first rank, Agent, is technically an officer, but they lack command authority. As a member of the tactical squad, you are enlisted personnel. General rules of military etiquette—”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“…dictate you should salute, and not interrupt, officers.” His mirth vanished for a moment. “We do try to maintain a certain sense of decorum.”
“Sorry. This is all… It’s a lot to handle. I’m used to fending for myself. If I can be honest…”
“Please do.” Lt. Drake laced his fingers, elbows on the desk.
“The only reason I agreed to join was because you guys can keep C-Branch off my ass. I don’t really feel the whole ‘sir, yes sir!’ routine. It’s better than what I was doing, or going back to living wild… and it’s definitely better than being a government lab rat, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to wrap my brain around the gung-ho thing.”
He grinned. “Give it a few months, Solomon. It kind of grows on you. You’re not used to being part of a team ready to take a bullet for you. Lone wolves sound sexy, but they die alone.”
Kate’s thoughts returned to sitting in a blasted-out building staring down the barrel of her own gun. She gazed into her lap. “Yeah…”
“Look, Solomon, that’s enough gloom. Today is your first official day as a Division 0 officer. I’m not going to blow sunshine up your ass. The next few weeks will be boring. You’re going to get started on some dry, but necessary stuff including a lot of classroom instruction. Since the nature of Division 0 does not lend itself to large training classes, everything is on sim. For the next thirty-two work days, you’ll be flat on your back wearing a helmet.”
“That sounds kinky.”
He coughed. “Far from it. You’ll be taking classroom instruction via virtual reality. Some of the modules are solo, others may include other new recruits from all over West City as well as the east coast.”
“Okay, a month of nine-to-five. That sounds doable.”
“I have a good feeling about you, Solomon. Based on your file, I half expected you to be grumbling about wasting your time in a classroom instead of running around blowing things up.”
She offered a one-shoulder shrug. “I’ve gotten that out of my system.”
“That’s good to hear.” His voice sounded somber. Dark brown skin turned pale grey in the castoff light of his holo-terminal as he switched screens. “Your psych profile says you killed people when you were only seven. Is that true?”
“Keep reading. I didn’t have ‘requisite intent’ or whatever they called it. I was just a child who didn’t want to die. I wanted the ‘bad men’ to go away. My brain did the rest on its own.”
“Your evaluation seems rather remarkable given your life.”
Kate looked at him. “What should I do? Waste my life sobbing in the corner and sucking my thumb? Jump at every shadow? I could wallow in it and let it control me, but that’s not what I want to do. Shit happened, so I dealt with it. I tend to be direct.”
“Officer Ahmed mentioned he had to influence your emotional state to forestall suicide.” Lieutenant Drake raised an eyebrow. “Yet, the department evaluator raised no red flags.”
Dammit, David. That’s going to haunt me. Why did you have to tell them that? She shut her eyes and sighed. Probably thought it would help me to get it out. No more secrets, right?
“Officer Solomon?”
Her eyes snapped open. “It was a situational thing, sir. C-Branch locked this fucking thing around my neck that I couldn’t get off. Any time I tried to use my abilities, it zapped the shit out of me—literally. I was in a black zone with like two bullets left, I didn’t have the protection of being too hot to touch anymore, and I did not want to get found by a gang of crazy augs. My back was against a wall. I didn’t think I had any way out.”
“I see.”
“Tell me you wouldn’t eat a bullet to avoid being gang-raped… or cannibalized… or both. Possibly at the same time.”
He held up a hand. “Valid point. Forget I asked.”
Kate kneaded her hands. “Sorry, I… I wasn’t in a good place there. I don’t like to think about it. I am over it. I haven’t come out of a nightmare and killed everyone within fifty meters of me in at least a month.”
His expression went slack.
“Sorry, I guess I have an inappropriate sense of humor too. Coping mechanism.”
He exhaled. “Please try to be careful of that. The world as a whole is on eggshells about psionics, and comments like that could be problematic.”
“Okay. So what now?”
“Well, as I said, you have about a month of classroom time ahead of you. That, of course, represents the equivalent of what conventional instruction can do in about eighteen weeks. Bear in mind you will experience a bit of fatigue. Time passes differently in cyberspace. Depending on the network and hardware involved, it can be anywhere from five to twenty seconds in net time for every one second in real time. We include simulated sleep breaks to help the brain cope, but you will get the equivalent of two-point-eight days of classroom training to every one real time day.”
Okay, maybe this will suck. She nodded.
“After that… or possibly interrupting it at some point depending on scheduling, you will be going with a group of Division 1 trainees for ISCOT. You’ll be headed to Fort Armstrong with the 11th Training Brigade.”
“ISCOT?”
Lieutenant Drake sighed. “Initial Soldier Combat Orientation Training. You and about two dozen Division 1 recruits will be attached to a basic training platoon of the UCF Marine Corps where you will run the same boot camp as soldiers. Of course, unlike the Division 1 personnel, you are considered activated with Division 0 and have full police powers. Granted, those powers are limited on a military installation, but you would have jurisdiction if a psionic event occurred.”
“Wait? Marines?” Kate shifted. “Military intelligence has to be all over that place. What if they try to grab me?”
“Two things.” He lowered his voice. “You are fully authorized to defend yourself by any means necessary. Second, one of the few perks Division 0 enjoys is the belief that other aspects of the government have secrets only because we haven’t tried to go digging yet. As you are one of ours, they know we would come looking. As tantalizing as your ‘weapons project’ is to them, they have other things they’d rather the world not learn about.”
Kate relaxed a little.
“It is full military training, as your position as a Tactical Officer is a front line role. Since you’ve grown up as a civilian, I assume you are not used to mixed bathing facilities?”
Kate laughed.
“Solomon? That wasn’t a joke. Do you have issues with an utter lack of privacy?”
She cackled for another minute. When she recovered, she wiped her eyes, unable to stop grinning. “I thought you read my file?”
“
Oh.” He tapped one finger on his desk, momentarily unable to look her in the eye. “Oh, that’s right. Do bear in mind during the boot camp that your rank of Tactical Officer I is laterally equivalent to Private First Class. Despite being in a different branch, their command staff will expect proper decorum. Far more than we do here.”
“Nice recovery.”
Lieutenant Drake stood. “I’ll walk you to the training room. From now until you are assigned a patrol craft and partner, I will be your first point of contact and your immediate superior. If you need anything, have any questions, or run into any difficulties, come to me first.”
“Okay.”
“Solomon…”
“Yes, sir.” She saluted.
He smiled and returned her salute. “That’s more like it.”
Lieutenant Drake walked with her to the end of the curved corridor outside his office and past another set of transparent doors. Three lengthy hallways and one elevator up later, he stopped at a white metal door bearing the words ‘Training 03’ and swiped his hand past a dark metallic panel. The door opened with a muffled squeak, revealing a rectangular room about 200 feet long. On each of the longer walls, a row of twenty shining chrome slabs, covered with segmented black pads and headrest cushions, occupied alcoves.
Raised floor tiles clicked and clunked with the weight of technicians in see-through plastic lab coats over dark blue jumpsuits bearing Division 2 markings. Thick wire bundles ran from each station into the space below. Each platform looked like the bastard offspring of a chair and a bed, with the addition of thick nylon straps by the forearms, waist, and ankles.
A tech approached, a thin Asian man about her age. “Welcome, Officer Solomon. I am Jun. I’ll be running your modules today.” He gestured at one of the stations.
Kate raised an eyebrow at the straps, leaning closer to Lieutenant Drake. “I thought you said this wasn’t kinky? Am I supposed to get undressed now?”
Jun dropped his datapad.
Lieutenant Drake coughed. “Think of them like seatbelts. They’re only used during advanced combat training sims. Sometimes, the neural inhibitors intended to transfer brain activity into the virtual world lapse, and trainees will punch, kick, or flop about in the real world. You won’t need to worry about them today unless you get a strong urge to punch a figure lecturing about policy and procedure.”
Angel Descended (The Awakened Book 6) Page 22
