19. Doolittle Plays A New Role
Chapter nineteen
Doolittle Plays A New Role
F uck this. Fuck Leader One. And even fuck Kyler.
This time, I wasn’t going to go and drown myself in a bottle. Everyone expected me to fade away. To fail. No. I was finally in a good place in my life, and I wouldn’t let anyone take that away. Too many times, I’d fucked up. Too many times, I had been the one throwing it away. Well, no more.
I didn’t follow K like I wanted to. That wasn’t going to get me anywhere. Instead, I headed in the other direction. I didn’t stop until I figured out where Leader One’s office was, and then I banged on the door until he opened it. “What do you want?”
“I need to talk about this.”
“This is not a good time, Doolittle.”
“Really? Well, Special K feels like his life is over right now, so I think it’s the perfect time.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at me. I let the silence fill the room while he scowled. I noticed that he had dark brown eyes, but they glittered with a bit of gold. He wasn’t that much older than me, but his stature was bigger, his presence tended to fill the room. For the first time, I wondered what power he had. Oh, he had to have something. He was too far up in rank not to. So far up that he didn’t share that rank. He didn’t need to flaunt it because he was obviously the guy in charge.
Finally, he exhaled loudly and sat behind his desk. “Okay. Come in. Make your case.”
“I know we should have told you sooner, but it’s new. We’re still figuring it out. And we liked working together a lot.”
“You make a great team, but I can’t have people in the field together who are also in a personal relationship, beyond a friendship, paired up. Whatever. I think you can understand that. See for yourself with a handful of what-ifs about today. What if you missed? What if you would have shot K? What if you didn’t get there in time, and they took him? What if they put a gun to his head and demanded things from you.” He pointed at me.
“I think I get that now more than ever.” I shook my head. “I finally like myself. I finally like this job. And it’s him. You understand?”
“I’m not without feelings, Doolittle. And K is named perfectly. I know he’s special. Probably more than he does.”
“What does that mean?” I was ready to defend my claim on my man. What was he saying? He thought K was special?
“I’ll show you.” He pulled a tablet out of his drawer and tapped around on it before sliding it to me. “This is some of the results from the testing we did to figure out how to stop the hypnosis from the triplets.”
I read the words on the table. It had K’s full name on the top as well as his code name. Then…
Unexpected Results
Previously unknown super abilities: Enhanced Intelligence, including decision making abilities at ten times the normal pace.
That was followed by a lot of terms I didn’t understand. “What does this mean?”
“He’s not just a smart kid. He’s a super smart kid. His brother wasn’t the only one in the family with abilities. And, though this is classified above your grade, he has relatives with abilities. His grandfather on his mother’s side was similarly enhanced, and his great-uncle on his dad’s side had telekinesis. These things tend to run in families and sometimes skip generations. We know a lot more about it now than before.”
Most people with abilities didn’t know how or why they had them. I was an anomaly. Mine came from the artifact now locked away somewhere from humanity forever.
“Doolittle, we’re not going to lose either of you. A suspension is a cool-off period until we figure out how to reassign you both.”
“You could have said that.”
“It’s also a punishment. It’s meant to make the two of you think about this. He might be able to make fast decisions, that doesn’t mean he’s making the right ones. The discernment you use in your private life carries over to your work. This is a lesson.”
I sat back in the little, uncomfortable chair in front of his desk. He was right. I needed to think about this. And I needed to talk to K. I wasn’t going to let him get away, no matter what else happened.
“Doolittle. Being in a relationship with him or anyone else at SPAM is not a bad thing. Being in the field together is. It’s too dangerous. And not speaking up about it when it started says a lot. I hope you two work things out and stay together, for what it’s worth.”
“Why? Why would you care?”
“Because you’re turning out to be a good agent. He’s a fantastic influence on you. I knew he would be when he chose you.”
“Chose me? What?”
“K was given the option to choose his partner from the new agents in this region. He picked you. He researched all of you and made the decision on his own.”
I had a lot of questions about that and what would happen next, but I couldn’t voice any of them. Kyler had chosen me. Over all the others, he’d picked me.
Me.
“As I said, we don’t intend to lose either of you. Now get out of here. I have work to do.”
The obvious dismissal had me rising, moving, but my brain was somewhere else entirely. I ended up out in front of the office building, on the sidewalk, without being entirely sure how I’d gotten there. I stared at the bar on the corner. I could go in and have a drink or two. I could go home.
But home was Kyler.