KITTEN || five hargreeves

01

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"Ah, shit."

This phrase seemed like a common one to Kit these days. Common, but necessary.

The future was a barren wasteland. Kit expected nothing less; if global warming wouldn't have done it, the horrible government would've ended the world themselves. Or perhaps it was some random wannabe who decided no one deserved to live. Either way, the world has ended.

The gravel crackled under Kit's feet as she walked along the desolate road, cursing herself for getting jailed so far away from her home city. Dallas would be at least another two days ahead of her, and she wasn't psyched about having to trudge along for any longer than she had to.

She spotted a small house on the side of the road, and she ducked in, looking around all of the cabinets for anything she could find. Stuffing all of the canned goods in her backpack- and popping a mint in her mouth- she glanced around the small house one more time for anything of interest.

Kit skated down the road on her new roller skates and whistled merrily, pausing only to nod at the dead bodies lining the street. If the debris didn't kill you, the toxic fumes did.

It took another two and a half days for Kit to reach her birthplace.

Dallas was rubble. Kit expected nothing less.

She rounded the corner to the old hearing aids place, surprised to see it still standing after 58 years and an apocalypse. Kit cringed as the door creaked open, but she squared her shoulders and pushed herself inside. Luckily, most of the hearing aids were still intact, and she shoveled them into the front pocket of her bag, careful not to crush them. She pushed one gently into her right ear, then her left.

"Testing... One two three..."

She felt foolish, but her amplified voice was a comfort to her. Finally, she could hear again.

The wind whooshed in through a window and Kit cringed at the sound, her brain trying to get re-used to the sound. When the government had sent her forward in time, they had forgotten to pack her any hearing aids. Or anything else for that matter.

She skated outside and flicked her middle finger up towards the crumbling government building, sticking her tongue out at it.

Kit Woods had been sent forward in time as an experiment funded by the Texas government to see if they could, but there was no way to monitor whether they had succeeded or failed. So far, Kit took it that she had been the only one to, in fact, succeed in going forward, and both thanked and cursed those scientists helping with the experiment. If they hadn't succeeded, she'd be dead, if she hadn't agreed to to it, she'd be dead, and even now that she had agreed to do it, she would probably be dead soon. There was no disputing that.

That night she crashed at the hospital, thankful to find a bed that was not occupied by a corpse.

The next day, she stayed in her city.

Those days bled into weeks, from weeks into months, those months into years.

Kit was 47 when they found her.

Kit saw movement on her left and she immediately branded her knife; hopping in front of her collection of stuffed animals. The woman had waved at her, offering her a deal. Kit wasn't a fool. She took it.

10 years of service. But how could you count the years when the Commission was on a completely different schedule than the passage of time?

☂️

"Kit Woods."

Kit looked up from sharpening her knife, eyeing the woman. The room around her was slightly messy, files scattered in an order only Kit could decipher. "What do you want, Handler?"

The Handler smiled, her lips stretched across impossibly perfect teeth. The Commission had a fantastic health package, and Kit was finally able to gain her very own pair of fully-functional hearing aids. The Handler just used it to maintain her "gorgeous but creepy" aura.

"I'm sure you've read your new assignment, Kitten. I just want to tell you that you will now be working with a partner."

Kit's eyes widened. "Partner?! But, Handler-"

"Oops! No buts!" She quipped, her slender finger sliding under Kit's chin, making her look her in the eye. "Commission's Handbook. Chapter 5, Section C, Subsection 2, bullet point 3: 'After the first year has commenced, partners may be appointed and removed to maximize efficiency.' Its quite simple."

The Handler handed Kit a file.

"Here's your partner. He has been given one exactly like it with your information. You will meet in the briefcase room and start your next mission in twenty-seven hours." She smiled and turned around, exiting Kit's private office.

Kit sighed and set her feet on her desk, knocking over some pencils in the process, and opened the file.

"Alright, Five Hargreeves. Let's see what you're all about."

Name/Alias: Five Hargreeves
Age: 58
Sex: M
Special abilities: teleportation, time travel, phasing
Kills: 56
Attributes: serious, accurate, intellectually sound

Kit nodded at the file; he seemed respectable. But she still hesitated with the thought of having a partner. Most agents with partners either didn't last, or they became too dependent on one another to the point where they were let go by the Commission without benefits.

And Kit needed those damn benefits.

She smacked down the file and counted the hours until she would have to meet her new partner.

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