The First Lock - 15. Chapter 15

- XV -

“Paul,” she sighed for probably the fiftieth time in the last fifteen minutes. “This is not going to work. I have no experience in this field...”

Here she was interrupted by a very loud snort from Paul.

“Let me rephrase that,” she said patiently. “I have no proof that I have any experience in this field. Also, I am sure there are some certain requirements... Plus, my medical condition...”

He stopped and faced her.

“Don’t you dare to breathe anything about your ‘medical condition’...” he made air quotes. “You don’t have a medical condition, Enigma, and we both know it! Just show him something; I don’t care what it is... If he says ‘no,’ that’s fine. There is a very good chance he might say ‘yes,’ however. So just please,” he put both hands on her shoulders. “Don’t play dumb, okay?”

“Fine,” she sighed for the fifty-first time. “I will not play dumb.”

“Okay,” he nodded. “Come on now.”

They paused in front of the door and Paul lightly knocked his knuckles on it.

“Come in!” someone shouted.

“Don’t hurt him too much,” Paul said quickly before opening the door. “He might get touchy about that...” and he opened the door. “Captain...?” he said a second later. “A word...?”

“Sure,” Katrena heard. “Come in, Sergeant!”

Paul glanced at her and gave her a quick smile. Katrena had to admit – this was somewhat entertaining. She imagined herself in the Captain’s position and snorted softly. Someone is trying to convince you that a pregnant, teenage-looking girl in front of your eyes is, in fact, a killing machine. “Oh, boy,” she thought. “This will be fun...”

Captain (“Jackie,” Katrena remembered) looked up and blinked when he saw both of them.

“Sergeant...?” he said with his eyebrow raised in a question mark.

“Captain,” Paul took a breath. “I need to ask you for a favor...”

“Okay,” Jackie nodded slowly, his eyes running quickly over Katrena’s chubby form.

“Katrena here,” Paul glanced at her. “Needs a job,” he finished, and the Captain blinked in confusion.

“Oh, man...” Katrena thought. “Paul, you need some diplomacy lessons... You don’t just blurt shit like this out...”

Captain (Jackie) cleared his throat.

“Sergeant,” he said. “All the positions are filled. We have enough secretaries, and we have...” he cleared his throat again. “We have enough custodians,” he finished, and Katrena had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep that mad laughter of hers locked inside.

Paul shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I should’ve taken a different approach...”

“You think?” Katrena bit her tongue just in time, before she said anything.

“See,” Paul was saying meanwhile. “She is really... Extremely good when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, so I was thinking that maybe you could hire her as a consultant...”

Jackie blinked again and looked at Katrena. She could tell that the Captain was doing the same thing as she was – biting the insides of his cheeks to keep himself from laughing.

“Sergeant,” he said finally, his voice very cautious. “We don’t hire consultants unless we need them for a particular case.”

“I know,” Paul nodded. “I thought that maybe you could hire her as...” he thought for a minute. “As a special tactics instructor,” he finished, and Jackie pretended he found something extremely interesting in the pile of papers that was sitting on his desk. “Look,” Paul sighed. “I know that she looks like someone who’d be having troubles with getting her fuel refilled...”

Katrena blinked at that.

“...but believe me when I say it,” Paul took another breath. “Her looks are beyond deceiving... Okay,” he nodded when Jackie just kept on staring at the papers, his lips trembling.

Katrena thought that she could almost hear what he was thinking. “McGregor... Her ‘special tactics’ have nothing in common with the police... Looks are deceiving, right... Just because she could get you on your back in bed, doesn’t mean that she should apply for this line of work...”

“Okay,” Paul said again. “How about this... If she knocks you out and disarms you in less than five minutes, will you consider it...?”

This time, Katrena couldn’t help but smile.

“Sergeant,” Jackie said, his eyes still glued to the stack of papers. “Are you out of your mind? She is pregnant, for crying out loud!”

Suddenly, Katrena was wondering if Paul told everyone it was his monkey.

“Believe me,” Paul said sincerely. “She’ll be fine.”

Jackie sighed and finally, he looked up.

“McGregor,” he said after a few minutes of silence. “Get to your assigned spot, will you?”

“Just one try,” Paul was never the one to give up so easily. “Please, Captain!”

Jackie sighed again – this time deeper – and rolled his eyes.

“Fine,” he said mildly and glanced at Katrena. “Are you going to play along with this, ma’am?”

She simply nodded. Jackie closed his eyes for a second.

“Fine,” he said again, when he opened them. “I have no idea what you are about to demonstrate, but a word of advice... Do not try and use that New-Age crap, okay? Because the minute I hear something like, ‘Chakras’ or ‘Spiritual bonding,’ McGregor here gets something nasty in his personnel file. Are we clear?”

“Absolutely,” she nodded very seriously.

“Fine,” he sighed, and Katrena briefly wondered if Paul had that effect on people – to make them sigh nonstop. “I suppose you want me to stand somewhere, correct? So you can get a better look at my inner streams...”

Katrena thought about it for a second (“Don’t hurt him too much,” she remembered) and slowly nodded.

“Yeah,” she said and nodded towards the armchair that was sitting in the corner of Jackie’s office. “Stand in front of the chair, please...”

Jackie suppressed a very obvious eye roll and patiently walked towards the chair.

“Okay,” he nodded. “I guess if I feel relaxed, I should just go ahead and let the invisible streams to wash over me, right? So they can give me more energy...”

“No,” she said simply and smiled. “I just don’t want you to hit your head on the way down...”

Jackie raised his not anywhere near tight fists in front of him.

“Okay,” he said with fake seriousness. “Bring it on!”

Katrena nodded without a smile this time, and moved to the right. As she expected, Jackie’s body followed her almost immediately, expecting some obvious and ridiculous attempt on shaking his concentration. She grinned -- she couldn’t help it. Right when he turned his torso ever so slightly to the right, her left hand shot forward and connected with a side of his neck.

Later, when Paul was describing this to her, he said that it looked almost as if she was about to go towards the hollow of his throat. “I couldn’t believe you were about to use the same thing twice in a row!” he said much later that day. Instead of gasping for a breath, however, Jackie’s body froze for a second, and then he collapsed into the armchair, which Katrena discovered a few minutes ago.

“Holy shit...” Paul said in a small voice when Jackie’s body fell into the said chair. “Oh my God... Is he...”

“He is fine,” Katrena sighed and pulled Jackie’s gun out of the holster. “He’ll regain his consciousness in ten mutes, give or take...” She looked at him and shrugged. “You told me not to hurt him,” she said calmly.

“You put him to sleep?” Paul asked incredulously.

“No,” she sat down. “You can’t put someone to sleep by pressing on some area in their body. I made him faint; that is completely different. He is unconscious, not asleep.” She glanced up at him. “I look like someone who’d be having troubles with getting my fuel refilled?” she asked with mild amusement.

“Yup,” he nodded seriously. “You look like one of those who would drop the nozzle ‘cause it’s too heavy.”

She shook her head and looked at unconscious Jackie.

“He will either be impressed or pissed,” she said thoughtfully. “If he is pissed, you’ll probably end up in some deep shit, you know that, right?”

“Yup,” Paul nodded again. “Let’s hope he doesn’t have a headache when he comes about.”

“He shouldn’t have any headache,” Katrena muttered and got up.

She walked closer to Jackie and pressed her fingers to his neck.

“Are you reviving him or something?” Paul asked with interest.

“I am checking his pulse,” she snorted. “It’s fine; he should be conscious in the next few minutes.”

“You know,” he said and grabbed her arm. “If I get fired, I’ll be around you all the time...”

“Let’s not imagine the worst outcome yet,” she said very seriously. “Maybe he’ll just send you out to direct traffic or something...”

He laughed and pulled her closer.

“I’ll make sure I pull you over every day,” he said, and slowly kissed her mouth.

She kissed him back, her hands locked on the back of his neck, Jackie’s gun forgotten on Captain’s desk. He started running his fingers down her spine when Jackie mumbled something unintelligible, and Katrena pulled away. She turned around and cautiously looked at the bewildered Captain. He looked at her with a small frown, blinking somewhat rapidly.

“What just happened?” he asked finally.

“You fainted,” she said seriously.

“Fainted,” he repeated.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “This area right here...” she tapped her finger on the side of her neck. “If you apply enough pressure, it’ll knock you out. You have to be careful with that though. Because if you apply too much pressure, the subject might not wake up.”

Jackie looked very thoughtful right now. Finally, he glanced at Paul whose expression was cautious.

“Where is my gun?” he grumbled and got up.

Katrena grabbed the gun from his desk and handed it to him. He checked it quickly and holstered it, making sure everything was just fine. Paul cleared his throat.

“She is the one who brought Kenny here a couple of months ago,” he said, and Jackie hemmed.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Kenny... He made up a wild story about some crazy chick with two bodyguards... He said that they were the ones who tried to mug him,” he looked at Katrena, his expression amused and thoughtful at the same time. “He thought the story would fly.”

Katrena blinked and thought of Mandy and Rusty the Dog – they would be the bodyguards, since she was the crazy chick, obviously. She started to laugh -- she couldn’t help it.

“Special tactics instructor, huh,” Jackie muttered and rubbed his neck. “What the hell... All right, I’ll give it a try. We’ll see how things are going to go for a month or so; if I see that we benefit from your... instructions... Then we’ll talk more seriously. If not...” he shrugged. “You might wanna think of opening a self-defense studio or something like that.”

Katrena nodded without saying anything. “Believe me,” she thought. “You don’t want that...”