I nodded politely, but I would have rather that she had no way of putting a face to my name.
"Oh, heads up. The city is going into emergency lockdown tomorrow, maybe for a couple of days as we try to purge the bactimen." Kim paused, letting us digest the information.
"Really?" I was surprised.
"Yeah. We have realized that we need to crush them outright now before they become a larger problem.
We have a few irons in the fire on how to do a big sweep." Kim shrugged like it was just another day at the office.
"You should bring your laptop home, Zayn. You can work from home next week." Candice smiled at me.
She never liked that I left it in the office. It made it hard for her to make asks of me on the weekend. And that was one hundred percent why I left it here. It gave me good separation.
"Sure," I told her. Working from home might actually be a nice change of pace.
"Good. I'll let you two get back to work." Kim stood up and excused herself.
Candice watched her go and then turned back to me.
"Bring your laptop home. You and your team need to finish before six weeks to make a good impression."
This time, she poured her superpower into her voice, trying to manipulate me.
"Of course," I replied, letting her think it had worked.
But once again, I shut it down. I was not letting her ability get anywhere near me. Even at full strength, it was just a powerful suggestion, but it still pissed me off. She loved to use it to get people to do a little more.
Bitch.
And now that she wasn't even a buffer between the Bureau and me, she was becoming even less valuable to me.
I headed towards the door, done with her. If I kept letting her talk, she might piss me off and make me do something I'd regret. As I headed out, I failed to grab my laptop.
As I got closer to the entrance, I ran back into Kim, who seemed to be on her way back in.
"Forget something?" I asked.
"Yeah, actually." She pulled a folded-up piece of paper out of her back pocket. "You guys run the bounty website for us too, right?"
It was a different department, but we did. "We do."
"Here, can you send this for them to update? It's urgent to deal with the bactimen." She handed me the paper.
Of course. I opened it right then and there. "This is a villain?"
"Yeah, Demon is extremely dangerous. We can't get anyone close enough to contact them; the bounty is for getting them on the phone to talk to us." Kim grimaced a little at the idea of asking a super villain for help.
I studied her. If they were pulling in a villain and enforcing a lockdown, the bactimen must be a much larger problem than anyone realized.
"You don't have their power listed here," I commented.
"No one knows exactly what Demon's power is. Everyone and everything just dies when they get close to their location.
Finding them isn't hard. Getting in contact with them is. We know where Demon is right now." Kim tapped on the address written down on the messy note.
I had to admit that I was a little intrigued by the idea of everything that got close to the super dying. That was some power. Maybe it was something I could mimic if I got a good look at it.
I looked down at the bounty. I couldn't help but think about the idiots that would get themselves killed going after it… and the blowback we'd have to deal with when the lawsuits came.
At least, that's how I was justifying it in my mundane life.
Staring at the sheet, I wondered if I should take it. I was pretty sure I could handle anything a super threw at me.
Not wanting to tell Kim that, I just replied, "I'll get this over to our systems team to upload tomorrow morning."
"Thanks. There's too much going on. I'm sorry to just drop this on you. But I would appreciate it." She gave a shake of her head.
She seemed overwhelmed, not at all how I expected her to be.
"You and the heroes do so much for us. It's only fair if I help out a little," I tossed an idle compliment. Her bureau and the heroes were worthless in my eyes, but my job required me to be polite.
"Thanks." Kim headed off.
It was past six and getting dark early. The stars were already out as I headed into the lobby.
Outside, the pig-nosed guard leered at me as I crossed the threshold, but one look at the not so far away BSH Director curbed any thought she might have had to retaliate for the morning.
Instead of following Kim, I went back over to the alley that was still coated in blood.
The train wouldn't be running for the next half an hour, and I really didn't feel like waiting.
Looking every which way for a camera or person, I found nothing and sensed nothing with my superpower.
So I pushed light away from me and let it wrap around me rather than bounce off me. It made a faint warp in the air if someone paid too close attention, but at night, there wouldn't be an issue.
Then I gathered kinetic energy. Using that energy, I lifted myself off the ground before flying up into the dark night.
I had the paperwork tucked into my pocket, and my mind kept wandering back to this Demon. Their ability seemed like a challenge, and it had been a while since I'd had a good challenge.
And helping find somebody who could help against a major problem in the city seemed like a good reason to be too busy to go to the bar with Ben and my team.