No one to greet me. Not a soul in sight. Just my luck! Having taken the trouble to make a phone call to arrange a meeting with the captain as soon as I received my transfer order, I hadn’t come unannounced. I had even exchanged a few banalities with his secretary after making sure she had noted it in her diary. Obviously, I had once again dealt with an incompetent. A gem barely capable of stringing two words together, posted there to make up the numbers or to look pretty in the entrance. Fantastic!

From dawn, this first day was already shaping up to be a disaster. The weather was as crappy as my state of mind. The captain, apparently, had decided to play the invisible man. And to top it all off, this damn headache, a burning reminder of my hangover from the night before, wouldn’t let go.

My mood, already gloomy, had turned to execrable in a matter of minutes. I could already see myself taking out my frustrations on this poor girl when a deep voice stopped me dead in my tracks, echoing my name through the dark and gloomy hall of the building.

My gaze swept the room, looking for the one who had dared to call me out like that, when I came face to face with a colossus sporting a panoply of medals. Arms as thick as my thighs. A face marked by time and worries. The captain.

“Moridan, I presume. Come this way!” he thundered.

I responded to his order with a nod and complied without uttering a word. No way was I going to get bitten by the bulldog of the place!

When I finally reached the door where he was standing, he sized me up for a long time before introducing me to my new teammate, a certain Leila, and her two sidekicks, monsters answering to the names of Rex and Hax.

Leila then appeared in my field of vision, and I must admit that I liked what I saw. She was the kind of girl I liked. A little bombshell with fiery eyes. A fine and graceful face, long brown hair dancing in the wind, a slender figure nicely molded in a black leather jumpsuit. A beautiful girl, perfect in bed, but certainly not at the crime scene! I was in a fine mess, to say the least.

I had finished my training a few months earlier, going through the mandatory internships with different teams, each more badass than the last. And now here I was in the field with a girl a few years my junior. A little girl who had found nothing better to do than play warrior. Was this some kind of sick joke? A bad hazing? It couldn’t be anything else. Me, the top of my class, the one who had racked up reprimands for being a little too zealous during training, I was supposed to team up with a kid?! No way!

Of course, my surprise and disbelief did not escape the captain, who burst out laughing. A thunderous laugh that made the walls of this damn building shake. And rather than giving me an explanation, he shook his head before walking away, not without adding:

“Officer Leila is one of our best elements! I’ll leave you to get acquainted… And, Leila! Try to keep him alive for more than two days, this one! It’s an order, not a request.”

A heavy silence settled between Leila and me, as the captain’s footsteps slowly receded. For a few interminable seconds, we sized each other up, until the young woman spat a piece of metal on the ground and called out to the captain, already far away :

“It’s not going to be easy, boss! I’ve already told you that I prefer to work alone.”

The only response she received was a deep, disapproving grunt, signifying something like, “My orders are not up for discussion.” Unsurprised by the captain’s attitude, she returned to her tasks, completely ignoring me.

My blood began to boil, but I forced myself to stay calm. Even though I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, I held back. I took a deep breath, as recommended in the anger management lessons I had been forced to follow. I clenched and unclenched my fists several times. There was no question of losing control. My borderline behavior had already earned me several reprimands, and that’s why I found myself here. In this dump that some dared to call a police station.

Instead of giving in to my anger, I bided my time. I waited for long minutes for Leila to deign to look at me. And when she finally did, she threw a retort at me that left me speechless:

Hax and Rex began to stir. They were growling and sniffing loudly, as if to warn me to scram immediately. But it took more than that to scare me!

“Listen, princess. I didn’t sign up to obey a girl’s every whim, okay! Otherwise, I would have married one of those airheads my mother introduced me to. I don’t know why the captain thought it was a good idea to put us together, but from today, you have a new partner. Whether you like it or not. And believe me, it doesn’t thrill me any more than you!”

Surprised, she smiled at me and added, before settling behind the wheel of the armored vehicle parked not far away: “OK, I like you, rookie. Come on, climb in!”

Texte de L.S. Martins (version originale)
Traduit en anglais par GPT-4.
Image par Mark Frost de Pixabay  : Fantaisie La Science-Fiction Fille - Photo gratuite sur Pixabay