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Nadine held her smile until she got back to her desk.
Her desk was the last in a line of cubicles in the Immigration Inspection for Fast Travel Powers Department, which was a fancy way to say they vetted teleporters and others who could move rapidly. She’d had an out-of-office meeting with a team from the Centralian Diplomatic Corp, so she had no idea about the attack Roman had experienced just twenty minutes ago.
Nadine knew when she had the upper hand, and she was willing to hold off on celebrating until she was sure no one was watching. It hadn’t been easy for Nadine to get a job here—nor for any of them, so it was amazing to her that they had chosen some of the people they had chosen—and while it wasn’t frowned upon for one to date a coworker, it also wasn’t encouraged.
But that wasn’t the reason she was smiling.
“Hey, Nadine, any chance you can take my 10:30?” a voice asked from the neighboring cubicle. “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment—well, my wife does, so I promised I’d be there.”
“Sure, Sarah, I’m fine with that,” Nadine told her coworker. Her coworker, Sarah, never stopped gushing about her wife. Maybe all newlyweds were this way; maybe it was a Centralian thing.
Nadine heard Sarah’s chair squeak. The middle-aged fast transport advisor came around to her cubicle and smiled at Nadine over the rims of her glasses.
“You probably don’t want to hear what’s going on with her, but I can tell you if you’d like.”
“No, that’s fine, medical situations are a private matter,” said Nadine, who had grown tired of hearing about Sarah’s wife. Her coworker seemed to always be going on about her significant other, and always managed to shove her into the conversation.
Sarah sat down as if she owned the cubicle. In a way, she did—or at least she had. Nadine worked in Sarah’s former cubicle, and Sarah had been here for ten years, so she’d seen everyone come and go, and had seen the entire process change at least three times—four if you asked her, but three if you actually looked at the documentation.
“Well, it all started out with an ache she was having in her lower back.”
“Really, Sarah, you don’t have to tell me anything.”
Sarah let out a sigh that eventually turned into a burp. Nadine had seen her do this before, and it was absolutely disgusting to watch, let alone hear.
“Excuse me, I’ve been meaning to have that checked out. You know, it’s funny, we really are like trains.”
“Why are we like trains?”
“Well, I guess that’s not a good analogy. We aren’t like trains at all. With trains, you can keep the shell and just change out the insides—you know, keep things fresh. You could theoretically keep one going forever if there weren’t changes in government regulations on size and things like that. But us? You can’t just change out our parts. Well, some exemplars can, and the rich can pay for a super to do it for them, but you get what I’m saying.”
“No. I mean, yes, I do. Well, I have a lot of work to do, so...”
“Yeah, but back to the conversation we were having about my wife. So she had this pain in her lower back, always had it as far as I can remember, but things really took a turn for the worse yesterday.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“She had gone down the street to get the mail, and, well, you can’t blame young supers, but they really should learn to control their abilities better than they do. Anyway, a few of them were play-fighting and when you have a fifteen-year-old who has the ability to control vector fields and turn his arms to steel chasing after another kid—equally talented, at least a Type II—well, that’s a recipe for disaster.”
Nadine began shuffling papers on her desk. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Sarah snorted. “So these young supers were play-fighting, and sure enough, my wife got in the crosshairs. She didn’t get hit by anything, but there was a small quake that caused her to fall, and she threw her back out. So now she’s in the hospital again. Third time she’s been in the hospital this month, actually, but they never seem to heal her up. I mean, she’s on a waiting list to meet with the healer, but you know how that goes. People like us, half-powereds, we never get to meet the healers.”
“I’m sure things will change one day,” Nadine said.
“Huh! That really is something. You said that with a genuine tone of hope in your voice. I have to commend you on that. I haven’t had hope in years—not since the guy who used to sit in my cubicle left. What was his name? Was it Bobby? No, maybe it was Joel. No, that wasn’t it either. Anyway, he was a good guy. Stinky, but nice. Okay, thanks for taking my 10:30.”
With that, Sarah stood and shuffled out of Nadine’s cubicle.
Nadine didn’t have much time to prepare for Sarah’s 10:30 appointment, and Sarah, always being the type of person who wanted to arrive early, had left minutes after their very one-sided conversation.
Nope, Nadine would have to wing it.
“I need to see some ID,” Nadine said in place of a greeting.
The young woman standing before her, Sarah’s next appointment, handed Nadine her ID.
Lisa Painstake was a Type IV, Class C & F, which meant she was a teleporter who also had some sort of elemental mimicry/organic manipulation ability. The young exemplar was incredibly fit, and a pink bouffant with blond bangs made her seem just about as young as she actually was, nineteen—and already in trouble with the law.
There was a note on her ID that led Nadine to decide she actually needed to see her case file. This kind of hidden note was only visible to administrators and advisors.
Every administrator had gone through a process in which a telepath had imprinted on them the ability to see hidden codes on people’s IDs, and for Nadine and anyone else in the immigration building, this meant notes based on their immigration status, as well as more detailed notes regarding their abilities.
“Stay here; I’ll be right back.”
Nadine moved over to Sarah’s desk, ignoring the cutesy picture of Sarah and her wife at some park in the Northern Alliance. While she was a little gross and always took over every conversation, Sarah was incredibly organized, and this was evident in the fact that all her files were in order.
It only took Nadine about twenty seconds to find the young super’s file.
“Okay, Ms. Painstake, to confirm, go ahead and tell me where you think your case stands?”
Nadine had her files open now, back at her own desk, and she knew very well where Lisa Painstake’s case stood. The girl was close to getting deported, and she would have already been deported if not for the fact that she had a relative in a distant embassy.
Lisa had been caught smuggling, so she was facing deportation or jail.
The thing was, since she was from the Southern Alliance, Centralia didn’t have jurisdiction to actually jail her. This was one of the things that benefited immigrants in Centralia.
Due to a prisoner exchange law that all five countries practiced, and the fact that there were supers all around, it was very hard to police certain types and classes. Most jurisdictions preferred to let their home state take care of exemplars like Lisa. It was fairly difficult to actually get arrested and stay in jail in a foreign country, not that it wasn’t possible.
There were holding cells—and other, more secretive government prisons—where supers who severely violated laws were kept for years on end as their paperwork was processed, but for the most part, it was easier to transfer them back.
The only thing was, at least for Lisa, she had a pretty good case as to why she should stay.
Or so she thought.
“I can’t go back there. I have a brother there, and... let’s just say, it was all his idea, this whole smuggling thing, and, um... we’re kind of not on good terms now. I don’t think I would be safe if I went to my home country.”
The look in her eyes did not match her demeanor as Lisa spoke of her brother and her fear for her life.
As Nadine listened, the young exemplar with the pink bouffant laid out more issues regarding her family and why it would be very dangerous for her to go back.
Nadine had heard these types of stories before, and since she really didn’t care what happened in Centralia much anyway, she was going to approve her paperwork, saving the poor girl from having to deal with Sarah, who loved to schedule dozens of meetings just to arrive at the same conclusions.
But approval would come at a price.
And as she continued to look over the file while Lisa gave Nadine her life story, she realized that a person with Lisa’s ability in her pocket could prove useful. The thing was, Lisa wasn’t exactly a teleporter, nor was she a traditional fast-traveling super who relied on physiology and stamina to travel long distances.
Lisa had a power known as Soul Speed.
It was a rare variation of enhanced speed that allowed the person to project their astral body forward and travel anywhere while their physical body stayed in one location.
Nadine had read about it, so she knew that someone who traveled this way had advantages over a teleporter, namely in the fact that astral travel didn’t trigger teleportation detection devices.
Out of courtesy, and to show the young woman she was on her side, Nadine let her finish her spiel.
Once Lisa was done, Nadine closed her case file and smiled at the young exemplar. “I believe we can work something out.”
