The opened a bleary eye and groaned. Quickly she closed her overly sensitive eye to the harsh morning sunlight. She couldn't pinpoint what exactly had woken her up so suddenly (and at such an ungodly hour). Then she heard the click of the answering machine in the hall and Zair's voice. “Cat, wake up! I know you're there, I can hear you.” She knew he could hear no such thing, but she'd rather leave the warm, comfortable nest of blanket she had made on her bed, then listen to Zair carry on a one sided conversation, which, given two more seconds, he would start to do.

She stumbled her way from her bed into the hall, clipping her shoulder on the corner of the wall, and trying to regain her balance, she almost slid sideways into another. Blindly she reached for the phone and put the cold receiver to her ear. She grunted into the mouthpiece.

“For God's sake Cat, what were you doing last night?” He asked impatiently.

“Why you wanna know?” She slurred sleepily into the phone. She wasn't a conversationalist in the morning, so sue her, and Zair always seemed to make her short tempered with his cold, bland personality when she was anything but shy of knocked out drunk. Zair was her boss though, and she respected him as such. She wouldn't let her emotions get in the way of her work.

He made a noise into the phone that sounded suspiciously like a growl. “I've gotten reports that you nearly destroyed the courthouse last night with your little display of temper!” Well I'm sorry, she thought sarcastically to herself. Next time I'll be sure to ask him out onto the streets so all the humans can see us. “Were you on drugs last night?” She could tell he was angry by the way he nearly bellowed into the phone and didn't want to make it worse, but in her mind she snickered. Yeah, actually she was. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. She wasn't even quite sure what she had taken, but she knew it was an impressive cocktail.

“Your lucky we have this type of thing worked out with the government. The story's already in the papers, they're calling it a gang scuffle.”

Ah, humans. It was impressive how quickly they buckled under fear when something powerful came along. They let the organization that Cat belonged, The Eye to do their thing, because in their mind, they were being rid of some immortal gang leaders. No one was going to object to that.

Zair sighed into the phone, sounding tired. For a moment Cat felt a little guilty, but she pushed it away. She was just doing her job. Now it was time he did his. She worked behind the scenes, hunting these people down and then getting rid of them. He dealt with the government, with covering it up.

“Just get down here. You need to file report and Sahn wanted to see you.”

“When d'you want me down there?” She tried to hide her discomfort. Sahn was easily one of the nicest, most gentle people she knew, but she still hated doctors and medical settings. Hopefully Sahn would be willing to see her in her office and wouldn't make her take the long trek down to the infirmary.

“You have two hours to get over here.” She knew he was being lenient. People in her line of work were expected to drop everything at the toss of a dime.

“Fine. You want me to file report, see Sahn, or come to you when I get in?”

“Come to me. Now shut up, your wasting your two hours.” The click of the phone and the dead dial tone rang loudly in her sensitive ears.

She sighed. She was too exhausted from last night to move her stiff, abused muscles more then she already had, but she had been trained to push herself past her limit, past where she thought she could go.

Her knuckles had begun to scab over and the skin didn't want to stretch with the movements of her hands. That damn vampire last night managed to land a blow, the knife had slid past her defenses and had dug into her side. The blood was dried now, but the wound still had a dull ache. Though she wasn't a vampire, able to heal from nearly every wound within a matter of minutes like some of the people she worked with, she did heal remarkably fast for a mortal. The wound was already almost done healing itself.

Sweat had dried in her hair leaving it stiff, and had dried onto her skin feeling like glue. She didn't feel as if she had the energy to move after having only slept four hours, but she made her way to the bathroom.

The bathroom was small, but then again, most of the rooms in her apartment were except for the kitchen and her bedroom. Everything looked new and clean, being as how she tried to avoid the bathroom. She had to stop herself from groaning every time she walked into the room, as the peach walls drove her crazy. Someone was having seizures when they painted that bathroom.

This morning she was too tired to grumble under her breath about the atrocious color choice. Instead she stood under the warm spray as it washed the blood and sweat from her skin, pink, down into the drain. She just closed her eyes and leaned against the peach (ugh!) tiled wall and dozed.

After about a half hour she managed to rouse herself enough to get out of the shower. The warm water had succeeded in loosening her stiff muscles and she felt cleaner without all the dried blood on her skin. The shower had also erased some of her exhaustion.

Now she could feel her stomach growling painfully against her ribcage, begging for food. She headed for the kitchen

She opened the refrigerator door with a loud suctioning noise. She poked around trying to find something edible. There was a wrinkled orange in the back that had reached the penicillin stage and she made a mental note to throw it out sometime when she wasn't as tired. There were two Chinese food cartons, one with Lo-mien, the other with a little bit of orange chicken still left in the bottom, leftovers from dinner the night before last. A few other items that were off, and nothing that tempted her stomach. “How come I never have any food in this thing? Isn't that what it's for?” Great, she smiled slightly at herself, though her smile held no amusement. I'm talking to myself. That will really get me that promotion. It could probably get me locked up in an asylum too. Good to know that I qualify for something anyway.

She pulled out a soft loaf of Portuguese bread that she had picked up the other morning at the specialty shop two streets over. She shoved the small piece of bread with its rosemary olive oil into her mouth and walked into the living room. She flipped on her computer and heard it whirl to life, straining. Another thing she needed, that she was too broke to get. She pulled her media player up and waited impatiently for it to open. Finally the window opened and she double clicked on a song. A live version of The Eagles song Desperado. She pumped the volume up she so could hear it through the apartment, picked up some more bread from the kitchen, and walked into her room, all the while muttering under her breath about piece of crap computers and jobs that didn't pay.

She went to the white laundry basket that sat in the corner, overflowing, buckling under the weight of too many clothes. Clothes were thrown in piles on the floor around it, hiding the hard wood. Laundry, something she had needed to do for a month that she still hadn't found the time to do. She opened up the window that overlooked onto the busy street below, hoping to freshen up the stale air in her room. She could hear car engines, radios, breaks and horns, mingled with voices of people calling to one another above the crowds.

She tried to find something clean to wear. The office didn't have a dress code, of which she was thankful. She never would have been able to keep some fancy piece of clothing clean for that long. It probably would end up torn and bloody, and she just didn't have the cash to keep up that sort of wardrobe. The clothes at the goodwill worked just fine for her. She honestly didn't care to much about what she wore as long as it was relatively clean. She pulled out a pair of jeans that were torn at the knees, and an over sized faded orange shirt, all of which smelt fairly clean. Or at least not like sweat.

She quickly pulled the clothes on. She had fifteen more minutes to get to headquarters. She grabbed her keys out of the pocket of the jeans she had worn the night before, and ran down to the parking garage. Everything could be left as it was, nothing was going to happen while she was gone. What was going to happen, would her computer explode? The bread attempt to take over the world? She felt pretty safe leaving them to their own devices in her apartment. She was sure that they couldn't manage to make anything messier then it was.

She slid into her car and put the key in the ignition. The engine whined. She pounded the dashboard. “Damn.” She was going to be late. Again.

Cat got out of the car and kicked the rusted door that had once been blue, leaving a dent in the door. She pulled her keys out even though she was fairly certain no one was going to try to steel her car. No one had yet anyways.

She jogged down the crowded streets, trying to avoid people, all of whom seemed to be moving against her. Just her luck.

Finally, after twenty minutes of running and dodging people half way across the city, she slid through the revolving doors and into the headquarters front lobby.

An extended mahogany desk was the first thing that came into focus. The workers behind it moved quickly, talking into headsets and typing away on technologically advanced computers. Cat knew, because she had tried to use one before. She could hack her way through a normal computer, but these ones were so encrypted that the workers had to learn for nearly fifteen years on how to use them. No one was going to get into them.

The floor was swirly patterned marble or granite tile that shined, the sunlight that poured through the glassed front reflected, almost too much for Cat's eyes. Marble pillars rose majestically from the floor, through the high ceilings. They were engraved with images of old mythology, Hercules, Thor, The Muses. They also told the tale of the Norse apocalypse, the sad tale of Orpheus, who, once he died became an oracle, his decapitated head resting on a lyre. It told the account of all the seers and sages throughout all mythology. Fantasy forever frozen in images upon a marble pillar. She always paused to look at them when she came into the lobby.

Cat knew that any normal person who walked into the building wouldn't be permitted further then the lobby. The lobby was an guise to hide the real workings of the tall building. People rushed back and forth over the lobby floor, through back doors and up elevators.

She walked behind the desk, past the bustling workers and through a back door labeled Employees Only in gold graven letters. She pushed the door open and no one gave her a second look, misplaced though she was in her torn jeans while everyone else wore business suits. The appearance past the lobby was less then pleasing. The hall was crowded with boxes piled haphazardly against the wall, papers spilling out. The floor was dusty and the single suspended light bulb didn't cast much light, giving the room a dingy look. She made her way past another facade, toward the real office. She reached for the doorknob, but the door swung open and a long shadow was cast over her as she looked into a shadow hidden face.