CHAPTER ONE
The Puppeteer
Washington D.C was unbearably humid this time of year.
Kitty had been in the American capital for almost a week now, attempting to get familiar with the unfamiliar town, but there was only so much she could do with the infinitesimal time she had been given for this particular mission.
This job would have been far easier in a city she was more familiar with, like New York, but the Confederacy had moved the North American Capital Citadel in the 1960s when things started to get to rough for their fragile Aurors. Cursing the previous Magister's name, she was forced to get acquainted with the new Capital Citadel's location or lose out on a major payday.
Honestly, the Broker's generation had it so much easier.
At this moment, she sat in her hotel room, examining herself in the mirror. While she usually preferred to flaunt the assets that good breeding and healthy living had given her, today she was going out of her way to seem as unremarkable as possible. Her shoulder length black hair was tied up in a high ponytail and she had forgone any kind of makeup charms. The stolen black and silver Auror uniform accentuated her form nicely, but she hoped no one noticed she was wearing the winter gear and not its lighter, sleeveless summer counterpart. The Broker had needed more time to steal the season appropriate uniform for her, and that was time she didn't have.
Picking up Saturday's evening edition of The Montreal Spectre, Kitty gave the room one last visual sweep before replacing her silver Ouroboros with her brand-new onyx one and exiting the room. She didn't bother to check out, as she had been staying here on the tab of her client and would be making her return once her mission had been completed. The very best Muggle hotels could often rival the middling Wizarding ones, so it was no hardship for her to spend a week living in one. Besides, it was easier for her assets to report to her in the Muggle world, or come in for a tune-up, without attracting undue notice from the local authorities.
While in the elevator, she glanced down at the newspaper she was still carrying. MASS BREAKOUT OF AZKABAN was a chilling headline, even for someone in her line of work, and she wondered for the hundredth time that day if she had been too hasty in changing her plan at the last minute. When she had seen the paper last night, her last-minute adjustment to the plan felt like a stroke of genius, but now she wondered if she was merely calling the Chimeras to her door.
Inside her hip holster, her wand began to buzz in a pre-timed alarm. It was midday. Her plan had begun.
At that exact moment, just a few miles away, hundreds of Muggles began to scream in horror.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Toby was strolling down the street to the beat that his headphones were playing into his ears.
He was on his way to his favourite bistro, making the most of his lunch hour in order to meet up with his girlfriend. For how hard his office worked him and his colleagues, an hour to eat and relax was not nearly enough, but he found it hard to get angry these days.
Things had been looking up for him since he graduated last year, and his first job being a lot harder than he had expected wasn't enough to get him down. Sure, the pay was crap, and the benefits were non-existent, but it offered good upward mobility, probably because there were few people who were qualified for the position, and only a fraction of that wanted to stick around long enough to be promoted.
He noticed one or two grouches were giving him odd looks as he was practically bouncing rather than walking, and he couldn't blame them for it. Who was this happy on a Monday? Normally, he would be right there with them if he wasn't on his way to meet Cynthia.
Just the thought of her name was enough to make him want to dance to the beat of the song playing in his ears. He didn't of course, as he could see her across the wide street and through the window, sitting at their favourite table at their favourite restaurant. If she saw him dancing down the street, she wouldn't hesitate to make fun of him, and he didn't want to give her more ammunition than she already had. Because she had plenty.
Looking at her now, strumming her fingers along her glass while she went over whatever work she had brought with her to pass the time, he felt certain of his future. It had only been six months, but with each passing day he grew increasingly certain that she was it for him. He could see his entire life play out whenever their eyes met, and it was nothing but happy.
Cynthia seemed to sense his gaze as he waited for the signal to turn green, and raised her hand in a silent greeting, her lovely smile stretching out across her face.
It was the last thing he ever saw.
Toby was dead before what was left of his body could even hit the ground, his headphones continuing to play the upbeat music against the pavement. Inside the Bistro, Cynthia had begun screaming and the other patrons looked at her, then out the window to see what had alarmed her.
Marching down one of the busiest streets in the city, brazen in broad daylight, were a dozen men and women in black hooded robes.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0
Kitty had taken a risk in deciding to use the Apparition point in Rock Creek Park, but she thought it would be far more unusual for an Auror to arrive to work on foot. Mercifully, the Broker had made an exact copy of the Auror badge she had borrowed from the Research and Development's Lieutenant that she had targeted and flirted with at the local tavern a few nights earlier.
She had timed her arrival perfectly. Alarms were blaring and Aurors were being deployed to deal with the sudden Death Eater attacks that were happening around the city. The two panicked Sentries that were stationed at the gates waved her through with hardly a glance at her badge, assuming she had been called in to help with the crisis that had erupted out of nowhere.
She walked up to the Citadel doors with as much authority as she could muster, not having expected her plan to work so smoothly. She had clearly underestimated how thrown the Auror Corps were by the fall of Azkaban.
Kitty held her breath as she pressed her badge into the slot by the already open doors. It took just a moment for the slot to return her badge without raising the alarm, but it was the longest moment of her life. Doing her best to seem impassive, she walked through the open doorway, finally releasing her breath when she wasn't incinerated the very instant she crossed the threshold.
While her bewitched assets caused chaos in three separate locations across town, Kitty planned to take full advantage of the mayhem that she had triggered. Avoiding the elevator, as she didn't want to risk getting trapped, she instead took the stairs down to the Research and Development Department.
R&D was far down, below training rooms and even holding cells. The idea behind its location was the minimisation of whatever damage their experiments caused and to give enough time for the Citadel to be evacuated should the worst happen, and the Researchers accidently open a bridge to another world, setting an Eldritch monstrosity loose on their world.
It sounded crazy, but it had happened before. It was how they had lost Atlantis.
Finally, after climbing down several minutes' worth of dimly lit, windowless staircases that had to have taken her a least a mile beneath the city, she came to the level she was looking for. The two young sentries that had been stationed by the double door R&D entrance looked surprised to see someone walk from the staircase rather than the elevator, but true to their training, they didn't hesitate when confronted with something unexpected.
"Stop right there, Ma'am." The taller of the two ordered. "Only authorised personnel are permitted on this level."
Kitty smiled tersely. The two were on guard so they must have been made aware of the situation on the surface through their Communication Mirrors. Still, they were young and inexperienced, which is exactly why she chose today to attack. R&D was usually protected by at least one experienced veteran, someone experienced in the Mind Arts, and while she could overwhelm most other Masters, she really didn't have time for that.
"I'm the new Lieutenant, taking over for Walters." She offered the nearer of the two, the shorter one, the blank documents she carried. When he reached for it, their fingers brushed and she had him with her speciality; A silent, wandless Confundus Charm. The shorter guard gave an almost imperceptible shiver, and if she weren't looking for it, she would have entirely missed it.
However, she hadn't been trained to notice imperceptible details, not like the taller Sentry had.
Kitty saw him go for his wand out of the corner of his eye, and only a lifetime of watching out for attacks gave her enough time to react. She took a hasty step to her left, hiding behind the confounded Auror's wide build, while drawing her own wand. The taller Auror hesitated, clearly not wanting to harm his comrade, just as she had hoped. Shooting a silent Stunning Spell at him snapped him out of it, but when the red spell was blocked by his Shield Charm, the dissipating splash of light blocked his vision momentarily, giving Kitty just enough time to shoot out from behind the shorter Auror and clasp her hand around the taller one's wrist. It was a little harder now that he knew what to expect, but she was able to brush aside his rudimentary defences like they weren't even there.
Kitty gave herself a second to catch her breath, not liking how close that was, before speaking to her two new thralls. "I'm the new Lieutenant, taking over for Walters," she repeated herself. "Let me in so I can begin my research."
"Nice to have you on the team!" The taller of the two smiled as he waved his wand, opening the doors for her, while the shorter one, the apparent grouch, merely grunted his greeting.
Ignoring them both, Kitty stepped through the doors, and headed straight for the Vault. Her associate had provided her with directions once she was on the inside, and having memorised them, she found the Vault with ease. It was a huge round door, made of the finest Goblin Silver and would put most of the vaults that Gringotts made to shame.
It would have been impossible to break into, but there was a reason she had targeted that particular Lieutenant in the local tavern. Only he, the Captain of the North American Research and Development division, the five Generals and the Magister were permitted to access the Vault unsupervised. Using a copy of the Lieutenant's badge meant that she was a part of that exclusive number too.
The moment the vault door opened, she slipped inside and began her search. It wasn't an easy one. The Vault was far bigger on the inside then it was on the outside, which made sense as all the unidentified evidence from cases all over North America were sent kept here for study, but she had included time to search when she had made her plan. It would take at least an hour for the Aurors to clean up the mess she had made before they could even begin their investigation of how it had begun. She meant to be long gone by then.
The walls were lined with Goblin Silver draws and she had to use her counterfeit badge to open them all, one at a time. It was a time-consuming process, but she got lucky when she found the correct draw in under the twenty-minute mark.
Slipping on her Dragonhide gloves, she reached into the draw and pulled out the Artifice. She hadn't blinked when the client had described his prize, as most Artifices were often disguised as incongruous items. Still, it was unusual to see a thin, black, leatherbound diary in a place like this.
Switching it with an enchanted copy the Broker had made for her from the description of a description (she really didn't pay him enough), she closed the draw and made to leave before she heard movement behind her.
Throwing herself to one side, she just barely missed the Stunning Spell that had been aimed at her back. Throwing up a Shield Charm, she came up from her roll onto one knee, and faced her attacker. When she saw who it was her stomach dropped. What the hell was Captain Halifax doing here on her day off?
The Captain of the Research Division lived up to her fearsome reputation as she didn't pause her attacks in the slightest. Despite spending most of her life training under the Broker, Kitty quickly found herself on the backfoot.
Captain Halifax had conjured blades sharp enough to shatter her Shield Charm and when she transfigured them into harmless sheets of paper, Halifax charmed them unbreakable and had them restrain her arms and legs, pinning her to the wall.
"You Auror Captains really live up to the hype, don't you?" Kitty asked, jovially.
Halifax narrowed her eyes. "No accent. You foreign then?" Kitty said nothing and Halifax smiled grimly. "Stay quiet for as long as you like, darling. Once General Creed finds out about this, he'll have you squealing in no time." Kitty smirked, which made Halifax's confident smile slip. "What are you-?" She was cut off by the Stunning Spell that hit her back.
"You took your time." Kitty complained. "Release me." She ordered her two bewitched guards. The moment they had done so, she began to rub her arms and legs, checking herself for any damage. While she never would have stood a chance against an Auror Captain, she would have put up a much better fight if she weren't so focused on summoning her confounded allies to her aid.
Kitty had previously planned to leave without a trace, but that wouldn't be possible now. She didn't have the time to get past Halifax's Occlumency defences without risking more people stumbling upon her, and she really didn't want to get General Creed's personal attention. "Come here," she told her bewitched guards, "and stand still."
It would be much simpler to implant memoires into the minds of the still inexperienced Sentries than it would to erase a single one from a veteran, and in just a few minutes she had both men believing that they were both having affairs with their Supervising Officer, Captain Halifax.
They had discovered that she was two-timing them and confronted her which led to a three-way duel. Not her best work, but she didn't need it to hold up under investigation as she placed another layer of duplicity before departing.
She reached into one of the draws she had previously opened, removing a snuffbox of Flesh-Eating Concoction that was labelled as evidence for an ongoing murder case in Portland before leaving the Vault. Should anyone look too deeply into this incident, they would assume this entire charade was all for overturning a murder charge.
Kitty left the Washington Citadel with haste, through the path she had entered through. She had spent far too long down here already.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0
It had been two days since her incursion into the Washington Citadel, and she had only managed to get back to Montreal the night before after delivering the strange diary. Walking into the Knight's Dusk, the local headquarters of the Fallen Sun, she made a beeline for the back where the Broker's office was located.
As she walked through the tavern, some of the regulars greeted her warmly, having had the pleasure to watch her grow up here. Glad she didn't have to serve such a rowdy crowd anymore, she was now much more genuine in her smiles as she headed into her father's office.
"Well done," said the Broker, "I honestly didn't think you could pull it off."
"Gee, thanks dad." Kitty rolled her eyes. "My money?"
"You have the right priorities." The Broker smiled, reaching into his draw to remove a Mokeskin pouch, filled with her twenty thousand Galleon fee, the most she had ever been paid. Accepting the pouch gratefully, the Broker began speaking again, business as usual. "You've got another client waiting for you in the back rooms."
Raising her eyebrows at how fast business seemed to be coming in these days, Kitty headed right for the directed room, storing her new fortune away in her bag. Upon entering the room, she saw a short man with close cropped blonde hair stand as she entered the room.
"Katherine Lawless? I'm Elijah Torrington, pleased to meet you." He spoke her native French without an accent, like all Translation Charms users, and she appreciated the gesture. He indicated for her to take the seat across from his at the table.
"I have a job for you. One that was commissioned by my Superior Officer."
Kitty took the offered seat and asked, "Superior Officer? You don't look like an Auror."
"I'm not." Torrington sounded insulted. Instead of explaining he reached into his pocket and removed a single photograph which he handed to her. Glancing at the figure in the picture, she felt her stomach drop.
"Why don't you go after him yourselves?" She asked, trying to keep her voice light.
"A few reasons," Torrington shrugged. "First, our Master did not appreciate you using our group's identity in confusing the Aurors of Washington. This is repentance on your part." He said this darkly, through narrowed eyes. Kitty could feel her palms start to sweat, but she kept herself from shaking. The Dark Lord was the last person's attention she wanted. "Secondly, our master has theorised that his sworn servants cannot harm the boy without suffering similar effects. As such, we are outsourcing the problem."
Kitty had killed for a commission before, but never a child. However, she didn't let an ounce of her distaste show itself on her face. "What exactly do you want me to do?" She asked, carefully.
"I thought that was obvious. We want you to kill him." Kitty repressed a groan. "It doesn't have to be public, but his head needs to be intact so he's easily identifiable. Our Lord wants the Confederacy to lose its symbol of hope."
Kitty nodded, silently accepting the job as she looked down at the photograph once more. The boy in the picture wore sapphire blue Quidditch gear and carried a Nimbus 2000 broomstick in one hand as he smiled and jostled with his teammates. He was in that awkward gangly phase that most kids seemed to go through, where he was more limbs than body, but his mass of curling black hair and vivid green eyes gave him a distinctive look.
If that wasn't enough to identify him, the scar above his right eyebrow, shaped like a bolt of lightning and peeking out behind his sweaty hair, certainly was.
A bit shorter than my usual chapter length, but I managed to tell everything I wanted to without going into the minutia like I usually do. Is this character growth for me?
Anyway, you get this a day ahead of schedule because I didn't have time to upload it tomorrow.
Please review.