Huliana sighed and picked up the next phial. Taking a pipette in her left hand and lifting the test tube in her right, she precisely deposited a single rounded drop of clear liquid into the tube. The contents stayed clear. Putting down the pipette, she impatiently flicked the phial with one chewed fingernail. The color did not change. She hadn't expected it to, but felt it was worth a try. She delicately set the phial on the counter next to rows upon rows of identical phials, all containing equally, disappointingly clear liquid. Two weeks worth of new threats and envelopes – well, half of what they had received, anyway, as the other half were currently under magical investigation – were stacked haphazardly in the corner, each missing the same carefully extracted corner of adhesive. The test was looking for the presence of saliva. Unfortunately, Relena's terrorist hadn't made any of the most obvious mistakes, which meant no saliva, no fingerprints, and, in general, nothing to show for hours and hours of repetitive, boring, expensive tests. Now it was time for data entry.
Pulling on some medium, powdered, latex-free exam gloves, Huliana gently extracted a threat letter from the pile and sat down at her computer.
I will kill you, relena.
It seemed redundant to type that. It was all they ever said. Moving on.
Bold, Arial, 10 pt, black.
Centered.
No fluids.
No marks, including figerprints.
Creased in perfect thirds.
20 lb. epson printer paper, white.
The next two descriptions were nearly identical. The type of paper was different each time, as well as the originating post office on the envelope, but nothing else changed. Huliana's mind began to wander. She wanted a better job.
I'm overqualified. Really. Here I am working for the oldest living vampire and his "reincarnated" soulmate. Fighting their stupid secret war.
With no disrespect to Hannah for believing herself to be the young Old Soul Thierry had killed in his younger years, Huliana didn't know what she thought about reincarnation. It seemed ridiculous. But then, the whole idea of a living creature that could only be harmed with wood, healed just about instantly, and yet was incapable of producing functional hemoglobin was just silly. Even so, here she was.
I mean, it's not like I don't like saving the world and everything: equality is good, saving humans from people who want to enslave them is good, it's just that for once in my life I'd like a normal job.
Then she sighed. There was no way for a "criminal" to get a normal job in criminal justice. And Huliana was a criminal.
* * *
Only a few months ago, she and Talia had been the youngest graduate students ever to attend the University of Colorado at Boulder. Huliana had been home schooled, rocketing along as fast as her love of knowledge could carry her, while Talia had attended an experimental accelerated school, designing her own curriculum from the time she was five. Thinking of this, Huliana shook her head at the under-funded public school system that would inspire such divergence. Colorado had one thing going for it, though: it had a resident exchange program with the University of Hawaii, allowing the precocious Huliana to study in one of the best biology programs in the United States. There, she had met Talia, as the two dodged the media circus surrounding the entry of not one, but two 14-year-old high school graduates. The two were even more of an intellectual force together than apart, and had dabbled in just about everything, from liberal arts to quantum physics to Pascal and C++. Their real flair was for biochemistry and molecular biology, and C.U.'s cancer research teams had rushed to take advantage of their skills. Since they were young and "inexperienced", they had been given only the most menial jobs, and their superiors rarely gave the girls credit for their ideas. With stars in their eyes and the passion of youth, the two pressed for any opportunity to let their research really take off, convinced that someone needed to make a difference in the world, and, young and reckless, they seemed to conclude that it had to be them.
Boulder, as a typical college town, was full of just the sort of rash idealists Huliana and Talia needed. Eventually, they wound up joining with a few graduate students (the proper age, of course) who had proven themselves trustworthy ("Never trust anyone over 30.") and been given free access to some of the smaller cancer labs. Without the bonds of petty jealousy over publications (or FDA approval), their research progressed at an unprecedented rate, and Huliana and Talia were soon publishing revolutionary papers on the use of recombinant DNA in the treatment and prevention of several types of familial cancer. After finishing her Bachelor's Degree in Biochemistry, Huliana decided she wanted to go into criminal justice. Forensic science was the natural choice. Talia, with her BS in Chemistry, decided to pursue a Master's degree in Molecular Biology. Unfortunately, their impossibly bright future was about to be extinguished. Living young and naïve with older, liberal, male students led to the inevitable adulteration of the girls' ideals. They joined an on-campus protest.
It seemed harmless enough at first: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, which seemed to most people a great way to charge hackers with serious crimes, seemed to the members of the Open Source Revolution as silly as banning scissors because a mattress salesman might use them to cut off the "do not remove" tags on his merchandise. As with too many C.U. civil protests, traditional enmity between certain students and certain officers of the peace had worked the crowd into a frenzy, resulting in arrests. Any hope Huliana had of a career in criminal justice was officially over, and her nearly completed degree was useless.
* * *
Huliana sighed deeply, and typed her third
I will kill you, Relena
of the evening. Her arrest, the trial, the bogus charges of vandalism and creating a public disturbance – it was all ancient history to her now, but that didn't stop her from regretting what had happened next.
* * *
Whatever Talia thought at the time, Huliana didn't know. Immature and unused to failure, she allowed her new criminal record to bring her life to a near halt. She despondently finished the last few months of her Forensic Science degree and got a job at Severn Trent laboratories via the recommendation of one of her "partners in crime" at C.U. While Huliana skulked about, watching auto-titration machines with a pouty attitude, Talia began again, working for her teaching certificate.
Then the visions came. Talia was in the middle of class – Huliana, who had been rather despondent at the time, couldn't remember which – when she had suddenly become completely unaware of the room around her, and came to herself yelling frantically about keeping the boy with the cold cobalt eyes away from the halfling. Naturally, the school staff had decided she was sick, and sent her back to her apartment with a cold pack and an admonition to keep cool and drink plenty of fluids. She had a few more episodes, but as they were outside of class and witnessed only by citizens of Boulder, who were used to such things, the school officially chose to ignore them. However, Circle Daybreak took an interest after one of her dazed, half-voluntary predictions was fulfilled – especially because it concerned Relena. Under the not entirely false pretense of funding their continued research, Thierry had brought Talia and Huliana to Vegas.
* * *