Agent Kat

Chapter 1: Kat

His hair was black as night, his skin white as snow. He wore an expensive black silk suit with glossy black dress shoes on his large feet. His brown leather briefcase swung with his arm at his side as he walked down the street. Shiny black sunglasses donned his face, shading him from the summer sun. Like a typical business man, he was talking on a silver iPhone in a black case.

Kat watched from around the side of a red brick building, her normal teenager attire fitted to her body. Black leggings, blue sneakers and a red leather jacket covering her green shirt. With those clothes on, it was quite hard to find her; New York is a big city with a lot of strange clothes and strange people.

She smiled, her eyes locked on the wallet half sticking out of the man's back pocket. It would so be easy to swipe it. It might have been too easy.

Taking a deep breath, Kat concentrated. All the noise and bustle of the city faded to nothing as she closed her eyes and focused all of her thoughts on what she wanted to do. She could picture it in her mind. Every detail of the sidewalk under her, and the buildings around her. She could see the man walking away slowly like he had all the time in the world.

She felt herself get torn away from her place beside the building by her own mind. The world flashed by her as she teleported herself behind the man. The other people on the street didn't matter. She simply appeared behind the rich business man.

No one walking by noticed her at all; they couldn't see her, or they didn't care. She was short and lithe and easily blended into crowds. Reaching her hand out, she quickly snatched the black leather wallet and started running down the street the opposite way from the man as she tried to figure out where to teleport to.

She heard yelling and the pounding of feet behind her, and Kat felt a pang of guilt run through her chest. She knew it was wrong to take from people, and she knew that this man would be devastated when he couldn't catch her...

But the just as quickly as the guilt came, it was swallowed by an overwhelming feeling of victory. She had succeeded once again.

This week, she'd be able to go shopping for some new outfits... and food.

Food was good. Food was always good.

Teleporting again, she opened her eyes to a dusty room. The paint on the walls was peeling, along with the cheap puce wallpaper. It often made her question her sanity, keeping that wallpaper up. The floor was creaky and made of wood. The furnish was fading, and there were spots of gleaming wood, and other places where it just looked like driftwood. The living room of the abandoned apartment where Kat lived was full of things she had collected over the years. The couple that had lived there before left suddenly, and left most of their belongings behind.

No, Kat didn't kill them. She isn't a murderer. She simply... persuaded them to move somewhere else, to give their unborn child a better life than one it would have had in New York. It was easy, with her telepathic powers.

The couch against the far wall was covered with cheap fabrics Kat had found in random places. Reds, blues and yellows made for an interesting patchwork, but comfortable none the less. A fireplace sat across from the couch, but Kat rarely turned it on. If she did too much, authorities would take notice and go looking for taxes. So, she rarely used the lights, the heat or the water. However, a few exceptions were made in the winter time.

Sighing, Kat put the wallet down on a glass coffee table and sat down on the couch. "Let's see what we have today," she murmured to herself. She opened the black wallet and pulled out a credit card, debit card, a few receipts and some gift cards from the front pocket. In the back were a few twenties, tens and five dollar bills tucked in along with a ton of change. "Jackpot."

Pulling the cash from inside out, she counted. Five twenties, three tens and two fives. That's a hundred and forty dollars! Plus the change, that would be enough to buy food for a whole week! Maybe even more!

She closed her eyes and hugged the money to her chest tightly before tucking it gently back into the wallet and putting it in her jacket pocket.

Walking into her bedroom, she opened a drawer in her dresser. The drawer held about twenty to thirty wallets. There were wallets of all shapes and sizes, colours and designs. She had at least ten black ones from unimaginative people she'd taken from.

Selecting a slim royal blue wallet, she put the money into it, dropping the black one with the cards still inside into the pile of others and closing the dresser door. Kat put the wallet into her pocket and walked out of the room.

Teleporting out of her apartment to the side of the grocery store, Kat sighed. Maybe, one day, when she was older, she would stop. She would get a job. Make money, not take it. But a fourteen year-old can only do so much...

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The shopping car squealed as Kat pushed it down the aisles. The cart was already full of crackers, cheese, meat, fruit and vegetables. Now all that was left was bread, butter, milk and eggs... and maybe a few extra things. Looking at the bread lined up on the racks, she picked out the whole grain bread bag with two loaves inside. That would do nicely. Laying it down in her cart, she spotted the butter section in the fridge next to the milk and eggs. Picking out a block of butter, a carton of 1% milk and a carton of eggs, she was almost ready to go.

All that was left were the pleasure items. As she walked, she spotted it: the candy section. She would only get a few things. Just a few.

The aisle was full of chip bags, pop, chocolate and bags of candy. Kat took a breath. Just a few. She repeated the statement in her head as she put a chocolate bar in her cart, along with one bag of sour candy. Just a few.

Steering herself away from the temptations, she let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. Now all she had to do was buy it all with minimal security screen time.

Pushing the cart into a self-serving line, Kat scanned and checked her food out, paying the money she needed to, and finding she still had about fifty dollars left. Smiling slightly, she loaded her groceries into bags and steered the cart into the area where all the others were. A man took the cart from her before she could align it with the others.

Well, it just saved her the trouble. Hoisting the grocery bags up, she started towards the doors. Now she could go home and rela—

"You're a little young to be shopping on your own," the man said. He was a tall African-American, with a black eyepatch covering his left eye. Kat could see the scars in a spider web crawling up from underneath the patch. He was bald, with a pepper and salt beard that was cut short. "Are you lost?"

"No. My mother was just busy at work. She told me to go shopping for her." Kat's lie came easily, slipping slickly out from her lips and into the man's ears.

The man looked at her suspiciously, but let it go and said, "Alright then. Have a good day."

"You too," Kat responded cheerfully. As soon as the man went into the store, her facade fell and she sighed with relief. Walking quickly to the side of the building, she teleported herself back home. Sighing again, she put the bags on the counter and walked into the bathroom.

She didn't look that young. Staring at herself in the mirror, she saw a nearly malnourished child with bright hazel eyes and tangled dark hair. Okay, so she looked kind of young, but that was besides the point. It wasn't unheard of for young people to go shopping.

Kat's tan skin stood out from the caucasian crowd of New York, but hey. It was New York. Tourism was its thing. To the people of the city, she probably looked nothing more than a tourist's daughter... That is, until they ask her what she was doing alone.

She would tell them some ridiculous lie about how her parents were so hardworking and busy and she had to go out for them.

What a load of crap.

Shaking her head, she strode out and away from the mirror, she went back into the living room and turned the TV on. Just one episode. While she didn't use it often, she thought today was a day to... bend the rules a little bit.

After all, that was what she was good at.