Panem PD: Forged Wedding- Chapter 1

Wow

The first word that came to her mind. She stood in front of the Panem PD building, the largest police and crime scene investigative headquarters in all of Panem. It was large, easily six stories with white brick walls and exposed metal accents. The double doorway was mostly glass with silvery-metal structure. Flags of Panem and all the districts flew a few yards behind her and many people dressed in expensive looking suits entered and exited the building.

She hardly felt as though she belonged there, dressed in worn kaki pants and a nice light green button up shirt. She was sure her knee high hunting boots added to her appearance as a tourist rather then a new employee. Maybe she could even pass as a charity compared to the sharply dressed agents.

How did she end up here? Straight out of the academy and into this plush looking career?

Probably luck, she had received the notice of employment last week. She had applied here only because her childhood friend worked here and insisted that she at least apply. She had applied to the District 12 PD as well and was asked to interview the day she asked to come to be polygraphed and go through a field test to work at Panem PD.

The second she put down the Glock .22 after her field test they handed her a paper that said she had passed and was to begin work.

She didn’t know what was so special that caused them to hire her on the spot, but she wasn’t going to question it.

“Do you need help with that?” A deep male voice asked her, Katniss turned to see a handsome man with black hair and a friendly smile. “Hey Catnip”

Katniss was stunned that he actually blent in with the rest of the agents here. This kid from The Steam who used to be covered in black dust from the mines and skip rocks with her. Looking at him you wouldn’t have guessed he was from 12 like she was. He showed no sign of the poverty from 12 nor did he carry the sulfur smell from the mines. He had his hair slicked back and laughed lightheartedly when she seemed frozen.

“I know this place is huge, you get used to it though.” Gale took her box she had forgotten she was carrying. Office supplies, desk stuff, most of it was gifts from her little sister and mother when they celebrated her getting the job. “I hear you get to work with Agent Haymitch Abernathy with Unit 2? Lucky you, that team has a pretty impressive arrest record.”

“Who would have thought,” Katniss muttered as they walked through the doors. The smell of coffee hit her as soon as they entered, many of the agents walked through with mugs as security in the front checked them for unregistered weapons and asked for IDs.

They searched through Katniss’s box thoroughly before the man gave her a smile and handed her back her temporary ID. Gale picked up the box and they walked through the main area.

“Sorry, it usually takes a while the first few times through, until the guard recognizes your face and knows you work here.” Gale explained as they headed toward the elevator, “Team rooms are on the upper floors, Agent Abernathy’s team meets on the third floor.”

“That’s not an effective tour Hawthorne,” A tall blonde man commented as they walked into the elevator. He was wearing an expensive looking navy blue suite with a white button up shirt and sea blue tie. His sea colored eyes were more blue in color with slight traces of green. He reminded Katniss of the well seasoned swimmers on the college swim team with his muscle structure and tanned skin. “You wanna show her the bottom floor first, B2, that’s autopsy. Actually B3 is the very first floor, but that’s the vault where all the case files and old evidence are kept.”

“I don’t have time for your version of an ‘effective tour’,” Gale rolled his eyes clearly annoyed at the blonde. After a moment the handsome man took Katniss’s box from Gale’s arms.

“Then off to work with you, I’ll show her around, after all” He turns to Katniss and winks, “We’re on the same team. Very Special Agent Finnick Odair, nice to meet you.”

Gale looked like he wanted to protest but the elevator stopped on floor 2 and a brunette boy stepped on wearing scrubs and looked between Finnick and Gale.

“That’s Eddy, he works in autopsy with Dr. Aurelius,” Finnick stated as Eddy walked onto the elevator and Gale stepped off.

“Don’t try anything Odair, I’ll meet up with you at lunch Katniss.” Gale offered a smile that Katniss returned. When the doors closed Eddy hit the B2 button and the elevator made it’s decent.

“So your Agent Katniss Everdeen,” Finnick stared, “Haymitch talked about you. Your his second recruit straight out of 12. He also recruited Peeta Mellark, who you will be working with.”

Peeta Mellark, Katniss remembered him from the academy, blonde boy with fair skin, slow on the trigger, good with words though. His parents ran a bakery outside The Steam.

“You and Peeta are the youngest Haymitch has ever recruited,” Finnick states as the elevator stopped and the two stepped off. 23 was the youngest someone could be when they got hired into Panem PD, Katniss was 22.

Finnick showed her the basics of the Autopsy area, before taking them up a floor to B1 where they ran drills and training simulations. They passed over The Lobby but Finnick insured her there was nothing of interest there other then some pretty impressive coffee machines and metal detectors. From floors 2 and up were teams of agents. They stopped on the third floor.

“Here is our media liaison,” Finnick knocks before opening the door, “Cressida controls what the media sees and doesn’t see about our cases.”

Cressida looks up from her desk and offers a smile and wave, she has blonde hair shaved on the left side of her head and feminine looking vine tattoos on her scalp. Her darker blue eyes hold mild curiosity before she turns back to her work and Finnick closes the door.

“Across the hall is Beetee and Wiress, they handle all the techy stuff, hacking, IP addresses, background info, you name it they can get it.” Finnick started but didn’t open the door, “They are also sensitive to the light.”

“Do they really work in the dark?”

“AHA She speaks!” Finnick cheers lightly, “We’ve gone through this whole tour and you haven’t said a word!”

“Not much for small talk,” Katniss shrugs lightly, Finnick only shrugs.

“And this is Annie Cresta, She’s our forensic specialist.” Finnick knocked and waited for a high pitched “come in” before opening the door.

“Oh, Finn, I thought you were Jo.” Annie stated as she turned back to the stack of files in the lab. Annie had reddish-auburn hair and green eyes with hints of blue. Her skin was slightly paler then Finnick’s and she had light red freckles dusted over her nose.

“I knock like Jo?”

“I don’t think there’s really anything characteristic about a knock.” Annie rolled her eyes, “I was expecting her to drop by, I have the lab results she wanted for that case, want to bring them to her for me?”

“Sure” Finnick smiled and took the file from Annie, “This is Katniss, she’s the new agent Haymitch hired.”

“Nice to meet you.” Annie smiled politely, her green eyes sparkling. “I work forensics here with Delly and Chaff, they aren’t in now but I’m sure you will come across them during your cases.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Katniss smiled, Annie seemed nice, dedicated, a reasonable person to enlist help in cases.

“I’m going to take her to meet the rest of the team,” Finnick ran a hand through his hair, “See you later?”

“Sure, don’t work too hard.”

“You either.”

They left the forensic lab and walked down the rest of the way, various windows showed what was going on in the forensics and technical labs.

“We share a floor with the labs, it’s nice we don’t have to walk as much. They used to be in the basement floor with autopsy but they got moved three years ago after they renovated this floor.”

Katniss nodded as she looked through the large windows on either side of the hallway, showing different groups of people working in the labs, darker lights in some sections and doorways leading to more private parts of the lab.

“And Haymitch’s team works down here,” Finnick lead them down the hall and to one of the solid oak doors.

When Finnick said that this floor was renovated, he wasn’t lying. The office area was very nice. There were three cubes on the left and right of the large room, a large central location held a rectangular meeting table and one of those smart-boards mounted on the wall. There was a cork board off to the left of the smart-board with various photos and a white board with photos and handwriting detailing a case.

“You’re cube is over here next to Peeta.” Finnick started as he walked to the left side of the room and placed the box on the desk of the cube next to a familiar blonde haired agent.

“Katniss,” Peeta smiled, his smile was similar to Gale’s in that it was friendly, but his was sometimes warmer looking then Gale’s. He had boyish charm where Gale had a sexy gloomy thing going for him.

“Peeta,” Katniss returned the smile. He looked different in his nice suite. Black slacks with a white button up shirt and beige jacket. He looked professional.

“Cleans up nice huh?” Finnick chuckled, “He came here two weeks ago looking like you did.”

Katniss doesn’t know if she should be offended. Her eyebrows come together in annoyance and her mouth opens to fire a retort at the sandy haired agent.

“He doesn’t mean you look bad, you just look out of place.” Peeta attempted as he rubbed the back of his head. “You look nice.”

“Don’t screw with your partner Mellark.” A feminine voice called from one of the cubicles on the right side of the room. Katniss turned to notice the black haired girl that was walking over. “That’s rule number one.”

“I thought one was ‘never let suspects stay together’” Peeta’s face takes on a look of confusion as the woman makes her way over. Katniss suddenly doesn’t feel so out of place.

The woman was sporting nice blue jeans with a black halter top under a red and black plaid shirt. Her badge hung off her black leather belt that hugged her hips. Her black hair was cut short with rebellious red streaks. She looked to Katniss like a lithe lumberjack over an agent at Panem PD.

“There are two Rule Ones.” The woman smirked, “According to Haymitch.”

“Agent Johanna Mason,” Finnick introduced, “She started here a year ago.”

That would make her 24, Katniss assumed. Not that it really matter, but the closeness in age was nice, as far as she could tell Finnick wasn’t much older either, it was kind of nice.

“She’s not much for fancy dress.” Finnick smirked as he tugged at his tie. Johanna turned on the heels of her black hiking boots, from what Katniss could tell they were probably Timberland’s.

“Why dress fancy when you make me do all the dirty work?” Johanna fixed Finnick with a smirk of her own, “I do all the running after the convicts, remember?”

“It’s hard work driving the car.”

Johanna rolls her eyes as an older man walks through the door, shaggy dirty blonde hair and dark suite.

“What are you two going on about?” He was much older, probably around forty. Now that Katniss thought about it, he was probably Haymitch. “Tell you at least filled Everdeen in.”

“We haven’t talked to her about the case yet.” Finnick started, “We figured we get introductions out of the way.”

“In any case, I’m your supervising officer, you report to me Agent. You’ll learn all the rules eventually.”

Rules? Katniss remembered Johanna saying something about two rule ones, so Haymitch had his own set of rules.

“So Mason, do you think she’ll work?” Haymitch asks and Katniss watches Johanna turn back on her heels to face her. Dark chocolate eyes scan her carefully. Katniss feels slightly uncomfortable under her gaze. Her stomach flutters when a wicked smirk makes its way to the older girl’s lips.

“She’ll do fine.” Her voice is raspier, teasing. Katniss swallows and looks between Johanna and Haymitch.

“Fine for what?”

“You’d make a fine wife, so Katniss Everdeen, will you marry me?”

WHAT

Finnick is laughing, she doesn’t have to look at him to see him hunched over. Haymitch looks amused and hiding a chuckle under his hand. Johanna holds her gaze, head tilted to the side lightly with that smirk and glint of mischief in dark eyes.

Katniss doesn’t want to admit that she looks pretty attractive with her “up to no good” look. It’s kinda sexy, but Katniss quickly shakes the thoughts and looks over to Peeta, the only person not laughing at her.

“It’s for a case.” Peeta offers seeing Katniss desperate, “Johanna needed someone to go under cover with her as newlyweds. You see, our perp is targeting lesbian couples in high end neighborhoods. So its been decided that we needed two people to go undercover as a newly married lesbian couple.”

“Undercover?” Katniss asked,

“Johanna wouldn’t do it with Cashmere,”

“I’m not working with that Unit 1 bitch,”

“Annie doesn’t go into the field, Cressida can’t fire a gun or defend herself too well, and Mason refuses to work with most other women agents available.” Haymitch rests a cup of coffee on the rectangular table. “In case you were wondering, you were going to be hired either way. You can deny the case if you want.”

“Pretty sucky to deny your first case,” Finnick murmurs,

“I’ve never worked undercover.”

“It’s fine,” Johanna flashed a grin, “I’ll take care of you.”

Why did that sound more scandalous then it needed to be? Katniss thought to herself.

“Johanna’s worked undercover before, she’s good at what she does, besides you have the easy part.”

“You’re my housewife” Johanna snickered, seemingly enjoying it too much already. “So what do you say?”

“Will you accept the case?”

LIVE TRIGGER

(A) Yes...
(B) I can’t-
(C) *Look to Peeta*
(D) Why me?