Jan Sawyer
More than once, Jan awoke that night to the smell of rain. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence, save for the fact that she was no longer in Seattle or anywhere else in the Pacific Northwest. She would roll over and look at the still unfamiliar walls of her apartment before realizing where she was. The third time her slumber was punctured by the aroma of petrichor, she finally realized that something was amiss. She had heard rumors in training about strange weather patterns bringing violence to Verthaven, and this had put her on edge considerably. Actually, everything had put her on edge considerably. Tomorrow was her first official day at NEST, and anxiety had caused her to sleep fitfully since coming back to California.
Her cat, Mugsy, stared at her from his perch on the windowsill, where he peered outside. It was 5 am, and sunlight had just begun to seep through her bedroom’s flimsy curtains. She made a mental note to buy better ones after she finished unpacking. Although her position was supposed to start that Monday morning, she had only arrived the previous Saturday and was still living out of boxes and suitcases. Finally deciding that sleep was a losing battle, Jan rose and decided to face the inevitable dawn. She turned on the tv while she made breakfast and fed Mugsy, more for background noise than because she had a pressing concern about local news or sports scores.
They were still playing clips from the previous night’s interview with some man claiming to be the head of a PMC recently contracted by NEST. She paused, and studied the screen for a moment in between bites of her apple. Although the man claimed to be a psychiatrist, there seemed to be something…off…about him. He seemed familiar, though she was fairly confident that they’d never met. Still, he reminded her of someone. There was something oily about him, though she wasn’t sure if that conclusion came more from his smug smile or the excess of product used in his hair. The interview finished with an eloquent threat for the Hands of Science, and Jan found herself studying the man on tv more closely, trying to parse who he reminded her of. Then the camera zoomed in show the man shaking hands with the reporter, both of them smiling and exchanging pleasantries. Of course! Between the smarmy smiling and the clean-cut charisma, he reminded her of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho.
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The drive to NEST HQ was uneventful, and Jan found herself trying to memorize landmarks in hopes of finding a nearby café or restaurant for her lunch break. She had hastily grabbed Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque from one of her many boxes of books, and realized with some sardonicism that Poe was probably not the best conversation starter. According to all of the paperwork that she had received, she was being placed in the I&I branch of NEST. This made sense given her abilities as a linguist and a computer expert, and she was a bit relieved that she wouldn’t likely be in the field. She still hadn’t learned how to properly control the ‘sonic boom’ portion of her power, and that made fieldwork somewhat dangerous. Unlike her pitch and echolocation abilities, her ability to create shockwaves with her voice had just recently become apparent. It had proven itself destructive and embarrassing and she had begun speaking in a low voice in order to avoid further incidents. Still, part of her had hoped that field training would help her learn to control this so that she didn’t have to interact with the world like a perpetual laryngitis patient.
She arrived at HR, or what passed for HR at a place like NEST. A somewhat snippy woman told Jan to wait at a nearby table while she got someone named Eli from I&I to come and get her. So Jan waited. And waited. And waited. About half an hour later, a very tall man walked into the office.
“January Sawyer?” he asked, looking down at her.
“Yes sir. Jan Sawyer, sir.” She replied, standing up to stare at him.
“We’d like to talk to you about an opportunity here at NEST that we think might be mutually beneficial.”
“Sir?”
“What, if anything, have you heard about taskforce RAVEN?”
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Several hours later, Former Desk Jockey January Sawyer became Rookie Field Agent January Sawyer. She was sitting at her desk, stunned at the turn of events and the diversity of metahuman coworkers that she had seen pass in front of her desk in the past few hours. ‘Overwhelming’ was an understatement.