Assignment - Akela Carpenter, Sierra Aguirre-Stoker, Shane Barrett, Pete Jemison, Saanvi Desai, Wren

Detective Akela Carpenter has worked her fair share of supernatural crime. Being gifted with what her Hawaiian grandmother called “One eye in the land of the spirits” (quite literally; she wore a brown contact for years after she moved to LA, trying to pretend she was normal and hide the single shifting sea-green iris) made her an instant recruit to the city’s fae enforcement task force. She'd hated the Codes and what they did to the city's already vulnerable fae, but she’d found a place she felt like she was actually helping them, working drug busts on Damiana smugglers and dealers.
Getting abruptly reassigned after the biggest bust of her career has been a slap in the face. She’s been fighting her way through the ranks for a decade and a half. And now, instead of receiving a commendation for her success, she’s been transferred.
It’s hard not to be bitter about it. To wonder if she’s being shunted off so she can’t point the finger at whoever on her team was skimming evidence. If she had to guess, it’s Archer. His mother is a senator’s sister in law. He has protection. And powerful friends who can make a problem like her go away.
Her new assignment is disconcertingly vague. She’s being assigned liaison to a hunter agency strike team code named “Polaris”. She knows nothing about it other than that.
She’d sort of like to strangle someone in the personnel office. Just because she’s worked fae crime for years does not mean she’s qualified to deal with vampires. People somehow seem to assume the two are similar just because they’re supernatural beings.
She pulls her clunky ancient Crown Vic out of the detectives’ parking line. She can’t quite bring herself to give up the car that belonged to her mentor. Carlos has been gone for eight years, but she still feels like it’s her responsibility to take care of that old beater. After all, he left it to her. Specifically. In his will. She feels like that has to mean something.
Her radio crackles, a re-direct from her original destination, the Chimera agency itself. Apparently ‘her’ strike team was scrambled to deal with a blood harvesting ring, and she’s being asked to help coordinate the arrest since that’s a crime that falls in the grey area between human and vampire justice systems.
When she pulls into the warehouse lot, it looks like pretty much every other arrest she’s ever worked. Minus all the flashing lights and black-and-white cars.
There’s a matte-black van, an older model with a battered left side panel, parked next to a silver classic. She can’t ID it on sight, vehicles have never really been her thing, but it’s definitely a few decades older than the usual commuter car.
A string of cuffed people are standing in a line against the van, being watched by a petite woman with long dark hair that appears to have escaped a ponytail at some point in the scuffle. She turns around when Akela pulls into the lot, the gun in her hand coming up from against her leg to train on the car.
Akela steps out of the car, slams the door hard enough the temperamental latch will actually catch, and holds out her badge. “Detective Akela Carpenter, LAPD.”
The woman holsters her gun and takes Akela’s hand with the slightly less bloody of her own, wincing. It looks like she fell onto shattered glass and caught herself on her hands. “Sierra Aguirre-Stoker.”
She gestures to the others. “Pete Jemison.” A blond man with wire-rimmed glasses and a bruised cheek waves shyly before turning a notebook so the woman next to him, her brown skin mottled with pale scars, her dark hair tangled, can see it. “He and Saanvi Desai are our accountants.”
“Hi, I’m Vi,” The woman says. She waves, then turns back to the paper, pointing to something and talking animatedly to Pete.
A woman steps away from the van and walks toward them, sheathing what appears to be a collapsible bo staff at her back. “This is Wren.” The name is a dead giveaway she’s fae. So are the thorn vines curling over the staff. Her silver-blond braid is also studded with fragments of glass and plaster. There’s a deep gash on her cheek and she’s limping slightly on her left side, as if she’s turned an ankle.
Maybe this is why Akela is here. Someone wants her dealing with a team with a fae on it. “Sierra?” Someone steps out of the building, then leans against the silver car with an air of familiarity. He’s big, skin pale, almost too pale, and his eyes don’t look human.
“And that’s Shay.”
He’s not fae. But Sierra is being as cagey with his name as she was with Wren’s.
All of them are wearing leather jackets, with varying patches and logos, but they all have the Chimera’s three-headed emblem on the left chest, and a patch with a white four-pointed star, like a compass rose center, with the words “Polaris” below it, on the right shoulder. Well. Almost all.
Shay only has the “Polaris” patch. Not the Chimera.
Maybe he’s some other liaison. LAPD can’t be the only one who wants a finger in the pie of a new hunter strike team. But he doesn’t give her the sense of being FBI or DEA or any other law enforcement. Especially not with how often he’s glancing over at her with vague apprehension.
He does look familiar. But like…wanted poster on the wall familiar.
A second van pulls up, and a short woman steps out, flanked by two burly-looking men, all of them also wearing leather jackets with the Chimera logo.
“Stoker. Barrett.” Sierra and Shay both snap around to look at her. “Want to tell me why you disobeyed a direct order not to engage?”
Barrett?
Shay. Shane Barrett.
Ho-ly shit.
No wonder LAPD wants someone watching out for this team.
Akela slips her badge back into her pocket. She can see what the play is here. If this team succeeds, LAPD can claim they have partial responsibility, putting a rising star like Akela on the job. If it fails, they’re perfectly fine with sending her career down in flames.
So she’s going to make damn well sure that this succeeds.