#kcauweek

 48 hours previous

                Caroline Forbes was screwed.      

              Like, as in, soon-to-be-evicted-and-no-way-to-pay-tuition screwed.

              She rapidly did the math one more time, her finger flying across the calculator keys on her phone. The results were still the same.

              She was pathetically broke.

              Caroline groaned and buried her face in her hands. She hadn’t expected this, even when she had seen the exorbitant bills for her mother’s chemotherapy.   Maybe because  she had been so determined her mother would beat the cancer.

              Now her mom was dead, and Caroline had no money.

              She was so tired she couldn’t even cry.  Instead, she just sat with her head in her hands, wishing that wishes could change the world.

              That was how Enzo found her.

              “You’re not looking  too sharp, Gorgeous.”

              Caroline looked up with weary eyes as Enzo sprawled in the kitchen chair across from her. He reached  out and tugged the paper with her attempts  at budgeting on it and winced  at what  he saw.

              “Bloody hell, Gorgeous. Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”

              “I didn’t know,” Caroline replied, scrubbing a hand over her hair.  “Enzo, I’m so beyond screwed.”

              Enzo  stared at the paper, then looked up at her.

              “Are you still unlicensed?”

              Caroline scowled at the question, and darted a look around, as though her non-existent roommate would hear them  speaking; but it was the result of spending  her entire life hiding her  wiring, that Caroline was always suspicious when it got mentioned.

              “I can’t afford rent.  How would I afford licensing?” she hissed low.

              It was illegal, of course, that Caroline had the Cyborg wiring in her arms.  All Cyborgs were to be  reported and properly licensed.

              But Bill Forbes had viewed himself as something of a scientist, and rather than getting Council approval, he had simply experimented on his daughter.   He had been kicked out, of course,  once Liz realized what he was doing. But by then it had been too  late.

              He had been killed in a  freak accident before he had ever discovered if  his experiments had been successful,  and Liz hadn’t been  able to afford the astronomical Licensing fees that would have put Caroline in the government record books, but also given her free systems upkeep.

              Instead, Caroline had relied on the illegal services of Meredith Fell – she had been cheaper  than the License fees, but not cheap, and Caroline  had that debt to figure out now too.

              “Look, I know  a guy-”

              “Kol,” Caroline interrupted.  “When you know a guy, it’s always Kol, and usually something illegal.  I worry about your taste in men.”

              “He’s good in bed,” Enzo drawled. “And do you want to pay your debt  or   not?”

              With Kol involved, she should have said  no.

              When she found out the mess involved a licensed Cyborg, she should have said fuck no. He would have modern tech, while Caroline’s latest update involved whatever wiring Meredith could sneak from the Cyborg Station in Mystic Falls – not exactly big city robotics.

              But Kol had failed to mention the military aspect of the Cyborg,  making her think he was just a regular drone that had a superiority complex and needed to be brought in for rewiring.

              So in desperation, she had taken the damn dossier and spent two days hunting the bastard down.

 Present

                Klaus Mikaelson came back online slowly.

              He couldn’t recall having a reboot like that in…

              Well, Klaus Mikaelson simply didn’t have reboots like that.  A reboot that left his head pounding meant the enemy had forced a reboot, and enemies never got  the upper hand like  that.

              Except the pretty little blonde had.

              “Look, Kol, I don’t care how you usually do things. I want you to take this guy now… … Yeah? Well maybe before you  bitch we should discuss how he’s apparently your brother!”

              Klaus sat up slowly.  The wiring just below his skin was glowing – a freaky, radioactive circulatory system is what Rebekah had once likened it to  - but since the girl clearly knew  what he was, he didn’t bother  re-engaging his stealth system.

              Instead, he activated his scanner again, this time engaging a deeper scan, searching for what he had missed before.

              He couldn’t see a control center, like the one he had embedded in his neck – the central computer that connected to his brain and allowed his robotics to communicate with his human aspect.

              It was the control center that allowed his sensors to register a Cyborg and read their capabilities, but the blonde had none. Even when he searched for the wiring in her arm, he came up empty. He thought, perhaps, there was a shadow…but then he blinked and swore he must have dreamed it.

              Klaus eased to his feet, and engaged his short range projectile. The whir drew the woman’s attention, and she spun around. Klaus prepared to dodge another electric attack, but rather than go on the offensive, she dove behind a nearby sofa.

              “Shit!” She swore, and he heard her thud to the ground, completely lacking any sort of grace.

              “Your innocent act fooled me one, Love. I underestimated you. It won’t happen again.”

              He shot  into the sofa, following the sounds of her scrambling along the length.  He felt his brow furrow as she leapt out the other side, falling for what was little more than a child’s strategy with ease.

              “Stop  shooting at me!” she yelled, backing away from him so that her back hit the wall, and her eyes glistened as though –

              “Are you about to cry?” Klaus asked, his arm lowering slightly in confusion.

              “You’re shooting at  me!” the blonde retorted, brushing the tears away before they could fall.  “And I’m under a lot of stress and I’m  pissed off! This was supposed to be easy!”

              “My brother told you that, I assume.  You should know that Kol lies.  Usually, simply for the sake of lying. He’s an ass.”

              “Clearly!” she snapped.

              “And you are… not at all trained,” Klaus realized, lowering his arm the rest of the way. While he didn’t particularly value innocent lives, killing the blonde simply because she had fallen  prey to his idiot brother seemed…

              Unbearably rude.

              And rather like kicking a puppy, as even angry, tears still sparkled in her eyes.

              Yet she was still a mystery.  Because Klaus had encountered every variety of  Cyborg out there, and even the unlicensed had a control center.

              “Who created you?” he demanded.

              “My parents,” she replied somewhat dryly, seeming to calm now that he no longer aimed the projectiles at her.  “You know, like all little girl and boys, even you.  Although you’re probably not recognizable as  that boy anymore.”

              Klaus refrained from rolling his eyes, but he was used to the judgements on  how far he had let them take his Cyborg status.

              His siblings viewed him as a monster, what should this girl’s opinion matter.

              “Your name,” he tried again,  impatiently, but the girl  stayed silent.

              “Caroline?” Klaus froze when he heard  the voice. Distant and tinny, he doubted the blonde could hear it, but it was far too recognizable to him. “Forbes?  Pick up, dammit! If my brother’s killed you Enzo will never forgive me.”

              Klaus ignored the woman – Caroline, he assumed – and picked up the phone. He heard her take a step towards him, and held up his arm, once more aiming at her as he held the phone to his ear.

              “Hello, Kol.”

              “Nik,” Kol sounded as he usually did – blasé and entertained, but there was a strain under it.  “I was under the  impression you’d been temporarily shut down.”

              “I recovered,” he answered coolly.  “So, you’ve  become lapdog to big government, then.   I never pegged you as the type.”

              “Hardly a lapdog, Nik.   But  we all have to make a living somehow.  This one suits me.” Klaus could imagine Kol’s grin and felt  a pang of home sickness. “She’s a sweet little bit, our Caroline. I thought she might appeal to you, get close enough for her little shock to work.  Can’t blame a  bloke for trying, right? But she’s not big league, Nik.  Hurting her won’t do a damn thing for whatever asinine anti-establishment mission it is you’ve embraced.”

              “No?” Klaus raised a brow and grinned at Caroline in a  way that made her look a little nervous.  He stepped around her, never giving her his back, and stepped up to a portrait on the wall, of another blonde woman, hugging a toddler close.  He assumed the toddler to be Caroline; they had the same eyes.

              And he had seen this picture before.

              “Bill Forbes is a madman,” Klaus stated, and though he spoke to Kol, it was Caroline for whom the words were intended.  “But  I do believe he  loves his daughter.”

              Kol spoke rapidly, but Klaus was already done with his brother.  He dropped the cell  to the ground and stomped it hard, crushing it into a hundred pieces.  Caroline held her hand up, blue volts sparked  along her  skin, the wiring he was unable to pick up in a scan lighting up beneath her skin. Klaus engaged his sensors once more, and still no control panel.  No wires.

              Yet physically, he could see that she must have both.

              “Undetectable,” he murmured, in something close to awe. “Sometimes, he would say it was possible… but I always assumed he meant in theory.  But he had a living prototype.”

              “What the hell are you talking about?” Caroline demanded. She jerked towards him, and Klaus stepped back.  

              She still hadn’t shot anything at him, leaving him to assume contact must be necessary for her nasty little trick.

              “William Forbes, of course. Head of the military’s experimental department.   You must hate him as much as I do, Love.”

              “William Forbes is dead.”

              She didn’t deny hating him, Klaus noted. Just denied that he lived.

              “When you work with the government’s most sensitive secrets, it’s best that the world think you dead.  He’s trying to recreate you, Love. But thus far, he’s failed. Were you dead, one could assume he’d continue to fail that much longer.”

              “Screw you,” Caroline hissed.

              “That could be arranged,”  Klaus murmured, because while a Cyborg, he was also still a man,  and Klaus had always been attracted to the very rare and beautiful.

              Caroline, with her hidden robotics, was both.

              She growled low in her throat, and moved again, aiming her hand once more – this time, straight for the control center in his neck, as though she knew where it was.

              The projectile he shot at her contained  a low grade sedative – enough to knock her out, but not damage the connection between human  and robotics.  She stumbled sideways, and Klaus caught her when she fell.

              He could kill her – he was more than capable.  

              But she hadn’t denied  that she hated William Forbes.

              And that meant she could be valuable.

              At the very least, Klaus was intrigued.  And for the moment, that intrigue would keep her alive. But not free.