“I am,” I agreed, feeling the others’ assessing eyes on me. “I was up all night working—it was driving me up the wall that I couldn’t find an entrance like normal. Luckily, that is no longer a problem.” I couldn’t help the bit of pride I infused in my voice at the end.
What? I was proud of what a kickass job I did on this team. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something.
“You know we can help you, right?” he offered, his lips pulling up in amusement, already knowing my answer.
“Oh right, I’m sure I would manage to stay focused while hanging out. That seems to always work out so well.” I smirked as he chuckled. It was a well-known fact that I was absolutely horrible at focusing on real work and research around them. They always distracted me with interesting facts and stories. Or even worse, they tried to sit next to me, and their closeness distracted me. Still, if they really wanted to, I would never actually tell them no.
Once everyone had their tablets, I took off my glasses and cleaned them on my shirt before waking up my own. I winced at the bright light despite it being dimmed and managed to focus on the information I needed to impart.
“So tonight you are leaving around 16:00,” I explained, looking over their travel itineraries. “The pilots will drop you about ten miles outside of base, where there will be transport vehicles waiting for you. You should get to the outside perimeter of the base around 21:00, give or take fifteen minutes.”
“Do we have anyone on the inside?” Damian asked curiously.
“Not this time, unfortunately.” I frowned, hating that concept and knowing that this was truly going to be completely dependent on getting through the first few defensive measures the base had without setting off any warnings. Usually we had someone on the inside that could at least shut half of those off. I didn’t think it was going to stop my guys or even make them miss a step, but it did worry me.
I continued. “I managed to find an entry point behind a water heater in the main building, so once you gain access onto the base, try to stick along the western boundary line. You are going to one of the large squadron buildings that is near the center of the base. It houses most of their shit, so the rest of the base should be fairly empty, but keep an eye out for anything unusual. The humans are getting better about setting traps.”
“Yet we are still just as good at killing them,” Saint mused under his breath, making Blackwell, of all people, chuckle. I rolled my eyes at that, letting out a small huff of amusement as Razar smoothed his large fingers over my wrist, seemingly in a self-soothing action. I knew he didn’t like missions, and not because of him going somewhere dangerous. Nope, my perfect nightmare didn’t like leaving me for the entire night—his words, not mine!
Despite having morning coffee and spending every day with them, I never forgot how dangerous my nightmares were. I mean, I watched their missions, I knew what they were capable of. So while this seemed normal, there was a darkness to all of these men that I absolutely loved and knew would always exist, no matter how many of my unicorn mugs Saint borrowed.
“Which brings me to where you enter.” I highlighted the point in question, and it popped up as a marker on all of their tablet maps. “It looks like our target is located in the fourth sector of the building. Once you find them, make sure they are secure and stable, and after that… well, frankly I could give a shit what happens to those human assholes.”
Had I mentioned before that I hated MAM?
Cy flashed a small smirk as Damian’s gaze snapped up, his eyes flaring in surprise. I shrugged, feeling like it was an honest statement. I wasn’t sure if all humans were bad, but this organization? Man Against Monster? It was created to hurt the people I loved. So excuse the bias, but in my mind, they deserved what was coming their way.
“What does our target look like again? Do we have any information on them?” Razar asked, his frown dipping as he pulled up the essentially empty file on the object of our rescue mission. This was one of the problems with this mission.
“I don’t know what they look like,” I admitted. “Our intel says they’re considerably young, but that could mean mid-twenties or thirties, for all we know. We do know that they are a Class A, according to the trials the humans have put them through. The results are far different from anything we’ve seen before.”
I wasn’t positive where my father had gotten this intel, but it was far less than usual.
Saint stiffened slightly, casting me a glance. “Trials?”
I nodded and sighed. “Like I said, make sure they are stable before going on a massacre. We have absolutely no idea what condition they could be in.”
“Sounds pretty easy,” Blackwell murmured, his eyes sliding over the tablet before he closed it and put it down, probably having already memorized everything.
My brow dipped, feeling a bit off about all of this, but not exactly positive why. “Just please be careful. I hate the idea of you guys going on any of these missions, let alone one where we don’t have a lot of insider information.”
My words seemed to sober the mood. The door suddenly opened, drawing all our attention. My father walked in, followed by Amun, causing the already present tension from my words to grow.
“Are we all set for tonight?” I could tell my father was eager for this mission, and I think it was in part due to curiosity. He loved filling in the blanks, and the fact that he knew so little about this nightmare only encouraged him more. If it wasn’t for my gut feeling that something was off, I probably would have been excited as well.
“For the most part.” I nodded, closing my tablet and finding myself wanting to take a nap. Something that was actually an option today. And no, it didn’t matter that I’d already had several cups of coffee. If I was sleepy, I could fall asleep any time, caffeine or no caffeine.
I think it also may have been the nature of the day. Brief days before missions were usually pretty easygoing, mostly because we liked to just relax in the guys’ dorm and not do much of anything until they left. Honestly, it was in part because I couldn’t focus while knowing they would be so shortly in danger.
I know. I know. What are some measly humans going to do to these terrifying monsters? Well, unfortunately, while killing them would be a feat, as they were pretty durable, they could still be injured. Or worse, captured. So I would still worry until I heard them say the words ‘on our way back’ each and every time. It made me want to go on their missions just so I could make sure everything went according to plan.
“Amun is going to have a trial period with the team, starting with training tomorrow,” my father announced, then looked down at his folder. “For now, let’s get him to the dorms. Considering you have two extra bedrooms, he can just take one of those.”
“One of those is reserved for Razar,” Damian leveled.
“And the other?” My father’s brow lifted as if daring him to argue. I had to give my father this—despite being human, the man was very rarely intimidated. In fact, I often wondered if my reaction towards nightmares and my lack of fear was because of being raised by him. Or maybe it was natural to me. I hadn’t really given much thought to the nature versus nurture argument when it came to why I would much rather do everything but scream in terror at their presence.