Chapter 37: Two Lies, One Mission.
Evening ca faster than I wanted it to.
I dressed in the black t-shirt Miss Brown had brought, checked the room once the way the plain had taught , force of habit, and stepped out.
I knocked on Sherry’s door.
"Almost," she called through it.
I waited. She ca out.
Black tall body stockings, short black skirt, white shirt tucked in, hair as it always was. The sa things she wore most days. It still caught
off guard, which said sothing about either her or , and I had chosen not to examine which.
We walked to the briefing hall together.
***
The hall had dry erase boards, maps pinned at angles, chairs arranged in a semicircle with the organized urgency of a plan that had been pulled together faster than was comfortable. A man I hadn’t seen before stood at the front, nondescript in the specific way of people who worked at being nondescript.
Wells and Annabelle were already seated. Mute’s chair was empty.
"You don’t need to know my na," the man said, as we settled. "I’m here to walk you through the operation on Mr Kim’s behalf."
He waited a beat. "Miss Brown will join us shortly."
He moved to the map.
"The girl’s na is Mira. We had contracted a Stray security team to move her but they pulled out. She’s currently here." He pointed. Second floor of a ten-story hotel in the city.
"The people looking for her don’t know her exact location. But they’re in the area. Waiting for extraction activity."
"What happened to the security team?" Wells asked.
"They encountered ability users." He said it without decoration. "They withdrew."
A Stray security company!! I thought. I had walked through their town. I had seen what those people were capable of, the resourcefulness, the endurance, the specific toughness of people who had built sothing from nothing inside walls that hadn’t been built for them. If they had encountered ability users and withdrawn, the opposition wasn’t casual.
The door opened. Mute ca in, sat down, said nothing to anyone. The man continued.
"Move Mira from the hotel to a point two hundred ters north. Leave her here. Our team takes over from this point. Simple extraction."
Sherry looked at . I looked at the map.
Simple, I thought. The second most dangerous word in any plan. The first is obvious.
Miss Brown entered carrying a case. She greeted the man, told us to use the ti to plan among ourselves, and walked back out with him imdiately. The two of them disappearing into a side corridor mid-briefing.
The five of us sat in the hall with maps, a two-hour window, and a plan that had just been handed to us by people who were already sowhere else. I stood up.
"Are we actually ready for this?" I asked.
Four faces. Nobody rushed to say yes.
"Does anyone think Miss Brown’s plan holds?" I pressed.
"No," Mute said.
I looked at him. After last night, hearing him contribute clearly and without performance was interesting.
"I’m level three," he said. "Two hundred ters in one teleport isn’t possible for . I need three stops minimum to cover that distance cleanly."
He hadn’t ntioned that to Miss Brown when she’d built the plan around him. He was ntioning it now, in the room with the people who actually needed to know.
"Three stops," I said. "That ans three exposed positions in a city with ability users already in the area looking for extraction activity."
"Can you do a hundred ters?" Wells asked.
Mute thought about it. "A hundred. Yes. That’s manageable."
Wells stood and moved to the map. He pointed. "Hotel to here. One stop. We cover the walk, you cover the teleport."
"That’s a hundred ters of open street with a girl who doesn’t know us," I said. "We need to move fast and we need to move clean."
I looked at the map. "Wells and Anna get her out of the building. I go with them, I’m in close proximity for cover. Mute, you and Sherry hold the extraction point. She handles injuries if anyone cos back damaged. You take Mira the mont she’s in range."
The room considered it. Nobody disagreed.
Sherry was quiet. Annabelle was quiet. But neither of them was shaking their head and in the absence of a better idea that counted as consensus.
Miss Brown ca back alone.
"Are you ready?"
We looked at each other.
"Yes," I said, for all of us.
"Then get dressed."
***
The case held disguises.
Sherry ca out in a blonde wig, white shirt, red mini skirt, black body stockings, red heels. Annabelle was in a long black dress with a slit, heels, makeup that added years to her face and presence. The two of them looked like people who lived in the city, which was the point.
The boys were all black. Clean and unremarkable. Cars were waiting outside.
"You look good," Annabelle said to , falling into step beside
as we moved out.
"Thank you, Anna."
She dropped her voice. "Bad feeling about this. Why didn’t Miss Brown choose Mable? She leveled up. She’s the strongest we have." A pause. "Is it because she’s Bala’s daughter?"
I kept walking. Wait. Don’t tell .
I replayed the na in my head with the specific clarity of a man who has just realized sothing significant about a decision he made two nights ago. Mable. Bala’s daughter.
Annabelle walked past
toward the cars and I stood there for exactly two seconds processing what she had just said.
Then I kept moving, because there was nothing to be done about that information right now and the cars were waiting and the mission was in two hours and Bala’s daughter was going to have to remain a problem for a later version of
to handle.
I was almost at the car door. Sherry tapped my shoulder.
I turned. She was close, voice low, the specific posture of soone delivering sothing they had been holding for a while.
"Bram." She held my eyes. "I’m not a healer."
The car engine was running. The others were getting in. The city was waiting.
I looked at her. She looked back with the steady expression of soone who had just put down sothing heavy and was waiting to see what happened next.
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