Marcus rubs a hand over his chin and speaks again, reckless as ever. “I have heard rumors that he shifted into something else. I didn't think the boy could give us any more surprises.”
The boy.
I reach forward to grab the bottle of water in front of me, wishing desperately that it was whiskey to take away some of the sharp edges inside of me. There will always be a level of superiority in this man when it comes to anyone that he deems below him, and that grates on my last nerve.
While his Gift isn't at any of our levels, he has years of experience on the TacTeams, and it means that he is quick to lord that over anyone around him. The fact that Gryphon hasn't called him out and thrown his own weight around is a minor miracle, especially considering that Marcus is his uncle.
Family reunions are never pleasant.
North clenches his teeth together for a second, visibly calming himself down before speaking again. “I’m not saying we aren't going to go in. I'm merely saying that we need to have a plan before we do.”
Vivian rubs a hand over his short, cropped hair, looking a decade older than he had a week ago. Watching his Bonded feel the pain of Unser’s torture had clearly been an ordeal for him overnight, and he looks as though he is ready to fight alongside us. I know that North would prefer for him to stay behind at the Sanctuary and keep an eye on things here, but I get the feeling that this time he is going to insist.
One does not merely say no to Vivian Wentley.
“It's not that difficult. There's only one Transporter spot to get into any of the Wastelands—”
“The camps are different though,” North cuts Marcus off. “They don't have Shields on them in the same way and, though I'm sure there is added security wherever they're keeping Unser, they're not going to waste that many people while they are on the offensive elsewhere.”
“Do we know which camp they're keeping him at?”
North's eyes flick over to me at my question and he gives a sharp nod, but it is Vivian who answers for me. “It's the one they kept your Bonded at. That's the one that Davies prefers, where he keeps all of his ‘special’ and ‘important’ guests.”
My bond does not like that. I can feel the shadows in the room and darkening, and I take a moment to check in with the bond and tell it to calm down.
I’ve become an expert at reasoning with it.
We will go to this camp, we will set the creatures on everyone. We will torture the man responsible for these things. We will do everything that it wants to do, but we cannot start that here.
There's an audible gulp out of one of the men further down the table, and North and Gryphon both stare at me for a second, subtly enough that no one else can tell that they're both checking in with me in a very shocked manner.
Surprise, my bond is obsessed with the girl and the god living inside her.
Things move quickly as soon as it’s been agreed on that our Bond Group will go with a smaller TacTeam to retrieve Unser and take out the Resistance camp. We had lost more than thirty operatives at the Wastelands, a number far too large for how limited we already are, and the decision was made to send in a smaller but more powerful group.
As I suspected, Vivian refuses to be left behind this time.
None of us want to leave Marcus in charge but in the end, it comes down to splitting up the Bonded Group to stop that from happening, or having everyone together.
I know which I would rather, and I have a suspicious feeling that when we arrive at the camp and come face to face with Silas Davies, the man who was responsible for kidnapping and torturing Fallows, it will not be North or I facing him.
Our bonds will insist on taking over.
With such a small group going, it's easy to coordinate and move out. I change into my Tac gear at North's offices before everybody else arrives and triple check that all of my weapons are clean, strapped in correctly, and fully loaded. Then I run through all of my shadow creatures, checking in with each of them and making sure that there aren't any signs of danger or weariness in them. It’s a necessity, especially since I’ve only had a few hours of sleep on the couch at North's office between arriving home and heading off to the TacTeam meeting.
I can't shut my eyes without seeing Fallows’ bond standing there in that robe and beckoning me towards her. She looked and smelled as though she had been thoroughly fucked by every last one of her Bonded, all of them except me. It had meant that it was a nightmare trying to go to sleep with my bond warring inside of me to go back to her.
I couldn't though.
I couldn't go back to her any more than I could have stepped into that room.