Page 40 of The ARC Unit: Breach

Raven nearly choked on his coffee and Bear laughed loudly enough that Viper actually smiled.

“Welcome to the zoo,” Jackal said.

I pointed my fork at him. “I saw you in your underwear before six this morning. I think I’ve been welcomed enough.”

That ended breakfast with considerably more yelling than it had started with.

◆

Raven gave me the tour at 6:38, which he claimed still counted as 6:30 because eight minutes was apparently within what he called “operational tolerance.”

I suspected this was the kind of technicality that kept people sane around Wolf.

We started with the operations floor because Raven insisted I had only seen the portion of it while occupied by my own problems. In daylight, the room felt larger than it had when I arrived. Four primary workstations faced the wall of screens, though Raven’s had clearly metastasized across two of them. The long central table could hold a full briefing without anyone needing to move laptops, and a secured communications room sat behind a thick door near the rear of the floor.

Raven tapped the badge clipped to his waistband and opened it.

Inside, server racks hummed beneath cold white lights. Portable radios charged along one wall beside encrypted handsets, compact drone cases and enough cabling to make me immediately understand why nobody else was allowed to organize Raven’s things.

“This is your actual bedroom,” I said.

“If I could fit a kettle in here, yes.”

“You probably could.”

“Wolf said no.”

“Typical douchebag.”

Raven looked toward the open doorway before whispering. “You’re adjusting quickly.”

He showed me the equipment storage room next, where shelves were organized with the kind of precision that suggested Bear had been involved and Jackal had been threatened.

Plate carriers hung by callsign. Cases held night-vision devices, optics and communications equipment, while another secured cabinet contained training flashbangs, smoke canisters and other equipment Raven only described broadly because there were limits to how much classified material I was allowed to absorb before breakfast settled. The armory door stood beside it.

Raven stopped, and for a second neither of us said anything.

“This is the armory.”

“I gathered that from the sign.”

“Good. Tour complete.”

“Open it.”

“No.”

“Raven.”

“Wolf specifically told me to keep you out of the armory.”

“Yesterday.”

“His orders do not expire at midnight.”

“Did you check?”

He stared at me.