Ok I'm back. I'm really sorry I've been soooo busy with my grandma in the hospital and my parents needing me for extra help, I haven't gotten around to writing that much. This one is a little bit shorter, but I hope it's worth it. I have already started on chapter six, so hopefully this gets back to a more normal schedule. I hope you guys enjoy and without further ado... Chapter 5
The next morning at 05:00 sharp, 14 operators sat around the long table in the briefing room. Meghan looked around surprised to find that Six had chosen so many of them. She had been working with their director the last week about this particular mission for the past week. It's why she has been so stressed lately. They had discussed sending 8 of them, but not 14 and on top of that they had never sent more than 10 with a single lead.
Along with her, Ela, and Zofia, there was; Doc, Finka, Twitch, IQ, Dokkaebi, Caveira, Alibi, Ash, Lion, Frost, and Jaeger. They all looked just as surprised as she was. Normally the only thing that warranted this many operators was very large operations. Those, however, typically had all but 10 of them going and had multiple op leads to help divide the responsibility.
Ash and IQ were sitting to the seal's left, "Do you know why there's so many of us Valk?" the redhead asked curiously.
"Yes, and no. I was informed that there would be more of us than the normal five, but I didn't know it was going to be this many." The blonde responded stiffly. She was honestly slightly nervous. From the way Six had explained it to her, this mission was going to be very long and she would ultimately be making all of the decisions with only a small "counsel" as help.
Ela was watching her friend closely. She leaned over closely to the seal to whisper in her ear, "You're not going to be alone Meghan."
She tensed further, "I know.", was all she said.
They waited in silence for the rest of the 10 minutes before Six finally joined them. Eliza had started to doze off in her seat by the time the older woman walked through the door of the briefing room. She stood at the head of the table mentally counting them. "Good, you're all here." She handed a stack of papers to Zofia, who was sitting directly to her left. "There is a set of review papers for each of you. They are labeled for each of you. Please take yours and pass the stack."
Zo did as she was told. Pulling the one with her name on front from the pile and passing it to Finka to her left. They continued until everyone had a stack of papers in front of them. Six gazed around at all of the different operators flicking through the files with a different array of reactions. She gave them a long moment to go over the papers completely, watching for any disagreements.
Ela couldn't breathe. She was on the last page of her briefing file and it was taking everything in her not to scream and throw the papers across the stupidly long table they all occupied. She couldn't believe this was happening. Staring back at her from the painfully white pages, was nothing short of a nightmare of information. A handful of high ranking officers from three different countries have gone missing, all of them seemed to just have vanished into thin air. They all had notes that said the same thing, "Fear those you cannot see. The darkness is where we hide. The light will expose you." She read the words over and over again not noticing that her breathing had picked up until she felt a gentle hand on her knee. She jumped and turned to her best friend.
Meghan didn't even open her file. She knew exactly what it said. After all, she has gone over it several times already, having gotten the same file two weeks earlier. She memorized every word and detail of this mission. As she sits and waits for everyone to finish she hears Ela's breath increase in pace and across the room she can see the colour drain from Zofia's face. She rips her gaze from the older woman to let it fall on her distressed friend. The polish woman's breathing becomes even more rapid and uneven and the seal has seen the girls panic plenty of times to know what it looks like. She lays a hand on her knee firmly, attempting to anchor her to her seat.
Ela jumps and suddenly the silence is broken by Zofia rising from her seat quickly and exiting the room. Only sending back a small, excuse me, as she left. The room went silent once more, everyone had their gaze shifting from the door to the green haired operator. Who rose from her seat methodically, and with the blonde following closely behind her she chased after her sister. She didn't say a single thing along her exit, not even bothering to ask permission from Six.
The dark skinned woman just sat in her seat at the head of the table and waited. All of the eyes in the room were on her as she rested her head on her hands. She knew this was a possibility, but she chose to trust Valkyrie's insistence that the Bosak sisters participate. She would give them two minutes to gather themselves before she would start. With or without them.
Zofia was in the hallway just outside the door, pacing a permanent path into the floor. She forced herself to take deep breaths and settle her mind. By the time her little sister and Meghan walked out into the hallway she had complete control of herself again. She ignored the questioning looks to try and sort out her thoughts.
Her mind was going a mile a minute trying to place why Meghan was in charge of a mission surrounded by her father. She looked up at the unsurprised posture of the blonde and sneered. "You knew about this." It wasn't a question. Zo knew full well that Valkyrie had received the mission breifing at least a week earlier. (Minus maybe the operators going) She was livid at the lack of reaction once more.
Ela rolled her eyes. If ever there was a time her sister was the dramatic one, it was when Jan is involved. She stepped between her angry sister and best friend, "Zo, you don't even know what is actually going on. Get it together. If Meghan didn't tell you its probably for a reason." She paused and looked over her shoulder at the blonde in question. She gave her a look that silently told the seal that they would be speaking about that later. "Now we kind of walked out on an actual meeting where our presence is required and Six won't wait forever."
"She's right Zo. I was ordered not to let anyone know anything until after we knew who was participating."
Zofia nodded and just gave a small gesture of understanding, finally realizing she was acting like a child. She then turned briskly on her heel and walked back into the meeting. The other two women followed into the still eerily quiet room full of their teammates.
"I'm sorry I needed a moment." Zofia spoke as she walked back to her seat.
"I hope it won't happen again, Zofia. If this is too hard for you to handle I can get a replacement for your roll." Six said icily, letting her upset be heard clearly.
"No ma'am, I can handle it. My apologies, Director. It won't happen again"
"Good. Now shall we get started?" Everyone nodded their agreement and Ela and Meghan sat back in their seats. "Great, where would you like to start Ms. Castellano?"
Meghan swears she feels her heart stop. She wasn't prepared to lead the briefing, but Six didn't look to be giving her a choice. She took a deep breath to steady herself and rose from her seat. She cleared her throat to take one last second to stabilize her nerves before she began, "Well as I'm sure you all just read, we are going to be under deep cover watching a certain cell of white mask's that has been…" she paused searching for the best way to phrase the situation, "causing quite a bit of trouble in the recent months."
Across the table Zofia scoffed to herself. If she was right about this "cell" then they were potentially going after the people who had contacted her the night her father "killed himself". They have been a problem for a lot longer than the "recent months". The blonde knew this very well considering she was the one helping her find them. She typically liked the SEAL, but right now she wanted to punch her in the throat. She looked up at the blonde glaring and crossing her arms over her chest, but keeping the rest of her body completely still.
To the rest of the team it probably looked like she was simply changing positions, but Meghan could feel the rage rolling from the elder Bosak sister. She looked over by mistake and their eyes locked. The hazel eyes were swimming with questions and betrayal. She dare not think that there might be a slight tinge of hurt as well. She pulled her eyes away and continued. The GROM agent would just have to trust her on this. "So far what we know is that they are responsible for the deaths of six high ranking government officials around the world," her eyes flicked from Zofia to Ela, "and a possible four more starting almost six years ago. After every one of these murders a family member or close friend would receive the same message you saw in the file. Now from," she clears her throat once more trying to rid herself of the knot she feels. She averts her eyes from both the Bosak sisters, "previous intelligence gathered over the course of three years I have learned that they often leave this message in a code of some form in all of their public acts of terrorism as well."
"Wait," it's Grace that speaks from her seat between Taina and Olivier, "Why if you've been looking into them for years are we just doing this now? And, they've already committed how many heinous acts against how many people already?"
Meghan doesn't get mad very easily, but if there is one way to make her want to punch your teeth in, it would be interrupting her. That on top of the tension she was feeling from her bestfriend and her sister, it made her quite irritable. She cut her eyes slightly to look at the Korean woman directly. Her face was rid of any expression and she watched as Grace at first looked back at her meeting the slight challenge in her eyes, but slowly Dokkaebi backed off lowering her eyes to her lap and nodding in slight apology.
The Korean woman had a tendency to 'act out' when her partner wasn't around, but the seal knew that simply holding your ground with the woman would make her back off pretty quickly. She composed herself and continued, "As I was saying, before about 6 weeks ago they had been completely quiet, making it next to impossible to locate their HQ now with the recent rise in activity, we have discovered where they are. We have been watching them with the help from an operator not known to anyone but the people in this room. We will be meeting them when we land in Worcław." This time when she paused, it wasn't Zofia's eyes she could feel on her, but Ela's piercing blues. "Once we are situated we will be keeping tabs on them via the new operator and three of you. As those four gather information on them, the rest of us will be on standby to intervene when needed, as cleanly as possible, without giving away our moles. Once we have a perfect understanding of what this particular cell's plan is we will move to step in and I think that is where you take over," she gestured in the direction of Six who simply nodded.
Meghan could still feel the eyes of the Bosak sisters on her, but chose to avoid their eyes in favor of keeping her sanity until the briefing was over. She tried to sit back in her seat without making eye contact with either polish woman. Ela, however, had a different plan, and as she sat back down the younger polish woman grabbed her knee tightly to gain her attention. She tried to ignore this action as well, trying her hardest to keep her attention on Six who had begun to tell everyone the more in depth version of the briefing.
Ela scoffed under her breath slightly, knowing that the blonde was avoiding her obvious attempt to grab her attention. She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. She tried to focus on Six as well, but found her mind wandering to her American friend. Meghan typically couldn't keep anything from her, so to have something like this kept secret for so long, stung more than she wanted to admit. She could feel the blonde becoming more tense the longer the briefing went on, and by the time it was finished, over an hour later, she resembled more of a statue than a real human.
Once Six dismissed them all, Meghan retreated to her room as quickly as possible, knowing the polish women would be hot on her tail. As predicted, she didn't make it farther than the entrance to the barracks before the footsteps behind her were gaining speed. Next thing the SEAL knew, Ela had grabbed her by the hand and was pulling her in the direction of her room. Once they were at her door, the now angry GROM operative roughly pushed the flimsy seeming piece of wood out of the way, and fiercely strode to the middle of the room.
Ela took a deep breath. 'Calm down Ela. She probably has a perfectly good explanation', she thought. She turned slowly to finally look at her closest companion. She let her eyes roam the other woman's posture finding the normally cool and confident aura of the blonde gone. She was hunched slightly, here head hanging low, still standing in the door way, her were arms drawn in around her stomach as if she was trying to make herself disappear. Then, like it was never there in the first place, Ela's anger dissipated. She frowned slightly, and stepped towards her. "Meghan," she questioned, " you know this is your room and you don't have to ask permission to enter." The green haired girl tried to jest to lighten the mood.
The blonde didn't move away, but didn't move to enter the room either. She felt as though without the normal welcoming presence of the taller woman the room felt awefully unfamiliar and cold. She knew as soon as Ela found out that she had been not only working with her sister behind her back, but also working on a case about her father as well. Let's just say Meghan didn't have very high hopes for their friendship going forward. When Ela spoke however, she didn't immediately feel like crawling into a six foot hole in the ground. Instead, the green haired girls tone was light and carried a soft air that surrounded the blonde, making her lose all sense of reality. Her head snapped up and her eyes locked onto her, now far closer, favorite set of ice blues. "You're not mad," she said, with no doubt a very dumbfounded look on her face.
"No, I'm mad, but not at you."
Valkyrie blinked in surprise, "What does that mean exactly?"
"OH you mean you're surprised that I'm not ripping into you for working with my sister behind my back for years on my fathers case?" It came out more callus than she meant for it to and she felt bad when she saw the tight muscles in Valk's neck jump slightly. "Sorry. I'm really just confused, and I think," she paused searching for the correct words, "I'm hurt that you kept it from me for so long. But, I'm willing to listen to the reason why. I know you Meghan, and I know you wouldn't keep something like this from me without cause. Just please tell me the truth now."
The SEAL nodded, "Ok, well for starters, your father didnt commit suicide. He was murdered, and I have the proof. I dont know exactly who yet, but I know who they work for and we're going to take them down. I can promise you that."
I hope you guys don't hate me too much. Next chapter is gonna actually kick off the actual plot of the story. I'll see you guys next time!!