After chastising Caboose for spilling the tea leaves (again), Donut insisted that I remained seated while he cleaned up the tea party. I crankily stayed in my chair while he and Caboose did the dishes and put the extra food away. I didn't like being babied like this.

Sarge strode into the kitchen just as Donut and Caboose finished up, Simmons and Grif close behind him.

"How're those ribs, missy?" he asked gruffly, grabbing a drink from the fridge. "You weren't exactly a sight for sore eyes when you came back from stupidly traipsing after those AIs!"

"I'm sorry, all right?" I said, still rather irritated. "We didn't want you to get hurt!"

"Yeah, and you got hurt instead!" Simmons retorted. "That was really smart."

"Would you guys give it a rest?" Donut cut in, putting on a flowery apron and starting the dishes. "I think they learned their lesson!"

Grif glanced down at my ribcage. "Yeah… but that wasn't the first time something like that happened to you, right, Eleven?"

I sighed. "No. Not the first time."

"So… so what happened before? I mean, your ribs looked pretty screwed up, but Wash said that didn't happen just now."

I clenched my jaw. The last thing I wanted was for them to know the cause of my nightmares. "Just a previous mission that went bad."

The Reds stared at me, waiting for more.

"I'm not talking about it," I continued, frowning. "You know too much already. I was injured, and that's that. End of story."

"I just can't believe it took so long for us to notice it," Simmons murmured. "I mean, it's pretty obvious."

"Thanks," I said wryly. "That makes me feel so much better about it. Maybe I made it a point to hide it from you."

The Reds didn't mention how stupid our decision was again. The Blues, too, must have had that argument while I was unconscious because I didn't get chastised by them either.

Thankfully, my recovery didn't take very long. After all, as Wash had said, my ribs were only bruised and not broken again. By this time, of course, both the Reds and Blues were aware that my ribs had been injured before. I was sure that every soldier in the canyon had taken a nice long look at the deformity while I was passed out. So much for the "secret" part of being a spy.

At least they didn't know how it had happened.

As my bruises faded and I could move around again without killing myself, the Reds and Blues focused on fixing our machinery. We couldn't afford to make contact with Command, so our radios were useless. That was going to be a major drawback. We didn't need O'Malley jumping into anyone else or overhearing any of our distress calls. If the AIs and rogue Freelancers found out we were getting help from Command, they'd surely make themselves even harder to find.

The AIs, Meta, and Tex didn't show up again as we made our preparations to go after them. I didn't know why. O'Malley seemed hell-bent on killing all of us. We, after all, "knew too much," but they just didn't come.

I stretched out gingerly as I walked toward the Puma. Meta and the AIs had decided to short out the AI tracker on the Reds' car as well while we were all camped out at Blue base. Sarge and Simmons were now working on it. Grif was assisting, too… or, rather, he was supposed to be. Instead, he was sitting in the driver's chair, the seat reclined and his feet up on the dashboard.

"How's it coming, you guys?" I asked, peering beneath the vehicle where the maroon and red soldier lay. I winced only slightly at the pressure this action placed on my ribs.

"Warthog's fixin' up just fine!" Sarge said cheerfully. "Looks like the damage really wasn't that bad after all!"

"Really?" I asked, surprised.

"Yeah," Simmons replied. "I just need to fine-tune a few things and it'll be perfect again!"

I frowned. "Wait… why didn't the AIs just destroy the shit out of our vehicles? Sheila seems to be recovering really smoothly over at Blue base, too. We haven't run into any major problems when fixing her."

"I don't know," Simmons shrugged. "They had every ability to completely annihilate both Sheila and the Puma—"

"Simmons!" Sarge snapped warningly.

"Sorry, sir. They had every ability to completely annihilate both Sheila and the Warthog. It's beyond me why they'd leave them both so… fixable."

Something wasn't right here. If Meta and the AIs (and now Tex) had been determined to avoid being found, why were we having such an easy time fixing everything?

"Listen guys, just be careful," I said, standing back up and cringing a little again at the dull pain that shot through my torso. "With the AIs' power, I don't think that something like this should happen. We shouldn't be having such an easy time repairing everything."

"Come on, Eleven," Grif yawned. "Stop being so worried. What's the big deal? So they didn't completely screw us over. It was probably a mistake."

Sarge perked up at hearing Grif's voice. "Speaking of mistakes," he barked from beneath the Puma. "You should never have been recruited to my team. Get your lazy ass down here, Grif!"

"Why?" the orange soldier whined. "I'm not going to be any help anyway. I'll probably just break something."

"He's probably right," Simmons muttered. "I don't want him screwing anything up down there."

"Reds! Pay attention!" I interrupted, exasperated. "I'm not being neurotic about this. I've been around the AIs before. I've been around the Freelancers before. Things like this don't happen accidentally. We need to be careful."

The Reds continued to bicker, not paying me any attention. I tried reasoning with them for a while until Sarge threw a wrench at Grif's head, almost hitting me instead. By that time, I knew they wouldn't listen to me. I stalked away in irritation, lost in my own thoughts.

So much of this situation was confusing to me, but I did know one thing: Freelancers didn't make silly mistakes like this. There was a reason we were suddenly able to fix our vehicles so easily. I needed to find out why that was.

And, in the meantime, I had to try not getting us killed.

Easy enough… right?