“That…fucker.” William turned his head, looking to where he knew Bobcat would be at the bar behind the kitchen walls.
If he could only zap lasers from his eyes.
He had actually asked John once if the Bitches could do that, but John had laughed and said no. However, apparently it was rumored that Bethany Anne had wanted that capability, but TOM had told her she couldn’t have it.
Plus, if she did, what would she do while her eyes were healing all the time?
“Fine.” He started moving toward the back. It really was his day to check out the offices at lunch time. Figures the little spy bastard would choose his day to do this.
William walked out the back door of the bar and looked around to make sure no one was in the hall. He walked to one of the white panels on the wall and said aloud, “I need in, Meredith.”
There was a click and he pushed open the door that had looked like a normal part of the wall a moment before. He closed it behind him, entering the hallway that was about thirty feet long and allowed for multiple scans to confirm who he was as he walked toward the end.
Outwardly he looked fine. Inwardly he felt little mechanical crawlies all over his body.
God, he wanted to shiver, then, take a bath in something that would kill the little guys. He came up to the door and pressed his hand against a panel. “It’s me, Meredith, open up.”
Meredith’s voice, colored with humor, replied, “That has never been, nor will it ever be, the request for permission, William.”
Forgetting himself for a second, William smiled. “I’m just shitting you, Meredith.” He tried again. “Hey, Meredith, it’s William. Do you have enough of my voice to verify identity?”
“Yes, that’s better,” she replied, and the door cycled open. William stepped inside and the door closed behind him. There was a pause before the other door opened and William stepped into the official office of Team BMW.
Official fake.
The whole office was nothing but a honey trap for those who believed they had figured out a suitable location to spy on the vaunted Etheric Empire. So far they had captured two previous spies trying to get inside the place.
Meredith had informed them days back that they had another contestant trying to abscond with their technology. Marcus had argued to allow them to get in, steal the data, and leave.
They would determine who the guilty party was when their planet exploded from the doctored data.
Bethany Anne had merely looked at the scientist. He sniffed under her glare and admitted, “We can be a bit annoyed with fellows stealing our hard work.”
“You don’t say?” Bethany Anne replied. “While I admire the concept, blowing up a planet of innocents isn’t my idea of just rewards.” She had brought Ashur with her that trip, so she summoned him back and before they left she called to Marcus, “Clean up your data. I don’t want planets going boom.”
A moment later she added. “Unless we do it on purpose.”
William walked over to the main computers and sat down. The computers in this area were on their own network and full of reams of useless data. ADAM’s massive data pull from before TQB Enterprises had left Earth came in handy.
Instead of Earth’s history, they had raided the data from multiple fake histories including George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones universe for European History and Second Life for what day-to-day life had been like when TQB left the world.
Then, for shits and giggles, Bobcat and William had decided to add in midi-chlorians as a description of how some humans were able to exhibit amazing “Jedi powers.” By the end of the night, just a little inebriated, Marcus had added some data from Laurence E. Dahners’ Ell Donsaii series on traveling through the nth dimension by entrapping and using entanglement.
William had wondered if that was a smart idea.
“Why?” Marcus asked, then hiccupped.
“What if it were possible?” he had replied. “Wouldn’t we be giving them the idea of how it works?”
Marcus had just stared at William, his eyes a little bloodshot, before smiling. “One moment!”
He got a vacant look like he did when he was using their internal communications abilities to talk with TOM, and then started placing math symbols in the extra documentation.
Marcus had then rolled back from the computer. “Now, that should give them just enough of the truth to send them down a rabbit hole for ten thousand years.”
William had shrugged. “You really like to fuck over other scientists.”
“No matter the species, cheating is not tolerated,” Marcus had told him.
William went through the motions they always did, checking data, pulling up spreadsheets, and running the latest reports for the fabricated data.
He scratched his chin and mumbled, “That doesn’t look right.” He pushed off the floor with his feet, rolling back to another desk, and hit another keyboard to turn on another monitor.
He liked to keep his input old-school.
He had been working for ten minutes when Meredith whispered in his ear, “What are you doing?”
“Checking the data for the ESD,” he muttered. “Something isn’t right. The original calculations didn’t show the ability to miniaturize the—”
Meredith interrupted, You know this is fabricated, right?
William blinked twice, staring at the screen.
“Well, fuck,” he said aloud before his eyes narrowed. “That’s just…too damned random.” He asked Meredith sub-vocally, “Take screenshots and video of this monitor until I stand up.”
“Understood,” came back.
William worked another ten minutes before getting up, stretching, and heading out of the room.
He went through the security process once more. Between the two doors, Meredith confirmed he had no spies on him anymore.
He wasn’t even thinking about the spies. “Get me the guys.”
“Are you including Tina?” she asked.
“What? Of course,” William answered as he went through the security door and clicked it shut. “She’s one of us, isn’t she?”
“Yes, but she is female.”
“Triviality,” he replied. “She’s one of us, ergo one of the guys.” He opened the door to the back of the club and slid into the kitchen, then stepped over to the bar side, catching Bobcat’s attention with a slight nod of his head.
Bobcat narrowed his eyes. He recognized that look on his friend. “Terry!” he called to the other guy behind the bar. “Take over, and call in help if you need it.”
“Yeah, boss!” Terry answered. He was a Guardian, and liked to work the bar when he wasn’t on duty. They had another two days before the ladies and Stephen took over the bar full time.
Bobcat gave William his one-eyebrow rise of questioning, but William just shook his head. “Rounding up the group.”
“Playhouse?” Bobcat asked, and William nodded.
Huh, Bobcat thought. Something just got interesting.
Maybe they would be handing over the bar early.
—
Gyada’s team had been practicing together, and it was a team, although it was a weird team. She had practiced with Shin’s team, and now she was working with a team of two female Weres who had three Guardian Marines backing them up.
When Peter and Todd had worked with twin Weres Brooklyn and Addison, they decided to try splitting the two girls up as well as putting them together.
It didn’t take more than a few minutes to realize that together was better, which meant they had rethought the two-Guardian-Marine formation and changed it to three. Caden for left, Carter to focus on right and Chris to deal with either back or forward.
Over the next two years, those five had become inseparable. Brooklyn was a five-foot five-inch-tall brunette with an olive complexion and a Marilyn Monroe mole that her sister would have killed to have.
Since she was blond.
“Mother loved you more than me!” she would fume when the two got into sq
uabbles.
“How do you see that?” Brooklyn, the elder by three minutes, would ask.
“You got her mole,” she would moan as she looked into the mirror.
Brooklyn would stare at her sister, who would be looking at her perfect face and hair so blond it often looked white, and try to kick her brain back into gear. “Your complexion is perfect, and what you bitch about is my mole?”
Addison turned to look at her sister. “Guys aren’t interested in perfect, they want character!”
Brooklyn humphed. “They want tits and ass. Whatever else you provide is a plus, unless it’s intelligence.”
The argument would continue down a common road from there.
Addison turned back to the mirror. “Stop picking guys who are six feet tall and little Greek gods, and you might get a guy who appreciates your intellect.”
“Is that why your picks always look like Greek gods?” Brooklyn shot back, grabbing a brush to pull it through her wavy hair. “Hell, I could grate cheese on their abs, they are so cut.”
“I never said I wanted stimulating conversation,” Addison answered. “Give me size, girth, muscles, endurance and the ability to shut the fuck up at the right times and I’m happy.” She took the offered brush from Brooklyn. “Make my eyes pop out and have to regrow, and I’ll consider it all the conversation I need.”
Brooklyn shook her head and smirked. Addison wasn’t focused on long-term relationships. She just lived for the moment and, by God, if you didn’t appreciate that about her, well, you needed to go find some other girl to cry your little bitch-ass emotions to.
Cuz she was all about the next guy once that weekend was over.
For all of that, she was quicker to ask how their friends were doing and bring soup if someone got sick than Brooklyn. Or she would stick around and help one of the guys in the team if they had been jilted by a girlfriend.
Addison was great with their team, but she ran through other guys like they were full-sized Ken dolls she could window-shop, buy, and then take back when the fun was gone. Most of the Weres loved that about her.
The only Were guy who was impervious to Addison’s cute-ass smile was Peter. Brooklyn understood Addison’s reason for never even trying to hit on the Captain. Not only was it because he was the Captain, but she figured Addison knew that Peter wasn’t a typical Were guy.
At least, not anymore. They all knew his early story, and Addison didn’t want to suffer the pain of being shot down.
“Well, maybe I want character,” Addison admitted.
Brooklyn looked at her sideways. “Who are you, and what have you done with my sister?”
“Funny ha-ha.” Addison tossed the hairbrush into the bag they used to hold their hair-care stuff. She turned and walked out of the bathroom, and continued the conversation after sitting down on her bed. “I think I’m getting tired of floozing about.”
Brooklyn’s eyes narrowed and she put down the clips she was using to restrain her hair. She looked out the door toward her sister. “Now you’re just scaring me.”
Addison shrugged. “I think I have the hots for Caden.”
“Ok, now, I don’t think...” Brooklyn walked out of the bathroom to sit on her bed. They shared quarters, with a single bed and a shared bathroom, a desk and a wardrobe each. “You can’t fraternize with the team, Addy.”
Addison grabbed a pillow and pulled her legs up onto her bed, sitting cross-legged. She put the pillow in her lap and hugged it. “I was talking with him last night.”
“Uh huh, you do that all the time. What girlfriend left him?”
“Monica,” Addison mumbled.
“That girl had no right to do Caden wrong. Nothing on Caden, but she shouldn’t have been the one to get out of any relationship with that face.”
“You’d think, but no,” Addison agreed. “Seems she used Caden to get Jered interested in her.”
“Bitch.”
“Skankasaurus, yeah.”
“That’s not usually something that bugs you,” Brooklyn pointed out. “So, give! What’s happened?”
Brooklyn watched as her sister’s eyes went vacant, looking at something she couldn’t see, but she did notice one thing. Addison’s lips curled into a smile.
Ohhhhh, fuck. She’s fallen for him!
“Have you ever noticed his smile?” Addison asked.
Brooklyn wanted to put her head into her hands and scream. Instead she replied, “Why, yes. I point it out to you at times, and you nod your head.”
Addison focused back on Brooklyn, “That’s because I accept that my teammate is happy again.” She pushed herself backward on her bed and rested her back against the wall. “The problem this time was I didn’t want to just help him as a friend. I wanted to hug him and make his worries about that swamp-donkey go away for the last time.”
“Um, before this situation, I had thought you liked Monica.”
“Jaw-monkey can kiss my ass. She used my teammate for her own personal reasons.”
“Uh oh, tell me you won’t let that—” Addison shot a glare at Brooklyn who put up her hands. “Okay, okay. Next time we spar, I won’t stop you from kicking her ass. Just know Peter is going to kick yours.”
She nodded. “I’ll own it,” Addison confirmed. “But Giggle Tits is going to know she’s been cunt-punted when I finish with her.”
Brooklyn just looked at her sister. Cunt-punted?
Addison watched Brooklyn’s face. “I’d kick ass and chew gum, but I’m all out of gum.”
“Oh,” Brooklyn nodded. “Got it.” She grabbed her own pillow. “Where did you hear that?”
Addison looked up a moment, thinking. “Uhh, Chris, Carter, Caden and I were eating over at AGB when Bobcat and William started laughing about someone’s lame-ass way of saying they were going to kick someone’s ass.”
“And?” Brooklyn asked. “You can’t set up a comment about Bobcat and William like that and not tell me more!”
“More of their comments?” Addison asked.
Brooklyn considered tossing her pillow. She lifted it up behind her head.
“Whoa!” Addison snickered. She put her hands up to catch the offending weapon if her sister tossed it. “Give me a second to remember!”
“You got five,” Brooklyn answered, leaving the pillow in the cocked position. “You damn near have an eidetic memory for curse words.”
“That reminds me,” Addison smiled, “the Empress came into our workout space about three weeks ago.”
“Three seconds,” Brooklyn warned her.
“Ok,” Addison said quickly. “There was a cunt-kicking carnival and an ass-kicking circus, some names they claimed came from Earth.”
“Like?” Brooklyn asked.
“Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude van Damme Slam, Chris Brown your ass, Stone Cold Steve Austin.”
“How do you use a name?”
“Well, if I told you I would have to go all Peter Pricolici.”
“Never mind.”
“Can I continue?” Addison asked.
Brooklyn eyed her. “Have I lowered the pillow?”
“So,” she thought about it again, “there was ‘natural selection,’ ‘Geronimo bunga,’ ‘veni vidi vici,’ ‘open a big can of whup-ass,’ ‘beat someone like they were their daddy.’” She looked over. “And a personal favorite, ‘break off my foot in your ass.’”
“Always,” Brooklyn nodded, “but that is one I know.”
“Well a few more were,” she leaned forward, “and I doubt I have even a portion of them, ‘we got bro-snowed,’ ‘chippenfuckyouup,’ ‘ass harassment,’ ‘skinnybitchectomy,’ ‘asskickginormous,’ and ‘a rear-end alignment.’”
“Damn!” Brooklyn lowered the pillow. “Just how many did they come up with?”
“I think someone stopped counting at eighty-three, then the next one was by William, who tossed out ‘go medieval on your honky white ass,’ and Bobcat popped up with ‘fuck you in the juggahoe with a rear-package slam.’”
“Those two guys are so damned weird,” Brooklyn whispered. “I’m glad Yelena took one for the girl’s team.”
Addison tossed her pillow to the side and slid off her bunk. “Thanks, Sis, I needed to be talked off the ledge.”
Brooklyn watched Addison walk back into the bathroom. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing,” she called back, “because you don’t screw your teammates.” She turned on the water and said more softly, but at a volume to be easily heard by Brooklyn, “And you never, ever, ever let them know you fell in love with them.”
Brooklyn shook her head. For the last five years, she had been wondering if her sister would ever get over having to leave their parents in Russia and decide that loving someone was ok.
Now she wished her sister still wanted to fuck around. Helping Addison through this was so going to suck.
Especially since they had to continue their training with Gyada starting in the morning for fourteen straight days.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
QBBS Meredith Reynolds
X’telent sipped his drink, mentally cheering his success at breaking through to the inner sanctum of Team BMW’s headquarters.
Apparently all it took was brains, luck, and months of patience to break through the humans’ security without getting caught.
X’telent motioned to the waiter. He wanted to savor one more drink before he went back to his rented room to enjoy his triumph. Fortunately, he thought, he had an abundance of all three attributes.
Especially brains and patience. He had been successful at each task he had been set. Now he just needed to successfully acquire the information, or enough information of value anyway, and exit safely.
Once he had the information his spybots had accessed, he’d move it to his ship separately from himself. That way, if anyone stopped him before he boarded, he would be clean. He didn’t want to risk moving from his ship to another inside their space. From what he had learned, they had a special way of detecting communications in Etheric Empire space, and he didn’t want to chance making them suspicious.
He glanced up when a shadow passed through the door. He kept his mandibles very still as he returned his eyes to the tablet in front of him.
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