Chapter Two

The control room was pretty dark, the room was mostly lit with the light of computer monitors. and extremely dim lights. and only a few small windows in the upper corners of the room, but they had blinds over them so they didn't add a lot to the brightness of the room. the room wasn't huge either, in fact with most of the people alpha team which consisted of about six members, and the team that staffed this room. it felt somewhat claustrophobic thankfully there was a separate meeting room connected to the control room that the commanding member of this operation was standing in. waiting for us to join her. her name was Amelia Tomasson, I didn't know a ton about her but apparently, Max and she had a romantic history, and from the look, she gave him as we entered the room. it was safe to assume that relationship didn't end on good terms. "alright ladies have a seat. we need to make this quick." she was standing at the end of the meeting room table with her arms crossed, everything about her demanded respect. everything from the look in her eye to the fierce stance she held. she looked to be in her late twenties, short blonde only came to her upper neck, her skin had a pretty dark tan. it was clear she spent a lot of time outside, the way she was built hinted that she either spent the time outside working out or running operations in the field. I had a feeling I was going to be getting along with her just fine. "alright looks like you numbskulls are gonna be thrown into the field much sooner then I expected. so I hope you haven't been lazing about prior to this job." she spoke in a slightly condescending and sarcastic tone as she grabbed the projector remote and turned it on. The projected hanging from the ceiling hummed to life and the height wall next to Amelia lit up and an image of a white struction mostly hidden behind trees faded in. "and what exactly is that supposed to be?" one of the men sitting near the end of the table spoke up as he looked to Amelia. "if you would gimme a second to explain I wouldn't have to explain smartass." she snapped back and myself and the rest of the members laughed for a moment. "can it! God it's like running a daycare." she said before turning to the projector screen. "now this is one of the few images was have from what we believe to be a genetic facility in the woods about sixteen miles south of here. it's pretty isolated and mostly surrounded by trees, the entrance to the facility is unknown at the moment. but we believe most of the members entering the facility come in by helicopter and land somewhere on the facility." I leaned forward a bit as I looked at the first image. "don't we have satellites in place to spot stuff like this?" she turned to face the table again and nodded. "yes but somehow they have either intentionally or accidentally built the facility in a blind spot. however, my bet is that they did it intentionally. how they did it is not sure. all I know is we don't have satellite images of this facility. which is where you and your buddy Max come in. seeing as you both have experience in reconnaissance you two will be sent to the location in order to gather any and as much information as you can. we have no idea what kind of operation they could have going here so it's important that we have reliable Intel when going into this. so you two better be on your A-game. got it?" max simply nodded and I leaned back in my chair a bit pulling a small notebook from my pocket. "yes ma'am." I responded before jotting down a few notes. "good, now we don't have the time to spend weeks casing this place, nor do we have time to put someone on the inside to get us Intel. so as much as it scares me, you will be going in blind as far as building layouts and security assets inside." she said before stepping towards the table. her arms crossed once again. "so in order to gain somewhat of an advantage we will be conducting this raid tonight, in hopes that a bunch of tired guard and the dark will give you all an edge. so I don't want any physical workouts and I want you all staying well rested for today. everyone but Parks and Max."

the rest of the briefing was pretty trivial, just rules of engagement and safety briefing to make sure no one got killed. once that was finished me and Max got what gear we needed and headed the location Amelia had given us. the map leads to a hill the just barely overlooked the facility. from there we got a pretty good sense of scale. the building was about two stories tall and didn't seem to be supermassive. it reminded me of a small clinic that you'd see in a middle-class town. however the building had somewhat of a camouflage, which was probably to make it more difficult to spot from the air, or just by mistake. however it was odd to see something like this on a building of this size, there may be something more to it than we aren't seeing right now. "eyes, front door. four contacts, one-armed other three seem to be staff." max spoke in a low quiet tone of voice as he stared through his binoculars. we were both lying prone in the grass as we watched the facility. "two of the staff are in lab coats, third is a woman in business clothing. what do you think? investor? maybe the head of the operation?" he shrugged slightly as he stared through his binoculars. "your guess is as good at mine, but considering she has an armed guard with her id assume she is important." I chuckled softly at his response as I watched through the scope of my rifle. "well he isn't very well armed, the rifle looks beat up. maybe retired military or police weapon. and he doesn't have any armor on, just a few mag pouches." he nodded and turned his focus back to the lab building. "just keep an eye on her. maybe we can radio and have police pick them up for questioning." as he spoke I turned my head to him. "did you just give me an order boy?" he rolled his eyes and chuckled. "cut the shit parks." I chuckled and gave a slight nod before watching the woman and her guard climb into a black truck. I took a few notes before returning to watch the lab again. whatever was going on here had some money being put into it, and a lot of it.