Page 147 of The ARC Unit: Breach

A door farther down the corridor opened almost immediately.

Jackal appeared first, which felt depressingly predictable. His hair was a mess, sticking up in every direction, and he wore loose black sweatpants with no shirt. The healing wound at his side disappeared beneath the waistband, which rode low enough for the familiar USE and ME tattoos over his hip bones to show. The skin around the injury was still pink enough that Bear had threatened him twice that week for behaving as though getting stabbed had been a scheduling inconvenience.

Jackal squinted at me, then at the water running out beneath my door.

“Why are you wet?”

I pointed into the room. Another burst of water hit the wall.

He leaned around me and took in the bed and spreading puddle. “That looks expensive.”

“Thank you for the assessment.”

Bear’s door opened behind him. He came out wearing a gray t-shirt and shorts, took one look past my shoulder and became fully awake in a way I deeply felt sorry for.

“Sprinkler?”

“My room finally decided it hated me too.”

Bear moved past us and crouched just inside the threshold. He looked at the spray, then the water gathering around the wall outlet and the edge of my desk.

“Everybody keep the hall clear. Raven! West branch shutoff.”

Another door opened.

Raven chose that moment to step out shirtless, which was how I discovered he looked considerably better without a sweatshirt than I had expected. He was so lean in clothes that I had never thought much about what was underneath them, but his chest was defined and his abs made it obvious that sitting behind six monitors all day had not excused him from whatever training schedule Wolf made the rest of them suffer through.

Raven followed Bear’s line of sight into my room. “Oh dear. That’s bad.”

“Woo! Strong technical analysis from the intelligence division tonight,” Jackal said.

“I just woke up,” Raven muttered.

“West branch,” Bear repeated.

Raven blinked once, seemed to remember he was useful, and disappeared toward the stairs.

I went back into my room and started grabbing anything that had not already surrendered. My notebook was dry. The laptop bag had survived because I had dropped it over the Strasbourg folder when I came upstairs, which accidentally made me look much more responsible than I had been.

Everything else had been less fortunate.

The spray had hit the open locker almost perfectly. I pulled out one shirt, squeezed the hem and watched a stream of water run onto the floor.

“Fucking fantastic.”

Bear appeared beside me and took the laundry bag before I could reach for it.

“Leave it.”

“My clothes are in there,” I replied.

“They’re wet either way.”

“I can see that.”

“Then stop standing under it.”

I moved before he decided to move me himself. Bear dragged the bag into the hallway and pulled my suitcase out even though the fabric along the bottom was soaked through.