Page 9 of The ARC Unit: Breach

Raven started upstairs before Wolf could hear the rest as I lugged my too-heavy-for-airline-regulations suitcase up one step at a time.

The loft opened into a narrow corridor lit by fluorescent fixtures that gave the entire place the atmosphere of an old military hospital somebody had abandoned halfway through renovation. The concrete walls had been painted, but not recently enough to hide cracks underneath and the identical doors were close enough together that privacy seemed like something the architects had considered inefficient.

Raven stopped at one near the middle.

“This is you.”

I opened it and for a second, I thought he was joking.

The room wasn’t much larger than the bed inside it. A metal locker stood against one wall, while a small desk had been squeezed beneath the window. There was enough space between the furniture to move around if I planned the route first.

I stepped inside and looked at Raven.

“Where’s the rest of it?”

He remained in the doorway. “That’s quite hurtful. We cleaned.”

“Where am I supposed to put my suitcase?”

Jackal appeared behind him and looked around thoughtfully. “On the bed.”

“Then where am I supposed to sleep?”

“On the suitca-”

Raven pushed him backward with one hand.

“There should be space underneath.”

I crouched on my hands and knees to look under the bed. There was not. A folded training mat already occupied most of it.

“Whose is that?” I asked while sitting up on my knees. Raven leaned down beside me.

“No idea.”

Jackal looked over Raven’s shoulder. “Mine.”

“Why is your stuff under my bed?”

“It wasn’t your bed yesterday.”

“Move it.”

He smiled. “Feisty.”

Raven pulled the mat out and shoved it into Jackal’s arms as I managed to wedge the suitcase halfway under the bed and decided that was a problem for another day.

“Bathroom?”

Raven pointed down the hall.

“That… would be toward the end here.”

Something in his voice made me suspicious as I walked toward it. The moment I opened the last door down the hall, my room became significantly less offensive.

A row of sinks ran beneath one long mirror, the edges of which had started to cloud with age. Metal lockers covered the opposite wall. A bench sat in the center of the room with enough scratches in it to suggest several generations of bored soldiers had carved things into the wood.

The showers occupied the back wall, divided into narrow stalls with thin white curtains instead of doors. Under the overhead lights, every single one of them looked almost translucent. Raven had stopped in the doorway with Jackal behind him as I put my hands up in surrender.