Blackwood's compound does in fact have a pool, a nice one too. Indoor, big glass bulletproof windows, hot tub, sauna, everything a man can ask for aside from some peace and quiet.

  John hopes that maybe the pool will be a good wind down, instead it looks like every operator solves their problems with banter and bullshit. He can’t complain too much though. Everyone’s heads are spinning after Lilith's meeting. It’s just too much to consider, too dramatic of a change, it has them all spiraling.

  According to Spaz and the reports John read up on in the flight over to the compound that first day, the company fought a number of anomalies in their year of operation, though they chalked nearly all of them up to experiments gone wrong from one of the many mega corporations trying to play god, a freak mutation, or something adjacent to those items.

  Blackwood's people fought something like a skinwalker out in the mountains of Appalachia, ‘zombies’ in Madagascar, some sea monster off the horn of Africa and more recently a man who seemed to be able to quite literally mind control people in Poland.

  All that is to say, the company hasn’t had anything specifically supernatural confirmed or proven, not in any real way at least. All other instances of anomalous activity had some explanation to it. The ‘skin walker’ was an escaped Arch experiment with mimicry not unlike some birds. The ‘zombies’ came about because of a viral load infecting people similar to rabies. The Sea monster, some over mutated apex predator, and the mind control could be explained through specific vocal frequencies impacting brainwaves, though Kid had a more detailed report. Everything explainable, all but this one.

  A half day spent grounding everyone and hanging out feels like the right thing to do, at least as “right” as anything can feel given the quickly collapsing worldview. Though as much as John hopes they can forget all about the existential dread and move on, it doesn’t look like the others are dropping the idea of “strange” anytime soon.

  “Listen man, I am telling you, that Batman has Spiderman beat any day of the week,” Spaz insists, flailing his arms around with wild abandon, forcing Bella to duck out of the way.

  “No, not any day of the week, because Batman needs prep time. You drop Spiderman in with a teleport right next to Batman, the dude is unprepared, not at all fast enough to handle that kind of conflict!” Kid presses, his eyes wild in disbelief at the sheer audacity of the statements being made

  “Batman isn’t prepared for Spiderman? Do you know who he hangs out with regularly? You don’t think Batman has contingencies for when Superman goes rogue standing right next to him?”

  “Yeah, Superman going rogue. Batman's whole thing is prep and deduction but he isn’t God for Christ sakes, he has contingencies for the people in his universe and who exist around him. There is no way in hell he has a fucking Spiderman contingency in his asshole, he doesn’t know Spiderman exists!”

  “Batman could just pay Peter parker to fuck off,” Casper offers with a low breath.

  “In lore, sure, but that's not how this thought experiment works.” Spaz rolls his eyes, as if that should be obvious.

  “Spiderman's got, what, strong punches and fuckin webs? Any one of us could take him,” Kane plasters on a self satisfied smile. “Batman's got training, martial arts and fuckin’ sick gadgets.”

  Kid and Spaz both shift to look at Kane.

  “You’re a fucking idiot. Spiderman would kill any one of us if he wanted to, he can dodge bullets.” Kid adjusts his glasses, looking every part the nerd he was.

  “And I got my fuckin gauntlets, what's he gunna do dodge the entire shockwave?”

  “Probably.” Spaz nods.

  John hasn't a single god damn clue what the fuck any of them are talking about. The most he knows about any of these characters are old posters in the windows of comic shops before they all closed down. He remembers some of the younger guys in MARSOC talking about the ‘big changes’ around 1980, but John was never involved. He figures these operators either grew up on the characters or had nieces and nephews who did. John, obviously, did not.

  “Well, at least we can all agree that the fictional character can kick Kane’s ass,” John sighs, eager to get off the topic he knows nothing about.

  Spaz and Kid both nod in agreement.

  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Casper hops from the hot tub and directly into the lap pool, kicking off the wall and swimming underwater to one end, then back, and finally to the other end once more before coming up for a single breath.

  “Fucking seals, I don’t know how they do that.” Spaz shakes his head disparagingly.

  “I sink like a brick,” Bronco offers from her spot on the chairs.

  “We know!” Kane chuckles, then dodges an absolute piss missile of throw as Bronco sends an entire chair at Kane's head.

  “Can’t throw for shit either!”

  Another rocket of a chair crashes directly into Kane's chest, sending him toppling over with a heavy thud.

  “I do not care for swimming either.” Blackbeard rolls his back around, trying to find a good spot on the pressure jet, ignoring Kane's groans of pain nearby.

  “Your name is Blackbeard, you’re a pirate.” Kid protests.

  “You do not see pirates swimming to treasure, no? They sail. I prefer solid ground.” Blackbeard taps the pool deck.

  “Why is this the first I'm hearing of this? It feels like my world is crashing down around me,” Kid huffs in utter horror.

  “It makes sense.” Bella shrugs. “In the movies, a pirate goes overboard, they often drown.”

  “Exactly! Besides, after the monster in the sea, I wish never to set foot in any body of water larger than a lake.” Blackbeard shivers.

  “You think the Loch Ness monster is real?” Spaz interjects.

  “No,” nearly everyone says in unison.

  “What the fuck, why?” Spaz looks around, hunting for anyone to agree with him.

  “Because there isn’t enough other marine life to sustain a creature that big. It would eat everything and then starve to death,” Kid says.

  “Unless it was an omnivore, then it could—”

  “Alright.” John gets up from the hot tub and joins Casper in the lap pool, diving in to try his hand at the swim his senior is doing.

  The cold water nearly sends him into shock before his body quickly adapts.

  How did the seals do it? He would jump out of a perfectly good airplane any day before doing a dive infill. He had done a few in his time—through necessity mostly—and he was good at it, but that didn’t mean he liked it.

  Pushing off the wall, John keeps his eyes open underwater and tries to make it to the end without taking a breath.

  It’s a hell of a lot harder than it looks, that’s for sure. This isn’t some lounging pool at a resort, it’s an Olympic sized lap pool, though still he manages to make it all the way to the end, and nearly halfway back before he needs to come up for breath. After recovering he continues in a traditional overhead stroke to reach his original starting point.

  A moment later, a splash of water greets him to the left as Bella jumps in.

  “I can’t stand it when they get like that.” She brushes her hair back, not bothering to look at John, and it takes a good deal of effort for John not to look at her in that black bikini.

  The last thing he needs is a boot to the head like Kane. He got the impression that despite Bella’s seriously impressive physique, she wasn’t too keen on people staring, so he works to keep his observant eyes to himself.

  “You two ready?” Casper asks, popping his head up from the other line, looking over to the two new arrivals.

  “What, you want to race? Fuck you—you’ll win,” John chuckles.

  “Then race for second. I do better with competition.” Without giving them a chance to respond, Casper ducks under the water and primes himself to push off.

  “I’ll gladly beat John,” Bella teases, lowering herself as well.

  “Oh fuck off.” John cracks a smile of his own, and they are off.

  It would have been easy for him to blame his earlier exercise on his loss, but that would only be a half truth. Even with all his energy he would have been smoked by Bella and Casper in the water, they were just too damn good.

  John sits panting over the edge of the pool, trying his hardest to catch his breath.

  It looks like some of the others got a little bored of the nerds back and forth arguing. Now Kane is at the poolside bar trying to flirt with the woman serving drinks, Bronco is fast asleep on her chair, Spaz and Kid continue their bickering even as they walk from the building, and Blackbeard is the only one remaining in the hot tub, basking in the warmth and relative silence.

  “You need to practice swimming, John,” Casper taunts, his own breathing barely above his resting rate.

  “Fuck off.”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a grating guy?”

  “Not that I can recall.”

  “Well I’m happy to be the first.” Casper laughs, jumps up from the pool and offers John a hand up out of the water.

  He slaps it away, hoisting himself up and onto the deck himself.

  “What, want an apology for this morning?” Casper asks, his eyes working themselves into dangerous slits.

  “Wouldn’t hurt, dick,” John tries to laugh it off, but he doesn’t sound particularly convincing.

  “I know it's been some time since you were in a unit, but just in case you need a refresher—I don’t owe you friendship. But you do owe us compliance. There was a sec breach, you weren’t ready when we needed you, that's a liability.”

  “We gonna fight again?” John grumbles, struggling to his feet.

  “Not if we can avoid it, but don’t confuse my job here as a senior with my personal feelings towards you.”

  “They seem to be pretty much one in the same.” John grabs his towel, tossing one to Casper and Bella as they both approach the chairs.

  “There is a fair amount of overlap, correct.” Casper says unapologetically, catching a stray scowl from John. “But I know you can learn. You did before. You’re a young man John, still fresh. Take these as learning opportunities.”

  John almost snaps back with something, but stops himself short. Casper’s right after all, as much as he hates to admit it. Despite the fact that Casper was a Navy Seal, he had a year and change over him in this PMC, and went through his own fair share of shit in dealing with anomalies, which is a year more experience than John has. This man is due respect, he more than earned it.

  “Alright.” John nods, making sure to keep his tone sincere.

  “Good.” Casper pats John on the shoulder as he heads from the pool.

  John his attention to Bella then, a half convincing excuse about why he can't go to her room tonight ready on his lips, but in the time it takes him to dry off his hair she vanishes from his sight.

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  “Fuck...” John shakes his head, leaves the pool, changes, and waits with a growing anxiety as night descends upon the compound.

  Why the hell is he so fucking nervous about this? Bella needs to know he isn’t like this. He needs to tell her that as beautiful as she is, teammate relations are dangerous, prohibited, and he isn’t ready to give up his heart to another quite yet. Unless all she wants out of this is a one night stand? He won’t have to give her everything permanent then…

  John slaps himself in the face.

  God he’s fucking pathetic. He supposes this is a natural consequence of having been with the same woman since he was 16. Him and his wife were friends long before their relationship started too. She was the only woman he had eyes for, the only woman he had ever wanted to be with, which means he doesn’t have a lick of experience with this kind of shit now that he’s well into his 30’s.

  He can kill a compound of 50 men but god forbid he tell a woman he finds physically attractive he isn’t ready for sex quite yet.

  Bella thinks he is still married, for Christ's sake. She seemed pretty put off by that at the bar but maybe she’s over it? Fuck maybe she thinks she could steal him away? Do the French do that? It sounds very fem-fatale to make a man cheat on his wife but Bella doesn’t strike him as the kind of woman to play like that.

  What the hell did he know though. He had spoken to her all of a handful of times, she could be anything at all and he wouldn’t know.

  He’s thinking too much. It’s getting late, and he would never be able to forgive himself if he just did what his gut told him to and stayed put in his room and explained it all in the morning.

  No, he might be an inexperienced coward when it comes to this shit but he isn’t a moron. The worst possible course of action would be to ignore her. Talk about creating tension in the teams… He needs to go over there, and tell her straight to her face that this wasn’t what he was looking for.

  “Be a fucking man, god damnit.” John slaps his face a few more times, puffs up his chest, and walks towards Bella's room.

  It’s at the other end of his hall, which is just close enough to second guess his decision, and also far enough away to shake his nerves and lose momentum.

  Lilith had him acting like a grade schooler, but he figured that was on account of her actual age being well into the “hundreds of years”, whereas Bella had him worked up like a college student sneaking out to on a school night while avoiding the campus narcs.

  Not that he knew what that was like, John barely finished highschool, but it was what he imagined it was like.

  Johns squares his shoulders in front of her door, and steels his nerves. With a deep breath to try and quell the anxiety, he knocks, and waits the longest seconds of his life before it opens.

  Bella stands there, dressed in a grey tank top and athletic shorts, her eyes half lidded, her lips pursed, her hip popped to the side with a hand tapping at the bone.

  “You look nervous,” she teases, diffusing all the bravado and bravery he worked up as she does that thing with her tongue and chin, a challenge, a taunt, a mind numbing intoxicating habit that sends him into a directionless spiral.

  “Well, what did you expect? Your demand was pretty forward and I’ve never done anything like this before,” He admits, letting himself be pulled into the room, and shutting the door behind himself.

  Her room is nearly exactly like his own, save for a few flourishes she’s added, such as a small French flag in a vase of flowers on the coffee table, as well as some old medals in a frame on the wall.

  “Done what before?” she asks, continuing the taunt.

  “Bella, before this goes any further I need you to know...”

  “You are married? I assure you that isn’t a problem.”

  “It is, for me. You are a beautiful woman but I can’t sleep with you.” He comes out and says it, the words more firm than he expected.

  Bella doesn’t lose stride, instead she sits down on the bed, and pats the spot next to her.

  “Bella, I told you-”

  “I'm not trying to fuck you, John.” She smiles. “You are working yourself to the bone and as good as the masseuse’s here are, they don’t quite get it right. Now take off your shirt, lay down on the bed and don’t be a pussy. I am sure your wife will understand.”

  John has to shake his head free of the clinging fog.

  “A massage?”

  “Yes John, a massage. Call me the resident expert on the matter.” She smiles her feline smile and pats the bed again.

  With a sigh, John takes off his shirt and lays down on her bed, letting his body sink into the mattress.

  Bella shifts, both legs cross over his body to mount his back, though no part of her touches him other than her hands, which begin to work a heavenly magic into the knots along his spine.

  Her palms press down, and roll forward along the length of his back, sending waves of utter euphoria through him. He has to bite out an “oh fuck” before having half the mind to stuff his face into the sheets to prevent anything else from coming out.

  “I told you,” She says with no small amount of self satisfaction.

  “You did...” John confirms with a muffled voice. “But why are you doing this?”

  “Questions later, for now I need you to relax.” she purrs the words, the sound of her voice cut off by a pop, a crack, and another wave of pure bliss that radiates from his shoulder as her hands work under the shoulder blade.

  Her request is not hard to follow. John’s mind turns to butter as her hands work at him—hands strong enough to not just make his muscles her bitch, but as a fellow operator know all the right places to focus, all the places that built the most tension for their specific line of duty.

  It is almost an eternity of relief. Just as he is worried she will stop, she continues, working the muscles in his arms and hands, his legs, and feet to the muscles of his face, which he didn’t even realize holds so much tension, not until her fingers work through his cheeks and jaw and forehead.

  When she is done, John feels like a brand new man. He didn’t want to leave, he doesn’t want to open his eyes, or utter a single word.

  “You asked why, yes?” She confirms, sitting back down next to him on the bed.

  “Yea...” he begrudgingly admits. Nothing matters now, he wants to bask in the sensation forever. Reasons didn’t matter any more.

  “Because I am worried for you.” She admits it so plainly it almost goes over John's head, but he catches the words moments before they escape him.

  Parting one eye, he watches her watch him with a look of concern.

  “I worry you?”

  “You are reckless, a drunk, full of yourself and utterly directionless, it is a very bad combination that is going to get people killed.”

  “Thanks...” the relief in his body is still present, though his mind now crashes back to the present.

  “That is why I did this. To show you that I care. I am not here to reprimand you or demean you. I will not beat you to a bloody pulp like Casper nor let you indulge in your idle self destruction like Kane.”

  “Training is hardly self destruction,” John grumbles, sitting up, no longer liking this conversation very much.

  “Blackwood realized you are directionless so he pointed you in one. You know as well as I he is using you. A man with no direction is dangerous.”

  “Yea yea, trust me I know. Casper gave me the whole spiel about finding something to fight for and yada yada. We went over this over drinks, I hardly think it needs retelling.”

  “But it does, because you still drank yourself into stupor and still ran yourself into the ground with Kane and still let yourself be used by Blackwood.”

  John runs his hand over his face. “Bella, while I appreciate the massage, I'm not about to let you shrink my head, alright?”

  “I am not a shrink John, I am a teammate, a teammate who knows what you are going through. I am doing all of the things I wished someone would have done for me,” Bella assures him, but John doesn’t bite.

  Throwing on his shirt, John makes for the door. “No offense Bella, really, but you don’t know what I’ve gone through.”

  “I was married once as well...” she says, giving John pause with his hand on the door.

  “Once?”

  “Same as you, he is no longer with us...”

  John taps a finger against the door and turns, resting his back against it, his eyes lingering on Bella as she meets his gaze head on.

  “How do you know my wife is dead?”

  “Because the look in your eye is one only we share...” She admits with a side smile.

  “What happened?”

  “The story I told you at the bar was not entirely true...” She admits, letting the words linger for a time before gathering the strength to finish the thought. “The man in the story, was my fiance, and I was playing the role of my sister.”

  “You were the one being beat?” John asks, raising an eyebrow

  “It is pathetic. A cliche. It is a story that hurts to tell not because of the bruises I suffered but because I was weak, too weak to stop the man from hurting me, too weak to put an end to it. My sister had to kill him, and even then I blamed her.”

  The rush of information floods John’s brain in an instant, as he replays Bella's story again in his mind, switching the roles, imagining her under someone's grip, crying, suffering.

  It’s a hard thing to imagine. The woman before him is a badass, a killer, a hardened soldier who has John in a fight on a coin toss, to think she… It’s almost impossible to believe.

  “Why?”

  “Because despite everything, I loved him.” She shrugs

  John makes his way from the door to rejoin Bella on the bed. He keeps quiet, not wanting to interrupt her truth.

  “He was the man of my dreams. I loved him since we were children, even though he was far older than I, and he took quite a liking to me. He was everything I could have ever hoped for. He was kind and gentle. He had a charisma to him, an authority. It made others want to follow him, be their friends. He was loved by all, most especially by me, and I was naive enough to believe he loved me too.”

  “So how did it all happen?” John shuffles, suddenly aware of how uncomfortable this story was making him.

  “We were promised to each other after a time, and then he changed.” She shakes her head, dismissing the idea. “No, he dropped his mask... he was a drunk, and when he drank he would get angry with me. He would hit me, first so that no bruises would show, but after a time he stopped caring. My family did nothing, his family did nothing and worst of all I did nothing, because despite the beatings, despite his hands around my throat I got to see the kind of man he was before all of this.”

  Bella pauses, and takes a steady breath.

  “After he would hit me, he would fall to his knees and sob, he would apologize and promise never to do it again. I would crawl back to him, offering any small comfort I could. I stayed to see the man he became in the moment after his anger. I stayed for the moment of softness, the glimmer of the man he used to be before we were promised.”

  “But your sister didn’t care, did she?” John infers, finding her nodding along to his statement.

  “She only saw the bruises, my eyes, my fear. She killed him, she killed him to save me because I wasn’t brave enough to leave. After that, my family fell into ruin. We lost everything… and I was left broken.“

  John takes her words in, playing the scenario out in his head for a while, trying to picture what it was all like and dreading every second of it.

  “I was disowned, as was my sister. She was already 18 and enlisted into the French military. It was the safest way to get food and a roof over her head, and I followed her shortly after... she wanted to channel her rage, her anger, she joined the infantry and was killed soon after. I mourned her for what felt like an eternity... I had nothing.”

  She gestures around broadly.

  “Just like you. I had lost everything, I had no reason to keep going and so I allowed myself to be pointed in a direction by anyone with a finger and a rank. I am no patriot, I am no one to look up to or respect. I am where I am now because I let my body drift in the sea until Blackwood pulled me from the ocean with a fresh finger and said ‘shoot that way’”

  John takes in a deep breath, her words finding a home in the back of his heart, where he feels the same hole opening up.

  He’s much the same after all. Granted his relationship with his wife was different but that feeling of love, no matter how wrong was a hard feeling to shake. Bella loved him, and lost him. That kind of heartbreak is unique, shared among an unlucky few.

  “When I see you drink, I see you get angry. When I watch you fight, I see that rage in your eyes. When I see you do as Blackwood says, I see you drift. I am worried about you John… I wish someone was there to pull my husband away from the edge, away from the bottle, and I wished someone was there to tell me following a finger and an order was not the way to deal with my pain.”

  “You’re sitting here worried about me, fuck Bella who is worrying about you?”

  “This team. This team that Blackwood has made has become my new family. We are a dysfunctional bunch of misfits and ne'er-do-wells but isn’t every family? When I joined, Casper spoke to me, and told me his story. Perhaps one day he will tell you as well...”

  “I'm not important enough to get the emotional spiel from him?” John tries to joke, and Bella seems to lighten from it.

  “Unfortunately, you are a man, and men are fucking hardasses.” She punches his shoulder. “He spoke to me because I am a woman. It took quite some time to prove to him that I am just as good as everyone else on this team. Old men are hard to teach but I managed. Still, men do not share with men, not in my experience. I knew no one would come to you, not in the way you needed. Not with fists and some promise of violence if you do not do as I say. Sometimes, we soldiers need someone to tell us something painful, and something honest, with no bravado, and no hard-assery. so... here I am.”

  “I'm grateful... truly.” John smiles, the pressure lifting from his chest slightly.

  “Do not be mistaken, this is no charity, I knew you were different from the others as soon as I met you. You may have had your doubts at first but when the bell rang you did not underestimate me, you gave me everything you had in our hand to hand combat match. You are a man who can judge me on my merit, not my sex, and for that you had my gratitude from the very beginning. You do not ogle me like Kane nor subtly think me weak like Casper. You do not pity me like Blackbeard, and besides, you and I have the same eyes. There is a... power in that. In the pain we share.”

  John smiles, the weight fully lifting from his chest then, allowing him to breath in some fresh air.

  “It sounds like we are all dead in the water huh?”

  “Ironically enough, everyone but Blackbeard, that man just loves being in the thick of it, I swear the man was truly a pirate in his last life.”

  “He has always just seemed happy to be here.” John chuckles, and Bella joins him. Letting the moment of levity ease the heavy air. “Thank you for this Bella, I mean that.”

  She brushes the hair from her forehead and holds it there, her eyes soften greatly and her hands find a place on John's arm.

  “If you do not know where to find direction yet, then find company in us. We are family, and though you are new I know you will find family in us too. Use that, hmm? People like us need others, no matter how much we want to believe we are lone wolves.”

  “I am a lone wolf.” John winks.

  “You are full of shit and you know it.” She flicks his forehead and stands from the bed. “Now you can go.” she shoos him off the bed with a clicking noise.

  “Alright alright! I’m going,” John laughs, standing up and heading back to the door.

  “Have a good night John,” Bella says as he leaves, doing that damn thing with her tongue that almost makes him keep the door open a little longer.