Cassius Stevens, Madison (best reads of all time txt) 📖

“I know.” Maximus nodded. “And I’m not above at least taking some help from the government, as long as it is limited mostly to cleanup or intel we can doublecheck ourselves. That’ll keep us from walking into any traps while we continue strengthening our own independent intel capabilities.” He glanced over at Julius. “Which is where our teams come in.”

CJ could never help but be a little uneasy around Julius. The other hybrid had been created by the same people, but whereas most of the hybrids were trained in squads as frontline assault troops and operators, Julius received special training to operate alone deep behind enemy lines as an infiltrator and saboteur. Years of freedom hadn’t dulled those skills, and there was always something about him that felt a bit false.

It wasn’t like CJ thought he was a traitor or double-agent, and all the hybrids had to lie and go undercover as part of their missions, but the ease with which Julius slipped into false personas disturbed CJ. It was hard to know who the man really was.

“I get that.” CJ frowned. “And I want to do my part, especially with this new enemy.”

“We still know next to nothing about Ouroboros,” Maximus continued, frowning. “We only know they’ve received some personnel, research, and aid from remnants of the Horatius Group and the Phoenix Corps, but they also seem to be doing their own thing, and none of the hybrid groups, to the best of my knowledge, have ever seen anything like the strange powers demonstrated by Quinen. Whatever their goals are, we know they’re targeting Vestals and they’re ruthless. That’s enough to want to stop them. We can’t have true freedom until that’s achieved. I refuse to believe there’s somebody else waiting in the wings to replace them.”

“What about these leads?” Julius asked. “They’re not total garbage if you’re willing to send out teams, but it smells like none of them are good enough for you to send a major team either.”

“That’s an accurate summary,” Maximus said, looking down for a moment. “I’m not going to sit here and waste an hour going through all the particulars with you, but it’s possible Ouroboros is trying to throw us off their trail with some fake operations or intel. All of the leads we have suggest small-scale operations, rather than bases or facilities, and we don’t have any indications of major players being involved. Moving all Alpha Squad is hard, and we risk more detection than when we move in smaller groups.”

CJ didn’t need to be an intel-minded saboteur and infiltrator to wonder about one obvious question. “Do we have intel clearly saying the opposite? Are we sure these are all small-scale ops?”

Julius grinned and gave CJ an approving look. CJ wasn’t sure how that made him feel.

“No.” Maximus shook his head. “I can’t guarantee the force disposition of the enemy on any of these leads, which is why everyone’s going in pairs. I’m confident that two members of Alpha Squad can at least cover each other’s asses well enough to escape.”

CJ frowned. “Escape and not eliminate?”

“Recon, establish potential targets, and call for reinforcements if necessary.” Maximus highlighted his orders by ticking up a finger for each statement. “Even if the other teams are busy, we can scrape together enough members of the squad for a major raid, and anything big isn’t going to be something Ouroboros can pack up in a day. I don’t need either of you to be heroes. You do your job, and if we need to drop the hammer, you wait for reinforcements. This should end with them taken out, not us.”

Maximus’s gaze lingered on CJ who got the feeling that Julius was being sent to keep him in check. Being able to kick ass had its benefits in straight-up fights, but CJ would admit how going off half-cocked might cause trouble in situations requiring more finesse. He didn’t think he was as overeager as some of the other hybrids, but when he started going through the list, the only other hybrid he could think of who might be not as willing to wait to take someone down was Agrippa.

“Understood,” CJ said. “We’ll keep it in check.”

“And where will we be doing that?” Julius asked. “We’ve got the background, but no specifics. I know you don’t want to bore us with the details, but we need something.”

“I’ll be sending you some data directly to your phones,” Maximus said. “The high-level overview is that you’ll be going to New York City to investigate suspicious shipping activity that might be linked to Ouroboros. What’s odd about it is what this activity is associated with, an obstacle course racing event called the Knickerbocker OCR Assault.” He furrowed his brow. “We’ve not seen this kind of thing before from any of the groups we’ve dealt with.”

CJ grinned. “And you want us to take a stab at the course? See what we can flush out? I always wanted to go full-out on American Samurai Training Challenge. This could be a nice practice run.”

Maximus’s angry glare almost made CJ chuckle. It was worth a shot.

“No.” Maximus shook his head. “The last thing I want is either of you to show off your full abilities in public. Some contact lenses aren’t going to be enough to convince people you’re not hybrids if two huge men suddenly start dominating a course like that with superhuman speed. Ouroboros might not be watching every random athletic competition, but this is one time they might.”

Julius cocked his head to the side, his brow wrinkled in deep thought. “But why would Ouroboros be interested in an obstacle course race? Are they testing new hybrids?”

No one spoke for a good ten seconds. Julius’s tone came off curious more than worried, but the sickening possibility hung in the air.

Maximus shrugged with a grunt. “We have no clue. None of our intel points to any reason the event is important, only that they might be associated with it, and we only know