The Aberrations of S.I.D.E.

No. 40: Crew Head Training

"Really, I'm... I'm honestly still in shock, pun intended," Emile said, mopping his brow. "You're sure that including Doppelganger's crew wasn't part of the plan?"

After the whole business with the second Circle attack, Emile had called the crew in a few days after it happened—it probably would've been earlier, but they'd all gathered in Virgil and Roman's room to watch Amphibia until dawn, so sick days were taken in order to get their sleep schedules back to normal. And apparently, Emile had lost a couple nights over this, too.

"They included themselves," Logan confirmed, nodding. "Not something I would have agreed with, but they were surprisingly useful."

Janus shrugged. "Yeah, I've been waiting for a while to finally give Operation K Squared a try in combat. We only did that to mess with Mum before."

"I'm not surprised." Emile sat forward. "So... would you like to hear the good news, or the bad news?"

Roman flopped his head backward. "Ughhhhhhh, please don't tell me there's paperwork involved."

"I'm much more qualified to complain about paperwork than you, Roman," Emile reminded him, then sighed. "So, the good news is, we were able to round up about a third of the agents before they teleported away, and their communication and teleportation devices have been put offline—"

"Oh, that's great!" Patton chirped.

"But the bad news is..." Emile looked to the side. "The Canadian op headquarters just got back to me, and interrogation... well, it was unsuccessful."

Remus nodded. "Okay, who died."

"Wh—nobody died, Remus, why is that always your go-to for everything?"

"Well, if nobody died, then what's wrong?"

Emile ran a hand through his hair. "The agents physically cannot talk. Or write. Or do Morse Code. Or anything that could potentially give us information."

The general reaction to that was "oh shit."

"You think she did something?" Janus asked, not needing to clarify who "she" was. "How long do her commands last, usually?"

"From what I've heard about the Macklemore family?" Emile answered. "There's only a limit if she wants there to be."

"So we're doomed until we get another email from our anonymous friend," Logan concluded. "Have you attempted to contact them for information?"

"I don't want to risk emailing them back, because I have no idea what their situation is," Emile told him. "They could be in threat of death if they're exposed. Our only option at this point is to wait and to get on with our lives. I still have The Ghost & Molly McGee to look forward to, as well as my wedding to Remy, and you boys probably have other things to do as well."

Virgil instantly realized what time it was. "Shit."

Emile gave him a confused look. "I'm sorry?"

"Head training, totally forgot, praying that Elliot doesn't kill me, bye," Virgil said in a rush, running out of the office.

.................

"Oh, great, you're here," Elliot said as Virgil skidded into the room. "I was about to sound an alarm."

"Ha-ha, very funny, I had to go to a debriefing about Circle Attack Two," Virgil snapped. "Assuming you've heard about it?"

"Yeah, it's gone viral on Anomaly social media. Really loved the demon spider taking care of things while you did fuck-all."

Virgil socked them on the shoulder. "That was me taking care of things. I haven't had a lot of time to train using shadow weapons yet."