Shaded Soldiers || Gay MxM || Omegaverse

37. So It Begins

Michael Mercer was going to survive. Against all odds, he pulled through, and was recovering fast. I was so goddamn happy about that, and I wasn't the only one. It was on the news for days. Of course, every reporter talked about it in a neutral tone, and tried to remember to include the fact that he was a notorious criminal, a murderer, a drug lord, and a dealer of weapons, but those facts were often added at the very end as a side note.

He actually survived... Of course, alphas were much stronger and way faster to heal than us omegas, but what I understood, his left side of the body got shredded with large shards of glass in an explosion in his house. The doctors had spent hours and hours pulling them out of him, then even longer trying to sow his internal organs back together. Even alphas weren't supposed to survive such damage. His heart had stopped several times on the operation table.

And yet, here he was getting ready to leave the hospital only a week after the attack.

Alphas... They healed so unbelievably fast once their injured body didn't have to keep draining every bit of energy just to keep itself alive. Mercer had reached that tipping point at the last possible moment. He would've died in hours if his body hadn't stabilized enough to start putting energy into recovering.

But still. He really shouldn't be returning home after only four days since he woke up, but apparently, I wasn't the most stubborn person there was.

"Make sure you get everything you need at home," Captain reminded me while we were getting our truck ready for the maintenance crew that was coming to pick it up. "It'll take a few days before you get them back."

"Yes, sir," I said.

I was fairly sure I'd packed all my belongings that weren't supposed to stay in the truck, but I was getting quite nervous, so my focus was pretty much gone.

Not only was Michael Mercer returning home today, but Captain, Nico, Reid, and I were supposed to meet with General Gray and Thomas Auburn before that.

I'd never met General Gray in person. I'd heard tales about her, yes. She was the first commander of the Special Operations Unit before she got promoted, and one hell of a soldier before that. Captain had told me that he was good friends with her, and that I'd definitely like her, but still. She was the general. There were only a few people with higher ranks than her in this army. And this little omega rookie was going to sit with her in a small meeting room.

And if meeting the general wasn't enough, the reason I was meeting her made things a hell of a lot worse. There were not one, but at least two terrorist bases right here in our state, and it was possible those facilities belonged to Jomica, or one of their allies.

Hoo boy...

We'd spent the past few days trying to learn more about these facilities, and sure enough, after we'd monitored them afar, it became clear they were indeed terrorist bases. General Gray had ordered us to work with two other teams on this, and to keep our mouths tightly shut for now. The other teams outside us three had no idea about our mission. There were so many innocent lives at stake, and if there was even one single traitor in our unit, those omegas the enemy was keeping as slaves would die.

We already had plans on how to save them. Several plans, actually, but no matter how urgently we all wanted to rescue the omegas, we couldn't just barge in. We needed Thomas Auburn and his information. We needed him to help us.

And finally, it was time to go meet him again.

"You are sure you have everything you need now?" Captain asked me when I put my bag in his car.

"If there's something I forgot, I'm sure I won't need it," I said reassuringly. "And I'm sure Reid will insist on getting me a new one."

"That is correct," my partner said while putting his bag next to mine.