[HIATUS] The Tide Rises

Chapter 8

"So. You said we got something from Jules?"

After pressing a few buttons on a control panel, Tek leaned back in his chair with a yawn. How does he do it? Ocean pondered. How does he do the same thing every day and not get bored?

For days and nights on end, he was known to switch between and monitor all of the control rooms, willingly taking little to no breaks. Yet he tirelessly trucked on, never asking for any credit, and she couldn't help but admire his dedication. Maybe she'd give him a week off after the situation was dealt with.

"We got a message recorded through Skye's earpiece, about an hour ago, but that's it," he said. He leaned back forward and began typing away at a computer.

Ocean kneeled down next to him, resting her elbows on the desk. "Still have it?"

"Already on it." Tek smiled and swiveled in his chair over to another panel, where a series of soundwaves showed on screen. After pressing a few buttons, the staticky feedback of the communication line echoed through the room.

"Hey, it's Jules again," Jules spoke in a clearly nervous tone. "Sorry for leaving you on the note I did last night... um... I have to run tasks from six until noon every day, so I probably won't be able to get in touch until then. I'll try my best to keep an eye on the prison, and I'll send you any updates afterwards. All I can say is right now, it's located in the same place the lounge was next to the old meeting room, which I said last night. All the corridors and the ventilation system are as close as I could get them to The Agency's design when I drafted The Authority, so anyone who knows the place by heart shouldn't have a hard time navigating through. Just more floors. There are also-"

There was the sound of a door creaking open, which seemed to have cut her off. There was a second of muffled conversation between Jules and a male voice. "I'll, um, get back to you on it later, Sorana," she said quickly, trying to cover up exactly who she was speaking to, and the recording ended.

"Brutus was here when the recording came in, and after that he said he had something to take care of," Tek said, looking back at Ocean. "Like she said, I haven't been able to reach her since the recording, so we'll have to wait 'til noon... we should start getting a plan going before then. Any ideas, yet?"

Ocean waved her hand in a so-so gesture. "I got something going in my head. Just wanted to wait for Brutus to get back though, so I can get the okay."

Tek tilted his head. "Well, you're the leader, right? If you have something, we should probably get a move on."

Ocean stood and bit her lip. "I'm kinda just used to needing his approval. If I mess something up because I go by my gut, he's just going to get onto me later, and I don't like having to deal with that." She sighed. "Maybe I'm just not cut out for this. Like—I'm just some field agent water surfer who Brutus said, 'hey, you like the water and the island flooded, wanna be in charge?' I still haven't even been in GHOST for a year. I just agreed to be in charge because I thought it was going to be fun, but..."

Tek glanced over as she stood behind her chair, grasping the back of it tightly. "Things didn't turn out how you expected, and now you don't know what to do," he concluded, and Ocean nodded.

"You know that shark we had to kill a few weeks ago? After that, I just... I don't know if this is for me anymore. I can tell people what to do, yeah, so can anyone else. Anything I do as leader is literally what anyone else can do. I was better off as a field agent." She frowned. "How do you do it? You're like the leader of the tech team, right? How can you sit in one place and not get... I don't know, restless?"

Tek smiled softly. "Do you know who Terra is?" Ocean shook her head. "She's... a longtime friend who worked tech with me. Well, she was. Y'see... she turned SHADOW a little over half a year before the whole Doomsday. Didn't even find out until January. Anyway... she was the one who encouraged me to join GHOST as a tech specialist, even got me into the stuff when we were kids. When she left, I just... felt like I lost my purpose. Felt useless without her. I got restless, wanted to quit... even stopped showin' to work for a few weeks."