Our entire team went out that night to celebrate and when asked where we wanted to go, both Oliver and I said, “Anywhere but Whiskey’s.” We ended up in some sports bar where the waitress wore shorts that could have doubled for underwear and shirts that only made it halfway to their belly button. We bought each other drinks and celebrated the ‘high level operation’ that we had pulled off. It was a night filled with comradery and happy, light moments.
I had never experienced anything quite like it and I found myself standing still and trying to soak up as much of this easy happiness as I could. In that moment I allowed myself to dream of future times with a different team but filled with the same level of contentment. If this is what working within a Whistler team meant, then I was willing to do almost anything to become part of it.
The light feeling that filled me from the celebration quickly drained out of my system when I scanned the new team groupings Monday morning. I was grouped with Brett Jenkins for the next two weeks. I had not seen much of Brett since the first day of training. The team system kept them isolated within their group. But every time I did happen across Brett, he would look at me with something close to rage.
I scanned over the other names on the list and reviewed what I knew about each of them. Nivar Martinez worked within military police for the last decade. His file didn’t include any commendations or mentions of work above and beyond what was expected of him. Nivar had been on the team that Amir and I had taken out on Saturday and I had seen disbelief in his eyes as I had shot him with three rounds of red paint to the chest.
Silas Contos was young, about the same age as me and Oliver. However, he had not spent the last years attending a University but had joined a local police force in Mississippi straight out of high school. His personnel file included comments from a Whistler team that had worked a missing persons case with Silas in Vicksburg. The leader of that team was impressed with Silas’ work and had personally recruited him to Whistler. Most likely Silas would end up on that team in four weeks’ time.
Derik Hanson was the seal team 6 leader that I had noticed Elena singling out when they picked teams last time. His file suggested that he was the best of the best and the few times I had observed him in the last two weeks supported that assumption. He was a master marksman, incredibly fast and deadly in hand-to-hand, and ranked up with ninjas in how stealthy he could become. About a week ago he had come to the Green Monster during one of my and Oliver’s training sessions and Derik had breezed through the entire course seemingly without breaking a sweat.
And then there was Brett. Brett also had a military background. He let the army pay for his college education at a state school in South Carolina and then served the eight years that he owed the United States Government. He rose quickly in the ranks and left as a decorated Major. I had done some extra digging after that initial confrontation with Brett and found that he had an ex-wife that was bleeding him dry in alimony and child support. He could have continued to rise in the military, but I guessed Brett was here because of the bigger Whistler paycheck.
After training with Oliver in the morning, I showered and then walked into the conference room that was reserved for my new team. I was the last to enter the room and had expected some kind of confrontation or comment by Brett, but the team just continued in their conversation like I wasn’t there. They were introducing themselves and giving details about their pasts and their strengths to the group.
When they turned their attention on me, I didn’t know what to say. Most of my skills were linked to a past that the United States Government had deemed confidential. I gave vague details from my fake background about my degree in business and psychology and my experience interning at the FBI. Derik, who seemed to be taking the leadership role, was quick to dismiss me and moved on to our schedule for the day. I met Brett’s eyes and he clenched his jaw and shook his head in disapproval of my presence on his team.
The morning was spent running drills on how to enter and secure buildings with armed combatants inside. I was treated as a liability that had to be protected throughout the entire drill. At one point I saved Nivar from being shot from behind, but instead of noticing the save, Derik just chastised Nivar for missing the shooter in his sweep of the room. The complete dismissal from my entire team got old very fast.
In the afternoon we worked on hand-to-hand combat. Derik decided not to participate and instead allow the rest of the team pair up. I was paired with Silas and Derik walked us through the basics of self-defense. I had learned these drills when I was thirteen but my comments that I was trained in multiple martial arts fell on deaf ears. If that was how Derik wanted to play this, I wasn’t going to challenge him on it. I could remember dozens of times that being underestimated had benefited me in the end.
While being ignored was annoying, at least they were not explicitly working against me. I was used to treatment far worse than being overlooked and figured I could ride this out for two weeks. I decided to use this situation to prove to myself that I could work within a difficult team. These men were my teammates. I didn’t have to like them. I just needed to work with them to get the job done. I could act as a professional and focus on learning the skills that would benefit me as a Whistler agent.
After dinner I went to Oliver’s room to work on the new Whistler firewall with him. I figured the least I could do was help him, seeing as I was the one that hacked into the secure network. I still had trouble believing that Oliver took the fall for me. No one had ever covered for me before, and he could have been kicked out of the program for a hack that he didn’t do. I knew that working for Whistler meant the world to Oliver and the fact that he was willing to jeopardize that for me was unbelievable. But whatever his reasons for doing it, I was now bound and determined to do everything in my power to make sure that Oliver achieved his goals and remained safe.
As soon as Oliver opened his door he surged forward and grabbed my shoulders and started looking me over. “Are you okay? I saw that you were teamed up with Brett. Did he do anything?”
I shrugged out of his grip and moved into his room. My skin didn’t crawl when Oliver touched me, but I was still unused to being that close to anyone on purpose. “I am fine. Brett didn’t do anything. The whole team ignored me all day.”
“Well that’s not fair. You are one of the strongest agents in our class. They need to use your talents if they want to win any challenges.” I smiled at his blatant complement and then asked how his day with the new group went. I had seen that he had Elena on his team but none of the other members stood out to me. “It went good. After taking credit for your hack on the ‘unhackable Whistler secure network’, I have a golden reputation. They are saying it was the access to the camera’s that allowed our team to completely take out the other team so easily.”
“Well, I am glad something good came out of Dwight’s hissy fit about the network. Because I did not compromise anything, and you know it.” I said as I settled onto Oliver’s bed and pulled out my laptop.
“Yeah, I have been looking into your way in, and you kept it clean. You are the only one with access to the backdoor you built, and even I haven’t been able to break your encryption.” I gave him a wry smile and then we got to work on increasing the cyber security around Whistler.
When I decided to call it a night, I walked out to the parking lot to find Brett waiting by my car. His hands were tucked into his front pockets and he didn’t advance on me as I approached. I considered the possibility that he just wanted to clear the air and decided I was willing to hear what he had to say. I should have known better. When I walked closer, I noticed that all four of my tires had been slashed. I stopped walking, not wanting to get within punching distance.
“You don’t belong here, Payton” Brett growled in a low voice that barely reached me. “You know it and I know it. Do us all a favor and leave before someone gets hurt.” He stared directly in my eyes as he delivered this threat and I saw hate and fury in their depths. I didn’t doubt that he would make good on his threat, but I just wasn’t that scared of Brett Jenkins. I had grown up with men that would make Brett shake in his boots and I had survived. I had no doubt I would survive him too. I held his gaze and forced him to break eye contact first as he walked away. Then I walked the mile back to the hotel all the while reinforcing my mental defenses that had started to weaken during my time with my first team.
The next ten days passed in a haze and I found myself sinking back into my well-practiced survival skills. The disregard for me as a member of the team increased and by the end of the first week, they had moved from ignoring me to actively pushing me out of their strategies. They were getting better at setting me up for failure. I tried not to let it get to me and instead view it as a sort of challenge. Would I be able to guess how they were going to sabotage my role and be able to subvert their efforts? But there is only so much I could do when I was left abandoned in the team challenges. Instead of dwelling on my increasing hostile team environment I put my efforts into excelling at the individual challenges and helping Oliver gain skills necessary to succeed.
Despite my rising scores in the Whistler competitions, by the end of the week all the hopeful ideas that I had formed about my future within a Whistler team were firmly squashed while my old view of the world was reinforced. It was me against the world and the only person I could count on was myself.
Oliver remained the exception to this rule. We still trained in the Green Monster every morning and we would end each day in Oliver’s room. Oliver loved to gossip, and drama seemed to follow Elena wherever she went. She used filtration and flattery with most of her interactions with the other recruits and while it seemed to work well with her first team it was starting to backfire on her now. The men from her first team were jealous of the attention that she was giving to the new team. I had witnessed this myself with a heated argument between Derik and Elena at lunch a couple of days ago.
Oliver also told me that he was sure that Elena had slept with more than one of his current team members. He described rising tensions within the group that centered around her and was betting on things coming to blows within the next few days. Because of all of the Elena drama their team wasn’t working cohesively and they were doing poorly on the team drills.
“Has she tried hitting on you yet?” I asked.
“Nope, I think I am too geek chic for her.”
“You are definitely too something!” I retorted in a teasing tone. Oliver responded by throwing a pillow in my face and moving to pin me to the bed. Afterward, I understood that he was reaching towards me to tickle me. But I had never been tickled before and I reacted viscerally to being pinned under a man. I used a judo move to unbalance his weight and then pivoted my hips to throw him off me. Oliver went flying off the bed and hit the floor while I launched myself to the other side of the room and took a defensive stance with the wall to my back.
I didn’t snap out of reflexive reaction until Oliver slowly rose from the floor with his hands held out in a placating gesture. “Woah Payton. Calm down. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Oliver told me in a careful voice.
I lowered my hands and just stared at Oliver in mild shock. What had I done? I could have hurt him. How was I going to explain what just happened? “I’m… I’m so sorry Oliver,” I stammered out in a quiet voice. He still looked so bewildered and I didn’t know what to do. Maybe I should just leave. I stepped towards the door to do just that, but he moved to block the way. I stopped in my tracks. With all the adrenaline running through my system I didn’t want to be physically close to anyone right now, not even Oliver.
“Payton you can leave if you want to, but I would like it if we talked about what just happened,” Oliver pleaded with me. What was I supposed to say? There was no way I was explaining how I was raised. That would lead to exposing all the horrible things I had done. Oliver was my only friend. I couldn’t bear for him to look at me like the criminal that I was.
“Did someone hurt you?” Oliver continued in his soft voice. “Did someone pin you down? Was that why you reacted that way?” He had no idea. There was no way he could understand, and I was not going to explain it to him. I let my eyes fall to the floor and shook my head as I quietly picked up my things and left the room.
Who did I think I was? I didn’t deserve the care and concern that was laced within Oliver’s voice. What was I doing here? I didn’t deserve to be a part of a Whistler team. Brett was right. I didn’t belong here. I didn’t belong next to a man as kind and loyal as Oliver Paxton.
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