Page 111 of Strays
A week after we identified the new drug, the full garrison assembles for our second inter-agency briefing. I remember the one on our first day too well: all the suspicion, the judgment, the room full of posturing aegis bothered by the presence of a stray pack, so I brace myself.
When we enter the command room, the other packs are already sitting. But this time, the mood’s different. Most of them nod to us, and one of the Zervas brothers even kicks a chair out for me with a flick of his boot.
The DEA is officially coordinating the joint op now.
The Bielke pack from HSI has been assigned to Port Newark. They’re digging through shipping logs, cargo manifests, and container routing histories. The Harris pack from the FBI is handling interviews and behavioral mapping, building psychological profiles of the men arrested. And it’s not just suspects they’re interviewing; it’s the women, too.
They’re terrified to talk, but they’re talking anyway. The Harris pack is compiling every name, memory and place, and what they’re hearing is disturbing.
The women were fished from poor neighborhoods in Colombia and Venezuela, approached by a modeling agency that promised international contracts for modeling or dance work. The agency looked legit. It had a website, downtown offices in both Bogotá and Caracas, and uniformed staff. They even held group photo sessions to “build portfolios.”
All the women signed fake contracts. The agency took their passports and IDs, claiming it handled all logistics, like flights, housing, and visas, and would return their documents upon arrival in the U.S.
On departure day, the agency gathered the women at headquarters in Bogotá and Caracas. Staff took their bags with polite smiles and said the luggage would be transported separately to the airport. Then they split the women up and placed each one in a private car with two men from the agency.
But once the car’s doors locked, the tone shifted. The men showed their guns, and the terror began.
The women were told to cooperate, to stay calm, and that no one would hurt them if they just listened. They were transferred from safe-house to safe-house, disoriented and silenced. By the time they reached the port in Buenos Aires, they were too exhausted and afraid to fight back.
They were then loaded into the hidden compartments on the ships. No light, no toilet, just a bucket, two food trays and two bottles of water a day. They were told not to speak and not to scream. And always the same warning:
“Come y bebe. Si llegas jodida al hielo, te mueres.” — Eat and drink. If you reach the ice messed up, you die.
None of them were told what “the ice” meant, but we know it refers to the TGH refrigerated trucks used to move both the women and the drugs from theships to the distribution hubs, like the building where we first found the product.
My brothers and I were assigned to the TGH communications. Our job is to extract everything we can from texts, call logs, backups, and encrypted threads pulled from seized devices and cloned SIMs.
We dive in, but the timing couldn’t be worse to be away from home this much. Jo is different now, restless and on edge, and we can’t help but feel tense, remembering everything we went through the last time she was under too much pressure.
But at least this time, she doesn’t look like she’s about to crumble; she looks like she’s about to erupt. After a difficult day at the hospital, we don’t find her with red, puffy eyes from crying anymore. Instead, she’s furious, cursing her supervisor with words that would make a sailor proud. It makesusproud.
She did her research, gathering every piece of information she could find on gregalis health care, and went full battle mode to make her clinic a reality. She submitted a detailed report to the hospital board, filed requests with the medical council, and is now contacting gregalis rights organizations. She even talked about sending letters to the MAB. Since most aegis are cops or soldiers under its jurisdiction, she thinks they should be interested in gregalis families having access to proper health care.
I don’t know if it’s her work, or us never being home, or both, but her mood that used to be soft is now irritable and short-tempered. She snaps over small things. Last night, as soon as I stepped in, she yelled at me because I hadn’t answered her text fast enough earlier. She never had a problem with our nest, even said she loved it when we first bought it, but now she wakes up almost every morning complaining it feels wrong and uncomfortable.
Her scent has changed too. Faint at first, but stronger now. Subtle shifts that make it even harder to be away from her. Harder to focus. Every time I lose concentration, my thoughts drift to her.
In the few hours we spend at home, we can’t stop checking on her. I’ll press my hands along her arms, her legs, not even sure what I’m looking for. Then I’ll walk away, only to come back half an hour later and do it again. Shane and Jay are the same, so I think it’s an aegis thing. Seeing our nyra unsettled makes us unhinged.
Since she’s snapping at us over everything else, I thought she’d hate being touched all the time, but these days, this is the one thing Jo doesn’t seem to mind. If anything, those are the moments she looks calm. Each time we check on her, she exhales like she’s been holding her breath.
But despite everything, we keep making progress.
Physically, we’re changing fast. Not just stronger, we are now taller and bulkier. We’re outgrowing everything. The only thing that still fits comfortably is our garrison-issued tactical vest.
We try a store in Bridgeport that sells aegis-size clothing, but nothing theyhave fits. The saleswoman ends up giving us the name of a custom tailor. It’s expensive as hell, and we have to be measured and wait a week wearing overstretched clothes until the new stuff is ready.
Even the F-150 feels tight now, and we know the day that we’ll have to give it up and start using the Bronco is coming.
Training is leveling up, too, with sensory drills rotating faster. Sometimes we pass on the first try.
At the DEA, we’re still neck-deep in the TGH comms. Everything’s encrypted, codes everywhere, but some are easy to break: “Cold” means the drug; “Hot” means the women.
Bit by bit, the system starts to reveal itself. The route logs are spotless: they pick up meat from Athena vessels and deliver to distribution centers, with no stops and no deviations. The manifests match; the GPS confirms.
But the messages say otherwise.
Buried in the drivers’ encrypted chats, we find the real trail. Once the ship is in port, the trucks move in to take everything: meat, drugs, and women.
