Page 125 of Strays
When we step into the room, all the packs from the garrison are there.
“We’re opening a task force for Aranya,” Sam announces. “Weekly inter-agency briefings every Tuesday.”
Everyone here knows this isn’t just another case. It’s personal to me. It’s the man who took away my mother. So when I look around, I expect to find resentment, annoyance at being pulled from their routines to join my case. But all I see is focus and determination.
I just nod. I couldn’t be more grateful.
And their support doesn’t end with the task force: over the next few trainingdays at the garrison, I can’t help but notice the shift.
At first, it’s subtle, just other aegis showing up to the gym during our physical training time, making casual conversation about the equipment and the grind of T1P.
Then it gets weird, like they’re going out of their way to be friendly. Like they’re trying to get to know us. It’s annoying, to be honest. Slows down training. I don’t know what to do with this kind of friendliness. It throws me off my rhythm.
But it’s also… really good.
My brothers and I have never had real relationships with other aegis, and now I can see how good it is talking to someone who actually understands what we are.
We learn a lot.
David Solomon tells us about a tailor up in Great Sky all the garrison aegis go to. He makes good stuff for reasonable prices, way better than the fortune we paid in Bridgeport.
We’ve been wearing only the garrison boots, even for workouts, until Andreas Zervas tells us about an online store that sells sneakers in our size. Now we have proper running shoes.
Otto Bielke gives us a discount code for a protein powder brand, twenty percent off. His brother Claus tells us about a shop in Bridgeport that sells blankets made from a special fabric. Says Lucy, their nyra, swears it’s softer than anything she’s ever touched. He guarantees Jo will lose her mind if we bring some home.
That week, we go to the store on Friday, just after our shift at the DEA, and buy a blanket and four pillowcases. When we get home and give it to Jo, we see Claus was right: she’s over the moon. Since that day, she’s only taken it off the nest to wash it, and the moment it’s dry, it goes right back on. We need to go back and buy her at least one more set.
We end up getting to know them a little better too. The Harris pack has two little ones, a three-year-old nyra named Zuri, an almost-two-year-old aegis named Carter, and their nyra’s pregnant again. They let it slip that they’re worried because this pregnancy feels different from the ones before. Their nyra has been feeling off. I can see how tense they get just saying it.
“Our mate is a resident doctor in Bridgeport, at Joseph Monsoon Hospital,” Shane says. “She’s damn good at it. If you take your nyra there, I’m sure she could take a look at her.”
My chest swells with pride, but the Harris pack’s reaction is instant confusion. They go quiet, glancing at each other like it has to be a mistake, and then change the subject. But a little later they come back, asking questions, carefully and curiously, like they needed time to believe it first, and now they’re trying to understand how it could even be possible.
I get it. When Jo first told us, I had the exact same reaction. It didn’t fit. But now it’s just part of who she is: brilliant, fierce.
Two days later, Jo is beaming with excitement when we get home. She hugs and kisses each of us before blurting out, “A pack showed up at the hospital today with a pregnant nyra asking for me. I got to see a nyra patient for the first time! They told me they’re Special Ops agents and that you guys talked about me.”
We all smile at her excitement as she goes on, breathless. “You should have seen how people at the hospital were staring, practically tearing their eyes out watching that pack walk in with her. I had to see her with Dr. Moretti, the OB-GYN, of course, but I didn’t care. I’m just so glad it happened. Turns out Makena, that’s her name, has high blood pressure and it could have been really dangerous for her and the baby. We started her on meds right away, and I’m going to keep seeing her through the rest of her pregnancy.”
The Harris pack pass by the garrison again to thank us, and I think they spread the word, because to my surprise the Solomons come to talk to us about Jo too. They already have four kids: three aegis aged eight, six, and five, and a nyra who’s seven. The oldest was throwing up a lot yesterday and this morning, and they want to know if Jo could take a look at him too.
“He probably just ate something weird,” Sam says, “but since we have a gregalis doctor now…”
After we told them to take the kid to the hospital so Jo could check on him, I gather the courage to ask questions myself. Since their youngest is five, I figure they must have found a birth control method that works. It’s awkward as hell, but it’s really important to Jo, so I ask what they did.
But they don’t seem bothered by the question at all. “Maya made us all get vasectomies after Yael,” Josh says. “It was hard to find a doctor who’d do it. We spent months looking, but we found one in New York. It was a relief. You know, if she got pregnant again and had another boy, we’d have to keep going to give him brothers, and we already had our hands full with the four we have.”
We end up with nothing, since surgery is not an option for us — we want something temporary that we can stop once Jo feels ready to try for a baby. But it was nice to talk to them either way.
Despite our growing relationships, every Tuesday briefing at the garrison is frustrating. Miles Aranya is untouchable. We’ve been trying every possible legal way to get to him, and nothing sticks.
We make a second attempt to get a search warrant for the Life Circle Biotech warehouse near Port Newark. The Harris pack already tried and failed, but we’re hoping our angle through the frostbite case will carry more weight.
But although the warehouse is tied to Aranya through the LLC, we can’t give the DOJ any link between him and the frostbite investigation other than the similarity between his name and the “Eme Araña” on Athena Foods’spreadsheet. The DOJ answer is that this is not sufficient probable cause to justify a search warrant for the warehouse.
The Harris also try to file a preliminary RICO case, tying together Aranya’s years of clinic relocations, their timing near trafficking raids, and connections to warehouse shell companies. The goal is to categorize him as part of a long-running criminal enterprise.
But RICO cases require predicate acts: at least two criminal offenses like trafficking, money laundering, or fraud directly committed by the defendant or ordered by them. Aranya has no known direct criminal activity on record, so the DOJ blocks the petition.
