"Are you sure we shouldn't send in Sebastian?" Benedict is standing inside the war room, talking to someone over the phone, presumably one of the higher-ups and one of the members of the Board.
"The situation looks very urgent, Sir, Sebastian could be there any second and-"
"Yes, I already have a unit for deployment."
"Yes, sir. We've got it covered."
The person on the other line hangs up. The call ends. At the same time, Yulia joins Benedict, Rina, and Kristoff who were already waiting inside the war room.
"Who was that?" Rina asks Benedict.
"It's the Deputy Director," he answers.
"Wow."
"This must be really important if that guy's calling personally," Kristoff weighs in.
"It is," Benedict flashes holographic images of Eden's research platform hovering in the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean as well as the target for the mission — a humongous, squid-like eldritch monster floating over the waters.
"Woah. What happened to Squidward?" Rina jokingly asks, smiling.
"Better question is what's GOING TO HAPPEN to Squidward," says Benedict.
"And the answer is you're going to kill him before he kills everyone on the platform and sinks it."
"Aww."
"Is it, floating?" asks Yulia.
Everyone focuses their gaze on the image of the giant squid, seemingly floating up a couple of meters in the air, some of its tentacles submerged in the cold waters while some are in the air, floating and wiggling with it.
"It is, apparently," Benedict answers.
"What are those things?" Rina asks, referring to the smaller-sized, gray creatures swimming around on the water.
"We have no exact explanation but surveillance are referring to them as sirens and they're apparently coming from the big squid."
"'Sirens', as in pretty face, fish tail?"
"'Sirens' as in water creatures that sing deadly, hypnotizing songs. And in this case, the song are high-pitched, disorienting sound waves," he explains.
The gray-skinned sirens are considerably small with an estimated size of just three and a half feet. They have a long, round head, face caved in with just a massive hole at the center. Their body is long, torso extending all the way to just a tail and two long, skinny, arms with long and sharp fingers.
"Right now, we have a brigade of Third-Class agents raining fire and protecting the platform from the sirens. They're holding off for now, but the problem is the squid."
"The squid itself doesn't really pose much of a threat," Benedict shows footage of the situation.
"As you can see, thing is just floating over in the distance. Thankfully. But even if it isn't doing anything itself, it's still spitting out sirens after sirens in bulk."
"So just get close and finish it if it's not attacking," Yulia suggests.
"It's only passive from the distance. We've already sent in a boat earlier and it just smashed the thing to pieces as soon as it got within its tentacle's range," Benedict responds.
"Why it's seemingly not moving, we don't know. But that's to our advantage. BUT, we can't just expect it to be this way the entire time. If it DOES make a move, it's going to sink the platform in mere seconds."
"This mission is ranked A. But we're still sending in Agent Rozanova as this is an urgent case as well as for mission compatibility as long-range combat is the most ideal approach," Benedict discusses.
"So, what does this have to do with Laurence personally calling in?" asks Kristoff.
"The Deputy Director was simply concerned with the safety of the Research Platform," Benedict answers.
"Figures."
"If there are no longer any questions, you agents may proceed with the mission."
"AARGHH," Sebastian screams out in frustration, crashing down on the white floor.
"Fuck this," he picks up the pack of cigarettes by his jacket, sitting on the ground and notices that it's lighter than usual.
He opens it and only finds three sticks left inside. He groans even louder.
"You're like a kid throwing a tantrum, you know that?" Eva comments, also sitting on the floor, back laid on the wall just by the door, white tablet resting on her knees.
"And you can't smoke in here, how many times do I have to tell you that."
He pays no heed to the reminder and proceeds lighting up the stick of nicotine anyway.
"You've been staring at an iPad for an hour and I'M the kid?" he retorts.
"Well, what do you want me to do in here? Watch you suck and fail the entire time?"
"Hey, this is hard, what I'm doing," Sebastian defends.
"Whatever," Eva shifts her focus back to her iPad.
Sebastian looks at his phone for the time. It's a couple of minutes past 9 'o clock. He's been in the training room for over two hours now and has made virtually zero progress from yesterday. This realization frustrates him even more and groans out even louder.
The Arctic unit arrive at the vast ocean after 40 minutes, the platform and the giant squid already in sight even from the distance.
"ETA, five minutes," the jet pilot speaks over the intercom.
"We're landing on the ocean behind the platform, agents."
The Research Platform wasn't small, but it wasn't large enough either and it also didn't have a landing area for the jet. Add the fact that the platform was filled with Third-Class agents shooting at the incoming sirens, with a few shooting at the far away squid with laser cannons.
Kristoff gets up and distributes slightly larger, two pieces of earpieces to Rina and Yulia. These will serve as devices for both communication and protection from the sirens' sonic attacks.
Additionally, he also hands over the same square device that he used in the Albuquerque mission to fly — the nanotech jetpack.
"Can I keep it after?" asks Rina.
"No," Kristoff firmly declines.
Yulia declines the jetpack.
"It's alright, I'm good."
"Oh, right. You can fly," says Rina.
Kristoff approaches the black, one by one meter cube that he brought along. He places his right hand over the top where a square, sensor-like surface was located. It lights up, as well as the cube's corners which start to spread and open up, revealing a wall of fragment-powered firearms from automatic rifles, to sniper rifles, to pistols, and even cannons and railguns.
"Pick your poison," he tells Rina who had only brought her pistols and was declined by Kristoff when she asked for a bigger weapon.
"So that's why you wouldn't give me anything earlier," she says, large smile on her face.
She approaches the wall of firearms, standing in front of it, struggling to make a decision.
"ETA, two minutes, agents."
"Hmmmm," Rina still hasn't decided.
"Don't you have something that's, I don't know, lightweight?" she asks.
"What you see is what you get, woman."
"Can I just get some of those hovering drones?"
"No."
Rina pouts. The jet lands on the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean.