They were in a large gymnasium-looking room, the walls painted an unappealing gray, with what looked like some sort of a futuristic tank sitting in the middle of it on some piece of machinery that seemed to act as a variable physics terrain device, providing resistance and higher or lower altitudes and natural formations for the vehicle to cross over. The boy in him wanted to go check out the tank, but every single other part of him wanted to kill Spade where he stood.
So he stormed right to the man, knowing that his eyes had to be dark brown and threatening as fuck at the moment, and swung at him with all the strength he had. Spade sidestepped him like he was some sort of an amateur at his first boxing match.
He was still faster than anyone Dice had ever known. It was fucking enraging.
"Where IS SHE!?" Dice growled, his voice resonating back from the high ceiling of the lab. "You fucking promised she'd be there. I tore up half of fucking Bolivia with your bloodhounds and she wasn't there."
"Guess the intel must have been wrong then," Spade said with the simplest of shrugs, his gaze impassive and almost bored as he ducked and weaved as Dice attempted to land a punch again.
He must have been exhausted and out of his mind, or Spade had gotten even better over the years. Both probably had a bit to do with how easily Dice was out-maneuvered. He hadn't slept in three days, though it felt like he hadn't rested since he'd allowed Meredith to slip out of his grasp.
"You guess? You fucking GUESS? What is this, the tenth fucking time your intel's been off?"
Dice couldn't keep his voice level or wipe the honest rage from his expression. It simply could not be done. He was too pissed off and far too ready and willing to see Spade's brains coating one of those gray walls, if for no other reason than to relieve some of the pent-up anger he was experiencing.
"In all fairness, I never promised that you'd find her there," Spade said with a shrug of his shoulders, looking at him almost as if he were bored.
Dice's hands rolled into even tighter fists, forcing himself to stand still for a moment, to breathe and see if he could incite any other emotion in himself other than flaming outrage. So far, no luck.
"I haven't heard from her in six months, Spade. Six. Months. You dangle my mate in front of my nose like some twisted kind of bait and then you let her disappear again? Where is she, you motherfucking piece of shit?! Where!? I need to know. I'm done doing your dirty work, I'm done wrangling your zoo. Keep them. Keep it all. You either tell me where Meredith is or I swear to all the spirits, I will make it my life's mission to make your life hell."
The smirk that crossed Spade's features was probably the closest thing Dice had seen the man show that could loosely be defined as an actual emotion. It only made things worse that Spade chose to quietly mock him for his pain.
Dice's jaw squared, his eyes narrowing. Man against man, Spade could outmaneuver him. But shifter against shifter? He wasn't so sure. Not that Spade would ever let it come to a fight where he didn't have a clear and immediate advantage, of course.
After Meredith had been tucked away on that plane and flown out of Peru right along with Dice's heart, Shifter Squad Nine had gone to town on the outpost. They dismantled it to its base particles. Not only would there not be a single Arctics' agent in the region to tell the tale of how The Firm won that day, but every transmission, every video feed, every wall and tower had been captured, destroyed and blown up for good measure.
Dice had never seen Rio quite so happy as when Dice had given the order to make sure that nothing on the two Arctics' sites could be larger than the size of his fist. The amount of firepower and destruction that damn lion could pack into an afternoon was staggering. It was like watching the Fourth of July fireworks over Los Angeles when Rio had thrown the switches later that day. Pure magic, really.
For the first few months after that mission, things had been working smoothly enough. The Firm gave Dice frequent updates on Meredith, along with her supposed location and the occasional video feed or two, and he could keep his head in the game.
Shifter Squad Nine had continued to be thrown into more and more harrowing situations and begrudgingly, they'd come to respect one another enough so that Dice could at least pretend to trust them not to shoot him in the back during a mission.
He wouldn't go so far as to say that he was friends with any of them, though the twins seemed to get along well enough amongst themselves as they seemed to resonate on the same frequency of crazy, but when he gave an order, he could assume that it was followed. There would be plenty of bitching and moaning, but they'd fucking do it.
It had taken at least three near-death experiences, including Ryker almost getting his arm cut off during an especially brutal fight in New Zealand with some zealot-like Arctics' groupies, and Price nearly getting them all killed when the chopper he flew was cut off by two assault helicopters during a mission over Cambodia. In short, times had been interesting for Shifter Squad Nine.
But over time, the feeds seemed to disappear completely and the news on Meredith grew rarer and rarer until it seemed to stop completely around the five-month mark. Since then, Dice had been getting a very elaborate song and dance routine about how getting reliable information was 'hard' and he would be told as soon as something came up. In a word, it was bullshit.
The longer he waited for news, the more antsy and angry he got, until it didn't take a genius to realize that Spade had been throwing the squad into increasingly questionable missions all over the globe, most of the time as far as possible from The Arctics' main hubs. Dice was wise enough to assume that it was partially because Spade didn't want Dice going guerilla on his ass and starting to bomb The Arctics' main sites with reckless abandon.
"Hell, hmm?" Spade finally asked, still wearing that smug, indecipherable smirk of his. "I don't think you know the definition of it."
"Yeah? Having my mate being held by a terrorist organization run by people I can only assume to be carbon copies of who you are now is not your understanding of hell? Maybe so, but I certainly know what bitter pain tastes like and I sure as fuck would like to give you a crash course on that, friend."
He stressed the last word, in a standoff with the high-ranking Firm agent. He had a sidearm on his hip and the rifle he'd used during the mission still slung over his back. Spade didn't look to be armed, but knowing him, he certainly had a piece somewhere. But as much as Dice wanted to wring his neck, he couldn't. Spade was the only one who could actually know where Meredith was.
Dice had gone from questioning his former friend's morals to hating him as fiercely as any other man in The Firm, but he wasn't dumb enough to think that anyone else could help him solve his very obvious and glaring problem.
"I think you'd find that to be incorrect," Spade said, the smirk falling off his features and his tone somber.
It made Dice's brow tick up, but nothing more. He waited, controlling himself so he wouldn't lash out again.
Deep fucking breaths, Dice …
"Did you get what I needed you to find?" Spade asked suddenly, shoving his hands in the pockets of his black slacks.
"In Argentina? Yeah, we got it. We got the convoy and took the blood samples you wanted. Thor handed them over to the lab geeks," Dice said, gritting out the words as if each one cut him personally.
"Good," Spade said with a nod.
"I wasn't kidding, you know. I'm done. You either tell me where Meredith is and show me some kind of a plan to get her out of there, or I'll go find her myself. I might not fucking find her but at least I'll be doing something instead of playing Earth Warden for your twisted schemes."
"I know," Spade said, his words dull. "And you won't leave."
That disarmed Dice. Was Spade calling his bluff?
His brow furrowed, glaring back at the tall, foreboding figure of the one man that every operative seemed to loathe with equal fervor, and all for different reasons. All good reasons.
"You know? Does that mean you'll do something about it? And why do you think I won't fucking quit? I'd rather be a bouncer at a club at this rate. The Nine guys are fine on their own, they can work without me."
The last one was a lie. They needed someone to hold onto the goddamn collars around their neck the whole time if any of those shifters wanted to pretend to be a functioning member of society. Even a fucked up one like The Firm.
"Dice, you should know by now that none of this happens without a good, solid reason to back it up," Spade said with the makings of a sigh, strolling up to him in the most casual way. "Follow me," he said, and begrudgingly, Dice followed as Spade led them out of the lab.