Free Blades of Winter by G. T. Almasi Page A

around the city, and he’d point out different buildings and how they related stylistically. But by the time we had you, all he ever did was that work of his. Of yours.” She stops pacing and sits on the bed again. “This—” She waves at all the medical stuff around my bed. “—is the same as it was with your father.”
    “Not quite the same. You and I aren’t fighting all the time.”
    She looks down at her lap, inhales deeply through her nose, exhales through her mouth, then says, “True. You and I aren’t fighting all the time.”
    We sit quietly for a moment. I ask, “What was all the racket I heard when you guys fought?”
    “Oh, my.” Another deep breath. “He’d kick the dressers, break the lamps, punch holes in the door. We’d argue about him quitting ExOps and doing somethingelse. He never hit me, but it was still … difficult to be around.” Cleo looks up at me. “Remember all the shopping you and I used to do together?”
    I do remember that. We were always on the lookout for inexpensive furniture at secondhand stores and yard sales. I never thought about what happened to it all, but it sounds like they went through their bedroom sets like other people go through bottles of laundry detergent. I guess I never noticed because when I went into their room, it was always at night. I’d crawl in with my mom after one of my nightmares. When I’d fallen asleep again, she’d carry me back to my room.
    “Why would he smash up his own bedroom?” I ask. It seems like a stupid question, but I can’t figure it out.
    “Oh, God … so many reasons. Mostly he needed to vent his anxiety from the field. He’d be alone for months under terrible conditions. Spying isn’t like the movies—you know this. There’s no room service or fancy cars.”
    “What was it like?” I talk quietly, the way you do at a funeral.
    “He’d be sent to some hellhole to retrieve someone or some item. He’d stake out an obscure little location for weeks, or they’d send him in to do something fast and dreadful. But he’d always do it alone.”
    “Alone? No Info Operator?”
    “Back then Levels didn’t have IOs. They did everything by themselves. They’d be inserted alone, and they’d return alone.” She looks down at her hands in her lap, “If they came back at all.” I reach out with my left hand and wrap my fingers around hers.
    Nowadays, all ExOps Job Numbers include a dedicated resource from the Information Department. Exceptions are made for really short jobs, like the one for following Hector around. In those cases, the Level is entrusted with the entire mission, including data acquisition. Most of our missions are big mean mothers, though, and require Info support.
    The type of support depends on the job, which meansit mostly depends on the Level’s class. Infiltrators typically operate in such deep, long-term cover that they have to get their Info support remotely. Protectors usually work as a security team that includes an Info Operator to synchronize their efforts. Vindicators like Raj tend to act as heavy muscle for larger missions that already include an Info resource.
    Then there are Interceptors, like me. We generally don’t work as part of a larger group, so we’re usually partnered with an Info Operator. Interceptors pull off deep penetrations that result in a lot of intel, but the missions are short, a couple of days to a couple of weeks. Most of the time we only need to maintain a surface cover, which consists of carrying a fake passport and remembering which language to speak. The Info Operator manages the harvested data while the Interceptor does everything else.
    I’m not a big rules person, but even I can see where this protocol comes from. I never would have kept my shit together during Mom’s rescue if Patrick hadn’t been guiding me through it. It hadn’t occurred to me that Extreme Operations didn’t always work this way.
    I ask Cleo, “What made ExOps start requiring Info