Chapter 229: Special Forces
Princess landed on Jake's left shoulder and began cleaning her paw with the unhurried composure of something that had just resolved a situation to its complete satisfaction and was moving on.
The male dragon, its burns already closing — the hybrid biology processing damage faster than the original Reign of Fire baseline — had relocated to the far end of the staging area and was studiously avoiding eye contact with the cat. It had also, apparently, made a decision about the power hierarchy in the base, because its subsequent behavior toward Princess had shifted from the territorial assessment of something that considered itself the apex of the local order to the specific careful deference of something that had updated that assessment.
"Big sister," it said, very quietly, in the direction of Princess.
Princess did not acknowledge this.
The male dragon appeared to find the non-acknowledgment acceptable — possibly even preferable to acknowledgment, given the circumstances.
Jake watched this and thought that Birkin was going to find the behavioral data from this interaction almost as interesting as the biological data.
"Let it fly," Jake said to the dragon. "One circuit of the outer perimeter, then return. I want the remaining holdout groups in the wasteland to get a clear look."
The male dragon appeared to find the assignment welcome — the specific motivation of something that had just been thoroughly humiliated and was ready for an environment where its status was less recently contested.
It launched with the committed wing strokes of something going somewhere with purpose.
Matilda, who had arrived with considerable enthusiasm for the idea of riding dragons and had been progressively recalibrating that enthusiasm since observing Princess's performance, was now holding the cat with the expression of someone who had decided the cat was the correct attachment to have in this base.
"It would have been cool to ride it," she said, watching the dragon disappear over the ridge. "But she's better."
"Different applications," Jake said.
"She's better," Matilda said again, with finality.
The base's expansion was visible even from the staging area entrance.
The smooth stone paving, the building foundations that were reaching toward the structure the plans called for, the trees that the agrarian team had been cultivating in the section the Red Queen had designated for the long-term ecological infrastructure. The three central rock formations that the original design called to be carved into something permanent — the work on those had started three weeks ago, the motion-capture robots and their Knight operators making progress that regular construction schedules wouldn't have permitted.
Against the backdrop of the Wasteland's exterior — the scorched, desolate landscape that the franchise had established as the consequence of resource war and the collapse of sustainable civilization — the base's interior was, in the specific way of places that had been built deliberately and cared for consistently, something that deserved the word haven.
Jake looked at it every time he came back from a transit and registered the progress.
He found, consistently, that the progress registered as something more than operational.
Selene was in the equipment testing space adjacent to the research wing when they passed — the glass walls that the base's design had specified from the beginning showing her at a workstation examining the weapons she'd brought from the Underworld world.
Matilda saw her before Jake pointed her out.
"You brought back another one," Matilda said. The specific tone communicated that she was conducting an assessment rather than making an accusation, but the assessment had an edge to it.
"The Dark Council's combat capability has a gap," Jake said. "Selene addresses it."
Matilda looked at Selene through the glass with the specific attention she brought to people who were going to be in her proximity for an indefinite period.
"She's a vampire," Matilda said.
"Yes," Jake said.
"Can she fly?"
Jake looked at her.
"Vampires in the Underworld world don't have wings," he said. "The progenitor line had them. The current vampire population doesn't."
Matilda processed this with the expression of someone filing a research question for later.
"The research team could look into it," she said.
Jake thought about this. Marcus's biology had been partially absorbed by the male dragon. The progenitor's specific genetic expression — including whatever mechanism had produced the bat-wing capability — was technically now in the Dark Council's research archive in a somewhat unusual format. Whether Birkin could extract useful data from that source was an interesting question.
He filed it.
Selene had become aware of them through the glass. She looked at Matilda with the assessment she brought to everything, and Matilda looked back at her with equal assessment.
They went in.
"I'm Matilda," the girl said, with the specific directness of someone who had decided the introduction was more effective as a statement than a question. "I'm the Saint of the Dark Council."
"Selene," Selene said. "I'm new." She looked at Jake. "You have a specific hierarchy."
"It's more organizational than hierarchical," Jake said. "The titles mean something in certain operational contexts."
Matilda looked at Selene with the expression of someone who had additional things to say and was deciding which order to say them in. Then, apparently, she was distracted by something more interesting than the hierarchy conversation.
"Can you actually walk up walls?" she said. "I read that vampires can ignore gravity for short periods."
Selene looked at her.
"Yes," she said.
Matilda's expression shifted significantly.
"Show me," she said.
Jake left them to it and went to find Selene's actual assessment of the base's operational situation.
He found it, comprehensively documented, on the terminal the Red Queen had set up for new personnel.
Selene had spent her first twenty-four hours observing everything and had apparently been taking notes the entire time.
The assessment was organized and direct and accurate in the specific way of someone who had been assessing operational capability for centuries and had developed a very precise sense of what mattered and what didn't.
Firearms: World War II era for the most part, with exceptions from specific acquisitions. Effective against baseline humans, insufficient against the enhanced biological threats that the fifth folder's worlds would present. No standardized ammunition logistics.
Armor: absent at scale. The coat was exceptional. Nobody else had anything comparable. The Batman equipment set was extraordinary and had exactly two users.
Heavy weapons: limited to the HYDRA energy tanks, which Jake had deliberately constrained from operational use, and obsolete conventional armor.
Aerial capability: the Bat aircraft, the dragons, and the Capitol hovercraft fleet that Furiosa was managing. No standardized crew training for any of it.
Combat personnel: the Knights were genuinely exceptional — the fearlessness that the Wasteland had produced, combined with the Dark Council's training, had created something unusual. Individual capability at the top end was significant. Unit tactics were functional. The gap was in specialized roles — dedicated snipers, breach specialists, the kind of capability differentiation that a serious fighting force needed to operate across varied environments.
The assessment concluded with three words:
Fix the fundamentals.
Jake sat with this for a while.
She was right.
The base had been built as a research infrastructure with combat capability as a secondary concern, and it showed. The dimensional portfolio had grown to a point where the threat environment of the next transits — specifically the fifth folder's MCU entries — required a baseline capability that the current roster didn't fully meet.
He thought about the G.I. Joe franchise.
The specific thing the G.I. Joe universe offered wasn't primarily its weapons — though the weapons were serious, the franchise having built its identity around the gap between what conventional military technology produced and what classified special operations technology produced. It was the training doctrine. The tactical frameworks. The specifically American approach to special operations that the franchise had developed into something coherent enough to be a useful model.
The dimensional library had a G.I. Joe entry.
He'd been thinking about it for a while.
The timing was right.
He needed weapons that worked against the specific threat profiles the MCU worlds would present. He needed training doctrine that could bring the Knights from capable-but-undisciplined to genuinely dangerous across varied environments. And he needed the specific kind of equipment that didn't get designed by conventional defense contractors because conventional defense contractors didn't know what the operational requirements were.
MARS Industries. Cobra's weapons technology. The franchise's established advanced materials and weapons systems — the accelerator suits, the next-generation armor, the weapons platforms that operated several generations beyond what any publicly acknowledged military technology produced.
Getting in, getting what he needed, and getting out.
That was the mission shape.
He stood up from the terminal and went to find Selene.
She was still in the equipment testing space, but now Matilda was there too — perched on the workstation edge with the specific attention of someone who had asked a question and was receiving a thorough answer, while Selene was demonstrating something with one of her pistols that involved the ceiling.
Jake looked at the fresh marks on the ceiling tiles.
"The wall-walking and ceiling thing," Matilda was saying, with the tone of someone who had just watched something and was processing the physics of it. "How far up can you go before gravity wins?"
"Approximately twelve seconds at full concentration," Selene said. "Less when engaged. More in low-gravity environments, theoretically."
"Can you teach that?" Matilda said.
Selene looked at her.
"You're not a vampire," Selene said.
"No," Matilda said. "But I've learned other things that weren't specifically designed for me."
Selene looked at her with the assessing attention she brought to things she hadn't categorized yet.
"Possibly," she said. "With the right neurological framework and the right physical conditioning."
Matilda looked at Jake with the expression of someone who had just received the right answer to the question they'd been asking before the question was asked.
"We're going to talk about the training program," Jake said to Selene.
Selene set down the pistol. "I was going to bring it up," she said.
"I know," Jake said. "But first I'm going to a different world to get better weapons."
She looked at him. "Which world?"
"G.I. Joe," Jake said.
Selene processed the franchise reference with the expression of someone who had been absorbing a great deal of new information about how dimensional travel worked and was continuing to absorb it.
"Special operations military technology," she said.
"Next generation," Jake said. "The kind of equipment that makes the difference between functional and formidable."
She looked at the weapons on her workstation. The franchise-standard Berettas, the silver-round modifications, the UV-bullet development that Tanis had contributed to from the Lycan side.
"Come back with armor," she said. "Personal armor that scales to the threat environment."
"That's on the list," Jake said.
"And a standardized ammunition logistics system," she said. "We can't maintain operational coherence if every unit is running different calibers."
"Also on the list," Jake said.
"And—"
"I have a list," Jake said. "You can add to it."
She looked at him with the expression she wore when she found something acceptable.
"The training doctrine," she said. "When you get back."
"When I get back," Jake said.
He looked at Matilda, who was examining one of Selene's modified Berettas with the focused attention of someone who had decided to understand how it worked.
"Don't take anything apart," he said.
"I'm not taking it apart," Matilda said, without looking up. "I'm assessing the modification."
"There's a difference," Princess said, from Matilda's shoulder, in the specific register she used for things that needed to be said.
Jake looked at the cat.
The cat looked back at him.
"I'll be back in two days," Jake said.
"The G.I. Joe world," Matilda said, still examining the pistol. "Is it the original or the reboot?"
Jake looked at her.
"How do you know about G.I. Joe?" he said.
"I'm thirteen, not three," Matilda said.
"The 2009 film," Jake said. "Rise of Cobra."
"MARS Industries weapons," Matilda said, with the tone of someone checking a reference. "The nanotech warheads and the accelerator suits."
Jake looked at her for a long moment.
"You can come," he said.
Matilda set the pistol down with the specific deliberateness of someone who had been waiting for exactly this.
"I'll get Princess's carrier," she said.
Princess looked at Jake with the expression of something that had known this was coming and had been waiting patiently.
Jake looked at the ceiling.
"Two days," he said to Selene.
"Come back with armor," she said.
He went to prepare the transit.
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