Pride, Mates, and Past Mistakes

Getting Hit on By Cashiers and Other Unnecessary Problems I Have to Deal With

*Cody*

Blondie awkwardly cleared her throat. "Well. It's very...quaint, I guess?"

I held back a sigh. I'd signed up for the mission and that meant dealing with everything in it. I couldn't expect to be pampered in luxury all the time.

After we'd left the airport (and more or less bribed our pilot from telling Rowena that we hadn't gone home), we'd driven back into the heart of New York City. Except this time, we went a little closer to the IPKA Headquarters. Unfortunately we no longer had Rowena's backing on the mission, and that meant that we no longer had access to the fancy five bedroom hotel suite Rowena had set up for us with the IPKA cash.

And while we still did have the stash of money that the Representative had given Sierra at the beginning of the mission, there was only so much of it. And as it turns out (to Nolan's increasing disappointment), New York City was not the cheapest place in the world.

Instead all six of us had submitted to a different living condition-a seedy motel right in the heart of some of the most ghetto parts of town. Most of the people who lived here were rogues who had broken away from their packs, trying to scrape by day by day on their own.

The room itself was already posing a few problems. While a double bed room that might have been nice for a family of three or four people, it was definitely not built for six jittery teenagers. Our luggage alone took up half of the space, and we didn't even have that much as it was-each of us only had what we really needed in a duffel and a backpack with us.

"Sorry," Sierra sighed. "It's all we can really afford right now. Rowena's no longer taking care of all our expenses, and we've got to last at least another eight days. Not to mention, we have to feed ourselves, too. It's kinda the best we can do right now."

"It's not that bad," Nolan attempted, fumbling over the obstacle course of our duffel bags and suitcases. For an Alpha, I had no idea how the kid could be so uncoordinated sometimes. "It has a bathroom, and right now, that's all I need. Like, right now." And without another word, he locked himself inside the bathroom.

Casey heaved a dramatic sigh, kicked a few backpacks out of the way, and made her way to one of the beds and flopped on it. She threw an arm over her eyes and declared that no one was to wake her unless they had food.

Meanwhile, the rest of us grabbed our bags and tried to shove them all into one mountain to open up some space, but with all six of us, the effort was pretty much in vain. The hard fact was that the room was not made for more than four people. Most everyone gave up before long.

Sierra, Doreen, and James, being the IPKA trainees, immediately got to work. Doreen pulled out a laptop out of her backpack, along with a few notepads and pens. She perched on the unoccupied bed and laid out her stuff. She tapped at her computer for a bit, and before long she was already jotting down things feverishly on her notepad.

Meanwhile, James pulled out his own set of tools out of his own backpack-a bunch of fancy looking wires and gadgets, all of which he plugged into his computer. He took a seat across from Doreen on the bed and began typing furiously into his computer. Occasionally one of them would glance up and ask the other a question, and the other would supply an answer without looking up, or without fully breaking concentration.

Casey, on the other hand, hadn't moved from her sprawled position on the bed, and Nolan (for some concerning reason) still had not returned from his trip to the bathroom. I felt awkward just standing in the corner by myself doing nothing, so I naturally drifted over to Sierra, who was poring over a bunch of papers laid out on one of the hotel's desks. Every few minutes she would frown, shake her head, rip out and crumple up a paper, and throw it across the room into the trash-never once looking at the trashcan, never once missing.