He’d just gotten through chewing out the prototypes for burning the gas station. They’d had a good excuse. They thought they’d seen Franks inside, and that was enough to justify an immediate, violent response. They’d been mistaken, but they’d still been forced to eliminate the witnesses. They were programmed not to lie to him and their version of events was plausible. He’d thought about flipping the kill switch and annihilating them, or at least the big stupid one, to serve as an example to the others, but it had been his call to send them without an overseer, and he was already down a few units. So he chalked it up to a learning experience.

Stricken’s office at the STFU bunker was completely unadorned. There were no pictures, commendations, or awards on the walls. There wasn’t even a nameplate on his desk. In fact, there was nothing on his desk except for his computer. He liked it that way. It was a habit formed over decades of working undercover in foreign hellholes. The less he had, the less he’d have to burn or shred if he needed to leave in a hurry. Nice and simple. Clean.

Unfortunately, now he had to take care of some more STFU personnel matters, and that would be anything but clean.

There was a knock on the door. His secretary stuck her head in. “Mr. Stricken, Heather Kerkonen is here for her appointment.”

“Send her in.”

The redheaded werewolf came into the office and his secretary closed the door behind her. Kerkonen really was a good-looking woman, though her nose was too big, and it wasn’t like something capable of regeneration could get plastic surgery. But right now she was too apprehensive to be pretty. She had never been summoned to the STFU command center before, probably had never had a clue where it was, or if a central physical location even existed at all. Stricken liked to think of his assets as mushrooms, where the best way to grow them was to keep them in the dark and feed them shit.

“Impressive place. I expected the big office, but I kind of figured you’d have a view.”

“Figuratively speaking, most of my career has been underground. Why should it be any different now that I’ve reached the top? Please, have a seat, Heather.”

There was a single chair in front of his desk. She eyeballed it like it was a trap. Her body language suggested she had probably been expecting tarps on the floor to catch the blood. Heather was playing it cool, but she was nervous. He could tell she was testing the air, using her heightened werewolf senses to see if he had brought any help. He hadn’t. He really didn’t need to. Brute force was for suckers.

She sat down. “You wanted to see me?”