Her silver-white hair was worn in a bob (a hairstyle that her last boyfriend had called a “Karen cut”), and her storm-blue skin, the mark of her drow elf blood, bore no makeup. She’d never needed it. Not even now that she was close to fifty years old. Her age would have made her a mature human, but as an elf, she was barely past her adolescent years.

Being an elf certainly had its advantages. Being a drow elf, however, negated some of them.

Even among those from her homeworld, she was viewed as lesser. Back in her homeworld, before the Fateweaver had destroyed it, the drow had kept to themselves for centuries, choosing to live within Eosor’s Underdark, a vast underground network of cities and dwellings where drow society could continue without interference from others. On occasion, the drow ventured out of their subterranean cities to raid the surface lands, taking slaves and plunder back to their underground realm. Because of this, Amanda Fallon’s people were widely feared, and the taint of that fear had stayed with them in their new home on Earth.

This subtle prejudice had been with Amanda through her early life and had followed her into her career. It remained with her even now, despite her decade of service to the EDI in its various incarnations.

That taint of fear was, she believed, what had led to her current assignment, and the three agents under her command: Selena the cat-girl, Astrid the lycan, and Belinda the psycher. Each had similar backstories: spurned by Eosoreans and Earthlings alike. What the agents all had in common, however, was the same thing that had driven Amanda for as long as she could remember: a desire to succeed in spite of those who wished to see her and her race fail.

Amanda may have shared the sting of prejudice with her trio of misfit agents, but for all that, they could be very difficult to control.

Even now, anger burned in Amanda’s stomach as she picked up her secure cell phone and dialed Astrid’s number. There was no dial tone, so Amanda guessed that she was presently inside the dungeon. Amanda then called Belinda, and received the same lack of dial tone. For no reason anyone had ever been able to determine, cell phones just didn’t work inside dungeons.

Selena was definitely Amanda’s least favorite of the three agents under her command, and so Amanda had deliberately left her until last. It was with some reluctance that Amanda now dialed her number. The call rang this time, but after eight rings, it bleeped over to voicemail.

“Hi, this is Selena, if you’re cool, hot, and like to party, leave a message and I might get back to you…” beeeep

“For Queen Viera’s sake,” Amanda cursed. She cut the call before she logged into the Discord server which she knew Selena frequented during her near-constant gaming sessions.

There she was: LittleMinx.