I Fell For My Nemesis

Avery got through the rest of the week by sheer force of will. Before she knew it she was at a small airfield about to be taken to Massachusetts. The laboratory was in a city called Brockton less than an hour out of Boston but it was easier to simply think of it as going to Boston from a logistical standpoint. 

The pilot was one of their contacts from Montana whose brother happened to be a flight instructor. He had gotten a pilot's license as a hobby and was able to borrow the plane that way. 

"Hi, Jared," Avery greeted, still in a decent mood because of the cake earlier. 

He was a middle-aged man with graying brown hair and laugh lines who smiled easily at her. "Hey, Avery. Nice to finally meet you. I've heard a lot about your exploits and it's a privilege to be able to see you in action." 

She blushed. She hadn't realized there were people in the network who were fans of her work. Regina from California hadn't been like this and she was the only other person she had interacted with directly. Angelo was the one talking to them all the time, plotting. 

"…thanks. And thank you for taking so much time to do this. Are you going to be able to get the sleep you need between flights?"

"Don't worry about me! If I could handle driving to work in the morning after dealing with crying triplets all night I can handle one night of flying getting by on catnaps. I made sure to get plenty of rest before I flew here too and I'm holing up in a hotel down in Florida once we're done before dropping you off."

Jared seemed confident so she was going to have to believe him. He chatted with her once the plan took off about his four children and asked her about herself. This was a much different experience than the one she had with Regina where they only spoke when necessary. 

Avery didn't mind too much yet. She wasn't tired. But if he tried this sort of thing at 3 AM when she needed to sleep between attacks he would have another thing coming. 

He asked her about her life too and she ended up telling him about her job as a cake artist and her upcoming wedding. He didn't seem scandalized at all (unlike Angelo) and asked her the sort of excited questions people were supposed to ask when they found out you were getting married.

She felt herself relaxing as they made their way to Massachusetts. The way the conversation was flowing the time passed seemingly in an instant. Once they landed they got some dinner and cannolis (she had heard a lot about Boston cannolis) since they didn't need to be in Brockton until late. They were delicious. Even better than Vanessa's, which was really saying something. Her cannolis were fantastic.

After dinner Jared, who had never been this far east, wanted to go sightseeing and she had time to kill so off they went. She had never been here before either. 

They traded off taking pictures of each other in front of things though they both knew they wouldn't be able to tell their families about this later. She was going to have to save these pictures to her computer then delete them off her phone so Christian wouldn't see them by accident. 

She was supposedly in upstate New York right now. He couldn't know she was near anywhere connected to the destruction of Hunsacher because he might get suspicious about her being Nox. 

Jared's wife and kids didn't know anything about his involvement with their group. His brother didn't either. He thought the plane was being borrowed for recreational use and that he was going on a solo trip to relax for a while. 

Officially, he was in California for a few days soaking up some time alone in the mountains. He was big on camping while his wife was not so this wasn't suspicious in the slightest. 

Avery was willing to bet a whole lot of lies were happening within their network tonight. Too many to keep track of. What they were doing couldn't exactly be advertised. The more people that knew about it, the more likely it was that they would be exposed. 

They carried on sightseeing until about 9 PM when they needed to try and nap for a couple of hours before striking at midnight. They couldn't do it too early because then people might be awake to see things. 

The mercenaries were all going to kidnap and scientists and their families at midnight across various states so if news of the first lab being destroyed made it to Nolan Hunsacher he wouldn't be able to contact them about it. After that it was all on Avery and Jared unless additional forces were required to take down the labs. The mercenaries in those areas would be on standby just in case. 

Jared, who knew it was dangerous to get used to sleeping sitting up considering his position, had padded the aisle and laid down in it to sleep. He set his phone volume to high and told her to call him when she was on her way back. She didn't see the point in trying to sleep since she needed to head to Brockton in less than two hours on her own so she sat around and watched videos on her phone until it was time to go. 

She left him there and put on the suit, running toward the freeway before jumping on a semitruck heading in the right direction. The GPS in her helmet was on so she knew where to go. Angleo had sent her the coordinates around 10:30. 

Get in, destroy things, get out. Leave nothing behind after corrupting their computer systems. It was like a combination of the time she hit Hunsacher HQ and that sweatshop. 

She didn't need to wait around for forty-five minutes this time to make sure people had enough time to escape. The goal was to do it as quickly as possible and move to the next target. Honestly? It was too easy. 

The guards didn't even see her coming. She corrupted the data, had Angelo do his hacking bit so she wasn't spotted on the video feed, and got all the guards out before blowing the place out in a controlled blast that wouldn't affect nearby buildings too much. 

The whole thing took her less than thirty minutes. Before she knew it she was back on the freeway heading to the plane. 

"First one down," she said in speech-to-text for Angelo's sake before calling Jared. He answered on the fourth ring and had the plane ready for her when she arrived. They were off to Pennsylvania without anyone being the wiser. 

Everything had been planned out so extensively that there weren't any problems in the lab just outside of Philadelphia either. Once they landed they were in and out in under an hour. 

This was too easy. Why was this too easy? Did having Leah Hunsacher on their side truly make that much of a difference?

By the time Avery left the destroyed lab in Jacksonville she was both bored and exhausted. Angelo congratulated her for a job well-done and told her to get some sleep, which she did on the second bed in Jared's hotel room. They would both be sleeping for about six hours before he flew her back to New York and he would spend another night there before going home. 

She crashed on the bed, utterly spent. That had been both simple and routine despite the number of stops but she was so tired even with sleeping every time they flew from place to place. 

Destroying things and making sure guards didn't get hurt was perfectly normal for her. This hadn't felt much different than her usual stunts aside from flying to multiple states in a single night. She never wanted to do something like that again. She didn't know how much sleep she would get before going home and having to work on Tuesday like nothing had happened. 

There was a reason she always did her insulin runs on Saturday nights instead of Sundays. She needed all of Sunday and Monday to recover before going back to her usual life. 

Jared seemed just as exhausted as she did when they woke up again but assured her he would be fine to fly. And he was. They made it back to New York around 4 PM on Monday. She barely had time to make it back to her apartment before Christian would be getting home and was still super groggy. 

She was lying rather miserably on the couch when he finally came home and wanted to know how her trip went. She didn't have the energy to say anything aside from "it was fine" and buried her face in his chest when he embraced her, barely able to stand. 

Last night had involved an awful lot of running and jumping and since she was running on broken-up sleep she was completely drained. He held her up with a frown. 

"What happened to you?"

"Too much activity. I just want to sleeeeep."

Christian let out a small laugh at her whininess and rubbed her back. "Let me get changed out of my suit then you can sleep on me. When did you get back?"

"Less than two hours ago."

"No wonder you're tired! Do you want pizza? You can nap until it comes."

That sounded wonderful. Avery nodded and let go of him. When he came back a couple of minutes later she flopped onto him on the couch and let him hold her. She was out almost instantly and woke up to eat three slices of pizza. 

It was SO tempting to fall asleep again afterward but she needed to fix her sleep schedule for work in the morning so she forced herself to stay awake by playing board games until the time she and Christian normally went to bed. He was rather diligent in his efforts to keep her engaged, able to tell what she was trying to do, and she loved him all the more for it.