Present

The office had fallen practically silent following the dispersing of all the unwilling staff from the building. It was now past five in the afternoon and the only two people who remained in those four walls were Roger and Millie, both of whom wished for the same thing – to find at least one survivor of this mission. It had begun to get dark outside, the normally bright room that was filled with light from outside now looking like a sorry version of itself, dim and dull in the dusk. It certainly reflected the mood the duo was feeling within it, that was for sure. Roger had spent the last hour teaching Millie the ways of the team; how to search frequencies, what to say through each one, how to listen for response in case the soldiers were unable to speak and when to escalate it to him. She had made a few notes on a piece of paper beside her, but had a feeling she wouldn't really need them if she thought the way everyone in this office already did - that the team were already dead. However, a part of her nagged away, telling her she needed to stick by this and check the whole thing herself. She never normally second-guessed her colleagues work but something about the severity of this wanted her to make sure she could hold her hands high and admit she'd done all she could but there was no way of solving this. She didn't want to guess that they'd all been checked if, in reality, her colleague hadn't done them all or hadn't heard a response. Regardless of how long this was going to take, she really wanted to do it right.

Roger had given her a list of all the frequencies but he'd scribbled an 'X' beside the ones he wanted her to check. She began at the top and set the frequency, pushing the button to enable the microphone on her headset before she spoke.

"Vulture, this is base. Come in Vulture. Do you copy?" She spoke with nervousness in her voice, scared of what her headset might pick up as the drug lords wandered by the lifeless bodies of the soldiers they'd just obliterated. Strangely, she heard absolutely nothing. She hung on, turning the volume on her headset up to make sure she could hear any small footsteps in the background or mumbled voices - at least then she knew their communications devices were working. Millie had worked for a while in procurement and she could remember the exact devices she had ordered for these soldiers: Helix branded, range of around five hundred metres, backup signal in case of a failing of some sort or bad reception. Only downside of these was that they'd pick up a lot of background noise but the managers decided it was better to hear too much than too little... yet she heard absolutely nothing.

"Roger, I'm not sure that-" Millie began, elongating her spine to enable her to see over the computer screen. She saw he, too, had headphones on so wouldn't be able to hear her as he repeated the same sentence she had to Vulture to another of the elite soldiers with the name Black Widow. Maybe she was overthinking this? Maybe that particular soldier's radio was faulty or it hadn't survived the gunfight just like the soldier probably hadn't. She decided it was best to try another few frequencies and see whether or not these radios were all the same. If they were all eerily silent, something was definitely wrong - more wrong than it already was.

"Wolf, this is base. Come in Wolf. Do you copy?" She spoke more confidently this time, her hand still hovering over the frequency to change it when needed. She sat in complete silence, making sure even her breathing was inaudible as she waited to hear something in the background once again. Anything would do; a cough or sneeze, a footstep or door closing - no one lives in silence like this. Millie wasn't convinced in the slightest. Quickly she stood up, waving her hand over her head to attract Roger's attention. He looked up at her over his screen, removing the headset as he looked at her with hope in his eyes.

"Good news?" He grinned over, his eyes gleaming as if he'd witnessed a miracle of some sort. Millie's shoulders drooped as she shook her head, Roger's smile faded instantly.

"Bad news, if we're categorising." She shrugged, her slightly bad humour coming out once again. Roger sighed as he rolled his eyes, running his hands over his hair and then his face in absolute frustration of the whole scenario. Millie decided it was best to just continue with her findings, hoping they could work together to sort it out. "I think there's some sort of signal blocker in the building. I remember ordering these radios, they were meant to be able to pick up five hundred metres of sound but I'm not hearing a single thing. I think they've blocked the radios somehow." Roger threw his hands on the desk in anger, letting out a primal scream as the frustration finally came out of him, despite it building up over the day with bad news coming thick and fast. Millie jumped at the noise, not expecting such a sight from her information.

"So what can we do?" Roger asked, walking over and standing beside Millie now with yet another steaming coffee in his hands. His foot was tapping anxiously as Millie thought long and hard about a way round it.

"Get someone to hack the blocker and shut it down? Other than that, we will need to somehow find another frequency that doesn't use our normal waves and maybe that would be able to get past the blocker." Millie guessed, followed by a shrug of her shoulders again. Roger paced around, coffee sloshing in the cup, as he thought long and hard about how to fix this. They didn't have time to waste or time to make a wrong decision, everything had to be perfect if they were going to sort this out at all. Despite neither of them being involved in the error to begin with, they were now both invested in trying to fix it and get those soldiers out - providing some of them had survived.