Page 10

It wasn’t a hallucination. A single mention of the entity in the woods landed me in a medical holding cell, awaiting a truck to escort me back to the airport for PTSD-induced psychosis. I screamed and repeated the story to anyone who would listen, begging them to look for the grave, the headstone, the dead body of my father that turned into Death. I screamed until they gagged me, then Bane finally told me that nothing was found in the woods. No man, no entity, no grave.

He locked the holding cell and instructed the guards to ignore me, that I suffered a psychotic break due to the trauma of being brought back, and that Sara was right. I was too mentally ill to lead.

That’s a lie. It was real.

The flashes in my mind are fleeting moments, short enough that if I blink or turn my head, I’ll miss it, but long enough to make me question my sanity. They’re small things—a taste in my mouth, some weird phantom touches on my hands, hearing gunfire or the flashes of my dead comrades at my feet. They’re fleeting moments, but that’s all they are. Moments. Seconds. They’ve never thrown me into a grave and kissed me.

It was real, but even I knew how ridiculous it sounded.

Dirt swells along the road as the last of the trucks leave, Sara leading the front with my plan now given to her. They’ll travel to the extraction point on the other side of the forest, a clearing overlooked by two hills that merge into the mountainside. It was perfect, concealed and away from prying eyes, and easy to trap my targets.

Anderson stayed behind, all too eager to watch me scream to no one about the things lurking in the forest, but one reprimand from Bane was all he needed to keep quiet, only snickering when I threw my breakfast across the room.

Occasionally Bane’s voice overshadows Anderson’s chatting, screaming with his brother where I can’t see, but all it took was the word ‘psych ward’ for me to realize I was well and truly fucked. As if I hadn’t been punished enough by being forced to go to therapy for twelve months, now they want to put me away forever for something that actually happened. This isn’t PTSD. The blood was real. Death was real. It stared me in the face and I hit it. It fucking kissed me and no one will listen.

The door of the medical building slams, jostling the bright lights that flicker from the force. I glance out the sealed window, Bane and Alastor bickering all the way to the briefing room.

“You lasted a lot longer than I thought you would,” Anderson says through the bars in the door.

“Shut the fuck up, Anderson,” I growl.

He puts his hands up in mock surrender.

“Hey, I’m not judging. If I wanted out, I’d probably pull the crazy card too.”

My lips curl into a snarl, rage festering in my throat that I force down. A medical discharge is better than a dishonorable discharge, and while I can negotiate being stuck in a hospital for the next twenty years, talking my way out of a military prison is a lot harder.

Anderson leans against the door, lips quirked up in a cocky smirk. “I think I prefer you crazy,” he muses, reaching through the bars, caressing my wrist.

I glare at him. “Touch me again and you’ll be jacking off with your left hand.”

“Stop acting like such a frigid bitch,” he sneers, gripping my forearm until I wince. “After all the training you did, you can’t really play that card anymore, can you? Crazy is the only one you’ve got now.”

Bile forms in my throat. The mention of my advanced training forces memories that bring on a bout of rage. He shouldn’t know about that. No one is allowed to know about the advanced training that we go through. It’s done in private, one on one, and for a very good reason. How the fuck would he know about mine?

Anderson smiles. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. I can keep a secret.” He looks me up and down and his other hand reaches through the bars, slowly dragging down the collar of my shirt to expose my skin. “But if Death got to have a go at you, I don’t see why I can’t have a small taste.”

My fist flies through the bars before I can stop myself, colliding with the side of his face and sending him back.

Anderson falls back onto the tiled floor, clutching his ear that quickly turns red with lines of blood.

Fuck.

Shock freezes me, my hand outstretched and gripping the key to my cell that tore from Andeson’s uniform. He’s moaning and groaning, holding his ear as if it’s missing from his face while he swears the end of my career. I can explain to Bane that it was self defense. The bruises on my arm are enough proof, though I don’t want to think about what he really wanted to do if he had the chance.

The outpost is old and the reality of the lack of cameras or witnesses in here makes my face pale. Anderson is bruised and bloody and I only have a few bruises. It would be easy to spin it in Anderson’s favor, unless I had enough evidence.

Or if I proved to Bane I was still valuable as a soldier.

I glance at the key in my hand and back to Anderson, slowly climbing to his feet.

Dad wouldn’t want this. He deserves justice…even at the expense of my freedom.

I reach in between the small bars of the cell door and slip the key through the lock. It opens with a groan, overshadowing Anderson’s whines of pain as I step out of the cell.

“You’re going to die,” Anderson groans under me.

I don’t answer and I don’t look back as I sprint out of the building and into the forest.

The trucks were ditched 200ft from the clearing. The foliage and textured camouflage created a small mossy hill among the trees, making it almost impossible to find, if I hadn’t spotted the tracks leading to it first. Streams of light beam through the trees like flashes, illuminating the path I walked the day before.

The coordinates are branded into my mind and as I creep quietly, the buzzing of the forest lessens, like it sees something I don’t.

And then it blinks back—a color misplaced amongst the greens, patches of brown and tan mixed in, creating the signature pattern of the camouflage soldiers hiding behind the trees, staring out into the clearing. Soon I see more and more. One after the other, my platoon creeps past me, lining the edge of the clearing, awaiting orders.

I keep low to the ground, silently weaving through trees. None of them see me—or perhaps they don’t want to—while I sneak past them, searching for Sara. She’ll be angry, furious that I didn’t listen to her warning before, but she won’t want me to go to prison. If Bane’s forgiveness is contingent on killing the terrorists responsible for the attack on the Pentagon, I’ll gladly lay down my life.

Each step jostles dirt underneath my shoes. Branches crack under my feet like landmines and every time something shuffles near me, I flinch, waiting for Anderson or Bane to find me before I have a chance to prove myself.

Then, another body comes into view; a black braid and the half-buzzed head of my best friend whispering into her radio.

Boom!

The ground shakes as a bomb detonates. A thick cloud of gray matter explodes into the air, engulfing everything in an instant. Burning chemicals flood my senses, forcing my eyes to water, even as I shield myself from the thick smoke.

My heart pounds in my chest, matching the frantic rhythm of the shouts and gunfire that echo in the distance. In seconds, the forest is engulfed in the impenetrable fog. A brief twinge of fear prickles along the back of my neck, like Death could emerge from the smoke and bury me in that grave. Or worse.

The terrorists know we are here.

The eyes that appear don’t belong to Death, instead, the soft brown eyes narrow on mine as she recognizes me.

Sara.

I surge forward, holding my breath through the waves of thicker smoke that clings to my clothes even after I leap onto the other side, with Sara and the nearby soldiers sporting gas masks.

“Sara!” I explode into a coughing fit, falling to my knees to capture the tainted air.

Hands pull my face upward, plastic and glass resting over my face before the familiar hiss of oxygen blares and I take in an unhindered breath until the dots in my vision fade and the searing pain in my head dulls to a throb.

“Have you lost your mind?” Sara barks with wide eyes. “You’re on medical discharge. You can’t be here.”

“Wanted…to help,” I pant.

Sara’s radio crackles to life, a grainy voice muffled when another smoke bomb releases. “Alpha 0-3, bait is set. Target in sight.”

Sara glares before she breaks off with a huff, pressing the receiver on her radio.

“Copy, hold position,” she says.

It’s then I notice the other soldiers positioned at the entry points to the forest from the clearing. Each one has a canister in their hands—an M18. One soldier pulls a pin and tosses the bomb into the clearing. White smoke billows out seconds later, engulfing the rest of the clearing in the suffocating fog.

I glance at Sara, heart hammering in my chest.

“Sara—”

“Save it,” she barks. “You have no idea what you’ve just done.” She places her hand against her temples, glancing between the thickening smoke and me. “You can’t leave your post, that’s insubordination.”

“I have to help!” I push back.

“No, you don’t. You need to go home, Helena. You’re not in charge of this mission. You’ll get hurt!” Her eyes take me in, like she’d just noticed I’m only in my basic clothes.

She sheds her own vest and straps it on me.

“You can’t abandon your post. That’s going AWOL.” She tightens the straps on the vest until it pinches around my exposed skin. “You’re going to get yourself arrested.”

“I punched Anderson,” I blurt out.

Sara’s mouth parts in shock, and my eyes fall to the ground.

“He was trying to undress me in my holding cell,” I tell her. “I hit him, and he knows there were no witnesses or evidence. You already have grounds to arrest me.” I pull my wrists together in defiance. The smoke swells and seeps through the trees like an eerie fog, closing around us blinding us to our surroundings. “I’m going to kill them, Sara. You saw the date. The Codex killed my dad and they’re out there, in the clearing. I came to serve, not to beg for my title. So if you want to arrest me after this, then do it, but I’m not going to stop until the men responsible are dead.”

Sara’s eyes soften, water glistening over her deep brown irises that she blinks away.

“I know,” she whispers.

A soldier finds her through the fog, whispering something in her ear. She gives me one last look and with a sigh, she nods to the soldier.

“Arrest her.”

My eyes widen. I freeze in place, waiting for the hallucination to fade. Instead, the soldier takes out his handcuffs.

“You can’t be serious.” I scoff.

A cuff snaps around a wrist.

“You went AWOL,” Sara concedes. “You know the consequences.”

The metal bites as it clicks around my other wrist, and I can’t bring myself to fight it. I had never felt doubt until now. I knew I’d return one day, that I’d right the wrongs I made in Syria, and despite the faith Bane had in me, I let him down. My return to base was a disaster. I’m playing chess with myself, pawning my own pieces while knights and kings fall, and I can’t win. Not against myself. It’s not the doubt that killed me. It was the pride.

Whistles of smoke bombs fall, shrill shrieks booming like thunder throughout the clearing, and every time one goes off, the trees shudder, quaking in their rooted place where the soldiers throw more.

Sara meets me, inches from my face. The first day we met, I was nothing more than a recruit, small and way out of my depth while the others picked on me. Sara met me in a crowd of them stealing things from my bunk and every one of them left with a broken nose. Our days on leave, I’d teach her to hunt in the mountains near Juneau, like my dad did when I was young, and I laughed when she threw up at the sight of the deer I shot.

Every memory reflects back at me through her softened eyes, and when she looks away, they shatter, along with any hope of my friend coming to save me.

As the soldier leads me away, another smoke bomb shoots off. It’s silent, unlike the others, spitting gray smoke as it flies into the air and disappearing into the white fog white a deafening bass.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand. I know that sound clearer than anything else. I dream of it, and the screams that come after, and when Sara looks back at me, we both know.

“Get down!” She tackles me past the treeline as the missile explodes, and the clearing is set ablaze. Flames burst out through the black smoke, soldiers running screaming and shouting while desperately trying to put out the fires engulfing their body.

I force my eyes open through a groan. Tiny shards of glass litter my body from the broken gas mask at my feet and through the haze of the explosion and the ringing in my ears, Sara drags me away from the chaos as gunfire erupts all around us, pinpricks of the ignited gunpowder sparkles throughout the trees of the remaining soldiers while more missiles and gunfire booms from the plume of black smoke.

Sara pats her body frantically, her eyes widening and darting around as the flames dance closer and closer. “Where’s the key?!”

My head rolls, a headache thundering with the smallest movements. The soldier who handcuffed me runs out from the trees, screaming as fire crawls up from his torso to his chest.

A sharp pain sears up through my head when Sara shakes me.

“Helena! Wake up!” She shakes me again. “We need to get out of here! Where’s the key?”

I tug at my cuffs, still strongly bound to my wrists. The soldier crumples to a heap when the flames reach his neck, and his screams suddenly stop.

“Shoot it,” I tell her.

Sara doesn’t listen, frantically searching her pockets for a spare. Flames catch on the trees, bathing us in a blanket of fire that is quickly moving over the canopy.

“Sara!” I shout. “Just shoot it!” I roll myself onto my knees, extending my arms as far back as they can go.

Sara finally moves, drawing her sidearm and with a loud bang, my hands are free, and we sprint out of the line of fire.

More pinpricks of gunfire penetrate through the smoke. There’s less than half now and each rapid fire of shots is accompanied by a low hollow boom at the bottom of the hill and the pricks of light go out, one by one.

I rip a rifle from the body of a soldier. Another boom illuminates the bodies—two large shadows in the thick of the smoke. I thumb over the trigger, but Sara grabs the muzzle before I can take aim.

“Hold your fire!” Sara orders. “You might hit one of ours.”

I lower my rifle.

“We need better cover,” I shout through the chaos. “Is there a high rise? Somewhere to view the clearing out of the smoke?”

She nods. “This way.”

We take off. Sara leads me through the trees, far away from the hail of bullets and past the outpost dimly lit through the thousands of trees between us. My lungs burn hotter than the canopy of flames disappearing behind us. It travels down through my legs and up to the returning throb in my head until finally, we reach a small peak on the hill, overlooking the cloud of smoke in the clearing below. Pinpricks of fire illuminate the soldiers falling one by one with the booming shots of the two men shrouded by smoke. They’re dying out, our men succumbing to the flames and fire by the actions of two men.

I collapse to my knees alongside Sara, wheezing and gasping from the smoke and fire. A hand wraps around my neck and she quickly hauls me to my feet, pointing to the mountains beyond the hill.

“We need to move,” she rasps, pulling me along with her. “Come on, Hels. Stay with me. We’re going to go kill those two, first.”

I stumble to my feet just as another shot rings out. I fall against Sara and we both crash to the ground as the bullet grazes me in a line of fire that strikes across my chest. My hand flies to my chest, along the padding of my vest. It struck me, shredding the material all the way down to the metal plate. It swiped right past me like a claw and even when I realize the bullet blew past me, my hand shakes when I see the red staining it.

“I’m hit,” I groan. “We need to get out of here.”

Sara doesn’t respond, laying limply in the dirt.

I shake her gently. “Sara?”

She doesn’t move and I shake her harder until both my hands are on her shoulders, yanking her from the grass.

“Sara!”

She falls to her side, groaning softly and when my hands leave her body, I finally spot the growing pool of red under her, the same staining both my hands.

“Oh my god,” I choke out.

Sara glances at the small growing stain in her shoulder and she offers me a weak laugh. “You’re okay.” Then she collapses to the grass below.

Everything slows. Her blood feels like tar on my skin. The gunshots echo, slowing until everything seems to stop around me. Flashes of the grass turning to sand, trees into dunes and my best friend grasping what’s left of her leg and screaming, crying for help until it fades. She’s not screaming anymore. She’s limp, lifeless, and even when I frantically pull her to me and press against the wound, it feels nothing before.

“Don’t move,” I stammer. I press down harder, jamming my palm against the gushing hold in her chest and she doesn’t even flinch. “You’re going to be okay, Sara. I’ve got you.” I grab her radio, hands fumbling with the receiver. “Alpha 0-3, we’re taking heavy fire. We need medevac–”

Her hand folds over mine, pulling just hard enough to rip the radio from my hands and smashing it against the ground until it shatters into a pile of plastic and broken wiring.

“Don’t go back to base,” she rasps.

My brows pinch together. “What? No, we need to get help.”

“They set you up, Helena. They want you gone. They’ll kill you if you don’t run. Please.”

Tears well up in my eyes. “You’re coming with me.”

“Go!” She grimaces as she shoves her rifle into my arms. She caresses my cheek, dragging lines of blood down to my chin with a soft look in her eyes like a mother comforting a frightened child.

“Helena.” She swallows hard, a tear slipping down her cheek. “Run.”

Her hand drops and I choke down a sob. I don’t touch her. I don’t want to feel another loved one stiff and unmoving, even as her darkened olive skin turns pale and sickly.

The booms of the gunfire have ceased. My platoon is scattered across the forest in heaps of blood and ash as the fires die out. The smoke is dissipating slowly, traveling up towards the line of dead trees and shrouding the bodies. They won’t come back for her, not in an active warzone. The thought of having to bury my best friend is almost as sickening as leaving her here with the ones who murdered her.

Her warning blares through my mind like the siren bells from the COP, only now noticing my absence. I can’t go back. Even as I drag my best friend’s body back behind a large rock and cover her with the dead leaves and branches from a fallen tree, my mind is ripping in two. Find Bane or listen to Sara. Beg for forgiveness or renounce my position. Go to prison or run.

I run.

My legs are like lead as I run towards the mountains, and the further I get away from the toxic smoke, the sicker I feel. The more I want to turn back, to find the killers, to return to Bane and accept the consequences of a soldier who went AWOL and resulted in their entire platoon being decimated. The longer I run, the further those thoughts get, suddenly overshadowed by the exhaustion coming in stronger, beckoning me to sleep.

Run. It’s not safe anymore.

I can’t remember the direction I turned when I spot a broken branch that looks similar to the one I passed minutes ago. The forest is a labyrinth and the mountains surround it like a mirror, forcing me to run in circles over and over again. The green blurs together, a haze while I stumble forward, too disoriented to run. A peaceful tug at my limbs begins and my head droops.

Sleep…

I fall against a tree, gripping it tight like it would keep the exhaustion at bay, but gravity pulls me deeper and deeper. There’s nothing left I can do. Nothing…

A light sparks in my eyes, a silver glint that forces my eyes open and a new bout of adrenaline shooting through my veins. Again. Another glint, high in the treeline, hidden in one of the patches among the darkness where the lights peeks through, and with a single step, I catch the muzzle of a rifle just barely visible among the wood.

I fall forward, fighting off another overwhelming wave of exhaustion, and grip the handle of my rifle.

Breathe, I tell myself.

In. Out.

I fire a single shot and a branch cracks before a body falls with it.

Blood pounds in my veins. It’s the second time I’ve shot someone before thinking about who they were. They could have been a survivor, a medic. It could’ve been Bane.

It could’ve been the Codex.

That single thought draws me forward, my gun raised. Even if it gets me killed, I’ll gladly use the last few seconds of my life to eradicate the world of their existence.

Just as I find the empty place of broken branches and a single black jacket, a body slams into me. A crimson scarf flashes in my vision, then the man throws my face against the tree. In less than a second, his chest is pressed against me and my rifle is in his hands.

He gestures the muzzle under my chin like it was easy, like threatening my life is nothing more than a tease or a joke, taunting me with my own gun and forcing me to trust him not to pull the trigger.

Never.

I wrench my arm from his grip and he digs the barrel between my shoulder blades.

“Nice shot,” he hums in my ear. “If you behave, I’ll let you go. What’s your name?”

Fuck.

His voice sends a chill down my spine, even worse when a soft laugh rumbles from his chest like the booming echoes of their guns. It’s quiet and dark—venomous like a snake poised for its kill. Or a devil and his scythe. It’s electricity straight to my core, burning me hotter than the flames in the forest.

I bite down on my lip, forcing me to stay still while the gun is lodged between my shoulders. “You shot at me and you don’t even know my fucking name?”

He chuckles, gripping my arm tighter. “Indulge me.”

“Why?”

“So I know what name to carve on your headstone, princess.”

I scoff.

“Do you want me to spell it for you?” I retort.

“Cute.” He spins me around. “But it doesn’t answer my question. Your name. First, last.”

“Fuck. You.”

His grip loosens until it disappears from my wrists and wraps around my throat instead, quickly crushing the air out of my lungs.

I thrash against his hold, gripping and clawing at the hand coiling tighter around my windpipe even as his gun digs into my stomach. My mouth opens and closes like a fish, words straining but my vocal cords completely crushed by his unnerving strength.

“That’s right, use your words,” he croons. “Come on now, doll. Tell me what you want to say.”

The words ‘fuck you’ come to mind, just above a plea that I’m sure would only make him kill me faster.

A shrill gunshot cracks through the air and his grip falters. I gulp down lungfuls of air, and when the man jolts at the sound of another piercing gunshot, he rips me from the rough bark and plants my back against him, using me as a shield against maybe the only survivor of the attack.

The man sucks in a breath when I push back against him, his fingers flexing around my wrist.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he warns. He presses the barrel of my gun against my back, and I roll my eyes at the threat.

“This back and forth is getting old,” I growl. “If you want me dead, then kill me.”

“If you waste more time, you might get your wish.”

Another shot cracks, this time closer. I can feel his eyes scanning over the treeline, searching for its source as the smoke dies. He says nothing in response to my insults, but I can feel the quickening pace of his heart thumping against my head. I know Bane is out there, searching for them, and the knowledge that a man the size of the tree is using me as a shield to protect himself, is enough to make my death worth it if I get shot by accident.

When the gun digs deeper into my back, my lips curl into a sneer and I press against it in defiance.

He groans. “You must really want to get fucked, don’t you?”

I freeze.

He’s lying.

My rifle is on the ground.

“Oh my god.”

Another laugh.

“I’m glad you think so highly of me,” he muses. “Don’t worry, doll. I promise I won’t fuck you until you’re begging for it.”

He throws me to the ground as I reach for my rifle. My dog tags rip, wrapping neatly around his hand as he lifts the rifle with the other. He gives it a single glance, and the look he flashes me after makes the words on my tongue wither and turn to sand. It’s a void in his dark eyes—a pit of black where a soul should be, but instead there’s nothing except the Devil. The man I now recognize with chilling clarity.

“Castor.”

He smiles, slinging the rifle strap over his shoulder. “It seems we’ve overestimated you, Ms. Kinsley.”

I shrink back when he takes a single step, closing the distance between us.

“Are you going to play nicely, Helena?” He asks.

I wince when he speaks my name. My tags thread between his fingers, daring me to take back my name, as if he had any right to it in the first place. He holds it in his hands like an offering, like the word alone could disarm me as he says it again in that deep baritone.

My other hand finds the large branch that collided to the ground with him.

“You want me to play nice?” I wrap my hand around the branch. “Beg for it.” I slam the branch into his side and tear myself from his grip, lunging for the rifle strapped to his back.

Castor rolls before my fingers graze the metal, throwing me off with a boot that slams into my side until I skid and land against a tree trunk.

He quietly raises to his feet, brushing the dirt off his shoulders. “Such an angry little thing. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

I groan, gripping my side.

“If you want mercy, then ask nicely ,” I hiss.

“Now why would I want that?” His hands find my ankles, yanking me towards him until he’s straddling my body.

“You’re a clever girl, Ms. Kinsley,” he purrs. He trails a hand along my jaw, turning it side to side as if he’s examining me. “Such a breakable doll. I’m almost sad I can’t take you with me.”

He flexes his hips against my own, grinding what I thought was his gun into me while he tips his head back and groans softly.

“He’s right. You do look sexy when you’re afraid.” His eyes rake down my body, and a smile quirks up on the edges when he collects my wrists in one of his hands and pins them above my head. “Something tells me you’d be more than willing to let me have you.”

I swallow down the fear, forcing the rage to lace my words. “If you even think–”

“Shhh,” he says in a soft voice. He lifts me off the ground, spinning me until I’m straddling him, my hands pinned behind my back. His hand caresses down my throat and I shiver when I feel his unmasked breath against my neck. “Just look at the pretty gun and take a deep breath for me.”

A glint of metal flashes in the thick of the trees, and I gasp as a loud shot rings out. Blinding pain radiates through my chest, followed by the familiar burn of a bullet lodged deep in the bone.

Castor lays me down gently, placing both of my hands to my side as my vision starts to blur. The demand for sleep comes back with a vengeance, too hard to fight off this time.

Two men stand above me, watching as my consciousness wanes. A red mask and a hood. Black eyes and a scythe.

Death and the devil.