I don’t believe in ghosts. I was raised Jewish. My mother converted but my father was devout in his beliefs. We attended the synagogue, celebrated the Passover, fasting on days of prayer. Ghosts weren’t something I was taught to believe in, but this mine will be haunted by them by the time Baron is done tormenting this kid.

His screams are nails on a chalkboard. I find certain kinds to be more tolerable, but these? These aren’t screams. They’re wails of a shrill pig, panicked, terrified, exaggerated. They are shrieks of a man that has clearly never been tortured before.

I pace outside the door, another high-pitched shriek cracking into my brain. It’s muffled quickly after, and Baron’s sadistic laughter fills the air.

“I’m getting really tired,” his voice echoes. “This would be so much easier if you cooperated.”

Anderson’s muffled retort is silenced by a sickening thud against what I assume was his skull. When he mumbles again, his voice is garbled, gagged by blood and likely several teeth.

As much as I trust Baron to handle interrogations by himself, his restraint is about as good as Anderson’s aim.

I walk in just as Baron pulls a blowtorch from a nearby box of tools. He glances over at me for no more than a second before turning back to the kid sprawled on the floor.

A thick cloth protrudes from his mouth, part of his uniform ripped to silence him. His eyes follow mine like a helpless dog, pleading between blood splattered on his broken nose.

“I’ve never been a boxer,” Baron says with a shrug. “Fighting with my bare hands just seems so messy.” He glances at his knuckles again, fresh blood covering the stains littered on his skin. His smile returns as he waves the blowtorch in front of the wide-eyed kid. “So I hope it’s alright if I switch things up.” He ignites it, the blue flame flickering to life with a soft hiss.

Anderson thrashes against the ropes, his screams cut short by Baron’s gleeful laughter. His eyes zero in on the small flame, dancing above his skin enough to warm it but not enough to burn.

“Wait,” I say.

Baron pauses, the blowtorch centimeters above the man’s face.

“Let’s take a break.” I nod towards Anderson. “He looks pretty tired.”

Baron extinguishes the blowtorch without protest and steps away. I take his place, grabbing Anderson’s head by his hair until he’s resting back on his bruised knees. His uniform is in tatters. Baron stripped away the armor, leaving nothing but his green military shirt, speckled with his own blood.

Andersons head lolls forward and I uncurl my fist, striking his face with my palm.

“No sleeping,” I demand.

Anderson groans, barely responsive, but his eyes flicker open.

“That’s better.” I release his head and step back. His nose is twisted and his eye is swollen and cut from Baron’s ring. I look down at my own, the same silver star matching his—one of our earliest memories together as handlers and soldiers. A mentor and student; the day the Codex was born.

“We don’t usually see rookies out here.” I turn back to him. “At least, not alone. How long have you been in the field?”

“Fuck you.”

I sigh.

“This is why I don’t like being nice,” I grab his face in a tight bruising grip. The bones of his jaw grind and shift, earning a pained groan. “Be glad that you have both of your eyes. There are much more valuable things to warrant that kind of response, and the duration of your service isn’t one of them.”

He coughs when I release him, and he spits a mouthful of blood onto the floor.

“Two…years,” he finally mutters.

I hum. “Explains why you have such a large stick up your ass. It takes a lot longer for the rookies to get broken in.” I stand back, taking in the way his body sways as he fights to stay awake—a battle he’s losing.

Death is a drug, calling you to sleep. It consumes your every thought until you give in, and someone as weak willed as Anderson can’t resist it without help, so I’d be more than happy to oblige.

I crouch to his level as he forces his eyes open again. “So I take it you don’t know who we are?”

Anderson laughs, a weak mule trying to cover the sound of his teeth chattering. “Everyone knows who you dipshits are.”

“You know what they’ve allowed you to know,” I correct. “If you actually knew us, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be too valuable to abandon. If you knew us, Anderson, you’d either be dead or trying to kill them like us.”

Anderson’s grin is bloody. “That’s not my problem.”

My eyes flick over to Baron, who’s running his fingers over the blade of his knife. Anderson has no idea how easy it could be to stand back, and let Baron remove his bones individually. A problem, no, a nuisance—a thorn in my side that I don’t need. The problem with rookies is they’re too busy stroking their ego, thinking it’ll make their cocks bigger. They never seem to grasp the concept they’re about as important as a dulled knife.

Baron picks his own nails with the tip of his blade, when he catches my long stare. He shrugs, gesturing towards the kid with his blade.

So tempting. So fucking tempting.

“You’re right.” I snap my gaze back to the kid. “It’s not your problem. It’s mine.” I take the knife from Baron’s hand, the cold white metal familiar in my grip. “While you were busy failing ninth grade for the third time, Bane decided to blow us off that mountain.”

I point the knife at him, the tip hovering dangerously close to his throat. “Since you’re only a baby in the field, you wouldn’t know what he’s hiding or where it would be. But Bane would…which makes you my problem now.”

He only flinches once when the metal bites into his skin, but otherwise, he forces himself to remain passive and stubborn.

I lower the knife, sighing. “Look, kid. You’re new, fresh out of high school, stuffing your pants and acting like killing people makes you a badass. That’s what they sell: status and power to people like you who lack the intelligence to realize that you’re barking like a dog for a man who wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.” I pull the cloth from his mouth. “So I’m going to offer you an out, and you can take whatever life you had and go: their lives for yours.”

His head finally raises, his eyes darkening in a way that I know far too well.

Don’t do it, kid. Just don’t.

“Well?” I ask.

Anderson’s lips curl into a sneer.

“Woof.”

Goddammit.

I step back, handing the knife to Baron. “He’s all yours.”

Anderson’s resolve turns to more shrill screams as Baron plucks out fingernails one by one. Each one leaves tiny drops of blood on the floor, pooling at his knees.

“What’s the matter, rookie?” Baron taunts. “Don’t they train you to handle pain?” He plucks out another fingernail, and Anderson’s scream tears through the air. “Where’s the badass attitude you showed Kinsley?”

“Fuck you!” Anderson spits, his voice hoarse. “Bane didn’t kill anyone who didn’t deserve it, and that bitch definitely did.” His lips curl up in a cruel smile. “If the bears don’t rip her to shreds, maybe I can still have some fun while she’s unconscious. She can’t say no to me then.”

My hand twitches, a sudden, violent urge surging through me that I force down.

Baron, however, isn’t as restrained. He points the knife at Anderson’s throat. “I don’t give a fuck about your desperate need to get laid, Anderson. I want that bunker, and I want Bane on his knees giving it to me.”

Anderson scoffs, his eyes gleaming with a twisted sense of satisfaction. “What makes you think that he hasn’t already found you?”

Baron’s eyes narrow, his knife pressing deeper into the soft spot under Andersons chin. “What are you talking about?”

“Tracking,” I finish. “Bane keeps one on all of his favorite toys. Isn’t that right, kid?”

Anderson smirks, spitting blood on the floor. “You’re really trying to bribe me to snitch on him when you’re too stupid to realize that he’s already on his way here. I’m shocked you three are still alive. You’re too slow to catch on. You have too much to lose. Your friends. Girlfriends. Family.”

The word freezes my thoughts and my fists clench.

“What did you just say?”

Baron glances back at me, a warning in his eyes. “Castor…”

Anderson notices too, his smirk widening. “Your little girlfriend is a traitor, that’s why Bane wants her dead. She’s useless and a fucking liability. Anyone else who gets in Bane’s way deserves it too.”

I step forward, the blood pounding in my ears. But before I can reach him, Baron grabs my arm, holding me back.

Anderson laughs in my face even as Baron hits him with his free hand.

“Look at you,” Anderson snickers. “You can’t even torture me without daddy’s approval. That’s why you’re here. Your family would rather die in silence than cry out for a coward to save them. Maybe that’s why they’re all dead.”

Something inside me snaps. I break free from Baron’s grip, lunging at Anderson until I lose myself in the violence, my fists connecting with flesh, my vision narrowing to a tunnel of red until I see nothing at all.

When I come to, I’m heaving, covered in blood, Baron’s knife clutched in my hand and Anderson’s throat in the other, ripped from his body.

Baron stares at me in brief alarm before his eyes lower, regarding the body with a soft click of his tongue. “Guess the interrogation is over.”

I huff, wiping the blood from my face before I grab Anderson’s lifeless body by the arms and start dragging him across the floor.

Baron follows silently as I haul the body to the edge of the tunnels. He doesn’t ask and neither do I. Acacia knows to avoid pissing me off. My composure comes at a cost. Anderson paid for it.

I find the open mineshaft, a hole torn between the tunnels. The circle is hundreds of feet long, and the depth of the darkness extends for miles, even as we throw Anderson’s body down it, it barely makes a sound.

He had his chance. I didn’t need to verify his tag. No one with a brain would admit to having a tracker on them, and Anderson knew that. His body is more useful to whatever insects live at the bottom of the mines than he would be to us or Acacia.

Baron follows me out as I navigate back to the mine’s center. “Now what?”

“We’ll keep looking,” I say without looking back. “Find Bane. Find the bunker or find someone who can lead us to it.”

Baron scoffs. “And wait until you kill him too because he talked about—”

“Yes!” I snap. “To him and anyone else who disrespects my family!”

Baron frowns. “He baited you, Silas. Now we have nothing and we still need to find that bunker.”

I turn away. Baiting or not, Anderson was always going to die. A recon specialist was hardly of any use to me to begin with, if not to give Baron a chance to blow off steam.

“Then we’ll wait it out,” I say. “No one knows we’re here.”

A shot rings out and both of us whip around. The deep bang reverberates throughout the tunnels, echoing in a foreboding ring.

I’ve heard that gun before. It’s not Acacia’s. Their guns are hardly shot unsilenced. This was loud, announcing, powerful like the boom of a grenade. Like a shotgun.

Dietrich.