Page 9

I dreamt for months of being in the field. I replayed that night over and over again, wondering what would happen if things had been different, if anyone missed me or if they hated me as much as I thought they did. All the times I wondered what it would be like to step back on base, to be welcomed back, and it never prepared me for this—standing in uniform, watching the other operators move about like I never left.

I’m here. I’m in the field.

I’m home.

I step back as a Humvee rolls past me along the dirt path. I expected to land on the base in Vienna. Instead, a car waited for me and drove deep into the forest, where a small embassy sat, neighboring the COP outpost. Mountains shield us from the sun, plunging us into its shadow and the thick trees provide enough cover to keep out any wandering eyes. It’s ominous. It’s dangerous.

God, I’ve missed it.

I lean against the medical building. The smell of sweat, gun oil and pine lingers everywhere as soldiers and trucks merge into a blurry mass, and I’ve never felt as close to home as I have now, but there’s one more addition I have yet to see.

A door swings open outside the briefing room and finally, after twelve months, I see my best friend standing ten feet in front of me. She’s dressed in her decorated fatigues, glowing against her dark skin. Her pants are tied tightly around her waist and barely cover the metal glint of her prosthetic, though she walks like it’s her own leg now. Her long black hair is tied back in a braid down her shoulder, showcasing the shaven hair on the other half of her head. Even five years older, she looks younger than me, but the hard look she gives passing soldiers is decades older. No one is brave enough—or stupid enough—to deny her orders, and when she barks at the two soldiers carelessly milling about, they each grab ammunition twice their weight and haul them inside before she even finishes giving the order.

My legs jerk, anticipation coiling in me like a spring, but I force myself to wait. I want her to see me, so I can finally tell her the good news myself.

The second her eyes meet mine, she freezes in place, mouth parted mid-order, and I smile, closing the distance in seconds to hug her.

Her arms hesitantly wrap around me and I only hug her tighter.

I’m here. Finally.

She pulls away just long enough to look again, her brows pushing together.

“What are you doing here?” She asks.

“Surprise!” I grin. “They reinstated me!”

She doesn’t move. Her eyes take me in, studying me like I was some hallucination.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she says and I laugh.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too. It doesn’t feel real.”

Her gaze hardens and she shakes her head.

“No. You shouldn’t be here.”

My laugh dies on my tongue, sinking into the rock forming in my chest. “What?”

“You’re still sick, Helena. You need rest and therapy.”

“Fuck therapy, I’m fine. They cleared me.”

Sara yanks me back as another truck passes, dragging me by the collar behind a building, out of sight.

“You’re not ready, Helena.” She states.

“The colonel thinks I am.” I motion towards the doors of the briefing room. “He told me himself.”

Her eyes narrow, eyebrows knitting together at my declaration. “Bane personally asked you to come back?”

“He invited me,” I beam. “He wants to give me a second chance.”

“Listen to me very carefully, Helena.” Her eyes scan the opening of the doors before moving back to me. “If Bane personally asked you back, it’s not a good thing. You need to go home.”

My smile fades.

Is she serious?

“I spent a year locked away with some shrink,” I scoff. “I paid for what happened in Syria, for what happened to you. I’m ready. Why won’t you let me fix my mistakes?”

“This isn’t about mistakes. You’re gonna–”

“Captain! Lieutenant!” Bane’s voice booms from the briefing room. “Let’s go!”

Sara’s eyes widen. “Captain?”

I turn on my heel, leaving her to trail behind me as I march inside the briefing room. Bane motions me forward, Major Alastor Bane already standing at attention at the other side of the table.

“Major,” I acknowledge with a salute.

Alastor responds with a nod, only breaking his stance when his brother regards him with a curt nod. It’s rare I see the both of them at once, the resemblance making the two of them almost impossible to distinguish if not for the clear difference in rank on their uniforms and the short buzzed hair contrasting to Bane’s meticulously gelled hair. They mirror each other in almost every other way, from their amber eyes to the stocky build. Had I not grown up with their constant presence in my life from Alastor’s security company stationed in my hometown, I would never have known the difference between the two of them. Now, it’s almost second nature, clear as day when Alastor regards me in a distinctly raspier voice.

“Welcome back, Captain Kinsley,” Alastor says finally. “I’ve heard quite a bit about your progress. I’m expecting a lot from you.”

“Thank you sir,” I say with an appreciative nod.

The doors swing shut with a harsh slam, Sara reluctantly drawing in with Bane and Alastor across from the two of us. Files are scattered along the wood—three identical to the one Bane left in my apartment with the same black star encased in a circle that’s stamped on the front.

Bane extends a hand. “Your file, Captain.”

I pull mine from my rucksack, and he sets it above the other three, revealing those same gruesome pictures inside.

“Seven years ago, a small terrorist cell formulated an attack during a DA strike in Libya,” Bane says. He points to the desert picture from before. “Most of our operators were KIA. They didn’t have any demands or leave any messages except these.”

He pulls several new pictures from his own file. Each one is stamped with a different time and location—Libya, Egypt, Syria, Budapest, Austria, Washington DC—but they all sport the same signature star carved into at least one victim’s body. “A few months later, they mounted an attack on Ft Russ and blew it all to hell and left a single message.” Another picture is placed on top of the others—the Texan military base engulfed in flames and bodies rearranged on the ground to form a word: Codex.

My eyes meet Bane’s, but he quickly gathers the pictures and stuffs them back into the folder.

“The Department of Defense organized a meeting in the Pentagon to discuss the intel they found…” He glances at Alastor. “Unfortunately, The Codex intercepted the call and mounted an attack before we arrived.”

“What?!”

Bane flashes me a look before continuing. He places down a new picture. Bodies litter the inside of the Pentagon. White tiles are stained red, desks and chairs scattered all across the meeting hall. A podium rests in the center of the room, the speaker sprawled across it with a curved knife sticking from his back. A star is carved into the back of his neck.

Washington DC, November 2018.

A month before dad died.

“Not many survived.” Bane states. “The JCS and several other members of the Department of Defense were killed before the Codex fled.”

My eyes zero in on the picture and the man strewn across the podium. A military meeting. The chairman—the man in charge of the Department of Defense—was murdered within one of the most secure facilities in the world.

“Any access to our security within the Pentagon is dangerous,” Alastor tells me. “Bane and I were lucky to have evaded it.”

Confusion spars on my face. “Why mount an attack if all their targets weren’t there?”

Sara’s lip quirks up, only for a moment, before Bane speaks up again.

“We don’t think that was the sole reason they were there. Task Force A had tracked them in these mountains until an avalanche had taken hundreds of our men. The Codex was thought to have died with them, until a year ago.”

My heart stutters. Syria.

“So it was them,” I mutter.

Bane nods.

“Whatever intel was taken from the Pentagon contained more than security to our facilities. They’ll have tracking on all of our operations, weapons vaults, names of our undercover operators, and a hell of a lot more if they aren’t dealt with.”

Alastor flips open the three remaining folders, each detailing a single photograph and a personnel file. “These are the leaders here. They are the ones fronting the attacks. They will be the hardest to kill.”

The photo is grainy—a man by the name Baron. It’s dark, illuminated only by the flash of the camera that caught him. He stares directly at the camera, black hair dusting over his eyes with his lips bloodied and curled up in a twisted smile while he remains frozen, mid-jump over the crates and debris in the alleyway.

Next to his picture is a small drawing of a knife; a curved blade resembling something shy of a scythe. A man in all black with a coat like a cape and a knife like a scythe, with bright eyes that glow in the flash of the camera. I shiver when I glance at it again, like he would jump straight from the picture if I look too long. It envelops his persona like a shadow. Like death.

The second picture dons the name Castor. It’s taken in daylight, the man hiding behind the rocky terrain of the desert, though the crimson scarf covering his face makes him just as invisible as Baron’s blurry image. Only his eyes are visible—near black voids that burn into the camera and his gloved hands are gripped tightly around his rifle, finger already trained on the trigger.

The dunes and rocks clutter the photo, making Castor almost pointedly obvious inside the frame, like he wanted his picture to be taken. It draws my attention so easily, I almost miss the date stamped at the bottom and the location.

Egypt, December 17, 2018.

The lump that forms in my throat stops the sob from coming out, but it doesn’t prevent a tear from slipping free, sliding down my cheek before I wipe it away just as quickly and throw open the last file.

It’s empty. No picture. No personnel file. Just a name.

“Fury? Really?”

“The Codex operates in a very calculated way,” Bane relays. “Most use whatever they can to kill, but not these three. They kill with very specific weapons, and in very specific ways.”

“Not very intelligent,” I mutter.

“Terrorism isn’t about intelligence,” Bane snaps. “They want us to know it’s them so people panic.”

Bane slips the files to Alastor, giving me a grave look. “That’s why you were recruited. We tracked them from their last attack in Budapest. They’re here and we believe the intel they stole is leading them to something that was lost during the avalanche. We can’t risk any more attacks on American soil. That’s why you will lead the extraction team.”

“That’s not possible.”

Sara’s voice stops all three of us, banishing the room into a silence while her voice echoes like the shrill whistle of a bomb, killing my confidence instantly.

She steps up to Bane, shadowing me from him as he regards her with narrowed eyes.

“You have a problem with my orders, lieutenant?” He challenges.

She tips her chin up, not even daring to glance at me. “Colonel Bane, Helena isn’t ready to carry out an extraction on her own. She is mentally ill.”

Memories mix in with her words—her leg blown from the explosion, the daily phone calls after my discharge, the hours of us laughing as we fuck with our squadmates together, all blurring together until the only one that’s left is the one that scarred me the most. Mentally ill.

“I wouldn’t have been asked to come back if the colonel didn’t think I was ready,” I tell her.

Sara doesn’t look at me. Her fists clench, body tensing until the metal of her leg groans under the weight. “Sir, I don’t think you can trust her to run an operation after what happened in Syria. We need operators, not dead bodies and freed hostages because of negligent practice on a Humvee.”

My argument dies on my tongue. Bane welcomed me with open arms and when I’d arrived on base, it had felt like I never left. My best friend had sheltered me from all my previous mistakes, and decided to remind me of my worst one. It forces me down, crushing me until I’m back in the realm of averted gazes and clutched bags—the reality of being treated like a murderer.

Their argument fades into a dull buzz in my ears. The soldiers pass us by outside the window, moving in a quiet rhythm as they prepare for their next order. Some are standing guard by the perimeter while others are sitting by the unpacked crates, talking and wrestling each other when someone eggs them on. Those were the days I missed—the days of Sara and I getting into equal trouble, hazing new recruits and stealing food from the mess hall, killing terrorists and rounding up drug rings. The days where I was treated as an equal, not a recruit or a killer.

I glance past the men, to the trees swaying lightly in the wind. They form shadows in the darkness of the mountains, forcing the rest of the forest to disappear like a small void, an endless row of trees.

Except one of them doesn’t move.

The smaller figure, half the size of the trees, is stiff and rigid, cloaked in the darkness. His brown hair shadows his face, but the bloodied and tattered remains of the uniform are unmistakable and when he waves at me, I feel sick.

Dad.

His head cocks to the side, bending unnaturally like it’s broken in several places. My breath quickens and I blink rapidly but the vision doesn’t disappear as quickly as the others. He places a bloody finger to his lips and then smiles a smile too wide and too sharp while blood pours from his mouth until he screams…

“Kinsley!” Bane shocks me back to the present. “I asked if you believe you are less qualified than Lieutenant Nadir to lead this mission.”

My gaze tears back to the window. The figure is gone.

Sara’s eyes are transfixed on me, but the anger is a mask. I know her too well to be able to see the irritation and concern for the mission. Maybe she does want me to get better, but the best way to heal a trauma is to confront it.

“No, sir.” I straighten myself, casting my eyes up to meet Bane’s. “What happened in Syria was a mistake that I paid for, and I’m stronger because of it. Telling you that I’m not ready after you asked me to come back would be an insult.”

“You’re wrong,” Sara mumbles.

“Watch your mouth, lieutenant,” Bane snaps.

Sara’s eyes flare and she shoves me out of the way, pointing an angry finger straight at the colonel.

“If Helena stays here, we’re all going to die!”

“Enough!” Bane shouts. He motions for the doors behind me and with every ounce of restraint, he grits out, “Dismissed.”

Sara lingers for a moment longer before giving a curt salute and walking out the doors.

I offer the same, turning on my heel.

“Helena,” Bane warns. “Don’t get in your head. Lt. Nadir is wrong. You’re here because I need you. She is jealous because of your position and you’re better than that, right?” He hands me the files. “Find the intel and then kill them.”

The star is a brand—a mark sealed on the page like the Codex did with all of their victims. Baron is wild and dangerous, while Castor is eerily calm, collected like his finger on the trigger means nothing. Dark and deceiving. Wild and poised.

‘Kill them’, Bane said.

Death and the Devil.

Find them. Kill them.

“Yes sir.”

I push through the weighted double doors, slamming shut as a hand harshly yanks me behind the building.

“What were you thinking, Helena?” She hisses. “You’re going to get yourself killed if you go out there.”

“I don’t care what you think!” I rip my arm from her grip. “Bane pulled me back in, so I’m staying.”

Her fists clench again, and she forces them to her side.

“Tell Bane you’re sick, that you have PTSD, I don’t care. Just get out and don’t come back.”

That same look crosses her face—something laced with fear before it’s gone just as quickly, replaced with the mask of a soldier that she promised never to show me. I was her best friend and the only one allowed to see her break, and one conversation broke that. The years we spent in the field together don’t matter. I’m just another soldier. Still her subordinate.

Except I’m not. Not anymore.

I straighten, blowing out a breath before speaking again.

“I understand why you’re concerned, Sara, but we’re still friends. I thought you of all people would look out for me.”

“I am looking out for you!” She shouts. “In fact, I’m the only one here looking out for you. Bane isn’t your friend. I am! This was never about Syria. I don’t care about that anymore.” She lifts her pant leg just enough to expose the glinting metal of her prosthetic. “This is about how you’re willing to become a martyr to defend your pride.”

“Enough!” Birds scatter with my booming voice and several marching soldiers freeze in place, Sara included.

I sigh.

“I didn’t ask to come back. Bane did. Your concern isn’t about my safety or you would’ve asked me to leave years ago.” She opens her mouth to speak and I cut her off with a wave of my hand. “If you feel unsafe with me around, you can take it up with the Colonel and request a transfer, otherwise, I will see you for the briefing on the extract. Is that understood, lieutenant?”

She blinks.

“Did you just…”

I take a step closer, drawing out each word as I repeat my question. “I said, ‘Is that understood?’”

A beat of silence passes before she gives me a rigid salute and disappears around the corner.

The mountains are statues at night. Shrouded in darkness, they cast shadows over the forest and bathe us in black. The insects chirp their warnings of nearby predators and an occasional wolf’s howl bounces off the concrete in a sinister melody.

My patrol is marked by the dirt paths surrounding the COP, second nature to me as my footsteps mark over the impressions in the dirt. All the times that I’d kept up my training at home, doing nothing but marking a path with my repetitions for days, I knew I’d use those skills again some day. I’m here, I’m alive and for once, I’m respected instead of feared.

I check each truck as I pass by their rows, scanning their instruments meticulously before moving on to the next.

The motion lights draw my attention as they switch on. The night guard swaps out, another man taking his place. Anderson. I pick up my pace, three laps behind what I’m used to at this hour.

One more circle around the outpost and my watch beeps, signaling midnight, seven hours since the start of my patrol. There’s an art to losing yourself. The repetitions of the path, the droning of the marches and the endless waiting. It drives most of these men insane. In my training, Anderson and the others complained for days about the stiff beds and shitty chow. They didn’t care about the wait or the training. They only wanted the kill and the ranks that came with it, but these tasks are more than mindless jobs to me. It’s a muscle and calming reminder of the days in the snowy forests I’d hunt in with my dad.

When the light clicks on again, my even footsteps stutter and I lose my pace. Irritation bubbles in my chest, but just as I turn to order Anderson to get to his post, a shadow darts through the trees—a man hidden by the blinding lights casting a shadow over him. He weaves through the darkness and then skids to a sudden stop.

I can’t see him. Even his shadow blends in with the darkness, but I can feel it—his eyes on me and the faint white smile glowing in the dark, watching me. Stalking me. Hunting me.

Then he turns and disappears into the forest.

I sprint after him, disappearing from the path of my patrol and plunging into the darkness of the woods. Noise plagues the forest, twigs snapping under my boots and insects buzzing as I dart past them. Even as my eyes adjust, the forest blurs together, fog and smoke burning my lungs, and the trees aren’t visible enough to keep my shoulders from smacking into a few of them as I chase nothing but the sound of heavy breaths and footsteps in front of me.

Snap.

I spin around, rifle drawn into the darkness but it falls silent. The footsteps are gone and the only breaths I hear are my own. The insects have stopped chirping, the trees are still. Deathly still.

My blood chills. The forest is completely silent.

Goosebumps blossom on my skin. It’s back—the feeling of being watched. From every side of me, I can feel something in the forest with me, hiding in the dark.

Slowly, I crouch low to the ground. The shadows blur together. Nothing is visible. Nothing moves. The forest is afraid and waiting like me, looking for the hunter.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, one of the trees moves. A man, as tall and black as the trees, steps away from the shadows and towards me. Closer.

My heart hammers in my chest and my finger tightens on the trigger.

Closer…

I fire, a high pitched ringing exploding in my ears. The man in front of me sways, dancing in the wind, before collapsing to the forest floor.

I don’t move. My hand stays steady on my rifle, watching for signs of movement from the shadow stalking me—just a man watching a hidden military base from the trees. Bane always taught us never to act on impulse. It was drilled into my head from day one. Wait. Watch. Listen.

This was different. It was an instinct, a drive—something that drew me to run after it when I should have called for Bane. But something else he taught me only solidified my justification as I move towards the body. Only enemies run.

The shadow of the man slowly morphs the closer I inch through the fog. A large bulky body hidden by a long black cloak only barely concealing the pale exposed skin of his face. Fear prickles through me, all the way to my hand hovering above the hood narrowly covering his face. The fog hovers over his body, like an omen to stay away.

Only enemies run.

I rip off the hood.

“Dad?”

He looks the same as I’d last seen him, dressed in the fatigues we buried him in, stiff with the smell of cedarwood narrowly covering the stench of decay. His name is etched in gold on his uniform and blood peppers the green camouflage trailing all the way up to his face, where his mouth is parted in a bloody grimace.

I turn him on his back and scream when his head falls from his shoulders, a large wolf skull sprouting from his neck while blood spills from its mouth. Slowly, the creature gets up, hood shadowing everything except its wide-toothed smile as it cocks its head to the side and shrieks.

I scramble back, dirt sliding under my feet as I slip and slide, trying to find my footing. Its steps echo off the trees, fog surrounding it as it circles me. A glint raises in the slivers of moonlight peering through the trees and I can finally make out the instrument that materializes in its hand. A scythe. Death.

Death is stalking me.

A low rumble vibrates in its chest as it laughs, regarding me with nothing more than a tilted head before it raises the scythe to my neck.

I scramble back, fear coiling in my chest. “Stay away from me!”

Death doesn’t move. It lowers the scythe, tucking it away briefly before appearing with a new weapon. A rifle.

My eyes bulge, hands instinctively reaching behind me, only to find the broken strap and a gap where my rifle used to be.

No, no, no. This can’t be happening.

I find my footing on the loose dirt. I should run. I should beg for my life. It isn’t my time. I can’t die yet. I’m not ready. I should run.

Instead, I lunge at the entity.

Death screeches as I tackle it to the ground. The rifle bounces in the dirt, my hand outstretched for any form of protection, but the creature finds it first and grabs my wrist, throwing me against a tree with its bony hand wrapped tightly around my throat.

“Bane!” I cry as I kick against the creature, but it stays stuck like stone and its grip tightens until my voice cracks and my cries for help wither.

It presses a bony finger to my lips, offering a slow shake of its head. It collects the beads of blood from my abused lip, staining the glistening white bone red. It sniffs the air, a heaving breath along with a tightened grip that makes me gasp, and it pushes the finger past my lips.

Copper and iron floods my tongue, the finger slowly scissoring inside and forcing more blood with it. I gag when it plunges deeper, earning another rumbling chuckle from the entity. It squeezes my throat harder and soon, my breaths slow and my limbs go limp and cold.

Am I dying? Is this how it ends?

The cold of my hands gets stronger and tangible, until my hand wraps around something metal on the entity’s cloak.

The scythe.

Adrenaline pumps through me and in one last effort, I slash the blade across the creature. It falls back with a shriek, releasing me instantly and I scramble to my feet, sputtering and coughing.

I slash at it again, but not quickly enough. It shoves me with its bony hands and I fall screaming, landing in a soft pile of dirt.

Groaning, I sit up in the deep rectangular hole. A pile of earth resides on the side in a heap and I flinch as a handful sprinkles down on top of me when I claw at the edges, my vision finally focusing on the small rounded stone in front of it.

Helena Kinsley

April 1998 - May 2025

I scream, falling against the wall of the grave. My fatigues are torn. Dirt and blood stains my skin, blackened and red, like Death. Another shriek sounds as I find the edge of the grave. Death grabs at my legs, pulling hard until it drags me down while I cry out for help.

“Leave me alone!” I claw at the hands, punching and scratching, desperate for any form of escape, but it just stands there, taking each blow with a widening grin as it stalks closer until it pins me to the wall of the grave. Tears spring in my eyes as it cages me in, its hood inches from my face.

“What do you want from me?” I choke out.

A line of blood drips to his lips which he licks up with the swipe of his tongue.

“You’ll see,” it rasps.

It kisses me, soft lips claiming mine brutally while its fangs draw blood. It growls into my mouth as I fall against the edge of the grave, trapped under the assault and forced to succumb to it.

Then, it rips me away, lips and teeth coated in blood before whispering a single word.

“Run.”