Page 11

TRAZ

T he bullets scream past my head, close enough to rattle my teeth.

I dive behind a crumbling pillar, gritting my teeth as the old stone chips apart under another barrage.

Dust fills my lungs. Blood pumps hot in my ears.

Too hot.

Too fast.

This wasn’t supposed to be messy.

Quick infiltration. Quick kill. Quick getaway.

Instead, I’m pinned under fire by mercs that look better equipped and better paid than the idiots who hired me.

Figures.

I check the mag on my sidearm. Light.

No time to be delicate.

I slam a new clip home and roll out from behind the pillar, firing blind toward the muzzle flashes.

Two bodies drop.

A third clips me across the ribs.

I snarl, more from anger than pain, and keep moving.

Can’t stop.

Can’t think.

Thinking is the enemy out here.

A grenade arcs through the air—slow-motion in the smoky haze.

I spot it too late.

The blast slams into me like a sledgehammer, ripping the ground apart, flinging me backward like a rag doll.

I hit the dirt hard.

Hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs.

Hard enough to make the world spin and shrink all at once.

I try to push up, but my arms won’t cooperate.

The sky overhead is a dirty smear, the green suns bleeding into each other.

Somewhere in the distance, boots crunch closer.

Shouts. Orders.

They think they got me.

Maybe they did.

My vision tunnels, dark around the edges.

Pain throbs through me in thick, heavy waves.

Then I see her.

Kelli.

Not here. Not real.

But so clear it guts me.

Her hair tangled across the pillow, soft and defiant. Those fierce, stubborn eyes cutting straight through me. The way she looked that night—scared but brave, fragile but burning.

The memory slams into me harder than the grenade.

I reach out without meaning to. My hand lifts off the wrecked ground, reaching for something that isn’t there.

"Kelli," I choke out.

It’s not a prayer.

It’s not even a word.

It’s a lifeline.

The world narrows to that one thought.

Her.

And the crushing, sickening certainty that I left her in hell to rot while I bled for nothing out here.

The boots get closer.

A voice barks something in a language I don’t recognize.

I blink hard.

Force my body to move.

Not here.

Not like this.

Not dying in the gutter like a dog while she’s still out there.

I grind my teeth and drag myself to my knees.

The world tilts sideways, but I stay upright.

Barely.

My pistol’s gone, blasted somewhere into the rubble.

Doesn’t matter.

I’m still a weapon.

I always have been.

I snatch a jagged piece of rebar off the ground, my fingers slick with blood.

The first merc rounds the corner, rifle up.

I throw the bar like a spear.

It drives into his throat.

He gurgles and drops.

The others hesitate.

Good.

Hesitation gets you killed.

I lunge forward, half-crawling, half-running, blind rage and raw instinct propelling me faster than my body should allow.

Another shot cracks past my ear.

I duck low and barrel into the second merc, driving my shoulder into his gut. We hit the ground in a tangle of limbs and swears.

I get my hands around his throat.

Squeeze until he stops struggling.

Until the last ragged breath wheezes out.

Only when he goes limp do I roll off him, gasping, my vision swimming in and out of black.

Two down.

One more shouting orders behind cover.

I can barely stand.

Barely breathe.

But I shove forward.

One broken, staggering step at a time.

Because if I die here, she’ll never know.

She’ll never know that she mattered.

That she changed everything.

That the man who walked away from her wasn't half as strong as he thought he was.

Another shot grazes my shoulder.

Burns hot and sharp.

I grunt and keep moving.

The last merc sees me coming and panics.

Bad move.

I tackle him before he can aim right.

We crash to the ground, and I hammer my fists into his face until he stops moving.

Until there’s nothing left but the sound of my ragged breathing and the thud of my broken heart.

I stagger back.

Survey the mess.

Dead men.

Broken stone.

Burning air.

And me, barely alive and bleeding out into the dirt.

I stagger toward the street, clutching my ribs.

The world tilts.

Colors smear.

Noise filters in—boots pounding. Shouts I can't quite make out.

Then strong hands grab me.

I snarl on instinct, swinging wild, but a sharp voice cuts through the haze.

"Stand down, Traz! It's us!"

Through the blur, I make out familiar faces—my fallback team. Contractors I hire when a job’s too messy to clean up solo.

They haul me up, half-carrying, half-dragging.

I hate it.

Hate the weakness.

Hate that I needed saving.

Hate even more the reason why.

Because somewhere in the broken mess of my mind, as the grenades exploded and the bullets flew, I wasn’t thinking about escape routes or tactics.

I was thinking about her.

Kelli.

Soft skin.

Fierce eyes.

A ghost in my blood, clouding my reflexes, slowing my hands.

I clench my jaw so hard my teeth ache.

One of the contractors—Vesh, big and mean—grunts as he shoves me into a battered evac runner.

“You’re slipping, boss,” he mutters under his breath. “Didn’t think you were the sentimental type.”

I snap my head toward him, glare hard enough to shut him up.

But the words stick anyway.

Slipping.

Detachment used to be my shield. My weapon.

Now it’s cracking.

Worse than cracking.

It’s breaking.

And in this business, that gets you dead real fast.

I slump back against the seat as the runner roars to life, rattling down the alleyway.

The pain’s sharp. Alive. Real.

But the bigger wound is the one under my skin—the bond pulling, stretching, weakening everything I thought made me strong.

I stare out the filthy window at the dying lights of Gur.

Fear coils low in my gut, unusual and unwanted.

Not fear of dying.

I’ve made peace with that.

Fear of caring.

Fear that I’m losing the one thing that kept me alive all these years, my edge.