Page 42 of The Words Beneath the Noise

How many promises had I made to dying men? How many times had I held someone's hand and sworn I'd write to their mother, visit their sweetheart, tell their children they'd been brave? How many of those letters had I actually written?

Not enough. Never enough.

Their faces blurred together sometimes. That was the worst part. I'd killed for them, died for them in every way that mattered, and now I couldn't even remember which name went with which face. They were just eyes. Hundreds of eyes, all of them looking at me, all of them asking the same question.

Why did you survive when we didn't?

The siren cut off.

Silence rushed in to fill the space, so sudden and complete it felt like drowning in reverse. My ears rang in the aftermath. My breath came in ragged gasps that fogged white in the frozen air, each exhale a small surrender.

I stayed where I was, crouched against the wall, and counted my heartbeats until they slowed from panic to something approaching normal. One hundred and forty-seven. That's how many it took before I could trust my legs to hold me.

One hundred and forty-seven heartbeats to come back from the dead.

I pushed myself upright using the wall for support. Made myself stand like a soldier instead of a casualty. Made myselflook like someone who belonged here, on patrol, doing his duty, instead of what I actually was: a ghost wearing a borrowed body, going through motions that had stopped meaning anything months ago.

No one had seen. That was something. Small mercy in a universe that had stopped dealing in large ones.

My billet was close. I could fall apart there, in private, where no one would witness the weakness. Where the walls couldn't report back to Finch that his security sergeant was damaged goods, broken machinery that should have been decommissioned long ago.

I made it to my room.

Closed the door behind me and leaned against it, breathing hard, hands still trembling. The cold seeped through the thin walls, frost tracing patterns on the inside of the window, but I didn't bother building up the fire in the small stove. Didn't deserve warmth. Didn't deserve comfort.

Comfort was for people who hadn't done what I'd done. Warmth was for people who could close their eyes without seeing faces.

I sat on the edge of my narrow bed and pressed my hands flat against my thighs, willing the shaking to stop. It didn't. It never did, not right away. The tremors had to work their way out of my system like poison, leaving me wrung out and empty and desperately, pathetically grateful to be alone.

Danny's voice in my head, the way it always was after the bad nights: “You can't keep doing this, mate. Can't keep carrying us around like stones in your pockets. We're dead. Let us be dead.”

“I can't,” I said out loud, to the empty room, to the ghosts who wouldn't leave. “I don't know how.”

“Then learn. Before it kills you.”

I laughed, and the sound came out broken. “Maybe that's the point.”

No answer. There never was, when I said things like that. Even the ghosts knew better than to engage with that particular darkness.

I lay back on the bed without undressing, boots still on, coat still buttoned. Stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about anything at all.

Failed.

Thought about Art instead.

Art, with his ink-stained fingers and his grey-green eyes and his habit of looking at me like I was a puzzle he couldn't quite solve. Art, who'd stood shivering in the cold and admitted he cared whether I survived. Art, who didn't know that surviving was the hardest thing I'd ever done, harder than any kill, harder than any mission.

Art, who made me want to keep doing it anyway.

That was the dangerous part. The part I didn't know how to handle. I'd made peace with dying. Had expected it, welcomed it even, in the darkest moments. But wanting to live? Wanting to survive not just out of habit but because there was something on the other side worth surviving for?

That was terrifying in a way the Germans had never managed to be.

I closed my eyes and saw his face instead of theirs. Pale skin and sharp cheekbones and that rare, startled smile that transformed him from austere to beautiful. The way he'd lookedat me when I'd called him Art. The way his fingers had brushed mine when he'd handed back my coat.

“You're going to get him killed, Danny whispered.The way you got me killed. The way you get everyone killed, eventually.”

“Shut up,” I said. “Please. Just for tonight. Shut up.”