Incursion

Chapter 20: Guilt

Shadow Team left the Copperfield | Mahogany Association Centre shortly before the clock struck midnight to bring about January 8th. Before we left, I told the new CO of the 41 CBGs and Chief Warrant Officer Angela King that we would be in touch regarding our next move. Neither Master Corporal Timothy Lane nor King expressed dissatisfaction with me “putting off” planning for the next operation; tonight had been difficult for all of us, to put it lightly.

The drive back to Haven was quiet and sombre. Usually on drives to and from any location, no matter how daunting the job ahead, Josh had one or two things to say at least. Whether it was an attempt at brightening the mood in the form of an unsolicited joke, or an idle verbalization of something the rest of us already knew, he could be counted on to kill the dead air. But even he had fallen silent.

Genel, for obvious reasons, was equally so. I kept surreptitious watch over her the entire ride back to our hideout, but the entire time she kept her face turned away from me. She stared out the window, not noticing me watching her. After she had wept and poured her grief out to me in the rec centre, she hadn’t said another word once the tears had stopped. I knew though, that they weren’t dried up.

When Josh parked the LUV in the hangar of Haven, it was about a quarter past midnight. He killed the engine, filling the interior of our vehicle with an even more deafening silence.

When no one moved or spoke for five seconds, I decided to break the heavy silence hanging over us.

“Josh, why don’t you go ahead?”

“Sure?”

“Yeah.”

“And the next step?”

“We’ll decide that later. It’s been a long night. We all need to rest and come back at this with clearer heads.”

Josh eyed me carefully from the driver’s seat, then nodded and stepped out of the LUV without saying anything else. He grabbed his gear from the trunk, then vanished in the direction of the elevators.

I waited for Josh to leave the hangar, then stepped out of the back seat. I limped around the LUV to Genel’s side and opened her door.

She sat stock still, staring ahead of her at something that I couldn’t see. I was familiar with that look. I’d worn it myself before. It was like she was still wondering if tonight really happened.

“Genel,” I said tentatively, holding the door open.

She jumped a bit in her seat, giving me a blank look. “Oh. Sorry, I was thinking about something.”

I had a good idea what, but I chose not to bring it up. That was for her to decide.

“Come on. I’ll walk you to your room,” I told her, holding out a hand.

Genel looked down at my palm, then back up at my face. “I’ll walk you to yours. You’re hurt.”

I stifled a sigh and shook my head.

You’re hurting more than I am.

When I didn’t retract my hand, Genel eventually relented. She put her hand in mine and I half-assisted the slightly lethargic sharpshooter off the vehicle. I let go of her hand once she was on her feet, instead opting to wrap one arm around her shoulders.

I pulled her gently to my side. She glanced up at me with a subtly quizzical look.

“You don’t mind, do you?” I asked her plainly, looking away from her eyes. “I’m a bit sore in places. I don’t think I’ll fall over or anything, but—”

Her eyes widened slightly, then a small, rueful smile formed at her lips. She pressed against me a bit more and put an arm around my waist.

“No, I don’t.”

“All right. Let’s go, then.”

We walked side by side to the elevators at the far end of the hangar and took a lift down to B3. Our half-shuffle, half-walk to her quarters was quiet, with no words being exchanged between us. Every once in a while, I looked down at her. She kept a straight, albeit tired face on the entire time.

When we reached her door, Genel quietly squirmed from my hold on her, then opened her door a crack. She hesitated a second, then glanced back at me.

“Are you sure you can make it back to your room by yourself?”

“It’s just down this hall. I’ll manage.”

“That’s good.” Genel paused, then went on, “I’m sorry for being… you know, like this, when Christina’s missing. I’ll get my head on straight in the morning, I prom—”

“No,” I said a bit sharply, shaking my head. “Don’t promise.”

“But I can’t just—”

“I know. But don’t.”

She stared at me motionlessly, then that same sad, lonely smile returned.

“For a moment,” she murmured morosely despite her smile, “You had me hoping.”

“For what?”

“For the old you to come back.”

I normally would have found a statement like that off-putting, but I held back any callous remarks for now.

Genel seemed to read my mind, because she didn’t bring up the past any further. She pushed her door open further, still looking at me.

“Do me a favour,” she said.

“What?”

“If I’m not out of bed by six o’clock, come drag me out of it.”

She stared at me with a glint in her eyes that told me enough about how she was feeling. She was trying to be brave for the sake of the mission. Casting aside her personal concerns to keep going.

“Okay,” I replied with a nod.

She nodded back. “We’ll find her, Ian.”

I hesitated a second before nodding again. “Yeah.”

“We’ll find her together. You, me, and Josh. We’re not leaving her behind.”

“Yeah. Together.”

I jerked my chin at her quarters. “Well, go on. Get some sleep. We’ll decide on our next move in the morning.”

“All right. Are you going to bed right away?”

“Yeah. I have to get my strength back as soon as possible.”

Genel slipped through her doorway and turned back to peer at me. “Well, goodnight. See you in the morning.”

“Goodnight. See you.”

Genel bowed her head slightly, seeming to look for something else to say, but ultimately came up with nothing. She met my eyes one final time before she pushed her door shut. When her door’s lock clicked, I let out a quiet sigh.

I turned back the way I had come, in the direction of the T-junction. Instead of keeping straight and heading for my quarters, I took another lift back up to B2. From there, I limped to the Command Room, where I settled on one of the desktop seats.

I booted up the computer and from the desktop menu, clicked on ‘HQ COMMS’ and put in a call to Chairman Chase Coste.

I put on the connected headset and waited for the chairman to pick up. The longer the call took to connect, the more inclined I felt to just give up on reaching the chairman.

In the end though, the call went through. A rather groggy voice greeted me with “Hello?”

“Sorry to call so late,” I began. Ottawa was two hours ahead of Calgary, putting the local time there at nearly 2:30 in the morning.

“Ian? Is that you?”

“Yeah, Chase. It’s me.”

“Oh. Okay.” The chairman seemed to inject a little more alertness in his voice as the rustle of blankets or a comforter permeated the line.

“I woke you, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did, but I also told you that you can reach me anytime.”

“Sorry,” I said, lowering my voice further. “I won’t keep you long. I just wanted to give you an update on how things are here.”

The chairman didn’t respond right away. When he did, he sounded concerned. “Are you okay, son? You sound… off.”

“I’m fine. Just sleep deprived.”

“That right? Well, let’s keep this brief, then. What’s new there, Ian?”

“My team’s already attacked two major enemy outposts, not counting the Calgary Stampede, and we’ve secured just over sixty civilians. The enemy’s obviously going to be more on guard now, but there’s no way around that. We’ve also made contact with the CSOR team you sent. Didn’t think it would be someone I’d met already.”

“Thought you’d appreciate the familiarity, however slight. Angela’s someone I worked with a few times during the tail end of my time with CSOR. How you two met might not have left you with the strongest of impressions, but trust me: she’s as hard as some of my best buddies back in the day.”

“No, I do believe that. I’m glad she’s fighting on our corner.”

Coste chuckled. “Glad you like her. She was eager to get right on this, you know. She wanted to pay you back for Crowsnest.”

“Yeah, she told me the same thing.”

“Anyway, what else? Your team doing fine?”

“Yeah… peachy.”

“Good to hear. Lots of other teams across the country aren’t as fortunate. Some are down one or two members. Some have been wiped out altogether. Like the one you found last week.”

I leaned over the console. “Who were they?”

“Grizzly Team. Standard-tier. Been working in the Calgary and surrounding areas as long as your team’s been. The fourth member who was missing was Sebastian Summers. Team leader. What happened to them, it’s… it’s no way to go out, son.”

“I agree.”

“Yeah. You watch out that you don’t end up like them.”

The bodies of the operatives I found in the school flashed in my mind again, only this time their faces were hauntingly familiar and identical. Dilated, glassy auburn eyes peered at me accusingly behind curtains of rose pink hair.

Bringing my hand over my eyes, I rubbed them through my eyelids and forced the image out of my mind.

“Yeah,” I said, managing to sound steady. “I’ll make sure to watch out.”

I shook my head in an attempt to dispel the ominous thoughts faster, then spoke up again. “Chase, I need to get going here. Lots of things to do, you know. Last thing I want to know: is the bulk of our reinforcements from the Army still on track to make it here by the thirteenth?”

“No problems on that front. They’re part of the 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, O Company. Last report today… Well, yesterday, actually, was that they’re already in CFB Shilo. They came from CFB Petawawa.”

CFB Shilo. That was another Army base in Manitoba. They were on track to making it here by the thirteenth, then.

“All right.”

Five days before they get here. Still enough time.

“I’ll give Captain Arellano your frequency so you two can hash out plans. He’s the CO for the O Company guys we’re sending you.”

“Sure,” I replied. “Give him my number.”

Coste kept silent for a few seconds, then yawned.

“What else do you need, son?”

“That’s all for now. Thanks, Chase.”

“Like I said, anytime. Talk to you again soon, yeah?”

“Right. Soon. I’ll let you get back to sleep.”

I moved the mouse cursor and clicked on ‘Disconnect’ to end the call. For a minute, I just sat there, absently listening to the hum of the servers on either side of the room.

Then, without much active thought, I got up from my seat and moved as quickly as my injured body could afford to out of the Command Room and toward the Medical Suite.

Once there, I opened the medicine storage closet and rummaged through bottles and boxes until I found what I was looking for: bottles of aspirin and ibuprofen. I grabbed a plastic bottle of each kind in lower dosages and put them in a paper bag.

I also raided the emergency supplies closet to get myself a trauma kit like the one Christina carried. Slinging the kit by the strap over my shoulder, I took my supplies with me up to the hangar and loaded them into the backseat of an LUV that we hadn’t used yet.

After that, I headed back down to B2 and entered the armory.

Within just fifteen minutes, I’d already selected new body armour, new holsters, and new weapons. Deciding that I would need to be more self-sustained, I chose a custom HK416 from the weapon racks – compatible with the enemy’s M4 STANAG magazines. Since I also lost my sidearm in the last op, I grabbed a Walther Creed and some attachments for it. I’d have time to configure my gear later.

After loading up on several boxes of ammo for both rifle and pistol, I took two trips – thanks to my battered body – to lug all my gear up to the hangar and into the trunk of the LUV.

Lastly, I retraced my steps back to B3 and made a stop to visit my quarters. There, I packed a week’s worth of clothing into a duffel bag, then took a bit of a break and sat on my desk.

It took me five minutes to build enough resolve to open my desk drawer and reach into the deepest recesses of it to pull out another TACPAD. Unlike mine, however, this one was noticeably more worn. There were several scratches across the screen, a crack the length of a fingernail close to the upper right corner, and the matte black paint on the back was peeling in certain places.

I stared at the thing with a mixture of light nostalgia and gnawing trepidation. Was I ready?

Doesn’t matter. I need this now.

With that thought in mind, I took a special cord and attached one end of it to my TACPAD and the other end to the second one. I held down the power button on the side of the older TACPAD until the screen lit up white and greeted me with a thumbprint scan.

I placed my right thumb firmly on top of the thumbprint icon until the device vibrated briefly and words formed in black font against the white background:

‘Verified: Kennedy, Erin. Code REAPER’

I inhaled sharply. Seeing that name made my bodily pains seem to hurt less for a second.

I looked away from the screen until the words vanished, eventually being replaced by the standby screen with the usual icons: ‘COMMS’, ‘GPS’, ‘DATABASE’, and ‘PURGE’. Unlike mine, the older TACPAD had a fifth and sixth icon on the standby screen, One of them was a quarter note icon enveloped by a square, marked with ‘AUDIO LOGS’ underneath the icon. The other icon was a small bust of a faceless person surrounded by something resembling the shape of a Polaroid photograph. That one was marked with ‘IMAGES’.

Almost immediately, I dragged both ‘AUDIO LOGS’ and ‘IMAGES’ to the opposite side of the screen, away from the rest of the icons.

With that done, I put down the second TACPAD and picked my own up. I tapped and held my finger down on ‘DATABASE’, then swiped the icon down toward the port the cord was attached to. The ‘DATABASE’ icon appeared to minimize into the bottom side of my TACPAD, then a popup message appeared which read, “Transferring files…”. On the second TACPAD, a different popup appeared too, reading “Receiving files from TACPAD…”.

Both popups disappeared in half a minute. When they did, I performed the same swipe on my TACPAD’s ‘COMMS’ icon.

Once the transfer was done, I disconnected the cord and placed the worn TACPAD in my wrist brace’s slot.

After some fleeting deliberation, I took another five minutes to record audio messages using my TACPAD – one addressed to Genel, the other to Josh. I kept both brief and to the point, staying away from heavier what-ifs. Genel would no doubt dwell on what I’d left unsaid and spend an absurd amount of time trying to dissect what I did say, but there was nothing to be done about that.

I set both voice messages to be sent by six this morning, then placed my TACPAD on the desk and left my quarters with my duffel back over one shoulder.

I managed to make it back to the hangar eventually, taking longer than usual because of my slower pace. I stashed my clothes in the trunk of the LUV and got behind the wheel. I brought the vehicle’s engine roaring to life and the bulkhead doors opening within the same minute.

At twenty past one in the morning, I was well away from Haven and headed for northern Calgary.





It wasn’t until past two-thirty when I parked the LUV in the parking lot of a condo complex called Panorama Pointe, located in the northwest neighbourhood of Panorama Hills. I’d never personally been this far north of Calgary; Panorama Hills was practically at the city limits in northern Calgary, and I seldom needed to ever come to this part of town. All the gun stores were in the southeast and southwest, and Haven was obviously outside of Calgary. My permanent address was in the southwest.

The complex was made up of several fairly newly-built five-story buildings made mostly of a combination of steel and glass. From just looking at the identical silver buildings towering over the parking spaces, I could surmise that the condos weren’t the most appealing for buyers or renters who valued aesthetics. The buildings themselves didn’t give off a family feel. Instead, they were more modern than conventional condos. Function over form.

I didn’t know if she chose this particular complex for her Calgary ‘safehouse’, but it certainly was like her. Functional, pragmatic, no bells or whistles.

I replaced the worn TACPAD in my wrist brace and stepped out of the vehicle. The complex was dark thanks to the lack of working streetlamps. Unlike the southern areas of the city, this area seemed not to be getting electricity from the power stations.

The TACPAD itself didn’t have any notes regarding the exact street address and suite number, but one text message I’d gotten from Erin shortly before she passed gave me the relevant information:

“2107-60 Panatella Street Northwest. Suite 20. Door code is 1122. You ever find yourself needing a home away from home, you’re free to use it. Key’s on top of the lamp. Don’t touch my beers.”

Almost three years now since she’d left me that text. I hadn’t touched my personal cell in two weeks, but her exact words in that text message were seared into my mind. ‘Forgettable’ was hardly something I associated with my mentor.

I’ll have to clear out three-year expired beer.

For some reason, that whimsical thought was the first and only thought I had as I stood by the LUV, looking up at the looming 2107 building in front of me.

The longer I stared at the silhouette of the building, the more I wanted to turn around, get back in the LUV, and just head back to Haven. I was sure that if I got back behind the wheel now and evade the six or so US Army checkpoints that I circumvented on Stoney Trail on my way here, I could be back before Genel or Josh even realized I had left without telling them. I could cancel sending those audio messages. I could crawl back into bed, catch a couple hours of sleep, think of a different plan.

Christina’s bright eyes and her genuinely amused smile from just the previous dawn popped up in my mind. Her enjoyment of our conversation with me under the silent sky and the sound of her bewildering laughter kept me from running away.

I can’t turn back now.

I gritted my teeth behind my lips and limped over to the front entrance of the building. The main entrance was most likely usually locked electronically, but with the power to the entire complex – the whole neighbourhood, even – absent, the doors were left closed but ultimately unlocked.

I entered the lobby, finding it somewhat darker than the rest of the complex, though some emergency lights mounted to the walls gave the area some meager illumination. Less than ten paces ahead, there was a main staircase that I could take to get to the upper floors. Beside the staircase was an elevator.

To either side of the foot of the staircase were hallways that stretched outwards. I stood at the intersection, estimating that there had to be at least ten suites on each hallway – five on either side of each hallway. The doors were also rather well spaced out, so I had to assume the suites themselves were quite spacious.

I glanced left and right, then on a whim turned to the hallway on the right and began walking down it. The building was so silent that my footsteps on the carpet sounded loud, and my own heartbeat seemed to pound in my ears.

The first two suites I passed that were facing each other on opposite sides of the hall were marked with ‘11’ and ‘12’ in the doors. Deciding that I was going down the correct hallway, I kept walking.

Fifteen, sixteen. Seventeen, eighteen. Nineteen… twenty.

I reached the end of the corridor and stood still in front of Suite 20’s door. The sight of just the door sent ripples of doubt and fear spreading across me like a poison.

I realized I was trying to turn the door handle for ten seconds in vain, the door not yielding because it was locked.

Get it together.

Key. On top of the lamp. Right.

I looked up at a small, rectangular lamp hanging beside the door to my right. I lifted my arm to reach above it, but lowered my arm almost immediately when a large burst of pain exploded from my chest wound. I tried again, this time moving my arm more slowly. The pain was slightly diminished with my more careful movement, and after some fumbling, my fingers touched something metallic and small on top of the unlit lamp.

I pulled the key down toward me, making a loud, scaping sound as it slid against the top of the lamp. I took the key and inserted it into the door handle’s keyhole. The feeling of the key sliding into that hole triggered yet another bout of dread that clutched my heart in ice. The fact that I’d never been here before and that I didn’t know what was in there held me in place.

I took some deep breaths, then squeezed the handle. I finally turned the key in its hole and before I could hesitate and deliberate further, I pushed the door inwards.

At first, I just stood in the foyer, staring straight into the suite with my heart hammering against my ribs. I was barely aware of the spacious living room, the pristine kitchen, or the smell of the suite that gave me a vague feeling that it hadn’t been lived in that much. A bit of the night light was pouring in from outside through a set of patio doors between the living room and kitchen, casting an eerie, bluish glow across the whole suite.

Is she here?

It was ridiculous to ask. Erin was dead. I knew that.

Like a man possessed, I staggered further into the suite. For the next quarter of an hour, I became increasingly frantic as I scoured the condo high and low. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for, but I flipped mattresses, lifted mats, and pulled out drawers with the fearful air of a child checking under the bed and in the closet for monsters before going to sleep.

My search had fortunately turned up nothing at first. She had always been a practical person, not one to decorate her place. After all, she had several places like this across the country, what with her job taking her to different locations every now and again. There were no clothes in the walk-in closet, no toiletries in the shower, not even any leftover cans of expired Moosehead Lager in the inactive fridge. Everything was as bare as a condo up for viewings, waiting for a tenant to buy or rent it.

It wasn’t until I checked the bedside dresser in the master bedroom that I found my first monster.

The dresser was empty save for its top drawer, which contained only a single photograph that was lying face down when I found it.

By the light being cast through the nearby window, I could just barely make out a handwritten note in deep blue ink on the back of the photo. It was in that not-so-elegant but still neat cursive that I knew well.

‘Merry Christmas, kid. 2017-12-24’

I reached for the picture with a trembling hand, every fibre of my being screaming out for me not to touch it, not to look at it.

But much like how people are strangely drawn to that which will harm them, I slowly took the photograph anyway and flipped it over.

It was a moment I’d never really forgotten – merely pushed toward the furthest point in my mind. It instantly reminded me of why I had.

It was a picture of me and my mentor at the shooting range of C.O.S. headquarters. I was still part of the way through training then, but even though I was decent enough at marksmanship and firearms in general, my mentor took me to the range and gym more often than regularly, intent on pushing me to become better than I was the day before. She was a brusque woman who worked me to the bone, sometimes even when I was clearly tired and would have liked to rest. “Don’t stop practicing when you get it right; keep practicing until you can’t possibly get it wrong”, she always told me. She always forced goals and more work in general my way, not content with some things that I claimed were “my best”. She continuously pushed back my limits, and though I occasionally complained I had done the best I could, she would snap and insist that I could be better. She would be right whenever she said that, every time.

In the photograph, she and I were standing next to each other with the range directly behind us. In her right hand, mounted over her shoulder casually, was an AR-15. Her left arm was thrown over my shoulders. She wore that same navy blue tank top she favoured along with black combat pants, in addition to a black ball cap, earplugs, and blue tinted range goggles.

She wasn’t usually one for outward displays of camaraderie, but it was on that day that she first did something as friendly as put her arm around my shoulders. It was also the first time I’d seen her smile, even if she did so only slightly in this photo.

Meanwhile, I was awkwardly frowning in the photo, looking like a kid who’d just been told an embarrassing fact about himself. My right arm was wedged between her and me. It was almost laughable how stupid my expression looked. I recalled my surprise at Erin’s gesture completely taking me off guard here. I was wearing the standard C.O.S. trainees’ compression shirt and similar combat pants. My black hair was longer, reaching past my ears and nearly touching my eyes. In my left hand, I was holding up a familiar handgun with the muzzle up and the magwell empty.

It was the gift my mentor had given me that day – a custom Walther PPQ, something so practical that only she could have ever gotten it for me.

The same handgun I’d been using for three years.

The same one I’d lost during the last op.

It was… difficult seeing her again. Seeing those sky blue eyes, that rare little roguish smile, and even the clothes she wore made my chest feel tight. I gasped softly, trying to breathe normally, but either my throat or my lungs felt like it was caving in.

I stumbled and crashed to the carpet, landing on my ass as the strength in my legs seemed to abandon me. Pangs of pain shot across my body in protest of my careless movement. I knew I should have dropped the photograph or just looked away. I knew I shouldn’t have touched it, even. But I continued to gaze at it.

A building pressure began to mount behind my eyes. My chest continued to constrict and strangle me, yet it wasn’t much later that my mouth started running on its own, saying the same thing over and over in strained whispers.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.





When I opened my eyes again, I found myself in a room that I didn’t recognize. My eyes took a few seconds to adjust and focus, but as best as I could tell I was in some sort of classroom. A portable battery-powered emergency light sat on a desk toward the back of the room, illuminating the room with enough light for me to take in my surroundings.

I was in front of several rows of study desks with chairs pushed beneath each of them. Corkboards were mounted to either side of the blue-green walls, with posters about literature studies and academic support pinned to the board. The room I was in was rather new-ish, and the general aesthetic of it made me think I was in a university classroom rather than a grade school one.

I tried to move my arms, but I found them immobile, raised to above my head. I looked up at my hands, finding my wrists bound to one corner each of what seemed to be a single metal bedframe that was standing up on two other corners. A look at the material binding my wrists told me I was being held in place by zip ties; a real pain to remove even with two hands free. My ankles were the same story: bound to the bottom two corners of the bedframe with another couple of zip ties.

I was also not wearing my parka or boots anymore. My gloves and hat were nowhere to be found, either.

I instinctively tried to shake the bedframe in a vain effort to break free or knock it on its side. That was when a voice shot out at me from somewhere to my left side. I would have jumped if I wasn’t tied to where I was.

“You are awake.”

I turned my head toward the source of the sound, eventually finding a man pushing off the whiteboard behind me from a leaning position and walking in front of me so I could see him better. The way he moved was rather stiff, even for a military man. His dark hair was cropped extremely closely to his scalp, and his eyes bored into mine with their rich light brown hue. One look at those eyes made my breath catch in my throat. He looked… soulless. As if he was the walking dead. In fact, I knew I’d seen that same look in someone else’s eyes.

Knight. Knight’s eyes looked like them by default, though this man’s were perhaps a bit more extreme. The resemblance was eerily similar – that same look prevented me from making any immediate inferences about a person. Inscrutable. Expressionless.

After a few seconds however, I noticed the olive drab fatigues he was wearing, and it clicked: this was the one who attacked me in tandem with Yansen.

Wait. Where’s Knight?

I quickly recalled my team’s leader getting pummeled into submission and taking a knife to the heart. He’d fallen and remained still the last I saw him.

Did I get him killed? Was he dead?

No. He couldn’t be. He was the Reaper. Surely he couldn’t just die like that. Not like that.

The image of a legendary Sector operative – one who could never be beaten – began to crumble in my mind. Up until now I’d always believed he was near invincible. I took comfort in knowing he was working with me on this mission. Somewhere deep down, I’d gotten used to the idea that he would always come out on top. I’d begun to expect he would win, no matter the odds.

To see him get taken down with the same swiftness he had while dispatching obstacles in his way filled me with icy doubt.

“Miss.”

I lifted my gaze and looked the man in front of me in the face. His expressionless face was another dark reminder of the Shadow leader’s fate.

“May I ask how you are feeling?” he asked. Even his voice was monotonous, though I detected a slight Slavic accent.

“Who are you? Where am I?” I demanded, glancing around at the room again.

The man did not blink, gesture, or react in any human-like way. He just stood there when he answered, like a living statue.

“My name is Heimdall. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you our exact location.”

The way he spoke was extremely formal, as if he’d come from a distant period in human history.

“You’re with Northstar,” I said, my eyes flicking to the familiar uniform.

“That is correct. I am employed under Northstar Security Solutions. As I understand, you were as well.”

I clenched my hands into fists above my head. “That was… a long time ago.”

“Four years is not a drastically distant point in the past.”

“What am I doing here? Why did you bring me here?”

“I was ordered by operative ‘Hornet’ to ensure you are kept alive until he returns. To that end, I have treated a gunshot wound to your right arm and right side. Are you feeling well, miss?”

Who the hell is this guy? I couldn’t tell if he despised me, or was genuinely concerned about my injury.

“Rhodes?” I asked, bristling a little. “Theo Rhodes ordered you to watch me?”

Heimdall nodded stiffly. “Correct.”

“Why?”

“I did not question him. Those were his orders. I am merely following them.” He paused a second before asking me again, “Are you feeling well, miss? Would you like to have a drink of water? It has been six hours since you—”

“I don’t want any goddamn water!” I snapped at this strange man. His robotic demeanour was so odd that his mere presence filled me with unease. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have pondered the possibility that he was some kind of robot after all, just sheathed in the appearance of a human being. “Get me out of these ties.”

Heimdall shook his head, his haunting eyes remaining locked onto mine even as his head moved slightly from side to side. “I cannot do that.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I was ordered not to allow you to escape.”

But why? I wanted to scream at him, but it was only as I began to gather my voice to shout the question at him that I realized my throat was dry. It had been a while since I’d had a drink.

I licked my parched lips and tried a different tack.

“My friend.”

Heimdall inclined his head minutely. “I do not understand why you would call me that.”

“No, not you. The man I was with when… Back at the hospital. Did you… Did you kill him?”

He didn’t skip a beat.

“Yes, I did.”

“No,” I protested, shaking my head like a petulant child. “You didn’t. You’re lying.”

“I am not lying.”

“You’re lying!”

“I am incapable of lying, miss.”

“Don’t call me that! Stop calling me that!”

Heimdall eventually chose to stop speaking to me, clearly finally understanding I wasn’t going to listen to him.

He had to be lying. Or just plainly wrong. Knight couldn’t go down just like that.

I need to get out of here. Regroup with my team, find out how the rescue operation went.

As I was desperately racking my head for ways to break out and overpower Heimdall, the door on the far end of the classroom opened inwards and a leaner man wearing a black overcoat came in pushing a library cart of sorts. His pallid face and shoulder-length black hair made him instantly recognizable.

When he saw me with me eyes open, an unpleasant smile grew on his face. It reminded me of a cartoon I saw as a kid that always put me in unease when I gazed at the villain’s face.

“Finally awake, Christina?” he said in a candid, almost gleeful voice.

Rhodes pushed his cart down an aisle and parked it beside where I was restrained. He turned his attention to the other Northstar mercenary.

“Any problems with our guest?” he asked.

“None, sir,” Heimdall replied. “Christina Valentine has only just regained consciousness. She, however, has refused drink and demanded to know where we are and why she is being held captive.”

“Did you tell her, then?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Now leave, Heimdall.”

Heimdall once again did not react at all to the abrupt dismissal. He merely asked another question for clarification.

“Yes, sir. Is there anything you wish for me to do? Should I return to my initial objectives?”

“Christina is now in our possession. You are free to return to your tasks for HQ.”

Heimdall lowered his gaze to the cart. “Will you be extracting intelligence from the captive, sir?”

Rhodes gave a cluck of his tongue and sighed. “Yes, yes, I will do what I can to supply you with more leads to aid you in your objectives. Now leave us.”

Heimdall nodded. “I appreciate your assistance, sir. I will take my leave now.”

Without more ceremony, the strange man walked toward the door, vanishing through it and closing the door behind him.

Rhodes stared after the other man and sighed again when Heimdall had gone.

“Finally. I thought he would never leave.” He looked me in the eyes, making me shudder from the malice he was keeping just beneath the surface. “Well then, how are you, Christina?”

I gnashed my teeth, simmering. “What do you want, Rhodes?”

He walked closer to me, standing in front of me. If only I could get one arm free, I could reach out an grab him.

Rhodes chuckled softly as I struggled against the zip ties. “Well, I see you’ve still got plenty of energy for someone who was just shot. Apologies for that, by the way. I thought I was clear that I wanted you alive, but Yansen was… Well, you know him, of course. Never one for being delicate.”

“What do you want from me?”

Rhodes gave me a slightly exasperated look. “Right down to business, Christina? I admit, I wanted to ease you into this, you know. Maybe chat about old times before I have my fun. It only seems proper. It has been a while and we should catch up.”

“Go to hell.”

Rhodes winced a little. “I’m being nice here. My, what happened to you these last few years? You’re not usually this scathing. You used to be a good girl.”

I didn’t answer that. His use of the phrase ‘good girl’ made me want to gag. I struggled more against my bonds even though I knew there was no getting out of them by myself. All I would get were chafed wrists, but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to sit here listening to a maniac.

Rhodes strode leisurely over to the cart he had brought with him. He picked up one of those KF-BAR knives the US Army soldiers carried with them and brandished it lazily in front of his face and mine.

“All right then, Christina. Since you’re so eager to get started, we’ll skip the niceties. I believe you know how this works. I have questions, you have answers. I would greatly appreciate if you could give them to me. Simple, no?”

I glared at him. “Fuck you. I’m not telling you anything.”

To my surprise and dismay, Rhodes’ smile turned into a grin.

“Ah yes, I was hoping you would say that! See, this wouldn’t be as fun if you’d just started spilling your guts out the second I asked politely. I like working to get at the answers, as strange as that sounds.”

He lifted the knife to my neck and placed the side of the cold blade against my skin. I tried to jerk away from the knife, but in my current position I couldn’t really move much.

My heart pounded loudly in my ears as Rhodes held the blade there for a few seconds, then spoke in an increasingly enthusiastic tone.

“Do give me a good time. Now, stay as still as you can, Christina. I wouldn’t want to cut anything vital.”

He moved the blade and no sooner than he did, I felt its edge glide a little through my skin. There was some brief flash of pain, but it was barely worth worrying about. Rhodes moved the knife away from my neck as I felt something warm trickling down my neck.

Rhodes’ beetle eyes seemed to glow at the sight of the cut he made on the side of my neck. A chill ran down my back as he licked his lips for a couple of seconds. With his free hand, he put a finger to my neck and brought the bloodstained digit to his mouth. I watched with utter revulsion as he wiped my blood on his lower lip.

He seemed to snap out of a trance. He cleared his throat and lowered his free arm. It took me until now to notice it, but his nose seemed a little deformed, as if he’d broken it recently.

“I’m getting carried away,” he said silkily, “Sorry about that.”

He took a few moments to regain some composure before speaking again.

“Q & A time.”

He reached into his coat pocket and took out a device I immediately recognized as a TACPAD. Unlike last time however, this one lit up when Rhodes tapped a finger on its screen.

My blood ran cold as he looked from the device’s screen to me. “I believe you know what this is. Of course you do – I took it from you.”

My TACPAD. It wasn’t purged.

Rhodes glanced back down at the screen and began tinkering with my TACPAD.

“Get your hands off that,” I said, my face burning with anger and shame. That single device had so much intelligence that could compromise all other agents and the C.O.S. itself if the intel ever wound up as shared knowledge between Northstar and the US government.

Rhodes took several seconds to peruse the device before smiling at me again. “The… Clandestine Operations Sector, is it? Hmm. A branch of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service? That makes sense, since you seem to be involved with the US Army’s headaches as of late.”

I struggled some more, grunting and panting. Rhodes continued to pore over the contents of my device.

“Damn it, Rhodes, give me that back!”

He looked up from the screen momentarily, then started reciting something from the TACPAD’s screen.

“Shadow Team. Code Zero-One-Four. Code Zero-Two-Three. Code Zero-Five-Seven. What do these ‘codes’ refer to, Christina? The other members of your team, perhaps?”

No. No.

Rhodes gave me a curious stare. “This is a treasure trove of information. A shame the ones I got from the other operatives like you were—”

He glanced back down at the screen to verify something.

“—purged,” he finished.

He already knew too much. I had to get out of here, get my TACPAD back, and silence him.

Think. How do you get out of this one? This is just like with the Stampede, but this time there’s no rescue coming. No Knight was coming to bust me out. I’m on my own. I don’t even know where I am; how can any of the others know where I am?

“Tell me, what is your team’s objective, Christina?” Rhodes asked as he pocketed the TACPAD again.

“To hunt and kill sick fucks like you.”

He chucked again. “That’s it? Seems rather simple, I’ll say. Fine, then. What is the Clandestine Operations Sector’s rationale? Objective?”

When I didn’t answer, he sighed. “Your employer isn’t on any of our databases. Up until now, no such organization existed. You’re more secretive than the CIA.”

He paused, giving me a scrutinizing look. He certainly seemed to like the sound of his own voice, if the way he spoke to me with an almost casual enthusiasm was any indication.

“Judging by how you seem to be after the prisoners, I’m going to guess this Sector of yours isn’t that different from other intelligence services. Protection of Canadian citizens from real and perceived threats here and elsewhere, am I right?”

I didn’t bother to answer that, either. It wasn’t hard a guess, given the context he had already. Even if I denied it, he wouldn’t have believed any other explanation.

He crossed his arms over his chest, the knife sticking out of one fist. “I just don’t understand why you’re in this business, Christina. If you really wanted to work with guns, you had plenty of opportunities for that with Northstar. I’m also sure we pay more than some government organization. Why jump ships to join a losing side?”

“I’m not doing this for the money,” I spat at him.

“Then what? Surely not for the thrills and adventure. We have plenty of those, too. What, then? Is this revenge? For Michael, maybe?”

I clutched my hands into tight fists at his mention of Michael’s name.

“We didn’t kill Michael, Christina,” Rhodes told me with the condescending air of a teacher explaining to a student where they went wrong with a math problem.

“You did,” I said vehemently, my entire body shaking now.

“Don’t delude yourself. You killed him. You killed your brother.”

My chest tightened and heaved. Even if that was the truth, having the truth recounted to me aloud still filled me with a painful bitterness.

“You had a gun to my head! You made me do it!”

The second I let that fly, I wished I could take the words back. It was just a flimsy excuse that I’d used for three years to try absolving myself of what I’d done.

Rhodes only seemed to become more entertained by my distraught state. His eyes gleamed and his smile deepened. He leaned down and placed his face close to mine.

“Then, what does that say about you, Christina? We never pulled that trigger for you. We asked you to, but that was all. You were the one who went along with it. That you would shoot your own flesh and blood because you were told to… Tell me. What does that say about what you are?”

I thrashed in my restraints, trying to lunge at him and get a bite out of any part of his despicable face, wanting nothing more than to see him in the ground. In the end, I eventually went limp after I struggled for a minute straight to no avail.

“You might be spineless, but you’re not stupid,” Rhodes continued. “That’s exactly why you chose your own life over Michael’s. So you’re not doing this whole clandestine operative thing to get back at us, are you? If you hadn’t disappeared on us, we would have trusted you, given your ability to set aside family for more practical reasons.”

“Fuck you. I wasn’t going to spend another mission with you animals. You murder innocent people,” I replied in disgust, hoping Rhodes would spontaneously catch on fire in front of me.

Rhodes’ eyes widened, and as much as I hated that I knew him at all, I could tell he was genuinely surprised what I had told him. For a while, I wondered if I had given away something fatal regarding the C.O.S., but—

Rhodes broke out in a grin again, then began to laugh as if he’d just been hit by the best joke he’d ever heard. I stared at him, lost and unsure what to say.

“Don’t tell me,” he said between half-guffaws and gasps for breath, “That’s it? This… You’re doing this because of that bombing?”

I opened my mouth to defend myself, but found my voice absent. Besides, why would I want to defend myself from that?

Once Rhodes settled down after a bit more laughter, he tilted his head sideways as he looked at me like I was a naïve child.

“You probably missed the fine print, then,” he said softly. “We’re soldiers for hire. No matter the job, as long as we’re paid to do it, we do it.”

“We were only supposed to go after some government officials,” I mumbled, bowing my head. I couldn’t look at him anymore without feeling sick to my stomach.

“And we got them. Surely you knew that before you ran out on us.”

‘We got them.’

The image of a levelled restaurant building with rubble everywhere, bodies crushed beneath debris, came to mind. I remembered the screams, the blood, the limbs sticking out of the debris that their owners reached out in the hopes that someone would save them. I recalled the sirens, coming to save those who couldn’t be saved anymore. I recalled the stench that I couldn’t describe more than one of death and despair.

Men, women, even children and toddlers, all caught in the carnage we’d fabricated.

Fifty-one. That was how many innocent lives were snuffed out, all so we could take out four Canadian government officials.

“That’s why you’re here?” Rhodes was caught between amusement and incredulity as the faces of the victims on the papers appeared in my mind. “Because of that operation?”

Yes.

I thought…

I thought I could make it right.