THIRTY-THREE
CAIDEN
I’m in the comms room early, half because I like the extra ten minutes to set up properly and half because if I’m left to pace my own quarters much longer, I’ll start gnawing through the furniture.
I’m checking channels, headset on around my neck with one hand resting on the console, when there’s a knock against the doorframe behind me.
I turn, and Niko’s standing there.
At first glance, he looks better than he has in weeks, which isn’t saying much, but I’ll take it right now. He’s shaved, uniform straight, and even looks like he’s sleeping and eating a bit, functioning in the narrow military sense of the word.
It’s enough that on paper, he passes. He could probably stand in a room full of officers who can look at him and see a man fit for work if they’ve decided that’s what they want to see.
Up close, it’s a different story. I can still see the strain around his eyes. “Morning,” I say.
“Morning. Have you been setting up long?”
“Long enough to regret it,” I reply. That gets the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth. He steps properly inside the room and shuts the door behind him.
That’s when I know this isn’t casual.
“Niko?” He doesn’t answer straight away. Instead, he looks past me at the screens, the maps, even the headsets on the desk.
“I want to be on the mission,” he says finally.
“No,” I say, staring at him.
He almost smiles at that, which annoys me immediately. “I wasn’t asking.”
“You absolutely were, because I’m saying no.”
His jaw clenches. “Caiden—”
“No. Not this one.”
He exhales through his nose. “I know the route and the terrain. I know how the joint team moves when they think they’re being subtle and the places they’ll go wrong if they’re not watched. I’m useful.”
Useful.
I hate that word.
“If you’re doing this to prove something—” I say.
His expression changes at that. “This isn’t about proving anything,” he cuts me off.
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” He folds his arms, then seems to think better of making himself look closed off and lets them drop again. “I need to do my job.”
“Need,” I say. “That’s the word we’re using?”
“It’s the right one.”
“No,” I tell him. “The right one is want. You want to be out there because sitting still is driving you out of your mind.”
For a second, he doesn’t speak at all. “You think I don’t know that?”
I don’t answer because of course he knows it. He’s Niko. He knows exactly what he’s doing nearly all of the time. That doesn’t make me any more inclined to help him do it.
He steps closer. “I can’t keep sitting in that flat and feeling myself rot.”
“Niko—”
“No, listen. Cassie is gone. The baby’s there. Every time I look at him, I know exactly what’s missing and exactly why he doesn’t understand it yet. I go home, and I sit there, and the walls feel closer every day.” He swallows hard. “I need to be useful.”
There’s that word again. I rub a hand over my mouth and look away for a second because there is no version of this conversation I like.
“You are useful,” I say. “That’s not the issue.”
“It is to me. I know what the CO thinks.”
“He said no?” I ask him.
“He advised against it.”
“Which is officer language for no.”
He gives a short breath that might have been a laugh in another life. “He thinks I’m not fit.”
“Are you?” I ask instead.
He looks at me steadily. “Fit enough.”
“Cassie died a matter of weeks ago, Niko. Do you really think this is the right time to push onto an op?”
“I think if I keep being treated like a man who can’t be trusted to do his own work, I’ll start believing it.
” The mad part is that I understand him.
I understand this impulse, the need to stand up for something rather than just what’s left after something awful. God help me, I understand it too well.
That doesn’t mean I like it.
I lean against the desk, arms folded now, because if I don’t anchor myself somewhere, I’ll start pacing. “And if it goes wrong?”
He shrugs once, but there’s no carelessness in it. “Everything goes wrong eventually.”
“That’s not an answer,” I say, letting out a breath.
His eyes don’t leave mine. “It’s the only one I’ve got. I need this, Caiden,” he says, more quietly than before. “Please.”
I look down at the headset on the desk, the neat stack of documents, the mission timings. Then I think about the route and about how good Niko actually is.
I think about saying no, him ignoring me, then going around me if he has to. Then I think about Ari. Ari would definitely say no, and not gently either. Ari would say no, mean it, and let Niko hate him for a week if that was the price.
When I finally look back at Niko, he’s watching me with that awful combination of hope and resignation you only get from men who are already preparing themselves to accept the answer they hate. “If I put you on this detail,” I say, slowly, “you don’t get to go charging about proving points.”
A shadow of irritation crosses his face. “I wasn’t planning to—”
“Good. Because I will personally drag you off it if you start acting like a lunatic.” That gets the faintest huff out of him. “You stay on comms. You stay where you’re meant to be. If anything shifts and I tell you to fall back, you fall back. No heroics and no stubborn nonsense. Understood?”
“Understood.”
I hold his gaze for a second longer, looking for anything on his face that suggests he’s about to promise what he has no intention of keeping.
I don’t find it.
“All right,” I say.
Niko nods once, relief so controlled it nearly passes for nothing. “Don’t tell Ari.”
I stare at him. “Absolutely not.”
“Caiden—”
“No.”
“He’ll say no.”
“That’s because he has sense,” I argue.
“And you don’t?” I almost tell him, not enough, apparently, but I stop myself. He steps closer, his voice lower now. “He doesn’t need to know before it happens.” That’s a rotten argument, and he knows it. “He doesn’t need another thing to worry about,” Niko says.
I know what he’s doing, but then I think about telling Ari his brother came to me asking to be put on an operation his CO has already advised against. I think about the inevitable row and the fact I’m already halfway into one bad decision, and apparently considering a second.
I hate that Niko can tell I’m wavering. “Don’t tell him,” he says again. “Let me do my job. I'll tell him I went over your head. He will be angry with me, but only for a little while.”
Fucking shit.
“All right,” I say at last, and I hate how tired the words sound. “I won’t tell him.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t make it sound like I’ve done you some massive favour. I haven’t. I’ve either made a good call or a terrible one. We’ll find out which later.” I shake my head. “Go get ready.”
He turns, then he pauses at the door. “Caiden. You know you can trust me, right?”
“I know.” He nods in thanks, then leaves. The door shuts behind him, and I stand there in the hum of the equipment with my hands braced on the desk, staring at nothing. Then I reach for the headset and get on with it.
The operation starts. The intel is scrubbed twice, once by the joint team and once again by the British lead before anyone even sits down.
The terrain is verified against satellite passes, drone footage, and boots-on-ground reports, filtered, summarised, and filtered again.
Enemy presence is mapped and cross-checked until the margins narrow into something workable.
Nothing on the board looks rushed or sloppy.
The room settles down the way they always do before something like this. Everyone is aware of where they’re standing, what they’re touching, and what they’re doing.
The maps glow across the wall in layered grids. Blue and green markers pulse faintly, updating on a rhythm just slow enough to notice if you’re watching for it. No one speaks unless they need to, and when they do, they’re clear and efficient.
I’m on comms. The channel discipline is tight, and call signs are clean. I track the units the way I always do, not as people but as positions, vectors, and time stamps advancing across a grid.
This is where I’m best, and where emotion stops being noise and becomes fuel. I don’t need calm to do this job.
I need everything else to get out of the way.
Niko’s unit is staged and ready; I deliberately assigned them.
Their call sign shifts colour as it moves from standby to active.
I watch them closely. They’re steady and experienced.
They won’t rush, and if something shifts, they’ll adapt.
If something goes wrong, they’ll hold long enough for correction.
I trust them.
I trust him.
“Bravo, advance on my mark,” I say.
“Copy,” Niko answers. Familiar. Calm. “Moving.”
The markers shift, and timers tick forward. For the first stretch, the comms stay clean. There’s no chatter beyond necessity, and the feed holds steady. The British lead glances at me once, gives his brief approval, then returns to his screen.
This is how it’s meant to go.
Then an anomaly appears.
It’s a tiny flicker at the edge of the map that doesn’t match expectations.
Too smooth to be wildlife, and too inconsistent for interference.
It’s definitely not enough to trigger alarms, but it’s enough to sit there and bother me.
I flag it straight away. “Check left sector. Possible unaccounted presence.”
Niko comes back without hesitation. “Visual unclear. Terrain’s tighter than mapped.”
I reroute another unit slightly wider, adjusting for the compression. It’s a small change and the sort you make automatically if you’re doing your job properly.
This is what comms is for. Catch it early. Keep it manageable.
Seconds pass, then Niko’s voice changes. “Contact left.”
I don’t look up. “Confirm numbers.”
There’s a short pause, long enough to start alarm bells in my head. “Heavier than expected,” he says. “This wasn’t on the brief.”
I’m already moving markers, already shifting the map in my head faster than the screen can keep up. “Hold position,” I say. “Do not push. Support en route.”
It is the right call, I know it is, but the problem is time; it never behaves the way you want it to. I’m used to staying in front of any issues, but this time I’m already running behind.
Then gunfire cuts across the channel.
“Bravo,” I say. “Fall back. Anchor on—”
“I can’t,” Niko cuts in, his breathing audible now. “We’re pinned—”
The signal distorts and static frays at the edges of his voice. “Niko— Bravo,” I say again, sharper. “Fall back. Support is moving.”
There’s a delay, a second, then two. “Caiden—” the sentence breaks in the middle.
Then there’s static.
An open channel.
Then silence.
I wait for a few seconds for it to come back.
I wait for breathing, a correction, absolutely anything.
But nothing comes. My thumb presses into the console hard enough the plastic cracks under my thumb.
“Niko, respond,” I say, but he doesn’t answer.
I start reaching for alternatives immediately.
It’s just interference, terrain shadow, equipment failures even.
I keep talking because stopping would mean admitting I’m already too late. Orders, redirects, and extraction windows that weren’t meant to be used yet. Every possible explanation is looping in my head.
My voice stays level while my thoughts start firing off in a dozen different directions. I should’ve widened the approach sooner. I should’ve challenged the mapping again. I should’ve— “Niko, come in,” I say again, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.
Another unit fills the channel with a status report, and the operation keeps moving.
Then I get the confirmation.
“K. I. A.”
For a second, those three letters don’t compute.
No. No, that’s wrong.
It can’t be right.
I’m hearing things.
I’m already going back through the last thirty seconds in my head, trying to find the point where this could still be wrong. Delay. Misread. Someone else’s call sign bleeding through. Anything.
“Confirm it,” I hear myself say out of raw insistence, as if saying it differently might change what I hear back.
There’s a pause on the other end. Then it comes again, slower this time, as if spacing it out might somehow help. “K. I. A.”
This isn’t happening.
No.
No.
No.