Chapter 2
CHAPTER
TWO
NOAH
She dabs my head wound fast and with no-frills. Hell, she barely looked at me until the bleeding stopped.
I watch her hands, steady, sharp, like the rest of her, controlled and cold. But that voice, it had teeth. And something underneath it I wasn’t ready to touch.
I walk out of the tent dragging the weight in my leg like a secret. She saw the limp. Of course she did. I told her it was nothing. That’s what we say, always. Even when it’s something.
Back in the barracks, I peel off layers of sweat-soaked gear. Dust clings to me like a second skin. Sergeant Mitchell sits across the room, shoulder still stiff from the last mission. He raises a brow. “You good, Cap?”
“Better than your shoulder,” I mutter.
He snorts. “You look like you lost a fistfight with a rock.”
“Almost did.” I don’t tell him about the terrain, or the choice I made to keep going when I shouldn’t have as I carried Private Torres down the rocky hill.
I rub my temple, fingers grazing the fresh bandage. The antiseptic scent lingers, and so does the memory of her touch, clinical, detached, but maybe not completely.
Major Stevens. I have heard some soldiers say she is too clinical, but I saw something in her eyes when she saw Torres bleeding out. Something haunted. Familiar. Like she’d lost someone once, and now she stitches with a purpose. I can respect that, more than I want to.
But respect is dangerous here. You start caring, you start hesitating, and hesitation gets people killed.
I drop back on the cot, hoping for rest, but sleep comes slowly and with it memories I haven’t thought about in years.
The sun has gone down and while most people are tucked safely inside, chasing a tomorrow. Luis and I are braving the streets, hoping to not run into trouble tonight. Grandma needs meds and there is only one person she trusts to have them.
We get to the building, and I wait outside scanning for danger, while he goes up to the nurse’s apartment.
Then I hear it; gunfire.
I run. Fast. When I reach the nurse’s door, she tells me Luis left out the back with some guys. I can see the fear in her eyes and my stomach drops.
When I get out the back door, I don’t see anyone, though I’m being cautious, not knowing who is around a corner ready to ambush me.
I finally find Luis behind a dumpster and see blood mixing with sweat, fear carved into his sixteen-year-old face.
Bruises, shattered ribs, and a bullet in the shoulder.
“Noah...” he wheezes. “They said you’re next.”
I don’t blink, as I peel off my shirt and press it into the wound, calling for an ambulance that won’t come fast enough.
“Fine, let them come, I’m done hiding,” I grit out through my teeth as I help him stand, leading him out of the alley and to the road.
The cops show up first, asking all of their questions, but there is nothing useful I can tell them. I didn’t see anything and Luis has already passed out from blood loss and pain.
I know who they are and I have my own plans. That night, not a member of that gang could tell you what happened, but they felt it, and some didn’t survive.
Later that night at our apartment, I sit in silence while my mother stitches up the gash on my side from where the bullet grazed me. Her hands tremble more than the needle.
“I raised you to survive,” she whispers, not wanting my grandmother to hear. “Not to charge into flames.”
“But somebody has to, they almost killed Luis,” I grit out, not in anger, but in defiance.
She doesn’t argue, just stares at me, finally seeing the boy she raised disappear into the man I’d become in this moment.
I wake in the dark barracks, chest tight, breath ragged. Ten years gone, but some fires never burn out.
Luis left Brooklyn and never looked back. Me? I joined the Army two months later.
I needed to learn structure over chaos. I earned loyalty through grit, medals through silence. Buried every ounce of guilt beneath layers of strategy and resolve.
Until today. Until Major Stevens.
And now her voice echoes louder than my mother’s. Louder than Luis’s.
“Being tough doesn’t mean being reckless.”
She doesn’t know what she’s asking. She doesn’t know the ghosts, but she’s close, and for the first time in years, I wonder if someone can see through my armor.
I don’t have time to dwell on it though as the ground shakes from a mortar hit, too close, then the radio crackles.
“Northwest perimeter- NOW!”
I jump up, and that is the wrong move. My ankle screams in pain, but I don’t have time to dwell on it as I grab my gear and hobble to the northwest perimeter.