Chapter 35 Cameron
CAMERON
Thomas drags a cumbersome hand over his jaw and stares at his reflection for a few moments in his hand mirror.
I wonder what he sees. Do all my squad mates see themselves as the monsters we’ve become? Following orders like savage, mindless beasts?
In my heart, I know I can’t even entertain the order Nolan has given me. Execute my own squad? Emery? There’s no reality in which I would do that. My hands clench furiously at my sides.
Being a sergeant could never be that important to me. It may have been my main objective once, but life has a way of showing you what really matters, doesn’t it?
I let my gaze warm on Emery’s hand, resting on my thigh.
Nothing could shake my will on this. My eyes drift closed with the decision.
I’d choose her over the world if I had to.
The plane rattles as we enter the higher elevation and pass through thick clouds. Gage has his headphones on and is hyping himself up to get his adrenaline going.
I made sure that Wraith and Damian understood their part in protecting our comrades if we can. We need to execute this perfectly, although Gage’s and Thomas’s trackers are still going to be a pain in the ass. We need to have the covers placed on them as soon as we start our counterplan.
None of us will be dying today, I repeat in my head as I look at all of them. Even Lieutenant Erik if I can convince him. Otherwise…
My fists close over my lap and I shake the thoughts from my head. I don’t know if I could bring myself to kill him.
We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
Emery’s leg bounces beside me. I know she’s anxious. Hell, I’m anxious.
I set my hand on her thigh and give her a little reassuring squeeze. She takes a deep breath and threads her arm through mine.
The small comforting motions make all the difference.
“Mori, as in to conquer,” she murmurs in my ear as she runs her hand through my messy, wind-blown hair.
I grin and let my head fall against hers.
I almost miss her taunting me with “Mori, as in to die,” but I find this much more endearing that she’s relented to what Mori means to me. My chest warms.
“Morphine, as in a goddess of dreams,” I shoot back.
She giggles and I wish I could hear it on repeat for the rest of my life. It’s the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.
“Is that really what it means?” Her brow lifts skeptically.
“In Latinized Greek it does. Came across it in one of my books recently.” I wink at her. She shakes her head, but the smile stays on her lips.
Erik move to stand in the center of the aircraft cabin as one of the pilots unlocks the exit door and slides it open.
“Twenty thousand feet. Prepare to drop, Fury Squad. Keep tight and remember your mission is to terminate Greg Mavestelli. Not bring him in alive.” The lieutenant walks by each of us with a picture of Emery’s father to remind everyone of his face.
Emery’s muscles stiffen as Erik passes, and her eyes drop to her knees.
“I was going to save this for after the mission, but soldiers, if you complete the mission today successfully, Fury Squad will be the first team to earn their cards out of the Dark Forces.” Erik walks back the direction he came in slow, steady strides.
Thomas and Gage light up. Hope radiates in their eyes, and it makes my stomach twist that they believe him so readily.
We line up and prepare to drop. I pull my oxygen mask on and secure the goggles around my eyes. Not one piece of skin is visible on any of us. Our uniforms are matte black and have zero glare ratings, which will make it near impossible to see us in the dark even with a flashlight.
Em tightens her forearm braces and locks her rifle around her chest. I sure as shit hope it doesn’t come down to a gunfight before we land, but at least we’ll be ready if we do. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume they’ll have manned roofs, and we’re prepared for it.
I flex my hands, readying to enter frigid weather and having to be at peak awareness. Emery downed her pills before we boarded, and I took a few extra just in case shit really hits the fan.
The air lashes viciously at us as we step closer to the exit door. Emery’s voice comes in through my headset. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t, Mori.” Her tone is light and humorous as she recites Dominic’s words from the Under Trials. I smother a laugh.
“Right back at you, Morphine,” I reply, noting the way she shifts on her feet and looks over her shoulder at me.
I wish I could see her soft eyes flashing me whatever emotion she’s feeling from behind her oxygen mask and gear, but I settle for her tipping my chin up and shooting me a handgun before turning back forward.
Here we go.
I take a few quick breaths to get my blood flowing to my head.
Erik lifts his hand into the air, and every millisecond turns endless in this moment, the silence in the headset violent, the single breath I take invigorating.
His voice is sharp like a bullet through my ears.
“Kill Greg Mavestelli, Fury Squad! Drop, drop, drop!” he shouts over the mic, and the line charges straight out into the dark.
Twenty thousand feet above the ground. In the middle of nowhere.
In a place where time stands still to the blood that will be shed tonight.
Emery doesn’t hesitate as she dives out.
I follow her, the visual much like what I would imagine leaping into hell would feel like.
The drop line clips behind me, releasing me from the plane.
Then, we’re swallowed up into nothing. The sky greedily consumes us as we free fall into gusts of howling wind.
My heart thunders through my ears. I can feel the craze starting up in my veins.
Adrenaline moves through my body and electrifies my limbs.
Stay focused. I grind my teeth and stare at Emery as her dark form falls gracefully like a downed dove.
Her hands are extended out to her sides, touching the condensation trapped within the clouds.
As much as I love watching her be a fucking badass, there’s an ache in my heart for a warmer, kinder life. One that I dread will evade us until the end of time, but I’ll do everything in my power to make sure it happens for at least a little while.
I swear it.
Thomas moves into formation, the others following perfectly. Practicing relentlessly over the past few weeks has made us pretty fucking impressive. The only one struggling is, of course, Damian. He can’t quite get into the right position no matter how hard he tries.
“Red Turtle, straighten up!” Thomas yells through the mic, and I have to stifle a laugh. “Forty-two hundred feet. Spread out, be mindful of the buildings and remember your objectives.”
We all tilt in the directions we were trained into and spread out enough to safely deploy. I really hope Erik had the right specs on the building heights because we’re dancing with the devil right now.
“Twenty-one hundred feet. Deploy, I’ll see you assholes down there!” Thomas sounds more like himself now that we’re getting back into the groove of things.
“Fuck yeah!” Gage roars as he pulls his rip cord.
The rush of entering a battlefield this way is absolutely exhilarating, and I have to clench my jaw to keep the endorphins from jittering my entire skull.
The rest of us pull our cords and then there’s dead silence as we listen for any movement or sirens below.
The fact that tonight of all nights had to have thick, low cloud cover is going to bite us in the ass.
Night vision and infrared goggles are useless against the atmospheric elements like clouds.
“Brace for landing, we could—” Thomas’s voice cuts out as he slams into the roof of a tall building. Blood rushes to my ears as I watch his body roll a few times on the surface.
“Power!” Gage cries. Fuck, that didn’t look good.
“Shit!” I curse and bend my knees in preparation. I know I should be focusing on what’s beneath me, but my eyes shift to Emery instinctively. She’s still in formation and staring at the ground, waiting for anything. Good girl. I take a relieved breath.
Wraith moves just in time to evade a tree. Damian lands on a lower roof.
Sweat beads down my temples. At least there’s no sounds from guards or alarms, maybe the cloud cover isn’t so bad.
The old cobblestone road finally comes into view. I don’t see any guards in the vicinity. A small mercy, I note as I land on both feet and quickly unlatch the parachute pack. I unsheathe my combat knife and quickly move toward Emery.
She lands with no trouble and slips out of her backpack with ease. Her voice comes in clearly to my helmet and I rejoice at her sweet tone. “We landed a few buildings off target.”
I peruse the area swiftly, the clouds have turned into a heavy fog down here, and the night vision has become essentially useless so I lift my goggles. “Let’s move quickly back to our target location. I don’t like how quiet it is out here.”
Em nods and unsheathes her KA-BAR as well, moving forward in a ready-to-kill stance.
It is such a contrast to see her fight like this compared to what I saw in the trials.
Of course, she was out of her element in the forest and with a hundred other cadets.
Here though, she’s the hunter in the world she’s always known.
The way her body moves fluidly over the uneven stones, uses the buildings as cover, sweeps the area, and then moves in a matter of moments is impressive.
She honestly makes me look clunky as shit. I’m more of the run-straight-in-and-start-killing kind of a guy.
I flinch and turn my head to the right as I hear Wraith’s machine gun blowing through a stone wall and probably guards somewhere in the mix.
“There goes our cover,” I growl and jerk my head at Emery to up our pace.
“Get down!” Em shouts and my legs instantly give, sending me to my knees. I roll to the side, perching myself up on one leg and lifting my rifle in the next breath.
The whistle of her knife flying through the air ends with a hardy thunk and then is followed by the collapse of a body.
She runs over and ruthlessly tears her knife from the guard’s face. Blood spurts, but she doesn’t waste one second. She just wipes the blood on her vest and brushes past me, tapping my shoulder and silently telling me to get the fuck up.
It’d be easier to move if watching her kill didn’t give me a fucking rager. I groan and palm my dick to settle down.
I trail after her and keep my rifle trained everywhere my head turns.
Bullets start lighting up the sky, aimed at the tallest building, as I’m guessing Thomas has been spotted. At least that means he’s okay. I keep my head down and press forward.
“Taking heavy fire on the rooftops, movement spotted in the target building, and the one directly adjacent to it. Target is suspected to be in one of them possibly—” Thomas gets cut off as more gunfire roars.
A beat passes without any more correspondence.
“Volt, are you and Red Turtle inbound to the target?” I say in a low, empty tone as I pull the trigger and put two bullets into a guard’s chest before laying one right between his eyes.
Gage cuts in, completely out of breath. It sounds like he’s running. “Red Turtle didn’t land with me, but we are on track to reconvene at the target building.”
More heavy fire from the machine gun and Wraith’s voice booms over the headsets. “Breached the wall! Mowing down guards, but I need Mori and Morphine to hurry the fuck up!” He’s barely audible with the roar of the bullets exiting his weapon. He’s going to need to reload soon.
Emery sighs before replying, “On our way, asshole.” She takes a hard left and we’re met with four armed men. They must’ve heard us coming because they immediately start firing at us.
My shoulder jerks back with impact, but I take a deep breath and shoot straight. The first guard drops when I blow out his knee, and the second tries to hold down his blood-spraying neck.
The euphoric high pulses through my entire body and a manic laugh rolls from my lips.
Emery throws her first knife into one guard’s thigh, and when the other tries to flee she shoves her knife up his ass.
I burst into laughter. “No fucking way you just did that!”
She does a little victory dance as she pulls out her pistol and blows the thigh dude’s brains out. “I couldn’t just leave you with the story. You have to see it, watch.”
I watch tentatively as the guard tries to pull the knife from his ass. Laughter escapes my lips as I viciously stab the heart of one of the guards I downed.
“I fucking love you,” I say as I rise to my feet and meet her. God I wish I could kiss her right now, but I bonk my helmet to hers and she giggles before pulling the knife out of the poor guy’s ass, and we both slash his throat from either side, effectively decapitating him in one fell swoop.
My heart pounds ridiculously fast as blood trickles around us like rain.
“Love you too, psycho.” She hits me with the butt of her knife, and I watch as she takes the lead once more. I love this crazy, wild side of her. First with the pink smoke in the first mission and now her dark humor? She’ll be the end of me.
Wraith is just one more block over and is already on his knees, a guard behind him with a knife to his throat.
The man shouts, “Drop your weapons or I’ll—”
I lift my rifle and put a bullet into his wide ass mouth before he can finish that sentence. He flops backward and Wraith just starts cackling. He’s completely covered in blood and dust so he looks insane.
“I fucking told him to just kill me because you’d do that.” He picks up his machine gun once more and nods to the interior of a large building. “Let’s fucking go!”
Emery high-fives him as she slips by, and I nudge him encouragingly with my elbow.
Holy shit, I’ve never felt more alive.