Chapter 6 Asher
Chapter Six: Asher
The gunfire leads me east.
Past the manicured hedges and decorative fountains, past the parking lot full of vehicles that will never take us anywhere, toward the perimeter fence where Dom's last transmission cut out.
My boots pound against pavement, then grass, then gravel.
My rifle is up, my eyes scanning, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Dom is out there. Dom, who taught me how to survive my first year in the pits. Dom, who held my head in his lap when I was seventeen and crying blood and convinced I was going to die. Dom, who followed me out of hell and into whatever this is, this half-life of violence and purpose.
Dom is dying, and I left Jinx bleeding in a shed to save him.
The math doesn't work. The math has never worked. You can't save everyone. The pits taught me that before I was old enough to shave. Triage is a fancy word for choosing who dies, and I've been making those choices since I was fifteen years old.
But I've never had to choose between two people I love.
Love. The word snags in my brain, catches on all the sharp edges. Is that what this is? With Jinx? With Dom?
Different kinds of love. Different weights. But love all the same.
The fence looms ahead, chain-link topped with razor wire. A section has been cut, peeled back, creating an opening just large enough for a body to slip through. Blood smears the metal where someone crawled past. Too much blood.
"Dom!" My voice cuts through the night. "Dom, respond!"
Silence. The kind of silence that settles into your bones and tells you what you already know.
Then, faint, "Here."
Twenty meters to my left. A drainage ditch, concrete walls sloping down into darkness. Dom is at the bottom, propped against the far wall, one hand pressed to his stomach. Even from here, even in the dark, the shine of wet is unmistakable.
Gut shot. The worst kind.
Slow. Painful. Invariably fatal without immediate surgery.
Kira is beside him, small hands trying to staunch the bleeding, her face white with fear. She looks up when she hears me approach, and the relief in her eyes is terrible. Like she thought I would have the answers. Like she thought I could fix this.
"He won't let me carry him," she says. "He keeps saying to leave him. He took off his vest to move faster and they… they got him."
"He's an idiot." I slide down the concrete slope, landing in ankle-deep water that stinks of sewage and rust. The cold hits my legs, seeping through my boots, but I barely notice.
All I can see is Dom. Dom, who looked out for me when I was a scared kid thrown into the pits.
Dom, who taught me how to read opponents, how to pace myself, how to survive when everything in me wanted to give up.
Dom, who is dying in a drainage ditch with his guts spilling through his fingers.
"Dom. Hey. Look at me."
His eyes find mine. Dark and glassy, already going distant. The hand against his stomach is slick with blood, and when he shifts, more wells up between his fingers. The smell of it fills the ditch. Copper and meat. The smell of endings.
"Told her to go." His voice is a rasp, the throat damage making it harder to understand. "Told you both. Leave me."
"Not happening."
"Asher." He coughs, and red flecks his lips. "It doesn't work. You know it doesn't work."
"Fuck that. We’re getting you out."
"The Harrison kid. Jinx." Another cough, wetter this time. Pink foam at the corners of his mouth. Punctured lung. The clock is ticking faster than I thought. "He's hit bad. Marlee told me. You should be with him."
"I'm with you."
"Don't be stupid." His hand reaches up, grabs my vest, pulls me closer.
His grip is weak, nothing like the strength that used to haul me off opponents in the pit, that carried me to safety more times than I can count.
"You love him. Don't pretend you don't. I've seen how you look at him.
The way you talked about him, all those years. The one who got away, you called him."
"Dom—"
"I'm done, Asher. We both know it. Gut wound, no medevac, middle of enemy territory." He tries to smile, but it comes out as a grimace. Blood stains his teeth. "This is how it ends for people like us. You know that. We always knew."
The words twist and turn, making me want to vomit.
Because he's right. The math doesn't lie.
Dom has maybe twenty minutes left, and those twenty minutes will be agony, bleeding out in a drainage ditch while his body slowly shuts down.
There's nothing I can do to change that.
No surgery, no miracle, no last-second save.
But Jinx. Jinx has an hour. Maybe more, if Marlee keeps pressure on the wound, if his body holds out, if he's too stubborn to die. And I'm here, in a ditch, with a man I can't save, while the man I might love bleeds out in a maintenance shed.
"Go." Dom's voice breaks. "Please, Asher. Go to him. Don't let me be the reason you lose him."
"I can't leave you."
"You can. You have to." His hand tightens on my vest, then releases. Falls to his side. "I'm giving you permission. I'm telling you to go. Don't make me die knowing I took you down with me."
My eyes burn. My throat closes. Fifteen years I've known this man. Fifteen years of shared pain and hard-won trust and the kind of bond that only forms when you've watched each other bleed.
And now I have to walk away.
"I'm sorry." The words come out broken. "Dom, I'm so fucking sorry."
"Don't be." His eyes are closing, his breathing going shallow. "You gave me six good years after the pits. Six years of freedom. That's more than most of us get."
"It's not enough."
"It's gonna have to do." His hand finds mine, squeezes once. Weak but warm. "Go. Save your boy. Live the life I never got to have."
I lean down and press my forehead to his. Feel the clammy sweat on his skin, the fading heat of his body. Breathe in the smell of blood and sewer water and the particular scent that's just Dom, gun oil and cheap soap and stubborn survival.
"I'll remember you," I whisper. "Every day. I'll remember."
"Better not." The ghost of a smile crosses his face. "I was ugly as sin."
A laugh tears out of me, raw and wet. "You were beautiful."
"As beautiful as a wart on a camel’s asshole."
"Yeah. But I love you anyway."
"Same, brother." His eyes flutter closed. "Now go. Before I change my mind and make you stay."
I press a kiss to his forehead. Taste salt and copper. Rise on legs that don't want to work.
Kira is watching, tears streaming down her face. She's so young. Twenty-two, barely old enough to have survived what she's survived. And now she's watching a man die, a man who was supposed to leave with us. The father-figure we never had.
"Stay with him," I tell her. "Until..."
"I know." Her voice cracks. "I'll stay."
I climb out of the ditch. One foot, then the other. Each step feels like dragging through concrete, like pulling myself away from a piece of my own body. Behind me, Dom's breathing rattles. Slows.
I don't look back.
I can't.
The shed is fifty meters ahead.
My legs burn. My lungs burn. Everything burns, and underneath the physical pain is a deeper agony, the knowledge of what I just did, what I just left behind.
Dom is dead by now. Or dying. Kira holding his hand in a drainage ditch while his blood mixes with sewage water and his last breaths fog in the cold air.
I chose Jinx over him.
I don't know if I'll ever forgive myself.
The shed door is open. Marlee is in the doorway, rifle raised, and she nearly shoots me before recognition kicks in.
"Jesus Christ." She lowers the weapon. "Where's Dom?"
"Gone."
The word hangs between us. Gone. Such a small word for such a massive loss. Marlee's face goes through a series of expressions, grief and fury and understanding, before settling into the blank mask of a soldier who's lost too many friends to let herself feel it.
"Kira?"
"Staying with him. Until."
She nods. Doesn't ask for details. Doesn't need to.
Inside the shed, Thiago is unconscious against the wall, his breathing shallow but steady. And Jinx—
Jinx is gray.
His skin has gone the color of old paper, sweat beading on his forehead, his hand still pressed to his side even though blood has soaked through the bandages Marlee applied.
His eyes are closed, and for one terrible moment I think I'm too late, that I left Dom to die for nothing, that I've lost them both.
Then his eyes open.
Dark. Unfocused. But alive.
"You came back." His voice is a thread.
"I told you I would." I drop to my knees beside him, hands going to his face, his neck, checking for pulse, for warmth, for any sign that he's not about to slip away. "I told you I'd come back."
"Dom?"
I want to lie. Want to tell him everything's fine, that Dom's right behind me, that we all made it out alive.
But I don't lie. Not to him. Not anymore.
"He didn't make it."
Jinx's eyes close. A muscle jumps in his jaw. "Asher..."
"He told me to go. Told me to save you." My voice breaks.
Shatters. All the control I've been holding onto crumbles, and suddenly I'm crying, ugly and raw, tears cutting tracks through the dirt and blood on my face.
"He told me to go and I went and now he's dead and I don't know if I made the right choice.
I don't know if I can live with this choice. "
"Hey." Jinx's hand finds my face. Cold fingers against my cheek, weak but present. "Hey. Look at me."
I look.
His eyes are steady despite the pain. Despite the blood loss. Despite everything. Dark and burning and so fucking alive that it makes my chest crack open.
"You made the right choice."
"You don't know that."
"I know you're here. I know I'm still breathing." His thumb wipes at the tears on my cheek, smearing blood and salt together. "That's not nothing, Asher."
"I left him to die."