3. Chapter 3 - Matt #4
Nobody inside the aircraft wasted movement or spoke unless necessary, and the atmosphere carried the same focused tension Matt remembered from military deployments.
His body slipped into old habits automatically before his mind fully caught up, narrowing his attention toward secured gear, exit routes, personnel placement, and potential threats throughout the cabin.
The only unusual complication was that several of those threats were fully capable of turning into animals.
Matt shifted the headset resting against one ear and glanced sideways toward Baptiste, who sat against the fuselage looking perfectly calm despite the turbulence violently shaking the aircraft. “You always this relaxed before missions?” he asked over the headset.
Baptiste looked up from cleaning one of his pistols with deeply unnecessary precision. “No.”
Matt waited.
“That was honesty,” Baptiste added after a moment.
“That somehow feels more alarming.”
“It should.”
Matt sighed and settled back against the seat harness while heavy storm clouds drifted past outside.
Hours still remained before they reached Romania, leaving him with entirely too much time alone with his own thoughts.
Unfortunately, those thoughts kept circling back to the same thing.
The thermal image buried in the mission file replayed in his mind again and again, the shape curled into itself beneath collapsed stone in a way that looked isolated rather than dangerous.
Every instinct Matt had should have treated the thing as a threat, but the hyena beneath his skin kept reacting with restless attention that felt uncomfortably close to concern.
He hated that reaction on principle. Concern became attachment, and attachment had a long history of getting soldiers killed.
Across the cabin, Keene watched him for several seconds too long and Matt noticed. “You’re doing the observation thing again.”
“You’re thinking loudly again.”
“That still isn’t a real sentence.”
Keene did not bother arguing, and Matt was beginning to learn that silence usually meant Keene thought he was right. It was an incredibly irritating personality trait.
A sudden burst of turbulence rocked the aircraft hard enough to rattle the cabin walls and draw several quiet curses from the rear compartment while the pilot’s voice crackled over the comm system a second later. “Crosswinds over the Atlantic. Strap in.”
Matt tightened the harness automatically.
Beside him, Baptiste finally holstered the pistol and leaned his head back against the cabin wall. “You’ve done overseas deployments before.”
It was not phrased as a question.
“Iraq twice.”
Baptiste nodded once like that explained more than Matt realized, which was becoming a recurring problem around Valker personnel. Maybe it did explain something. Nobody here seemed especially committed to sharing information directly.
“You can always tell,” Baptiste said after a moment.
Matt glanced sideways. “Tell what?”
“Who already knows what it feels like before entering dangerous places.”
Something about the way Baptiste said it settled uneasily in Matt’s chest. The problem was not judgment.
If anything, Baptiste sounded too experienced, like he recognized the feeling well enough to speak from memory instead of theory.
Matt looked at him more carefully beneath the dim red cabin lights. “How old are you exactly?”
Baptiste’s expression remained perfectly neutral. “Rude.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It was not intended to be.”
Matt snorted before looking back toward the storm clouds rolling past outside.
Silence gradually settled across the cabin again afterward, though that had never bothered him much inside military transports.
People usually talked before deployments when they were nervous.
Veterans tended to save their energy instead, along with whatever fear they were carrying.
The engines droned steadily beneath the storm while exhaustion finally began creeping over Matt in slow heavy waves.
He closed his eyes briefly, quickly regretted it, and saw stone corridors rise behind his eyelids almost at once.
Darkness followed. Breathing. Something waiting with enough patience to feel ancient.
Matt’s eyes snapped open as instinct abruptly overruled exhaustion.
Across the cabin, Keene noticed because apparently the man considered privacy a personal insult. Matt pointed toward him tiredly. “You are making friendship impossible.”
“I was not aware we were attempting friendship.”
“That is exactly what a deeply unfriendly person would say.”
Something faint shifted at the corner of Keene’s mouth for the first time since Matt had met him. It was not exactly a smile, but it was close enough to be deeply concerning. Matt stared at him across the cabin. “Jesus Christ. You do have facial muscles.”
Baptiste looked between them calmly. “This is the closest thing to social bonding I’ve seen from Keene in months.”
“That is the saddest sentence I’ve heard all week.” Matt sighed.
The turbulence gradually eased as the aircraft finally rose above the storm clouds into open morning sunlight.
Gold light poured across the cabin windows and briefly transformed the aircraft into something quieter and almost ordinary, catching against steel, weapons, and tired faces in ways that made the entire scene feel deceptively peaceful.
Then Matt remembered what was waiting beneath the monastery in Romania, and the illusion vanished almost instantly.