Chapter 20 #2
The knife hung between them, silver catching the light, while the desert wind sang its endless, abrasive song.
Krait held it by the blade, the edge kissing her palm, and watched the SEALs exchange glances, impressive microscopic negotiations of loyalty and mission that she tracked without seeming to.
The silence stretched, taut as a tripwire.
She didn’t want to take on this dangerous, tactical threat.
Then Komodo moved closer, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her. The proximity was deliberate. They'd hunted together long enough that she read the tension in his frame, the way his nostrils flared slightly, scenting something beyond the physical.
"I have a bead on her," Komodo said, his voice low and precise. "The energy surge...it opened something. I can track her signature now, across thresholds. She’s in the wilds of Peru."
Tex's jaw tightened. The flint in his eyes softened to resignation. The gig was up, and they all knew it.
"She has proof," Tex said, gesturing toward the server bank against the far wall. "She gave me the codes to her systems. You might want to take a look.”
Krait's grip on the blade shifted. She'd been skeptical from the start.
The profile didn't align. Lechuza had been a ghost, precise, controlled, never sloppy enough to leave the evidence trail that had led to her sanction.
It had crossed her mind that someone had wanted her hunted, and someone had manufactured the proof.
Anger surged that a woman she loved like a sister had been cut from their protection, forced into fugitive status, and hunted by her own.
"Show me," she said.
Tex moved to the terminal, fingers flying across the interface.
Screens lit up with a stream of data from a dedicated woman who'd been running down her own doppelg?nger while the world accused her of murder.
The pattern assembled itself in Krait's mind.
Lechuza hadn't gone rogue. She'd been chasing the hand that was wearing her face.
“Date stamps, geolocation data, travel logs. She was here, in Arizona, during three of the supposed assassination hits. Lisbon, Istanbul, and Sana’a, all while she was tracking leads on her framer in this facility."
"She was hunting the impersonator," Krait said. Then her breath got trapped. She couldn’t believe her eyes. “Komodo…”
He moved closer. "Eva?" His mouth thinned. “That’s impossible.”
“Why?” Tex asked.
“She’s dead…I killed her myself. She gave me no choice.” Krait looked at Komodo. The Shadowguard secrets were theirs to keep. But she couldn’t shake the thought that these SEALs and her order were now connected by some cosmic force, one and the same.
The words hit like stones. Krait's eyes found Tex's shoulder, where the ethereal mantle of what could only be this strange Veil-sight showed the ghost of a stallion, mane tossing, hooves striking sparks against air that shouldn't hold weight.
She was getting used to it. Her acceptance made it fade somewhat.
"That diaphanous horse," she said, her voice dry. "It has nothing to do with you being a cowboy, does it?"
Tex's mouth quirked, almost a smile. "Stallion. Apparently my Veil form. Shadowguard manifestation. The whole team's...changed."
Krait turned. Her gaze swept the hangar, seeing them now with Veil-sight fully engaged.
Brawler stood massive with Beast beside him, alert, and the thread of gold between man and dog wasn't affection but something deeper, a bond that transcended species. She couldn’t unsee the formless, massive white wolf coiled around their legs, invisible to mundane eyes.
"What's happening with you and your dog?" she said. "I don't think I want to know."
She moved to Shark, where the air itself seemed to shimmer with pressure, the otherworldly suggestion of something massive and finned cutting through atmosphere like water. "Jaws," she deadpanned.
Then Dagger, radiating heat she could feel from three meters away, the phoenix coiled in his chest like a second heartbeat.
Bondo, armored and immovable, the rhino's horn ghosting from his forehead. The Veil forms hummed through the hangar like a power grid coming online. Komodo’s lizard ghost and her snake manifestation told her this went beyond anything that would make sense.
"It explains a lot," she murmured. Then it hit her.
A call. A vibration in the bones that had nothing to do with sound, resonating through the gold thread that she was now understanding, connected all Shadowguard, the living and the dead, carrying to them in a voice she recognized she’d known her whole life. We’re all connected. Join us. Fight.
She'd never been called before. The Shadowguard weren’t just a CIA Division.
She longed to speak with their direction, Silas Creed.
Had he felt everything that had happened, and was it driving him mad?
Were they part of a legacy that walked between worlds?
But the wave of energy, Flash and Lechuza, the font responding to their union, had opened something in her, too.
She was Shadowguard now, whether she'd chosen it or not. They all were.
"The framer," she said, her voice steadier than her hands. "Eva. She’s not natural."
"No, she’s not.” Komodo looked at Tex. “How is Lechuza important to this fight?"
“End-of-the-world important,” Tex confirmed. "Without her, Chaos wins, and we all lose…everything."
“Explain,” Komodo said.
* * *
The bond hummed to life in Fly's chest, a vibration that was intention, Tex's voice carrying across the golden thread like a plucked wire.
Reavers know. Working on containment.
Fly leaned against the moss-slick boulder, the Peruvian cloud forest breathing around him in shades of green and shadow.
Twister sat on the ground nearby, his back against a fallen log, head in his hands.
Easy paced a three-step track in the leaf litter, his jaw working.
In Flash’s haste to get to Lechuza, he’d stranded them here, but he was sure they’d be back.
Acknowledged, Fly sent back, the words forming as golden light behind his eyes. We're working a problem here. Stand by.
He pushed off the boulder. His boots sank into humus that squelched, releasing the smell of rot and renewal.
Twister's head came up, eyes clearing. “Tex will handle it."
"I have no doubt." Fly pulled his canteen, drank, the water metallic and warm. "We focus on our piece."
The air tore open ten meters downslope, a golden seam widening into a corridor that folded light and ozone.
Flash stumbled through first, hauling Lechuza by the hand.
They were wrecked, leaves in their hair, mud smeared across their skin, her shirt torn at the shoulder.
They looked like they'd crawled through war. Through time.
Fly capped his canteen. "What happened?"
Lechuza found a sapling to lean on, her knuckles white against the bark.
"We were so close." Her voice was stripped bare.
"The font almost opened. We could see the Veil, the threshold, everything.
And then..." She looked at Flash, her throat working.
"His scar started bleeding, but it wasn’t real. Everything shut down."
Fly's eyes tracked to Flash's side, the same wound that had killed Cisco five centuries ago. The Veil was trying to tell them something.
"We keep at it," Fly said. "We find another angle, another—"
"There's more." Lechuza's face contorted, tears gathering and spilling without her permission.
She looked at Flash, her mouth opening, closing, the words fighting her.
"These aren't echoes. These are memories.
" Her hand found Flash's, their fingers interlacing with a desperation that transcended the present moment.
"Our memories. We are Quri and Cisco. We are them now, not descendants. "
The silence that followed had weight, texture, the density of history settling into the cloud forest like mist.
Fly absorbed the way they stood together. “That explains that paradox.” The data aligned, and that was hope.
“I don’t think anything going forward is ever going to surprise me again,” Easy growled.
"Okay," Fly said. The word was small, inadequate, but it was a foothold. "At least that's more information than we had before. Let me work the scar. But it will have to wait.”
He looked upslope toward the sanctuary, then down toward where the forest dissolved into cloud. “Why? Do we have another pressing problem?” Lechuza said.
"Yeah," he said, "we need to corridor to the Eyrie. The Reavers know we've been protecting you."
Lechuza stiffened, her spine straightening, the warrior reassembling herself from the wreckage. "And?"
Fly met her eyes and let a smile touch his mouth, his strategist's grin, the Visionary's certainty that there was always a move.
"Tex is explaining. We've got to nix this or get them on our side.
End of the world takes priority over jurisdiction.
" He gestured at the tear in reality, still shimmering gold behind them.
"We leave now." Lechuza's breath released, Flash's arm settled protectively around her shoulders, and Twister and Easy rose from their positions to assemble.
* * *