Chapter Twenty Three
Dax
The desert is a liar.
It looks flat, dead, endless—but every shadow hides teeth, and every corner is a place to bleed.
My vest clings like a second skin, sweat stinging down my spine, my rifle digging into my shoulder so hard it feels like bone. The convoy hums low, engines vibrating through the floor, but no one talks. Not this far out. Not after Mason.
The silence rides heavy, broken only by the static hiss in my headset and the occasional clink of gear shifting against gear. I can smell diesel. Burnt sand. The sour tang of my own sweat.
“Eyes up,” Reese mutters over comms. His voice is low, clipped. He’s two seats down, face shadowed by the brim of his helmet. “Too quiet.”
Too quiet.
Always too quiet before it happens.
I adjust my grip on the rifle, fingers flexing, the trigger an itch in my palm. My gaze skates the horizon—mud-brick walls, blown-out windows, the skeleton of a minaret leaning like it’s tired of standing.
A kid runs across a rooftop, bare feet slapping dust, something clutched in his hand. I track him, muscles coiled—But he vanishes. Like smoke.
My stomach knots.
“Kingston?” Mason’s voice should be here. But it’s not. He’s still chained to a machine, and all I’ve got is the echo of his laugh in my head, the memory of him shoving a protein bar in my hand and saying, Eat, asshole, before you keel over.
Now it’s just me. And the waiting. Always the fucking waiting.
The truck jolts over a rut. My head slams against the wall, rattling teeth, but I keep my rifle raised, muzzle kissing the slit in the armour, eyes searching the ruins outside.Sweat drips into my eyes. Stings. Blurs.
Every brick looks like it’s breathing. Every shadow looks armed. The guy next to me crosses himself. Fast. Quiet. Like he doesn’t want us to see.
“Five out,” Leo calls from the lead. His voice is a rasp over comms. “Stay sharp.”
Five minutes.
Could be the last five minutes of any of us.
The heat presses in, thick, suffocating. My tongue feels like leather. My heartbeat matches the engine. My lungs squeeze like they know something I don’t.
I catch my reflection in the cracked glass—hollow eyes, jaw tight, bloodshot. The face of a man who doesn’t sleep, doesn’t pray, doesn’t fucking want to live unless she’s there.
Cassandra.
My Butterfly.
And fuck me, she’s here. Somewhere in this desert. Maybe patching up some kid’s leg. Maybe writing my name on a chart she’ll burn later. Maybe bleeding.
The thought is a bullet to the brain.
I swallow hard, adjust the rifle again. My finger taps the trigger guard in rhythm.
One. Two. Three. Four.
A mantra.
A countdown.
A heartbeat away from the end.
The truck slows. The air changes and my gut knows. Something’s about to break.
The convoy crawls, engines down to a hum, every gear shift sounding too loud, like a fucking announcement: here we are, come kill us.
The road is nothing but dust and broken stone. Villagers used to line this strip, selling fruit, bootleg cigarettes, anything to keep breathing. Now it’s empty. Doors shut. Curtains drawn. Windows hollowed.
That’s the worst sign of all because out here, quiet means somebody already knows what’s coming.
“Nothing on the north ridge,” Leo says, voice tight over comms. “But I don’t like it.”
No one likes it.
Reese spits into a bottle at his feet, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His knee bounces, metal tapping. Mason used to smack his helmet when he did that. You’re giving me a fucking seizure, calm down.
No Mason now. Just the sound.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
My teeth grind.
Sweat trickles down my temple, stinging the cut I got two nights ago. I ignore it. Eyes locked forward, scanning rooftops, alleys, the shimmer of heat on the horizon.
We pass a burned-out car, its frame twisted like a carcass. The stench of old oil and something worse hits my throat. I swallow bile, force myself not to look at the scorch marks on the ground. Not to think about how many kids have been blown open right there.
“Kingston.” Reese’s voice cracks through my headset, sharp. “You with us?”
I nod, jaw tight. “Yeah.”
“You don’t sound like yeah.”
I don’t answer. Because what the fuck am I supposed to say? That my chest’s been a coffin since the day I left her? That I hear her voice louder than the comms, whispering my name like it’s the only thing keeping me standing?
I flex my fingers against the rifle, forcing the thoughts down. Bury them.
Not now.
The sun shifts, bleeding down the walls of the street in long shadows. Every corner looks like it’s holding its breath.
“Two out,” Leo mutters.
Two minutes.
The air feels heavier. Denser. Like the sky’s leaning closer, waiting. My heartbeat hammers in my ears. Not fear. Not yet. Just readiness. That edge you live on out here, the one where every blink might be your last.
The kid on the rooftop flashes back in my mind. His bare feet. His phone. The way he disappeared like smoke.
I can’t shake it.
Something’s wrong.
I glance at Reese. He’s chewing gum too fast, his jaw snapping. Leo’s shoulders are stiff in the lead. The rookie in the back—Keller—has his mouth half open like he’s praying, even though he swore he doesn’t believe in God.
Everyone feels it.
The hum of the engines.
The hiss of radios.
The silence pressing from every window, every shuttered door.
My grip tightens on the rifle until my knuckles ache and all I can think—All I can hear, louder than the convoy, louder than the silence—“Don’t you fucking leave me again.”
Her voice in my head.
Her hands on my chest.
Her eyes when I kissed her like I was trying to crawl inside her and never come out.
I drag a breath in, dust burning my lungs.
Exhale slow.
Focus.
The convoy rounds a bend.
The air holds.
Waiting and my gut twists because I know—we’re seconds away from the snap.
The engines cough over the dirt, too loud, too steady. Every sound feels wrong. Like we’re on rails leading straight into hell.
The horizon won’t sit still. Heat mirages twist the road, blur the distance, turn rubble into silhouettes that vanish when you blink.
I blink too slow and when I open my eyes, nothing’s changed. Still quiet. Still waiting.
Leo’s hand goes up from the turret. Flat palm. Stop.
The convoy grinds to a halt.
Boots scrape inside the MRAP, rifles cock, straps pulled tight. Nobody speaks. Not even Reese.
It’s the kind of silence that tastes metallic. Like blood before it spills.
I scan left. A school—what’s left of it. Roof half caved, chalkboards visible through the holes like ghosts of lessons nobody remembers. Right side, a wall of stone and cloth, patched together by hands too small for the bricks. Nothing moves.
And that’s the problem.
Too still.
Too staged.
The rookie—Keller—murmurs something, too quiet to catch. A prayer, maybe. He looks green, but his rifle’s tight against his chest like he’s welded to it.
“Clear?” Leo’s voice cracks through comms.
Static.
“Repeat—are we clear?”
No answer.
My grip clenches on the rifle until the tendons in my hand burn.
I scan the rooftops again.
Shadows.
Antennas.
A flutter of cloth in the heat—just laundry, or maybe not.
Reese taps his thigh twice.
Tension.
Confirmed.
The convoy doesn’t move.
Nobody breathes too loud.
It’s like standing at the edge of a minefield, knowing the next step isn’t yours to control and in my head—her again.
Always her.
“You’ll leave again.”
“You’ll break me all over again.”
Her voice slices through the static, through the sweat, through the desert pressing against my ribs.
My lips part, but nothing comes out. Just dust. Just silence. I force myself to scan again. To catalog every angle. Every corner. Every breath of heat coming off the stones.
This is the part that kills you.
Not the bullet. Not the blast.
The wait because the wait feels endless—and I know it won’t be.
The world holds its breath.
Engines off. Radios low. Boots braced against the floor.
The dust hangs in the air like it knows what’s coming. Like it’s waiting to be painted red.
I watch the rooftops until my eyes blur, until shadows start to crawl in patterns they shouldn’t. A wire? A barrel? A kid? My brain scrambles to make sense of shapes that refuse to be innocent.
“Anything?” Reese whispers.
I shake my head. My throat’s too dry to answer.
Leo clicks the safety on the fifty. That sound is louder than a gunshot.
Torres mutters something beside me—one of his bullshit jokes he throws out when fear starts gnawing too loud. But even he doesn’t laugh this time. His hand flexes on the grip of his rifle, veins jumping in his knuckles.
I shift my weight, slow, deliberate, scanning the road in front of us. Gravel. Tire tracks. Nothing.
And then I see it.
Barely a shimmer.
Just under the sand.
The outline of something too perfect. Too neat.
IED.
“Front. Left. Ten meters,” I rasp.
The convoy stills harder. Even the dust seems to freeze.
Every man knows what that means.
We’re in the kill box now.
Reese’s hand hovers over the comms, waiting for Leo’s call.
Leo doesn’t make it.
His jaw’s tight, his eyes scanning too fast, and I know—we all know—there’s no clean way out of this.
The air changes.That subtle shift you only learn by living it too many times. Like the desert itself just whispered: run.
My pulse slams against my throat.
I grip my rifle tighter and in the middle of it—her face again.
Cassandra.
My butterfly.
Her hands pressed to my chest, her voice breaking: “You’ll never catch me, Dax. You never fucking do.”
God, maybe she’s right.
Maybe I won’t catch her.
Maybe I won’t even catch myself this time.
The silence builds until it’s a scream.
One more second.
One more breath.
One more heartbeat—My lungs lock.
The whole world tilts on that shimmer under the sand. The line. The trap. I keep my hand up—fist clenched—telling the others don’t move, don’t even breathe, but my own breath is shaking out in broken pieces.
Reese’s eyes flick to mine. Wide. Too wide. He knows.