Chapter Twenty Three #3
Still flat on the ground.
Still waiting for the earth to bury me alive.
The world won’t settle. It lurches, tilts, crashes back. Like I’m still tumbling from the blast even though Torres has me shoved against a wall. My ears buzz like a hive. My teeth feel loose in my skull.
The wall at my back is warm. Too warm. I glance down—handprints of blood smeared across the stone. Mine.
Shrapnel’s still in me. I can feel it. A sharp burn low in my ribs, wet heat dripping under my vest. Every breath tastes like metal, like smoke swallowed down raw.
My fingers twitch at my side, searching for my rifle. I find it, but it feels wrong. Too heavy. Like it belongs to someone else.
Gunfire cracks, sharp and close. It punches the wall an inch from my head, spraying grit into my eyes. My lids slam shut. For a heartbeat, I’m back in the silence. Back in the waiting.
Back in that fucking chapel.
Her breath against mine.
Her voice breaking: You’ll leave me again.
My own lies snarled back: You should’ve stayed gone, Butterfly.
My stomach knots so hard I nearly vomit.
A hand smashes against my chest, jerking me forward. Torres’ mouth is moving, but it takes a second for the sound to punch through the fog.
“Stay with me!”
His knuckles dig into my vest like anchors. My head bobs, useless. My breath comes shallow, whistling through grit.
The ground trembles again. Another explosion, farther off this time. Not enough distance. Not safe.
Something hot streaks past my arm—a tracer, red and quick, burning a hole through the night. My brain stutters, tries to process incoming but it’s all static, all too slow.
Torres jerks his rifle up, firing into the smoke. The kick echoes through the stone, through my bones. Each shot a hammer driving me deeper into my body.
I want to help. Want to raise mine. Want to fight back but my hands won’t close. My vision won’t clear. My chest feels like it’s folding in.
I taste iron. Thick. Wet. My tongue feels heavy in my mouth. My knees buckle, sliding out from under me.
Torres snarls, catching me before I hit the ground. “Fuck no, Kingston! Not like this. Not here!”
He drags me tighter against the wall, shielding me with his body while bullets chip stone above us. His face is smeared, filthy, wild-eyed. But steady.
“Breathe!” he shouts, shaking me once, twice. “You hear me? Fucking breathe!”
I try. God, I try but the only breath I feel—is hers. Whispering against my ear in the dark. Soft. Sharp. Fragile. I want you to stop letting me fall alone.
Torres’ grip is iron, his hands under my arms, hauling me up like dead weight. My boots scrape uselessly against stone, knees buckling, chest seizing.
“On your fucking feet, Kingston!” His voice cuts through the ringing, jagged and furious. “You’re not bleeding out on my watch.”
The wall tears away from my spine and I’m dragged forward, half-stumbling, half-carried. Every step feels like fire lancing up my ribs. The air is thick, choking—smoke curling, grit burning my throat raw.
I want to tell him to leave me. That I’m slowing him down. That I’m already half-dead but my mouth won’t work. My teeth just chatter, jaw clenched against the pain.
The street is chaos—bodies darting, shadows breaking open with muzzle flashes. A Humvee groans somewhere ahead, tires shredded, flames licking the hood. Shouts rip through the night—orders, screams, someone crying for a corpsman that won’t come fast enough.
Torres forces me forward, shoulder under mine, his rifle swinging loose at his side. “C’mon, Doc. Don’t make me drag your ass.”
Doc.
The word stabs deeper than the shrapnel because I’m not a medic. Not the man who saves them. I’m the bastard who breaks minds. Who’s only ever good at pulling people apart, not keeping them whole.
I choke on a laugh, bitter and wet, but it comes out more like a cough. Blood spatters the dirt. Torres doesn’t slow. He jerks me harder against him, lips peeled back in a snarl. “Don’t you fucking quit. Not here. Not now.”
Another crack splits the air—close, too close. He shoves me down behind a low wall, pushing my rifle into my hands. My fingers barely curl around it, but I hold on.
“You cover left,” Torres barks, slamming his back to the wall beside me, rifle up. His voice drops low, steady, the same way I’ve heard him talk to the younger guys when they’re shaking. “Breathe, Kingston. Just fucking breathe. In through your nose. Out through your mouth. Like she told you.”
The words hit harder than the blast.
Like she told you.
My chest jerks. My throat burns. I can almost hear her—soft and sharp in the same breath. Breathe with me, Dax. Just breathe. I drag air in, ragged, broken. Blood trickles from my mouth. My ribs scream. But I breathe.
Torres glances at me once, quick, sharp, then back to the smoke and the shadows. “That’s it. That’s it, Doc. Stay with me. We’re not done yet.”
And for the first time since the blast, I believe him.
The rifle feels too heavy in my hands, but I curl my fingers around it anyway, bite down hard enough on the inside of my cheek to taste iron, and force my body upright against the wall.
Torres leans out first, muzzle spitting fire into the dark. His shout rips across the chaos. “Two left! MOVE!”
I drag myself to the edge, ribs screaming, vision tunnelling, but I aim. The scope shakes like my hands don’t remember how to be steady. I swallow the blood in my mouth, breathe like she told me—in through your nose, out through your mouth—and pull the trigger.
Crack.
One down.
The recoil jars my side so bad I see stars, but I don’t stop. Not now. Not with my brothers screaming around me. Not with Torres’ shoulder pressed to mine like he’s the only thing holding me to the earth.
I squeeze again.
Crack.
Another shadow drops.
The alley glows with muzzle flashes, the air thick with gunpowder and grit, the smell of burned flesh crawling up my throat.
Torres slams a fresh mag into his rifle, shouting over the chaos. “That’s it, Kingston! Keep fucking going!”
I do.
Every breath hurts. Every shot feels like it’ll tear me apart. But I keep firing. I keep moving. I keep killing—because if I don’t, I see her face instead of theirs. Her eyes. Her mouth. Her voice whispering goodbye, Butterfly.
And I’ll be damned if I let the next silence I hear be hers.
The world narrows—heat, smoke, the thud of boots, the sting of blood down my side—but my trigger finger doesn’t stop. Not until the alley goes quiet again. Not until all that’s left is the ringing in my ears and Torres’ hand slamming down hard on my shoulder.
“Still breathing?” he growls.
Barely. But I nod because even if my body breaks here, I’ll stay upright.
For her.
For Mason.
For the brothers who still have a pulse.
Even if it kills me.
The dust hasn’t even settled, but Torres is already yanking me forward, dragging me out of cover like we haven’t both just bled into the dirt.
“On your feet, Kingston!” he barks. “We clear the rest or we’re dead in ten.”
My lungs claw for air. My ribs feel like splintered glass. But my boots move anyway, crunching over rubble and casings. The weight of my rifle digs into my shoulder, the sling biting at skin rubbed raw.
We push deeper into the alley, shadows shifting at the edges of the light. The doors we pass are half-shut, half-broken. A child’s sandal lies abandoned in the dirt. A trail of blood smears toward a doorway where silence feels too heavy.
Torres signals with two fingers—clear it.
I nod once, throat dry, and press myself to the frame. My pulse slams in my ears. I kick the door open and swing my rifle up, ready.
The stench hits first—sweat, piss, rot. Then movement. Two men, startled, rifles half-raised. Too slow.
I fire.
One drops instantly, blood painting the wall.
Torres takes the other, his round exploding through the man’s chest with a wet crack.
The room goes still.
I lower my weapon, chest heaving, eyes scanning corners that don’t stop swimming. My side is on fire, wet warmth spreading fast under my vest, but I ignore it.
“Next,” I rasp.
Torres looks at me, eyes hard. “You’re leaking like a stuck pig.”
“I’ve bled worse.”
“Bullshit.”
I shoulder past him, stepping back into the corridor, rifle up, scanning the shadows that never stop shifting because this is the truth of it: if I stop moving, I’m dead. If I stop fighting, the silence wins and I can’t let it. I can’t let the last thing I hear be the sound of her voice in my head.
So I keep pushing.
Boots heavy.
Breath jagged.
Blood soaking every step and with every trigger pull, every door kicked, every body that falls, I tell myself the same fucking thing:
Stay alive, soldier. Just stay alive.
The compound isn’t big but war makes walls grow teeth.
Every hallway feels endless, every doorway another throat waiting to swallow you whole. My boots are slick now, the blood soaking through my fatigues, squelching with every step. My fingers twitch against the trigger, but I don’t ease off.
Not when I hear the scrape of metal up ahead. Not when the shadows keep shifting. Not when silence feels like a countdown.
“Two left,” Torres mutters behind me, his breath jagged. He’s limping, but he won’t admit it. None of us ever do.
I give a sharp nod, press my shoulder to the wall. My vision tunnels, edges swimming, but I lift the rifle anyway. Up. Ready. Don’t hesitate.
We breach.
The first man barely lifts his weapon before I drop him. The second is faster. His shot cracks the air, heat slicing past my cheek, close enough I smell the powder. My ears ring, my skull buzzes.
Torres shoves forward, screaming, empties half a mag into him before the bastard even hits the floor.
Silence.
Again.
The worst fucking sound of all.
My chest heaves, lungs clawing at the air. The smell of cordite hangs heavy, mixing with the copper tang of blood and the sour rot of bodies too long in the heat. My stomach turns, bile threatening, but I swallow it down.
Torres glances at me. “Clear.”