14. Silas
Silas
The ping hits my earpiece with a sharp, high-pitched noise that freezes the blood dead in my veins.
I’m crouched behind a rusted, foul-smelling steel dumpster in a damp choking back-alley of a forgotten Middle Eastern border town, the steady, driving rain plastering my hair to my forehead and soaking through the layers of my gear.
The sheer weight of the mission presses down on every inch of my body. My torso locked inside a vest of heavy Kevlar meant to stop high-caliber rounds, but right now it feels less like protection and more like a lead shell crushing my lungs..
Sweat slides between my shoulder blades, hot and slick, the humidity and rain turning my gear into an oven, and there’s fuck all I can do about it, not out here, not on this mission.
Deadly, and necessary. CJ had said. I’d agreed months ago without thinking twice.
Jack and I were casual– are casual? I actually don’t know what we are now.
But with the rain hammering down and the alley closing in around me, all I can think about is being back in bed with him, his warmth pressed along my side, the quiet way he breathes when he’s finally safe.
But instead, here I am, sweating and overheating.
“God, this is hotter than Satan’s armpit,” I mutter to Mack and Callan, while quietly sending CJ a silent Fuck you.
Mack is crouched six feet to my left, and even over the rain I can hear his heavy gear groan as he shifts to whisper into his comms.
Callan scans the broken second-story windows opposite us with his suppressed sniper rifle, his knuckles stark white against the matte-black frame.
We’re deep in hostile territory, dead center in an asset retrieval that took three grueling months of digital surveillance and our most reliable informants running midnight recons just to map out.
CJ’s encrypted message cuts through the static of Mack’s comms, the channel we only use when something has gone very, very wrong.
I see Mack react first, a tiny shift in his posture, but then the transmission bleeds into my own feed. It wasn’t meant for me, I know I shouldn’t be hearing it. But I am.
I keep my eyes on Mack, rain hammering against my helmet, while the words breaking up, but filtering through, quiet, barely there, but enough to snap something inside me clean in half, detonating my world when I hear them.
Jack found unconscious… Hospital… okay… ribs re-fractured… Silas… flight.
I hear Mack speak, his voice barely audible under the rushing in my ears. “Shit. Silas…” He moves toward me, crouching low, kneeling in the mud beside me.
The world stops. Just… stops.
Every sound that I heard a moment before completely cuts out. The distant hum of heavy cars on the boundary road. The steady patter of rain hitting dirt and metal. My vest creaking with each shallow breath. Mack’s slow, controlled, tactical breathing.
All of it vanishes, swallowed by a roaring silence.
Unconscious. Hospital. Ribs refractured.
My chest tears open beneath the crushing weight of my vest. The panic that hits isn’t a slow, controlled burn, it’s a sudden, violent detonation of raw terror.
Jack. My soft, fiercely brave, fragile dove.
The image slams into me, Jack lying alone on a harsh, sterile hospital bed, ribs damaged again, no one there to hold him, no one to keep him safe; and something inside me snaps cleanly in two.
I stand. Straight up. No thought or hesitation, I just need to move. Now.
“Silas, what the fuck are you doing? Get down!” Mack hisses, his hand shooting out in a lightning-fast reflex to grab the heavy nylon drag-handle on the back of my vest, trying to haul me back into the mud.
But I’m already gone. Already somewhere else. Already moving.
“We’re pulling out,” I snap, my voice vibrating with a lethal, terrifying edge that makes even Mack hesitate. I rip my rifle off the chest sling, my grip tightening automatically as the barrel swings forward.
“My house was breached. Jack ran. He’s hurt. I’m going home.”
“Negative, boss, you can’t move,” Callan barks, his voice sharp, eyes locked on the razor-thin shadows shifting up ahead in the alleyway.
“We blow the op now, everything goes dark, and we leave a trail straight back to our client. Stay the fuck still. We get the intel, finish the sweep, and we finish the fucking mission, Rook.”
His words hit like bullets. Fast. Hard. Unavoidable.
“I don’t give a single, rotting fuck about the network!” I roar, turning on them with a violence that shakes through my entire frame.
I shove Mack backward into the slick brick wall, hard enough that the plates in his vest rattle against his ribs. “Let me go!”
Mack doesn’t flinch. Not even a breath. Years of joint survival and brotherhood snap into place like a reflex.
He steps right back into my space, his massive arms locking around my torso in a crushing, unyielding hold that traps my rifle against my chest and pins my arms to my sides.
Callan drops his rifle to its sling and throws his full weight into my legs, dropping me down into the freezing mud and water of the alley.
Two men holding me down. And I still try to break free.
“I need to get to Jack!” I roar, a sob pulling from my throat, as I try to break free.
“You’re out of your mind!” Mack yells directly into my ear, wrestling me down behind the cover of the dumpster as my boots slip and skid in the sludge. His grip is iron-tight, unyielding, dragging me down whether I fight or not.
“You run out of here now, you walk straight into an active crossfire and you die in a ditch!” Mack yells into my ear, his voice ripping through the chaos.
“You think Jack survived Vancouver just to wake up and find out you threw your life away because you panicked? Fight it, Silas. Get your head back in the game!”
I sob, trying to get free, throw them off.
* * *
Before I can throw them off the alleyway erupts.
A round slams into the metal dumpster inches from my head, screaming off into the dark with a whine that vibrates in my teeth. Rusted steel bursts outward, stinging my cheek and leaving a hot, bleeding graze.
“Ambush!” Callan screams, drawing his sidearm in one fluid motion as bright, vicious muzzle flashes erupt from the broken windows of the abandoned warehouse opposite us.
Bullets rip past, tearing down the narrow alleyway, smashing into the brickwork beside me and kicking concrete dust into the air. The thick, suffocating smell of sulfur and burning copper floods my throat, sharp enough to make my eyes sting.
“Move, move, move!” Mack roars, hauling me upright by the collar of my vest before my brain can even catch up.
We turn, sprinting through the narrow, garbage-choked alleyways as a wall of lead chases our heels.
Running in full gear is a fucking nightmare. Every step feels like wading through wet cement. My vest slams against my chest, jarring everything inside me, and the weight strapped to my thighs drags my legs down like anchors.
Gunfire pounds the air, a deafening, relentless drumbeat bouncing off the damp brick walls, rattling my skull and vibrating straight through my ribs. A round grazes the brick beside my ear, spraying hot stone dust across my neck.
“Secondary vehicle! End of the lane, left side!” Callan shouts over the roar of gun fire, blood already dripping from a fresh graze on his forearm where a round clipped him.
We round the corner hard, our boots skidding across slick grease, trash, and pooling rainwater.
Mack slams his shoulder into the side door of a van tucked beside a old, building, ripping the door open with a violent screech.
We pile in, diving over the middle seats as three more rounds punch straight through the back panel, spraying shattered glass across the interior and cutting into our skin. Blood hits the floor in thin red drops.
I scramble into the driver’s seat, “Fuck!” My vest catching on the steering column before I wrench myself free and slam the doors shut from the inside.
I throw the van into drive, stomp on the accelerator, and the engine screams as we tear out of the alley, tires spitting gravel and choking white smoke behind us.
We’re flying down the wet, twisting mountain road that snakes out of the border town, the engine howling under the strain. In the rearview mirror, I see two sedans appear fast, their headlights blinding, rifle barrels already jutting out of their rolled-down windows.
My knuckles are white, welded to the steering wheel, but my mind isn’t on the road or the headlights closing in behind us. It’s trapped in that sterile hospital room.
He ran.
Why. What had caused him to run. He’s hurt. Why was he running. Was he leaving me?
I know Jack wouldn’t just leave me. My gut tells me he was running from or too something. It isn’t his first instinct to save himself. It’s in his nature to shield someone else from the monsters. Was that what he did?
A heavy, suffocating realisation drops straight into the center of my chest, cutting deeper and sharper than any knife.
For months, I’ve lied to myself; pretended keeping it casual was protecting him, that staying detached kept him out of my shadows. But as the road blurs through hot tears of terror and rage, the truth hits me so hard it steals my breath.
I love him.
Holy fuck, I love him.
I love the way he looks at me like I hung the stars in the sky, the way he trusts me with his broken, bleeding pieces, the way he whispers my name and calls me Sol.
And if I make it out of this alive; if I survive this fucking mountain pass, the very first words out of my mouth when I look into his eyes are going to be that I love him.
Fully. Without conditions. Without hiding behind the armour.
The car hits us like a sledgehammer, throwing the van into a violent sideways skid across the wet asphalt.
I fight to pull it back onto the road, “Fuck!”
“They’re running us off the road!” Callan shouts from the back, slamming a fresh magazine into his rifle.
“Hang on!” I roar, steering hard into the slide. Burning rubber fills the air as we clip a concrete guardrail, bright orange sparks spraying into the night.
I wrench the wheel again, spinning the van across the narrow single-lane road, blocking both directions. Before the sedans behind us can brake, Mack and Callan are already out, weapons raised and firing in bursts of three.
The firefight hits instantly.
The enemy bails from their vehicles, using doors and trees for cover. Us, we only have the van. Muzzle flashes rip against the dark pine trunks like jagged lightning. Gunpowder thickens the air, choking my throat, stinging my eyes.
I kick my door open and drag myself out, drawing my pistol, but before I can even lift my arm, searing agony tears through my left shoulder. The impact spins me back against the van.
A hot rush of blood soaks through my vest and shirt, the fabric sticking to my skin as the pain spikes white-hot.
“Silas!” Mack roars over the gunfire.
“I’m okay,” I yell, firing at the fuckers who just shot me.
Across the hood, Mack takes a round to his right thigh. He drops hard to one knee, a raw, animalistic curse ripping from his throat as blood pumps through his fingers, pooling black on the wet asphalt.
“Mack!” Callan screams. The sight of Mack going down shatters him. His face drains of color, his hands shaking so badly he nearly drops his rifle as he fires three wild, blind shots into the trees. “Mack, fuck, you’re bleeding out, I need a medic bag!”
“Shut up and shoot, Callan!” Mack snarls, teeth gritted so hard a vein pops in his neck. He forces himself upright, leaning on the van for support.
I push off the door, ignoring the white-hot fire ripping through my shoulder as adrenaline and feral rage take over.
These men are keeping me from my boy.
That is the wrong fucking thing they could do.
“Fuck this shit! I snarl, raising my weapon with my good arm, lock onto the men behind the car doors, and fire three clean, lethal shots through the laminated glass and frame. The glass shatters. Both men slump forward, dead.
To my left, Callan pivots, breathing steady now, panic gone, replaced by cold, sniper-sharp focus.
He steps out from the van, boots planted in the grit, and unleashes controlled bursts toward the trees.
Each shot finds its mark.
Three rhythmic impacts echo through the pines. The men behind the trucks drop one by one, cut down mid-movement.
Silence crashes over us, broken only our ragged breathing, and the steady drip of blood hitting the ground.
“Let’s go,” I pant, vision tunneling at the edges, my left arm dead at my side, gear soaked in my own blood. “We move. Now.”
We pile back into the bullet-riddled van. Mack’s breaths come in shallow, jagged gasps as he clutches his shredded thigh. Callan sits beside him, tears streaking down his face as he tightens a tourniquet, his hands slick with bright red.
I watch as Mack wipes his tears away with his thumb. “Mi Vida, I’m fine.”
Callan nods, and tightens the tourniquet causing Mack to grunt in pain. “Sorry,” Cal huffs, a small smile on his face.
Yeah, that’s another questions for another day. Right now, I need to get to my boy.
I throw the van into gear with my right hand, stomp the gas with a boot soaked in blood, and point the nose toward our pick up point.
Jack is waiting. My dove is hurt, bleeding, alone in a hospital bed.
And I am coming home.