49. Sage
Sage
Isat huddled in the shadowy corner of the barracks, my knees pulled tightly to my chest and my hands clamped over my ears, trying to block out some of the deafening noise around me.
It didn’t work. The compound’s perimeter alarm shrieked continuously, a repeating wail that vibrated through my skull.
Beneath it was the terrifying, recurrent pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire echoing off the massive stone walls of the cathedral, accompanied by the frantic shouting of men and women fighting for their lives.
Slices of blinding white light bled through the cracks in the window shutters, casting nightmarish, strobing shadows across the floor.
They promised this was a safe zone, I thought frantically, hot tears spilling over my eyelashes and tracking down my mascara streaked cheeks. This entire world was a bleeding war land, and I had walked right into the middle of it with nothing but a box of paint and pencils.
The heavy crunch of tactical boots on the pavement outside the window, immediately caught my attention .
Footsteps.
Heavy, deliberate, and moving directly towards the annex door.
I held my breath, my entire body trembling. I pressed myself harder against the wall, hiding behind a stack of metal footlockers. The footsteps stopped right on the other side of the door.
“Julian?” I whispered into the dark.
Silence. And then, the aggressive rattle of the handle.
“It’s locked,” a voice growled. It was a harsh, gravelly accent I didn’t recognise.
A deafening CRACK echoed through the room.
I flinched, biting down hard on my own knuckles to swallow a scream. The heavy door shuddered, its iron deadbolt giving way with a sickening pop of metal. The door swung open, letting the blinding glare of the floodlights flood into the room.
Two large silhouettes stepped over the threshold, assault rifles raised.
“Check the corners,” one of them barked. “Door was bolted from the inside. Somebody’s in here.”
I Squeezed my eyes shut, fresh tears burning my face. I tried desperately to control my breathing, but my chest was heaving with silent, ragged sobs.
“Come out, come out,” the second man taunted, his heavy boots stalking across the concrete floor. He was kicking over metal chairs, overturning cots. “We don’t have time to play hide and seek.”
The footsteps grew louder. Closer. He was walking right in my direction. The shadow of his rifle stretched across the floor, creeping towards me. He was going to find me. He was going to turn the corner and aim that gun right at my head.
Move. Survival instinct overrode my paralysing fear, and just as he stepped past the first locker, I burst out from the shadows.
The man shouted in surprise, swinging his rifle around, but I was already moving. I scrambled past him, shoving a metal chair into his path to trip him up, and bolted through the shattered doorway out into the cool, damp night.
“Hey! Stop!”
I didn’t stop. I ran straight into the chaotic nightmare of the plaza. I ducked between the supply tents pitched on the concrete, my lungs burning, the sirens deafening.
I rounded the corner of a transport truck and slammed to a halt, gagging.
A trail of bodies littered the pavement.
They weren’t just dead—they were mutilated beyond recognition.
Throats slashed, limbs bent at impossible, horrifying angles, chests caved in.
I had never seen real violence before, never seen what human bodies looked like when they were broken like this.
The sickening brutality of it made me momentarily falter.
“There she is! Get her!”
The shout came from right behind me. I spun around. The two men were less than fifty meters away, sprinting across the cobblestones towards me.
I bolted down a dark alleyway between two massive steel storage containers.
CRACK
A gunshot rang out, echoing off the metal walls. Instantly, a sharp, tearing pain sliced across the outside of my right thigh. I stumbled, crying out as my leg nearly buckled, but the paralysing fear of being caught kept me going.
I rounded the end of the containers, plunging into complete darkness, and slammed directly into a massive wall of muscle.
I screamed, thrashing wildly as two hands clamped down on my shoulders with the strength of ten men. I kicked, fighting like a cornered animal, caught in the dark.
“Sage.”
The familiar voice cut through the panic, bringing me back to reality. I stopped thrashing and gasping for air. The man shifted slightly, and a faint wash of the perimeter light hit his face.
Julian.
Instant relief washed over me. If he hadn’t been holding my shoulders, I would have collapsed onto the ground.
“They—they broke in,” I babbled, panting hysterically, my fingers weakly gripping his tactical vest. “Someone’s coming. They chased me, Julian, I think they shot me, I don’t know, my leg hurts—”
“Shh. I’ve got you,” he interrupted, dropping to one knee, keeping me upright with one arm while his other hand swept quickly down my right leg. I hissed when his fingers brushed the wound on my thigh.
“It’s a graze,” he assessed, his eyes darkening to near-black as his pupils dilated in anger. “You’ll be fine. But we need to get out of here. It is not safe for you, out in the open like this.”
Before I could answer, the crunch of heavy boots echoed from the end of the alley. The men who were chasing me.
Julian’s entire demeanour shifted. He pushed me gently down until I was crouched behind a stack of wooden pallets hidden away in the shadows.
“Stay here,” he ordered in a soft whisper. I was crying, shaking my head, terrified to be left alone again. He reached out, his thumb quickly wiping a tear from my cheek. “I promise you, I will not let them hurt you. Do not make a sound.”
I nodded, clamping my hand over my mouth.
Julian stood up and walked out of the shadows, deliberately stepping onto the pavement in the path of the two approaching men.
I couldn’t see what happened. I could only listen to the carnage unfold.
There was a shout of surprise, followed immediately by a sickening, wet crunch. A man screamed—a short, abrupt sound that was suddenly cut off. Then, the horrific sound of bone snapping and a heavy thud against the ground.
It lasted less than thirty seconds.
Then… hair raising silence.
A minute ticked by. The sirens blared in the distance, but the alley was dead quiet. My anxiety peaked, my chest tight to the point of pain. Did they shoot him? Is he dead?
Footsteps approached the pallets. Slow. Deliberate.
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the worst, but strong hands reached down and grabbed my waist, lifting me effortlessly off the ground.
“It’s me,” Julian reassured. He scooped me up into his arms, carrying me against his chest as easily as if I weighed nothing at all. “I’m taking you to the medical triage.”
I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck, burying my face against his shoulder.
Inhaling sharply, I filled my lungs with the scent of his cologne—a rich, familiar warmth that brought a sudden comfort amid the chaos of the evening.
As he carried me out of the alleyway, I forced myself to open my eyes and look back.
The two men who had chased me were lying on the cobblestones.
One’s neck was twisted at an angle that defied human anatomy, and the other’s face was caved in beyond recognition.
My breath stalled. I remembered Alice’s words: The Terminator.
The Machine. Jesus, he really was a machine.
No normal human being could do that with their bare hands in thirty seconds.
We reached the makeshift field hospital, which had been set up directly inside the cathedral’s vast, soaring nave.
It was chaotic, flooded with harsh fluorescent work lights and the shouts of triage nurses.
Julian bypassed the waiting area, carrying me to an empty cot in the back corner and setting me down gently.
The bright lights overhead flickered, finally illuminating us both.
I looked up to thank him, but the words died instantly in my throat. My eyes went wide with shock, horror and something else simmering beneath the surface.
In the dark, I hadn’t been able to see it.
But here, under the harsh medical lights, the sight of him was impossible to ignore.
Julian was saturated in blood. It soaked his tactical vest, turning the canvas black.
It coated his neck, his jaw, and his hands in a thick, wet, horrifying layer of gore.
He looked like he had walked out of a slaughterhouse.
“Julian,” I gasped, my voice trembling uncontrollably as I frantically scanned his body for a wound, reaching out with shaking hands. “Julian, are you hurt? Oh my God, are you bleeding?”
He stood perfectly still under the lights, totally unfazed by his own horrific appearance. He looked down at me, his eyes devoid of any human warmth, and delivered a sentence that made the blood freeze in my veins.
“It’s not mine.”
Those three words should have sent me screaming out of the cathedral nave.
They should have triggered every basic human survival instinct I possessed, demanding I run as far away from this man as physically possible.
He had admitted, with no remorse, that the horrifying amount of blood soaking his clothes, his hands, and his throat belonged only to the men he had just killed—he had not a single injury from the conflict.
I was terrified. My heart was hammering a frantic, out-of-sync beat against my chest, and my hands were shaking so hard I had to grip the edge of the metal cot just to stay upright.
But beneath the terror, something else was waking up. Something dark, twisted, and dangerously hot.
A heavy, pooling heat settled low in my stomach, overriding the pain radiating from the bullet graze on my thigh. I couldn’t look away from him. The harsh lights exposed every brutal detail of the violence he had committed, and God help me, he had never looked better.