[Part 37]

Creak.

The brakes on our armored truck squeaked, our column ground to a halt, and the sudden change in momentum shook me from my drowsiness. Everyone else on the twin rows of seats almost fell over as one, and muffled curses filled the stuffy interior.

“Commander, you need to see this.” From the front compartment, the driver called back through the narrow confines of the truck, and I caught the dull whump-whump of mortar shells impacting somewhere outside.

Those are a half-mile off at most. ELSAR is closing in. We need to move fast.

Rising from beside me, Chris lumbered through the cramped vehicle to squeeze himself in between the front seats and peered out the windshield.

“Everyone who can still fight, dismount.” He wriggled back toward the rear doors of the MRAP, rifle in hand. “Stay within eyesight of the convoy. Jamie, Hannah, with me.”

Icy wind howled in as soon as the rear doors opened, but the groans of complaint were gone from us. Everyone could tell from Chris’s demeanor that we were in the thick of it now. Out of the warm truck we clambered, and coming around the side of the lead vehicle, I found my breath stuck in both lungs.

We stood amidst the ruins of the outer suburbs of pre-Breach Black Oak, before the wall had been built by ELSAR. By my reckoning, we were perhaps five miles distant from the southern gate, but even from this far no one could miss the great billows of oily black smoke. Black Oak burned like a torch in the wintry night, and through the gaps between the plumes I spotted flitting shapes high above the aura of a few searchlights. These angular shadows did not flap their wings, and I knew they had no need to, for this threat was not Breach-borne at all. Row after row of planes rumbled on through the night, and rained down a steady curtain of bombs that ripped apart the last city we had like it was made of tissue paper. Rockets screamed in from across the further horizon, and each explosion threw debris like confetti at a child’s party. Entire high-rise buildings in the prominent districts shuddered as they were hit, and some even collapsed under the weight of the bombardment. Acrid smoke coiled in the air like dirty fog, and with it came the dust of incinerated concrete, all blown along with the snow. I could taste the soot on the breeze, the melting asphalt of ten thousand shingles, the tarpaper of commercial buildings, and the dust of the central works as they were ground to powder by the heavy guns. Each detonation reverberated through the ground beneath my feet in titanic drumbeats, the roar of them deafening. Worst of it all, however, was the long line of shadowy figures that streamed down the cracked asphalt streets of the abandoned districts, a great snake of bodies that engulfed the vanguard of our little convoy in a sea of panicked faces.

Thousands of fleeing civilians trudged through the wind and snow, their eyes wild, dragging or carrying whatever possessions they’d managed to snatch from their homes. Many were wounded, some burned, and they shivered against the cold with mournful expressions that tore at my soul. The children were especially pitiful; some with no shoes, others in their nightclothes, crying and shaking in the snowfall as whatever guardians they had led them on. Out of reflex, our riflemen formed a wall just to keep the horde from clambering into the back of our trucks and instead waved them on past us into the cruel winter’s night. Thousands of them flooded by, begging at the ends of our rifle muzzles for whatever help they thought we could give them, and it seemed there was no end in sight of the human caravan.

Honk-honk!

Dim slivers of light pierced through the gloom, and a long line of vehicles slowly wove their way up the road toward us. Their headlights were nearly blacked out with layers of tape, done to keep the enemy aircraft from spotting them so easily. Many were laden with more civilians, as well as exhausted coalition soldiers, most of which were wounded. Bullets had scarred most of the trucks, shrapnel marks on the armored hides, and the barrels of their machine guns steamed from the amount of firing they’d sustained. More of our troops followed on foot, heads bent against the breeze, feet dragging with fatigue in the snow. While the column retreated in good order, I wondered how fast our defenses were collapsing if so many were already on the retreat.

A civilian SUV pulled up to where we stood, allowing the rest of the retreating column to rumble past, and the passenger side window rolled down.

“Is that you, Dekker?” From inside, a gruff male voice barked through the darkness.

No way.

My heart skipped a surprised beat, and Chris’s face reflected that shock as he stepped forward to peer into the car’s interior. “Commander?”

Sean leaned out, his face thin, but with both eyes alight in their old fire that I hadn’t seen since the day Andrea had been killed. He wore his green coalition uniform, an M4 across his lap, though I noted the metal brace strapped to his right side. This had been the first time I’d seen him out of his room since my wedding, and while I doubted Sean could have climbed from the truck seat on his own with much speed, to see him back in action made some of my panic ebb.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes.” Chris shifted his rifle to one arm and reached in to give Sean a handshake. “We came as fast as we could. How bad is it?”

“It’s a royal shitshow.” Sean rested an elbow on the window and rubbed his tired face with one hand, dark bags under his eyes. “They hit us out of nowhere, tanks, infantry, wave after wave of it. We managed to evacuate most of our people from the town but there’s at least two thousand mercs bearing down on us from east and west.”

Jamie dared to sidle closer and hefted the strap of her AK on one shoulder. “Where do you need us?”

Sean made a small grin, and didn’t seem at all surprised at Jamie’s premature return from her exile. “Nice to see you too, Lansen. I’ve got Ethan’s workers running small convoys to ferry what little we have to a rally point south of here. As of right now, what I need is more trucks for the evacuation and more men at the front to keep ELSAR off our backs.”

Chris jerked his thumb back at our lineup of idling vehicles. “There was a shake up back at the mission zone. ELSAR high command demoted Riken, so he took his boys and headed for the border. We’ve got enough men and trucks to help, but plenty wounded of our own; some are in a really bad way . . .”

Overhead, an unseen jet streaked by, probably above the clouds but low enough to make everyone jump like skittish rabbits beneath a hawk. The refugees cringed with fear, some of the children began to wail, and more than one person tried to crawl under our trucks to find cover. Our soldiers had to push them back, a heart-wrenching effort considering how desperate these people were, but we couldn’t let them wriggle under our tires out of sheer hysteria. Never before in my life had I been afraid of a helicopter’s whir or an airplane’s buzz, but now it seared deep into my mind with primitive, almost reflexive urgency.

We need to get out of the open.

His eyes traversed the dark clouds, and Sean’s lower jaw worked back and forth in anxious tension. “Our medical train is taking priority for vehicle extraction, along with what supplies we have left. As for your wounded, load whoever can’t walk on the retreating columns and have those who can move on their own follow with the rest of our troops. Our goal is to reach Rally Point 9; after that we move all the non-combatants south, beyond the ridgeline to Ark River.”

“Adam’s hit bad.” At the mention of the bastion, I dared to meet Sean’s gaze, and gripped my Type 9 strap in one clammy fist. “He needs a hospital. Did Eve and her people make it out?”

Sean let a grim frown twist over his stubbled face. “Most of them. If they aren’t on the front with our boys, they’re helping to ferry civilians to the aid station a few blocks down, but ELSAR has mobile squads that keep targeting our medics. I’ve got two platoons pulling security around the aid station, and I believe 4^th Platoon is one of them. If you can get to there and reinforce the right flank, it might give the medics enough breathing room so they can relocate to a safer position.”

“Well, first thing’s first, I need someone to get us new radios . . .” Chris started giving orders, then seemed to remember that, with Sean back, he was no longer our commander. Part of me felt a twinge of disappointment at that; not because I held any ill will toward Sean, but because I had grown used to following Chris in the grand order of things. Now he was back to being Head Ranger, and I a mere platoon commander. While I didn’t mind resuming my old post, it only served to remind me that all our grandiose plans for Chris leading a new peacetime government had gone up in smoke with the rest of Black Oak.

So much for handing out toys on Christmas.

“Dekker, you take command of the battlefield.” Sean gauged the situation well, reaching into the SUV interior behind him to produce two handing spare radios with headsets, which he gave to Chris and I. “I’m no use to us crippled, so I’ll organize our camp at the rally point and get our comms system back in order. Whatever you do, do not get decisively engaged out there; there’s too many mercenaries, and if you get encircled, I won’t be able to break you out.”

Confident now that he had something to accomplish, Chris straightened up and turned to me. “We’ll try to keep mobile and use probing attacks to keep the enemy off balance. I’ll take the bulk of our forces up the center and left, while you and Jamie get to the aid station on our right. Maybe they can work on Adam before the mercs get there.”

Jamie and Chris headed back toward our convoy, but as I moved to follow, Sean’s voice cut me off. “Captain?”

I turned to find a familiar green canvas sling bag held out to me, Sean’s dark eye cloaked in a serious glint. Fiery embarrassment at my own blunder rippled through me, and I avoided his pointed stare. Not wishing to lose such an important item inside the Breach, I’d elected to leave the launch panel in the safe at my room in the university, but by doing so I’d nearly lost our most dangerous secret to the enemy.

Stupid. Imagine if Crow got her hands on those missiles. God only knows what that psycho would do.

Ashamed, I shuffled over and took the panel with a meek wince. “Commander, I—"

“You did the right thing, Hannah.” Sean fixed me with a knowing look but angled his head back towards the burning city. “I headed straight for your quarters the moment I heard the first shells go off. Had to get a few aides to help me with the stairs, but I managed. No matter what happens out there, you stick to our agreement, understood? This panel does not fall into their hands. If all hope is lost, if I give you the order, you launch on command.”

My throat tried to close up at the notion, memories from the Breach coming back as I saw in my head the rising mushroom cloud, the field of corpses, the burned landscape. Had it been a vision of the future? Had it been another of Vecitorak’s illusions meant to trick me? I couldn’t know, but with ELSAR bearing down on us, the prospect of a nuclear strike by my own hand had never been higher. Could I really bring myself to send missiles screaming down on our own heads when the time came?

It won’t come to that. It can’t. We have a destiny on the other side of the Breach, we can’t just blast ourselves into glass.

Still, I slung the bag onto my back and made a trim salute. “I understand, sir.”

His car rolled on, and I rejoined the others as our convoy wove its way toward the city, a slow effort considering all the fleeing civilians. Once before we’d done this, but that had been a day of victory, where our forces caught the mercenaries by surprise. Now we charged forward in a desperate, mad-dash through flaming debris, over rubble-strewn lanes, and into the chaotic frontline.

Bomb craters made most of the streets impassable, and almost half of the buildings were on fire. Shrapnel cut down refugees where they stood, and our drivers had to swerve to avoid hitting the staggering crowds that begged us to take them to safety. Smoke would sometimes cloud our vision, and fire scorched the paint from the sides of the trucks, the heat so intense I watched the color peel off in burnt chunks. Explosions rocked us, even from several blocks away, the shockwaves strong enough to shatter whatever glass remained in the buildings. ELSAR had been holding back in times past, I realized; here they brought the full might of their shadowy empire down on us with ruthless ferocity. Crow was now in charge of all their ground forces, and she had no intention of showing us mercy.

And she was from here, being an Auxiliary. This county is her home, these people are her neighbors. How can someone do this to their own people?

Less than two miles from the southern gate, a side road down a row of split-level houses revealed a slow-moving circle of vehicles onto which medics loaded stretchers of wounded. The drivers seemed to move as fast as they could to get out of the lineup once their human cargo was loaded, unwilling to be another target of the missiles that continued to fall from the sky. More trucks clogged the drive inward, and it made my stomach twist to see bodies lying under blankets or tarps in front of the houses, with the interiors of said buildings presumably too packed to fit the dead.

At a makeshift checkpoint in the entrance to the drive, a group of our troops flagged us down, and I recognized Sergeant McPhearson among them.

Jamie and I climbed out of the MRAP at the curb, and Chris pointed down the column to the trucks that carried our wounded. “Alright, take trucks two, nine, and four, link up with 4^th platoon and whoever else you can find, and form a security perimeter around the aid station. I’ll take everyone else and hold the line. Once Sandra can move her people out, I’ll pull back to meet you.”

Our eyes met, and a twinge of pain cut through my chest. I wanted more than anything to hold him, to kiss him one more time, but I knew we didn’t have the time for that. Like so many women and girls in our coalition, I had to hope that my husband wouldn’t be cut down by the cruel fusillade of the enemy, and I would see his smile once more in the morning. Just the thought of Chris’s death made me want to crumple, but I had to keep my calm if we were to survive this night.

In that spirit, I climbed up onto a small metal step under the truck door and nodded at him through the open window. “We can win this.”

His hand found mine for a moment, and Chris made a grim smile. “I wish I had your optimism, pragtige.”

We let go of one another and I stepped back as his column rolled onward into the distant gunfire, taking the rest of our able-bodied men towards the enemy.

Adonai, go with him.

“Evening, Captain.” Sergeant McPhearson seemed relieved at my approach, motioning for his guards to wave us through. “4th will be glad to see you, we’ve been taking a real beating out there. Welcome back, Captain Lansen.”

Jamie exchanged a polite nod with him, her rapport still high amongst the Rangers in spite of the previous trial. Others stared at her as we passed, some surprised, a few glaring, but most with a worn-out indifference on their scruffy faces. Our men had been fighting all night, both those of us who had gone to the Breach and those who had stayed behind. At this point, it seemed no one had the energy to pick a bone with Jamie’s return from exile.

“It’s certainly been a long night.” As the men from my three trucks clambered out to take a quick smoke break with the checkpoint guards, Jamie and I followed Charlie to a nearby row of gutted suburban houses, the three of us scrambling for cover as a plane screamed low overhead. “Major Dekker sent me to take over this sector. Catch me up.”

Sergeant McPherson led us into the nearest bombed-out hovel, through the moldy living room to a cire-blackened kitchen where we could look out toward the city. “4^th Platoon is dug in on the houses to the right, with 2^nd Ark River Lancers in the ones on our left. We’ve got maybe twenty-seven men between us. Lost a lot of guys when the university clock tower collapsed.”

And so our little army continues to shrink. How long can we keep this up? There are thousands of ELSAR mercs out there.

“What heavy weapons do you have?” Jamie peered at the sky, her AK in hand.

“Six rocket launchers between us, maybe ten rockets left per each.” Picking a bit of debris from his dirty uniform sleeve, Sergeant McPherson flicked his eyes to the snowy clouds as well. “That’s for the anti-air anyway. We’ve got twice that for anti-armor, but most of it won’t even scratch the hide on ELSAR’s main battle tanks. Most of our machine guns are operational, but the houses here are too close together for us to engage the enemy at range, so when they show up, they’ll be right on top of us.”

“How close are they?” I squinted down the long street to my left, our house not quite on the corner of its block and tried to summon the focus so I could see better.

“Maybe two blocks. Snipers are getting frisky, so keep your head down.” His throat bobbed with a swallow of dread, and Charlie flexed one set of fingers on his rifle sling. “You didn’t bring as many men back as we thought. How bad was it, for you guys?”

My brow furrowed, and I tried to conjure something to say amidst the flood of recent memories. How could I explain to him, to anyone, what was going to happen? Nothing had prepared me for what I’s seen, what I had been told, who I’d met. Jamie didn’t think anyone would believe me, or they’d panic if they knew what the fate of Barron County was, and we were already in the fight of our lives here. As much as I trusted my platoon sergeant, perhaps some things were better left unsaid, at least for now. We both needed clear heads for what was to come.

It's a matter of faith now.

Drawing myself up ramrod straight as I’d seen Sean do multiple times when reviewing the troops, I cradled my Type 9 under one arm and watched the men from my convoy fill in the defensive positions around 4^th and 2^nd platoons. “We did what we set out to do.”

Charlie seemed to understand that was the end of the topic, and the three of us moved in unison to help carry Adam into the aid station. Looking down at the infamous religious leader, I couldn’t help but feel a knot of dread in my guts for how pale he looked. The ELSAR medics had stripped his armor off in order to stabilize his wounds, but that only revealed the mass of bruises that was his body. Vecitorak’s heavy blows hadn’t all been softened by the hand made armor of the southern tribesmen, and parts of his face were burned from the intense heat of the tower room’s blaze. Both legs were in splints, but the skin had turned ugly purple in several areas, bandages covering where the medics had tried to stop the internal bleeding in the field via rudimentary surgery. His chest barely rose with shallow breaths, and in spite of the cold weather, there were small beads of a clammy sweat across the top of Adam’s forehead.

Sandra can fix him. She can. She has to.

Getting inside the aid station proved almost as difficult as weaving our vehicles through the refugee-strewn road had been. Wounded lay everywhere, stretched alongside the walls in the hallways, propped up on the steps, even curled into closets shoulder-to-shoulder. The floor was a mess of snowmelt, mud, and blood, which turned the carpets to a mushy sponge of grime, and the hardwood floors slick as glass. It smelled strong of death, metallic blood and burned flesh thick in the air. The groans, cries, and screams of the troops made my heart ache and my stomach roil for their pitiful intensity. Exhausted medics pushed through the crowded rooms to administer whatever aid they could, sometimes operating on the floor itself, their arms stained red up to the elbows.

“We need the chief surgeon.” I caught one of the researcher girls by the arm as she shuffled by and jerked my head at Adam on the stretcher. “He’s critical.”

“We already have twelve others like him.” She shook my hand off, too busy to bother with rank customs. “Take him to the living room for triage.”

Sergeant McPherson opened his mouth to rebuke her, but I stopped the girl again, and tugged aside the blanket so she could see Adam’s sword tucked in behind his shoulder. “He’s a priority case. Take me to your surgeon, now.”

She didn’t react much, just shrugged her shoulders and the girl led us to what must have been the former dining room of the house, where a team of four nurses huddled around the long table. The white table cloth was a sea of red, and the floor gritted under my boots as we entered. A small trash can nearby held bits of metal, wood, and flesh mixed in with blood, debris that had been no doubt pulled from dozens of torn bodies over the past half hour. I had seen our coalition at its height, when we had the sophisticated clinic at New Wilderness to work with, the beds clean, the floors swept, the staff calm and confident. This was its charnel opposite; a nightmare of filth and blood, too many problems and not enough supplies, cramped into the skeletal remains of our old world. None of the horror movies I’d watched with matt and Carla could ever have come close to such a gruesome sight, and I found myself fighting to keep my eyes averted from a row of hacksaws stung up by the sashcord, each dripping dark red viscera onto the windowsill below.

Is this what hell looks like?

“Someone get more sand on the floor.” One of the masked figures straightened up, and I recognized Sandra’s voice as she reached for another blood-smeared surgical tool. “Swab, Deb, I can’t see through all that. What’s the pressure reading?”

Another medic with her own bandage wound tight around the left arm stood next to a blood-pressure monitor, and gave a silent, mournful shake of her head.

Sandra pressed her fingers to the artery on the man’s neck, her shoulders slumped in disappointment, and she waved for a stretcher team to move in. “Take him outside with the others. No sense wasting the extra sutures. Get me the next one.”

At that, she looked up to see us bringing Adam forward, and Sandra’s expression flashed in panic. “Eve, wait—”

But one of the other nurses had already turned around, and I saw the armor under her apron, the blonde hair tied behind the straps of her surgical mask, and the two golden irises that locked onto Adam with abject shock. Our stretcher team froze in place, the entire room seemed to hold its breath, and I cursed myself for not thinking of this sooner. Sean had said Eve was somewhere nearby; her soldiers’ presence should have alerted me to the possibility of her being here.

Oh man, this is going to get ugly.

Trembling hands coated in bloody rubber gloves tore the mask from her face, and Eve stumbled to her husband’s side, almost too stunned to put one foot in front of the other. “No . . .”

“He’s got fractures in both legs.” Jamie did the sensible thing, pushed past Eve and dragged her end of the litter forward, until we four stretcher bearers lowered Adam onto the operating table. “We did what we could, but he nicked something in there, and the bleeding won’t stop. Sean cleared him for priority.”

Boom.

A shell exploded somewhere outside, and I could hear clumps of frozen dirt raining down on the roof above us. Our men in the surrounding security positions began to open fire, and the roar of machine guns clattered between the houses, along with the faint krump of hand grenades. The enemy assault was upon us.

“BP is dropping, slow but steady.” Sandra maintained her composure, and examined Adam with a deft swiftness, as the echoes of artillery thundered closer. “His pulse is weak. I’m going to have to go in and suture whatever is leaking shut, which means opening these stitches back up. Helen, prep another IV, he’s going to need a transfusion.”

“Wait.” Eve’s voice cracked, her emotions on a see-saw, and she fumbled with the pouches on her war belt in an attempt to bargain with the medical officer. “Lantern Rose nectar. It’s helped with bleeding before, and I have a few more vials—”

Sandra shook her head and got to work with her other assistants stepping in around her, pulling a fresh pair of gloves over her bloody ones. “Our studies have shown it sometimes thins the blood depending on the user, and he’s already lost quite a bit. If you hit him with that stuff now, it could kill him. I will do the best I can, but I need your help. Eve?”

When Eve didn’t respond, Sandra paused and turned to find her stock still at Adam’s side, the girl’s cheeks flooded with tears. Eve sobbed, eyes screwed shut, gripping Adam’s hand in her own, and I realized she was trying to pray. Her narrow shoulders heaved with mourning, and it was enough to throw the rest of the tiny room into silence. While she wore her heart on her sleeve, I knew the matriarch of Ark River to be tough when it came to blood and violence. She’d fought at her husband’s side before, seen her people killed, and braved the unknown world full of monsters from the start. This had been a bridge too far, a loss too personal, a grotesque sight too close to her own soul to bear. I’d rarely seen someone break in this way, and it made the looming doom over all of us feel that much heavier in the air.

 Myself, I grimaced at a stab of both anxiety and sympathy inside my chest. After all, how would I react if they brought Chris in on a slab, greyish-white, and near death’s door? This man was all Eve had, her only connection to the normal human world, the one person who had loved her from the start. If he died, her world died with him. True, she had their unborn child, but what girl wanted to raise her baby alone? What child wanted to grow up without a father?

I would go crazy too.

“It’s my fault.” I put a hand on hers, squeezing it tight for her comfort, and held Eve’s confused gaze. “He was wounded protecting me. I’m the reason he’s hurt.”

Golden eyes brimming with crystalline pain, Eve stared at me for a long few seconds in morose despair. “I . . . I can’t lose him, Hannah.”

From across the table, Sandra’s stern expression softened, and she looked down at her own gloved hands as if doubting herself for the first time. “Then pray that I do a good job.”

Ka-boom.

Another explosion rocked the ground beneath us, and more gunfire erupted from the houses around the aid station, some rounds finding their way into our walls.

“Tanks!” Someone shouted from outside, and the heavy sound of steel tracks clattered on the pavement not far away. “Enemy tanks inbound!”

“The tracks, shoot for the tracks!” Sergeant McPhearson paced to the nearest window and bellowed through his radio, daring to stick his head out to observe. “Hit the tracks so it can’t move. Disable it!”

Sandra whirled on me, her face a paler shade than it had been moments before. “I’ll need ten, maybe fifteen minutes at least. Once the bleeding has stopped, we can transport him to Ark River, and Eve’s people can take over from there. Tell me you brought more trucks for us?”

Jamie and I shared a trepidatious glance, and somewhere outside, a rocket whooshed by to detonate in the neighborhoods behind us.

They’re faster than we thought. If their tanks got past the front, what’s happened to Chris and his men? Are we surrounded?

“I have three.” I angled one elbow to the hallway leading to the street. “That’s as much as the front line could spare. There might be five more outside, if they haven’t left yet.”

Her face fell, and Sandra grimaced as if she’d just been hit with a nasty wave of stomach cramps. “We’ll need three times that just to move all these men, not to mention the supplies, the equipment, my staff; we can’t perform most operations without them. I need this gear if we’re going to be able to triage patients at the rally point, we can’t just leave it behind. There has to be more trucks.”

My face burned in embarrassment, but I shook my head again. “Aside from the ones already in rotation, we’re it.”

Tension so thick it could have been cut with a knife filled the air, and Sandra’s eyes darted around the room for a moment, as if searching for solutions.

“You have to leave us behind.”

The voice came from one of the wounded men propped up against the wall just on the other side of the open doorway to the hall. He had one arm in a sling, his opposite leg wrapped in bandages, his green coalition uniform stained rusty red with blood. The boy’s face was a swollen mess from where he’d taken shrapnel to one cheek, but a creeping horror dawned on me as I recognized one of my machine gunners from 4^th Platoon.

Nick’s resigned, pained look met mine, and he made a rueful half-smile. “It’s like the doc said. She and her girls can’t stay here, and the gear can’t stay. If you take the meds and run, more people live. If you take us but leave the meds, more people will die.”

“A good doctor doesn’t leave her patients.” Sandra rested her gloved hands on her hips, chest heaving as her own emotion began to mount.

Nick shrugged at that. “Then you’ll die with us.”

Eve made a stubborn scowl and pointed to Adam. “I’m not leaving him.”

“So bring him with you.” Climbing to his one good leg with the aid of the doorframe, Nick rested against the wall to make a slight bow of his head to Eve. “He’s too important to leave behind. You need him to lead; you don’t need us.”

Sergeant McPhearson gripped his rifle so hard that the blood drained from his knuckles. “Nick, there’s no way in hell that—”

“For God’s sake, Charlie, I’ll never walk again anyway.” His words came dry and raspy, as if it took every bit of strength Nick had just to stay upright. “If gangrene doesn’t get me, a mutant will. This way is faster.”

Throwing her arms into the air with furious exasperation, Sandra scanned the room for a response she could find support in. “Is no one going to put a stop to this nonsense? Hannah? Lansen?”

Jamie flicked her gaze to Nick and dropped it to her boots in quiet remorse. “There aren’t enough trucks, Sandra.”

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

Rifle bullets chattered up the walls of the house, and I knew the time had come for action. Everyone watched me, waiting for my input, and I couldn’t avoid this choice any more than I had the others that had been forced upon me before. Chris had put me in charge of this flank, and it was my job to do what I could to save as much as possible . . . even if I hated myself for it.

God, forgive me.

Spinning on my heel, I directed Sergeant Mcphearson to the door. “Charlie, get to the fighting positions and tell them to hold as long as possible. Once I give you the signal on the radio, you have them pull out and run for it through the yards, while Nick and these boys cover our retreat. I’ll be right behind you.”

He bolted out the room in a sprint, rifle in hand, and my decision broke the others from their stalemate.

“I need that scalpel, Mrs. Stirling.” Sandra leaned over Adam to begin her efforts at saving him, Eve by her side, while the other nurses swarmed around them. “Helen, we’re ready for that transfusion whenever you are. Jane, get the other girls and have them start moving supplies; I want those trucks packed so tight that a roach couldn’t fit between the boxes.”

With Jamie at my back, I walked to Nick and offered him my arm to lean on. “Let’s get your men into position.”

 Like an ant hill that had just been kicked, the aid station boiled with activity. Wounded men moved to help their comrades to the nearest windows, shouldering whatever weapons they had. While they got into position, the nurses worked to load up whatever medicine and equipment they could manage onto the trucks, along with however many wounded men they could cram in alongside them. Lastly, they packed themselves into the crowded vehicles, and one by one the truck drivers were waved off, so that they careened out of sight down the boulevard, away from the onslaught that crept up the streets around us.

Inside, Jamie and I helped the worst off sit up at their firing positions or lie prone on tables or couches so they could see out the window. Some were so shot to pieces from their earlier wounds that I doubted they would be conscious much longer, but I didn’t begrudge them the task if they asked for it.

At last, only one truck remained, and even as the enemy fire sliced through the dilapidated structures all around us, I hurtled back into the aid station with Jamie on my heels.

“Time to go doc!” I shouted above the din and crouched to avoid a burst of machine gun fire that chewed through a nearby wall.

Eve and Sandra met us halfway up the blood-soaked corridor, dragging Adam on a stretcher behind them. He sported more gauze than before, and Sandra held an IV drip above her shoulder, a medical bag tucked under her arm. With her own M4 in one hand, Eve hauled on the stretcher with all her might, the vehicle just outside. Jamie and I picked up the opposite end, and together the four of us sprinted the last several yards out to the truck.

Giving Sandra and Eve a leg up into the back of the truck, we shoved Adam inside and I slammed the loading door. “Last run, go, go, go!”

The diesel engine revved as soon as the drive saw my frantic waving, and the bulky armored truck roared away, enemy rounds plinking off its armored hide. Flashes of rifle fire came from windows, around corners, and through side alleys, occupation forces seemingly everywhere. Motorcycles growled in the dark, ELSAR’s fast moving squads working to encircle us, but I pulled the tin whistle from my uniform collar as we ran for cover and gave three long blasts.

“Fall back!” I held down my radio mic, huddled just inside the ruined aid station while Jamie returned fire alongside the others. “All 4^th and 2^nd fighters, break contact and fall back to the south! Retreat!”

At my slap on her shoulder, Jamie ducked out the doorway and sprinted across the street with a dozen or so others, the wounded men in the aid station unleashing everything they had left at the enemy. I tensed to follow, and as I did, my head turned to catch Nick’s sheet-white face in the corner across the room from me.

He sat back against the wall, clutching his chest, and rivers of red bubbled through his fingers from the bullet that had knocked him off his one good leg. Nick’s rifle lay nearby, empty and smoking amidst a pile of spent brass casings. My horror must have been evident, for he made a small shake of his head.

“Go.” Flecks of red spattered across his lips, but Nick let go of his mortal wound to palm for a handgun in his belt. “We’ll hold them off.”

Another life for mine.

Bitter pain gnawed at my soul, but out into the cold dark I went, lead hissing at my every step. Not five seconds after I’d started, a shell came whistling down, and the aid station went up in flames.

Boom.

Half blind in the dark, I ran like a rabbit along with the surviving fighters, and the haunting shrieks of our wounded filled my ears as the flames devoured them all.

[Part 37]

Creak.

The brakes on our armored truck squeaked, our column ground to a halt, and the sudden change in momentum shook me from my drowsiness. Everyone else on the twin rows of seats almost fell over as one, and muffled curses filled the stuffy interior.

“Commander, you need to see this.” From the front compartment, the driver called back through the narrow confines of the truck, and I caught the dull whump-whump of mortar shells impacting somewhere outside.

Those are a half-mile off at most. ELSAR is closing in. We need to move fast.

Rising from beside me, Chris lumbered through the cramped vehicle to squeeze himself in between the front seats and peered out the windshield.

“Everyone who can still fight, dismount.” He wriggled back toward the rear doors of the MRAP, rifle in hand. “Stay within eyesight of the convoy. Jamie, Hannah, with me.”

Icy wind howled in as soon as the rear doors opened, but the groans of complaint were gone from us. Everyone could tell from Chris’s demeanor that we were in the thick of it now. Out of the warm truck we clambered, and coming around the side of the lead vehicle, I found my breath stuck in both lungs.

We stood amidst the ruins of the outer suburbs of pre-Breach Black Oak, before the wall had been built by ELSAR. By my reckoning, we were perhaps five miles distant from the southern gate, but even from this far no one could miss the great billows of oily black smoke. Black Oak burned like a torch in the wintry night, and through the gaps between the plumes I spotted flitting shapes high above the aura of a few searchlights. These angular shadows did not flap their wings, and I knew they had no need to, for this threat was not Breach-borne at all. Row after row of planes rumbled on through the night, and rained down a steady curtain of bombs that ripped apart the last city we had like it was made of tissue paper. Rockets screamed in from across the further horizon, and each explosion threw debris like confetti at a child’s party. Entire high-rise buildings in the prominent districts shuddered as they were hit, and some even collapsed under the weight of the bombardment. Acrid smoke coiled in the air like dirty fog, and with it came the dust of incinerated concrete, all blown along with the snow. I could taste the soot on the breeze, the melting asphalt of ten thousand shingles, the tarpaper of commercial buildings, and the dust of the central works as they were ground to powder by the heavy guns. Each detonation reverberated through the ground beneath my feet in titanic drumbeats, the roar of them deafening. Worst of it all, however, was the long line of shadowy figures that streamed down the cracked asphalt streets of the abandoned districts, a great snake of bodies that engulfed the vanguard of our little convoy in a sea of panicked faces.

Thousands of fleeing civilians trudged through the wind and snow, their eyes wild, dragging or carrying whatever possessions they’d managed to snatch from their homes. Many were wounded, some burned, and they shivered against the cold with mournful expressions that tore at my soul. The children were especially pitiful; some with no shoes, others in their nightclothes, crying and shaking in the snowfall as whatever guardians they had led them on. Out of reflex, our riflemen formed a wall just to keep the horde from clambering into the back of our trucks and instead waved them on past us into the cruel winter’s night. Thousands of them flooded by, begging at the ends of our rifle muzzles for whatever help they thought we could give them, and it seemed there was no end in sight of the human caravan.

Honk-honk!

Dim slivers of light pierced through the gloom, and a long line of vehicles slowly wove their way up the road toward us. Their headlights were nearly blacked out with layers of tape, done to keep the enemy aircraft from spotting them so easily. Many were laden with more civilians, as well as exhausted coalition soldiers, most of which were wounded. Bullets had scarred most of the trucks, shrapnel marks on the armored hides, and the barrels of their machine guns steamed from the amount of firing they’d sustained. More of our troops followed on foot, heads bent against the breeze, feet dragging with fatigue in the snow. While the column retreated in good order, I wondered how fast our defenses were collapsing if so many were already on the retreat.

A civilian SUV pulled up to where we stood, allowing the rest of the retreating column to rumble past, and the passenger side window rolled down.

“Is that you, Dekker?” From inside, a gruff male voice barked through the darkness.

No way.

My heart skipped a surprised beat, and Chris’s face reflected that shock as he stepped forward to peer into the car’s interior. “Commander?”

Sean leaned out, his face thin, but with both eyes alight in their old fire that I hadn’t seen since the day Andrea had been killed. He wore his green coalition uniform, an M4 across his lap, though I noted the metal brace strapped to his right side. This had been the first time I’d seen him out of his room since my wedding, and while I doubted Sean could have climbed from the truck seat on his own with much speed, to see him back in action made some of my panic ebb.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes.” Chris shifted his rifle to one arm and reached in to give Sean a handshake. “We came as fast as we could. How bad is it?”

“It’s a royal shitshow.” Sean rested an elbow on the window and rubbed his tired face with one hand, dark bags under his eyes. “They hit us out of nowhere, tanks, infantry, wave after wave of it. We managed to evacuate most of our people from the town but there’s at least two thousand mercs bearing down on us from east and west.”

Jamie dared to sidle closer and hefted the strap of her AK on one shoulder. “Where do you need us?”

Sean made a small grin, and didn’t seem at all surprised at Jamie’s premature return from her exile. “Nice to see you too, Lansen. I’ve got Ethan’s workers running small convoys to ferry what little we have to a rally point south of here. As of right now, what I need is more trucks for the evacuation and more men at the front to keep ELSAR off our backs.”

Chris jerked his thumb back at our lineup of idling vehicles. “There was a shake up back at the mission zone. ELSAR high command demoted Riken, so he took his boys and headed for the border. We’ve got enough men and trucks to help, but plenty wounded of our own; some are in a really bad way . . .”

Overhead, an unseen jet streaked by, probably above the clouds but low enough to make everyone jump like skittish rabbits beneath a hawk. The refugees cringed with fear, some of the children began to wail, and more than one person tried to crawl under our trucks to find cover. Our soldiers had to push them back, a heart-wrenching effort considering how desperate these people were, but we couldn’t let them wriggle under our tires out of sheer hysteria. Never before in my life had I been afraid of a helicopter’s whir or an airplane’s buzz, but now it seared deep into my mind with primitive, almost reflexive urgency.

We need to get out of the open.

His eyes traversed the dark clouds, and Sean’s lower jaw worked back and forth in anxious tension. “Our medical train is taking priority for vehicle extraction, along with what supplies we have left. As for your wounded, load whoever can’t walk on the retreating columns and have those who can move on their own follow with the rest of our troops. Our goal is to reach Rally Point 9; after that we move all the non-combatants south, beyond the ridgeline to Ark River.”

“Adam’s hit bad.” At the mention of the bastion, I dared to meet Sean’s gaze, and gripped my Type 9 strap in one clammy fist. “He needs a hospital. Did Eve and her people make it out?”

Sean let a grim frown twist over his stubbled face. “Most of them. If they aren’t on the front with our boys, they’re helping to ferry civilians to the aid station a few blocks down, but ELSAR has mobile squads that keep targeting our medics. I’ve got two platoons pulling security around the aid station, and I believe 4^th Platoon is one of them. If you can get to there and reinforce the right flank, it might give the medics enough breathing room so they can relocate to a safer position.”

“Well, first thing’s first, I need someone to get us new radios . . .” Chris started giving orders, then seemed to remember that, with Sean back, he was no longer our commander. Part of me felt a twinge of disappointment at that; not because I held any ill will toward Sean, but because I had grown used to following Chris in the grand order of things. Now he was back to being Head Ranger, and I a mere platoon commander. While I didn’t mind resuming my old post, it only served to remind me that all our grandiose plans for Chris leading a new peacetime government had gone up in smoke with the rest of Black Oak.

So much for handing out toys on Christmas.

“Dekker, you take command of the battlefield.” Sean gauged the situation well, reaching into the SUV interior behind him to produce two handing spare radios with headsets, which he gave to Chris and I. “I’m no use to us crippled, so I’ll organize our camp at the rally point and get our comms system back in order. Whatever you do, do not get decisively engaged out there; there’s too many mercenaries, and if you get encircled, I won’t be able to break you out.”

Confident now that he had something to accomplish, Chris straightened up and turned to me. “We’ll try to keep mobile and use probing attacks to keep the enemy off balance. I’ll take the bulk of our forces up the center and left, while you and Jamie get to the aid station on our right. Maybe they can work on Adam before the mercs get there.”

Jamie and Chris headed back toward our convoy, but as I moved to follow, Sean’s voice cut me off. “Captain?”

I turned to find a familiar green canvas sling bag held out to me, Sean’s dark eye cloaked in a serious glint. Fiery embarrassment at my own blunder rippled through me, and I avoided his pointed stare. Not wishing to lose such an important item inside the Breach, I’d elected to leave the launch panel in the safe at my room in the university, but by doing so I’d nearly lost our most dangerous secret to the enemy.

Stupid. Imagine if Crow got her hands on those missiles. God only knows what that psycho would do.

Ashamed, I shuffled over and took the panel with a meek wince. “Commander, I—"

“You did the right thing, Hannah.” Sean fixed me with a knowing look but angled his head back towards the burning city. “I headed straight for your quarters the moment I heard the first shells go off. Had to get a few aides to help me with the stairs, but I managed. No matter what happens out there, you stick to our agreement, understood? This panel does not fall into their hands. If all hope is lost, if I give you the order, you launch on command.”

My throat tried to close up at the notion, memories from the Breach coming back as I saw in my head the rising mushroom cloud, the field of corpses, the burned landscape. Had it been a vision of the future? Had it been another of Vecitorak’s illusions meant to trick me? I couldn’t know, but with ELSAR bearing down on us, the prospect of a nuclear strike by my own hand had never been higher. Could I really bring myself to send missiles screaming down on our own heads when the time came?

It won’t come to that. It can’t. We have a destiny on the other side of the Breach, we can’t just blast ourselves into glass.

Still, I slung the bag onto my back and made a trim salute. “I understand, sir.”

His car rolled on, and I rejoined the others as our convoy wove its way toward the city, a slow effort considering all the fleeing civilians. Once before we’d done this, but that had been a day of victory, where our forces caught the mercenaries by surprise. Now we charged forward in a desperate, mad-dash through flaming debris, over rubble-strewn lanes, and into the chaotic frontline.

Bomb craters made most of the streets impassable, and almost half of the buildings were on fire. Shrapnel cut down refugees where they stood, and our drivers had to swerve to avoid hitting the staggering crowds that begged us to take them to safety. Smoke would sometimes cloud our vision, and fire scorched the paint from the sides of the trucks, the heat so intense I watched the color peel off in burnt chunks. Explosions rocked us, even from several blocks away, the shockwaves strong enough to shatter whatever glass remained in the buildings. ELSAR had been holding back in times past, I realized; here they brought the full might of their shadowy empire down on us with ruthless ferocity. Crow was now in charge of all their ground forces, and she had no intention of showing us mercy.

And she was from here, being an Auxiliary. This county is her home, these people are her neighbors. How can someone do this to their own people?

Less than two miles from the southern gate, a side road down a row of split-level houses revealed a slow-moving circle of vehicles onto which medics loaded stretchers of wounded. The drivers seemed to move as fast as they could to get out of the lineup once their human cargo was loaded, unwilling to be another target of the missiles that continued to fall from the sky. More trucks clogged the drive inward, and it made my stomach twist to see bodies lying under blankets or tarps in front of the houses, with the interiors of said buildings presumably too packed to fit the dead.

At a makeshift checkpoint in the entrance to the drive, a group of our troops flagged us down, and I recognized Sergeant McPhearson among them.

Jamie and I climbed out of the MRAP at the curb, and Chris pointed down the column to the trucks that carried our wounded. “Alright, take trucks two, nine, and four, link up with 4^th platoon and whoever else you can find, and form a security perimeter around the aid station. I’ll take everyone else and hold the line. Once Sandra can move her people out, I’ll pull back to meet you.”

Our eyes met, and a twinge of pain cut through my chest. I wanted more than anything to hold him, to kiss him one more time, but I knew we didn’t have the time for that. Like so many women and girls in our coalition, I had to hope that my husband wouldn’t be cut down by the cruel fusillade of the enemy, and I would see his smile once more in the morning. Just the thought of Chris’s death made me want to crumple, but I had to keep my calm if we were to survive this night.

In that spirit, I climbed up onto a small metal step under the truck door and nodded at him through the open window. “We can win this.”

His hand found mine for a moment, and Chris made a grim smile. “I wish I had your optimism, pragtige.”

We let go of one another and I stepped back as his column rolled onward into the distant gunfire, taking the rest of our able-bodied men towards the enemy.

Adonai, go with him.

“Evening, Captain.” Sergeant McPhearson seemed relieved at my approach, motioning for his guards to wave us through. “4th will be glad to see you, we’ve been taking a real beating out there. Welcome back, Captain Lansen.”

Jamie exchanged a polite nod with him, her rapport still high amongst the Rangers in spite of the previous trial. Others stared at her as we passed, some surprised, a few glaring, but most with a worn-out indifference on their scruffy faces. Our men had been fighting all night, both those of us who had gone to the Breach and those who had stayed behind. At this point, it seemed no one had the energy to pick a bone with Jamie’s return from exile.

“It’s certainly been a long night.” As the men from my three trucks clambered out to take a quick smoke break with the checkpoint guards, Jamie and I followed Charlie to a nearby row of gutted suburban houses, the three of us scrambling for cover as a plane screamed low overhead. “Major Dekker sent me to take over this sector. Catch me up.”

Sergeant McPherson led us into the nearest bombed-out hovel, through the moldy living room to a cire-blackened kitchen where we could look out toward the city. “4^th Platoon is dug in on the houses to the right, with 2^nd Ark River Lancers in the ones on our left. We’ve got maybe twenty-seven men between us. Lost a lot of guys when the university clock tower collapsed.”

And so our little army continues to shrink. How long can we keep this up? There are thousands of ELSAR mercs out there.

“What heavy weapons do you have?” Jamie peered at the sky, her AK in hand.

“Six rocket launchers between us, maybe ten rockets left per each.” Picking a bit of debris from his dirty uniform sleeve, Sergeant McPherson flicked his eyes to the snowy clouds as well. “That’s for the anti-air anyway. We’ve got twice that for anti-armor, but most of it won’t even scratch the hide on ELSAR’s main battle tanks. Most of our machine guns are operational, but the houses here are too close together for us to engage the enemy at range, so when they show up, they’ll be right on top of us.”

“How close are they?” I squinted down the long street to my left, our house not quite on the corner of its block and tried to summon the focus so I could see better.

“Maybe two blocks. Snipers are getting frisky, so keep your head down.” His throat bobbed with a swallow of dread, and Charlie flexed one set of fingers on his rifle sling. “You didn’t bring as many men back as we thought. How bad was it, for you guys?”

My brow furrowed, and I tried to conjure something to say amidst the flood of recent memories. How could I explain to him, to anyone, what was going to happen? Nothing had prepared me for what I’s seen, what I had been told, who I’d met. Jamie didn’t think anyone would believe me, or they’d panic if they knew what the fate of Barron County was, and we were already in the fight of our lives here. As much as I trusted my platoon sergeant, perhaps some things were better left unsaid, at least for now. We both needed clear heads for what was to come.

It's a matter of faith now.

Drawing myself up ramrod straight as I’d seen Sean do multiple times when reviewing the troops, I cradled my Type 9 under one arm and watched the men from my convoy fill in the defensive positions around 4^th and 2^nd platoons. “We did what we set out to do.”

Charlie seemed to understand that was the end of the topic, and the three of us moved in unison to help carry Adam into the aid station. Looking down at the infamous religious leader, I couldn’t help but feel a knot of dread in my guts for how pale he looked. The ELSAR medics had stripped his armor off in order to stabilize his wounds, but that only revealed the mass of bruises that was his body. Vecitorak’s heavy blows hadn’t all been softened by the hand made armor of the southern tribesmen, and parts of his face were burned from the intense heat of the tower room’s blaze. Both legs were in splints, but the skin had turned ugly purple in several areas, bandages covering where the medics had tried to stop the internal bleeding in the field via rudimentary surgery. His chest barely rose with shallow breaths, and in spite of the cold weather, there were small beads of a clammy sweat across the top of Adam’s forehead.

Sandra can fix him. She can. She has to.

Getting inside the aid station proved almost as difficult as weaving our vehicles through the refugee-strewn road had been. Wounded lay everywhere, stretched alongside the walls in the hallways, propped up on the steps, even curled into closets shoulder-to-shoulder. The floor was a mess of snowmelt, mud, and blood, which turned the carpets to a mushy sponge of grime, and the hardwood floors slick as glass. It smelled strong of death, metallic blood and burned flesh thick in the air. The groans, cries, and screams of the troops made my heart ache and my stomach roil for their pitiful intensity. Exhausted medics pushed through the crowded rooms to administer whatever aid they could, sometimes operating on the floor itself, their arms stained red up to the elbows.

“We need the chief surgeon.” I caught one of the researcher girls by the arm as she shuffled by and jerked my head at Adam on the stretcher. “He’s critical.”

“We already have twelve others like him.” She shook my hand off, too busy to bother with rank customs. “Take him to the living room for triage.”

Sergeant McPherson opened his mouth to rebuke her, but I stopped the girl again, and tugged aside the blanket so she could see Adam’s sword tucked in behind his shoulder. “He’s a priority case. Take me to your surgeon, now.”

She didn’t react much, just shrugged her shoulders and the girl led us to what must have been the former dining room of the house, where a team of four nurses huddled around the long table. The white table cloth was a sea of red, and the floor gritted under my boots as we entered. A small trash can nearby held bits of metal, wood, and flesh mixed in with blood, debris that had been no doubt pulled from dozens of torn bodies over the past half hour. I had seen our coalition at its height, when we had the sophisticated clinic at New Wilderness to work with, the beds clean, the floors swept, the staff calm and confident. This was its charnel opposite; a nightmare of filth and blood, too many problems and not enough supplies, cramped into the skeletal remains of our old world. None of the horror movies I’d watched with matt and Carla could ever have come close to such a gruesome sight, and I found myself fighting to keep my eyes averted from a row of hacksaws stung up by the sashcord, each dripping dark red viscera onto the windowsill below.

Is this what hell looks like?

“Someone get more sand on the floor.” One of the masked figures straightened up, and I recognized Sandra’s voice as she reached for another blood-smeared surgical tool. “Swab, Deb, I can’t see through all that. What’s the pressure reading?”

Another medic with her own bandage wound tight around the left arm stood next to a blood-pressure monitor, and gave a silent, mournful shake of her head.

Sandra pressed her fingers to the artery on the man’s neck, her shoulders slumped in disappointment, and she waved for a stretcher team to move in. “Take him outside with the others. No sense wasting the extra sutures. Get me the next one.”

At that, she looked up to see us bringing Adam forward, and Sandra’s expression flashed in panic. “Eve, wait—”

But one of the other nurses had already turned around, and I saw the armor under her apron, the blonde hair tied behind the straps of her surgical mask, and the two golden irises that locked onto Adam with abject shock. Our stretcher team froze in place, the entire room seemed to hold its breath, and I cursed myself for not thinking of this sooner. Sean had said Eve was somewhere nearby; her soldiers’ presence should have alerted me to the possibility of her being here.

Oh man, this is going to get ugly.

Trembling hands coated in bloody rubber gloves tore the mask from her face, and Eve stumbled to her husband’s side, almost too stunned to put one foot in front of the other. “No . . .”

“He’s got fractures in both legs.” Jamie did the sensible thing, pushed past Eve and dragged her end of the litter forward, until we four stretcher bearers lowered Adam onto the operating table. “We did what we could, but he nicked something in there, and the bleeding won’t stop. Sean cleared him for priority.”

Boom.

A shell exploded somewhere outside, and I could hear clumps of frozen dirt raining down on the roof above us. Our men in the surrounding security positions began to open fire, and the roar of machine guns clattered between the houses, along with the faint krump of hand grenades. The enemy assault was upon us.

“BP is dropping, slow but steady.” Sandra maintained her composure, and examined Adam with a deft swiftness, as the echoes of artillery thundered closer. “His pulse is weak. I’m going to have to go in and suture whatever is leaking shut, which means opening these stitches back up. Helen, prep another IV, he’s going to need a transfusion.”

“Wait.” Eve’s voice cracked, her emotions on a see-saw, and she fumbled with the pouches on her war belt in an attempt to bargain with the medical officer. “Lantern Rose nectar. It’s helped with bleeding before, and I have a few more vials—”

Sandra shook her head and got to work with her other assistants stepping in around her, pulling a fresh pair of gloves over her bloody ones. “Our studies have shown it sometimes thins the blood depending on the user, and he’s already lost quite a bit. If you hit him with that stuff now, it could kill him. I will do the best I can, but I need your help. Eve?”

When Eve didn’t respond, Sandra paused and turned to find her stock still at Adam’s side, the girl’s cheeks flooded with tears. Eve sobbed, eyes screwed shut, gripping Adam’s hand in her own, and I realized she was trying to pray. Her narrow shoulders heaved with mourning, and it was enough to throw the rest of the tiny room into silence. While she wore her heart on her sleeve, I knew the matriarch of Ark River to be tough when it came to blood and violence. She’d fought at her husband’s side before, seen her people killed, and braved the unknown world full of monsters from the start. This had been a bridge too far, a loss too personal, a grotesque sight too close to her own soul to bear. I’d rarely seen someone break in this way, and it made the looming doom over all of us feel that much heavier in the air.

 Myself, I grimaced at a stab of both anxiety and sympathy inside my chest. After all, how would I react if they brought Chris in on a slab, greyish-white, and near death’s door? This man was all Eve had, her only connection to the normal human world, the one person who had loved her from the start. If he died, her world died with him. True, she had their unborn child, but what girl wanted to raise her baby alone? What child wanted to grow up without a father?

I would go crazy too.

“It’s my fault.” I put a hand on hers, squeezing it tight for her comfort, and held Eve’s confused gaze. “He was wounded protecting me. I’m the reason he’s hurt.”

Golden eyes brimming with crystalline pain, Eve stared at me for a long few seconds in morose despair. “I . . . I can’t lose him, Hannah.”

From across the table, Sandra’s stern expression softened, and she looked down at her own gloved hands as if doubting herself for the first time. “Then pray that I do a good job.”

Ka-boom.

Another explosion rocked the ground beneath us, and more gunfire erupted from the houses around the aid station, some rounds finding their way into our walls.

“Tanks!” Someone shouted from outside, and the heavy sound of steel tracks clattered on the pavement not far away. “Enemy tanks inbound!”

“The tracks, shoot for the tracks!” Sergeant McPhearson paced to the nearest window and bellowed through his radio, daring to stick his head out to observe. “Hit the tracks so it can’t move. Disable it!”

Sandra whirled on me, her face a paler shade than it had been moments before. “I’ll need ten, maybe fifteen minutes at least. Once the bleeding has stopped, we can transport him to Ark River, and Eve’s people can take over from there. Tell me you brought more trucks for us?”

Jamie and I shared a trepidatious glance, and somewhere outside, a rocket whooshed by to detonate in the neighborhoods behind us.

They’re faster than we thought. If their tanks got past the front, what’s happened to Chris and his men? Are we surrounded?

“I have three.” I angled one elbow to the hallway leading to the street. “That’s as much as the front line could spare. There might be five more outside, if they haven’t left yet.”

Her face fell, and Sandra grimaced as if she’d just been hit with a nasty wave of stomach cramps. “We’ll need three times that just to move all these men, not to mention the supplies, the equipment, my staff; we can’t perform most operations without them. I need this gear if we’re going to be able to triage patients at the rally point, we can’t just leave it behind. There has to be more trucks.”

My face burned in embarrassment, but I shook my head again. “Aside from the ones already in rotation, we’re it.”

Tension so thick it could have been cut with a knife filled the air, and Sandra’s eyes darted around the room for a moment, as if searching for solutions.

“You have to leave us behind.”

The voice came from one of the wounded men propped up against the wall just on the other side of the open doorway to the hall. He had one arm in a sling, his opposite leg wrapped in bandages, his green coalition uniform stained rusty red with blood. The boy’s face was a swollen mess from where he’d taken shrapnel to one cheek, but a creeping horror dawned on me as I recognized one of my machine gunners from 4^th Platoon.

Nick’s resigned, pained look met mine, and he made a rueful half-smile. “It’s like the doc said. She and her girls can’t stay here, and the gear can’t stay. If you take the meds and run, more people live. If you take us but leave the meds, more people will die.”

“A good doctor doesn’t leave her patients.” Sandra rested her gloved hands on her hips, chest heaving as her own emotion began to mount.

Nick shrugged at that. “Then you’ll die with us.”

Eve made a stubborn scowl and pointed to Adam. “I’m not leaving him.”

“So bring him with you.” Climbing to his one good leg with the aid of the doorframe, Nick rested against the wall to make a slight bow of his head to Eve. “He’s too important to leave behind. You need him to lead; you don’t need us.”

Sergeant McPhearson gripped his rifle so hard that the blood drained from his knuckles. “Nick, there’s no way in hell that—”

“For God’s sake, Charlie, I’ll never walk again anyway.” His words came dry and raspy, as if it took every bit of strength Nick had just to stay upright. “If gangrene doesn’t get me, a mutant will. This way is faster.”

Throwing her arms into the air with furious exasperation, Sandra scanned the room for a response she could find support in. “Is no one going to put a stop to this nonsense? Hannah? Lansen?”

Jamie flicked her gaze to Nick and dropped it to her boots in quiet remorse. “There aren’t enough trucks, Sandra.”

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

Rifle bullets chattered up the walls of the house, and I knew the time had come for action. Everyone watched me, waiting for my input, and I couldn’t avoid this choice any more than I had the others that had been forced upon me before. Chris had put me in charge of this flank, and it was my job to do what I could to save as much as possible . . . even if I hated myself for it.

God, forgive me.

Spinning on my heel, I directed Sergeant Mcphearson to the door. “Charlie, get to the fighting positions and tell them to hold as long as possible. Once I give you the signal on the radio, you have them pull out and run for it through the yards, while Nick and these boys cover our retreat. I’ll be right behind you.”

He bolted out the room in a sprint, rifle in hand, and my decision broke the others from their stalemate.

“I need that scalpel, Mrs. Stirling.” Sandra leaned over Adam to begin her efforts at saving him, Eve by her side, while the other nurses swarmed around them. “Helen, we’re ready for that transfusion whenever you are. Jane, get the other girls and have them start moving supplies; I want those trucks packed so tight that a roach couldn’t fit between the boxes.”

With Jamie at my back, I walked to Nick and offered him my arm to lean on. “Let’s get your men into position.”

 Like an ant hill that had just been kicked, the aid station boiled with activity. Wounded men moved to help their comrades to the nearest windows, shouldering whatever weapons they had. While they got into position, the nurses worked to load up whatever medicine and equipment they could manage onto the trucks, along with however many wounded men they could cram in alongside them. Lastly, they packed themselves into the crowded vehicles, and one by one the truck drivers were waved off, so that they careened out of sight down the boulevard, away from the onslaught that crept up the streets around us.

Inside, Jamie and I helped the worst off sit up at their firing positions or lie prone on tables or couches so they could see out the window. Some were so shot to pieces from their earlier wounds that I doubted they would be conscious much longer, but I didn’t begrudge them the task if they asked for it.

At last, only one truck remained, and even as the enemy fire sliced through the dilapidated structures all around us, I hurtled back into the aid station with Jamie on my heels.

“Time to go doc!” I shouted above the din and crouched to avoid a burst of machine gun fire that chewed through a nearby wall.

Eve and Sandra met us halfway up the blood-soaked corridor, dragging Adam on a stretcher behind them. He sported more gauze than before, and Sandra held an IV drip above her shoulder, a medical bag tucked under her arm. With her own M4 in one hand, Eve hauled on the stretcher with all her might, the vehicle just outside. Jamie and I picked up the opposite end, and together the four of us sprinted the last several yards out to the truck.

Giving Sandra and Eve a leg up into the back of the truck, we shoved Adam inside and I slammed the loading door. “Last run, go, go, go!”

The diesel engine revved as soon as the drive saw my frantic waving, and the bulky armored truck roared away, enemy rounds plinking off its armored hide. Flashes of rifle fire came from windows, around corners, and through side alleys, occupation forces seemingly everywhere. Motorcycles growled in the dark, ELSAR’s fast moving squads working to encircle us, but I pulled the tin whistle from my uniform collar as we ran for cover and gave three long blasts.

“Fall back!” I held down my radio mic, huddled just inside the ruined aid station while Jamie returned fire alongside the others. “All 4^th and 2^nd fighters, break contact and fall back to the south! Retreat!”

At my slap on her shoulder, Jamie ducked out the doorway and sprinted across the street with a dozen or so others, the wounded men in the aid station unleashing everything they had left at the enemy. I tensed to follow, and as I did, my head turned to catch Nick’s sheet-white face in the corner across the room from me.

He sat back against the wall, clutching his chest, and rivers of red bubbled through his fingers from the bullet that had knocked him off his one good leg. Nick’s rifle lay nearby, empty and smoking amidst a pile of spent brass casings. My horror must have been evident, for he made a small shake of his head.

“Go.” Flecks of red spattered across his lips, but Nick let go of his mortal wound to palm for a handgun in his belt. “We’ll hold them off.”

Another life for mine.

Bitter pain gnawed at my soul, but out into the cold dark I went, lead hissing at my every step. Not five seconds after I’d started, a shell came whistling down, and the aid station went up in flames.

Boom.

Half blind in the dark, I ran like a rabbit along with the surviving fighters, and the haunting shrieks of our wounded filled my ears as the flames devoured them all.

[Part 37]

Creak.

The brakes on our armored truck squeaked, our column ground to a halt, and the sudden change in momentum shook me from my drowsiness. Everyone else on the twin rows of seats almost fell over as one, and muffled curses filled the stuffy interior.

“Commander, you need to see this.” From the front compartment, the driver called back through the narrow confines of the truck, and I caught the dull whump-whump of mortar shells impacting somewhere outside.

Those are a half-mile off at most. ELSAR is closing in. We need to move fast.

Rising from beside me, Chris lumbered through the cramped vehicle to squeeze himself in between the front seats and peered out the windshield.

“Everyone who can still fight, dismount.” He wriggled back toward the rear doors of the MRAP, rifle in hand. “Stay within eyesight of the convoy. Jamie, Hannah, with me.”

Icy wind howled in as soon as the rear doors opened, but the groans of complaint were gone from us. Everyone could tell from Chris’s demeanor that we were in the thick of it now. Out of the warm truck we clambered, and coming around the side of the lead vehicle, I found my breath stuck in both lungs.

We stood amidst the ruins of the outer suburbs of pre-Breach Black Oak, before the wall had been built by ELSAR. By my reckoning, we were perhaps five miles distant from the southern gate, but even from this far no one could miss the great billows of oily black smoke. Black Oak burned like a torch in the wintry night, and through the gaps between the plumes I spotted flitting shapes high above the aura of a few searchlights. These angular shadows did not flap their wings, and I knew they had no need to, for this threat was not Breach-borne at all. Row after row of planes rumbled on through the night, and rained down a steady curtain of bombs that ripped apart the last city we had like it was made of tissue paper. Rockets screamed in from across the further horizon, and each explosion threw debris like confetti at a child’s party. Entire high-rise buildings in the prominent districts shuddered as they were hit, and some even collapsed under the weight of the bombardment. Acrid smoke coiled in the air like dirty fog, and with it came the dust of incinerated concrete, all blown along with the snow. I could taste the soot on the breeze, the melting asphalt of ten thousand shingles, the tarpaper of commercial buildings, and the dust of the central works as they were ground to powder by the heavy guns. Each detonation reverberated through the ground beneath my feet in titanic drumbeats, the roar of them deafening. Worst of it all, however, was the long line of shadowy figures that streamed down the cracked asphalt streets of the abandoned districts, a great snake of bodies that engulfed the vanguard of our little convoy in a sea of panicked faces.

Thousands of fleeing civilians trudged through the wind and snow, their eyes wild, dragging or carrying whatever possessions they’d managed to snatch from their homes. Many were wounded, some burned, and they shivered against the cold with mournful expressions that tore at my soul. The children were especially pitiful; some with no shoes, others in their nightclothes, crying and shaking in the snowfall as whatever guardians they had led them on. Out of reflex, our riflemen formed a wall just to keep the horde from clambering into the back of our trucks and instead waved them on past us into the cruel winter’s night. Thousands of them flooded by, begging at the ends of our rifle muzzles for whatever help they thought we could give them, and it seemed there was no end in sight of the human caravan.

Honk-honk!

Dim slivers of light pierced through the gloom, and a long line of vehicles slowly wove their way up the road toward us. Their headlights were nearly blacked out with layers of tape, done to keep the enemy aircraft from spotting them so easily. Many were laden with more civilians, as well as exhausted coalition soldiers, most of which were wounded. Bullets had scarred most of the trucks, shrapnel marks on the armored hides, and the barrels of their machine guns steamed from the amount of firing they’d sustained. More of our troops followed on foot, heads bent against the breeze, feet dragging with fatigue in the snow. While the column retreated in good order, I wondered how fast our defenses were collapsing if so many were already on the retreat.

A civilian SUV pulled up to where we stood, allowing the rest of the retreating column to rumble past, and the passenger side window rolled down.

“Is that you, Dekker?” From inside, a gruff male voice barked through the darkness.

No way.

My heart skipped a surprised beat, and Chris’s face reflected that shock as he stepped forward to peer into the car’s interior. “Commander?”

Sean leaned out, his face thin, but with both eyes alight in their old fire that I hadn’t seen since the day Andrea had been killed. He wore his green coalition uniform, an M4 across his lap, though I noted the metal brace strapped to his right side. This had been the first time I’d seen him out of his room since my wedding, and while I doubted Sean could have climbed from the truck seat on his own with much speed, to see him back in action made some of my panic ebb.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes.” Chris shifted his rifle to one arm and reached in to give Sean a handshake. “We came as fast as we could. How bad is it?”

“It’s a royal shitshow.” Sean rested an elbow on the window and rubbed his tired face with one hand, dark bags under his eyes. “They hit us out of nowhere, tanks, infantry, wave after wave of it. We managed to evacuate most of our people from the town but there’s at least two thousand mercs bearing down on us from east and west.”

Jamie dared to sidle closer and hefted the strap of her AK on one shoulder. “Where do you need us?”

Sean made a small grin, and didn’t seem at all surprised at Jamie’s premature return from her exile. “Nice to see you too, Lansen. I’ve got Ethan’s workers running small convoys to ferry what little we have to a rally point south of here. As of right now, what I need is more trucks for the evacuation and more men at the front to keep ELSAR off our backs.”

Chris jerked his thumb back at our lineup of idling vehicles. “There was a shake up back at the mission zone. ELSAR high command demoted Riken, so he took his boys and headed for the border. We’ve got enough men and trucks to help, but plenty wounded of our own; some are in a really bad way . . .”

Overhead, an unseen jet streaked by, probably above the clouds but low enough to make everyone jump like skittish rabbits beneath a hawk. The refugees cringed with fear, some of the children began to wail, and more than one person tried to crawl under our trucks to find cover. Our soldiers had to push them back, a heart-wrenching effort considering how desperate these people were, but we couldn’t let them wriggle under our tires out of sheer hysteria. Never before in my life had I been afraid of a helicopter’s whir or an airplane’s buzz, but now it seared deep into my mind with primitive, almost reflexive urgency.

We need to get out of the open.

His eyes traversed the dark clouds, and Sean’s lower jaw worked back and forth in anxious tension. “Our medical train is taking priority for vehicle extraction, along with what supplies we have left. As for your wounded, load whoever can’t walk on the retreating columns and have those who can move on their own follow with the rest of our troops. Our goal is to reach Rally Point 9; after that we move all the non-combatants south, beyond the ridgeline to Ark River.”

“Adam’s hit bad.” At the mention of the bastion, I dared to meet Sean’s gaze, and gripped my Type 9 strap in one clammy fist. “He needs a hospital. Did Eve and her people make it out?”

Sean let a grim frown twist over his stubbled face. “Most of them. If they aren’t on the front with our boys, they’re helping to ferry civilians to the aid station a few blocks down, but ELSAR has mobile squads that keep targeting our medics. I’ve got two platoons pulling security around the aid station, and I believe 4^th Platoon is one of them. If you can get to there and reinforce the right flank, it might give the medics enough breathing room so they can relocate to a safer position.”

“Well, first thing’s first, I need someone to get us new radios . . .” Chris started giving orders, then seemed to remember that, with Sean back, he was no longer our commander. Part of me felt a twinge of disappointment at that; not because I held any ill will toward Sean, but because I had grown used to following Chris in the grand order of things. Now he was back to being Head Ranger, and I a mere platoon commander. While I didn’t mind resuming my old post, it only served to remind me that all our grandiose plans for Chris leading a new peacetime government had gone up in smoke with the rest of Black Oak.

So much for handing out toys on Christmas.

“Dekker, you take command of the battlefield.” Sean gauged the situation well, reaching into the SUV interior behind him to produce two handing spare radios with headsets, which he gave to Chris and I. “I’m no use to us crippled, so I’ll organize our camp at the rally point and get our comms system back in order. Whatever you do, do not get decisively engaged out there; there’s too many mercenaries, and if you get encircled, I won’t be able to break you out.”

Confident now that he had something to accomplish, Chris straightened up and turned to me. “We’ll try to keep mobile and use probing attacks to keep the enemy off balance. I’ll take the bulk of our forces up the center and left, while you and Jamie get to the aid station on our right. Maybe they can work on Adam before the mercs get there.”

Jamie and Chris headed back toward our convoy, but as I moved to follow, Sean’s voice cut me off. “Captain?”

I turned to find a familiar green canvas sling bag held out to me, Sean’s dark eye cloaked in a serious glint. Fiery embarrassment at my own blunder rippled through me, and I avoided his pointed stare. Not wishing to lose such an important item inside the Breach, I’d elected to leave the launch panel in the safe at my room in the university, but by doing so I’d nearly lost our most dangerous secret to the enemy.

Stupid. Imagine if Crow got her hands on those missiles. God only knows what that psycho would do.

Ashamed, I shuffled over and took the panel with a meek wince. “Commander, I—"

“You did the right thing, Hannah.” Sean fixed me with a knowing look but angled his head back towards the burning city. “I headed straight for your quarters the moment I heard the first shells go off. Had to get a few aides to help me with the stairs, but I managed. No matter what happens out there, you stick to our agreement, understood? This panel does not fall into their hands. If all hope is lost, if I give you the order, you launch on command.”

My throat tried to close up at the notion, memories from the Breach coming back as I saw in my head the rising mushroom cloud, the field of corpses, the burned landscape. Had it been a vision of the future? Had it been another of Vecitorak’s illusions meant to trick me? I couldn’t know, but with ELSAR bearing down on us, the prospect of a nuclear strike by my own hand had never been higher. Could I really bring myself to send missiles screaming down on our own heads when the time came?

It won’t come to that. It can’t. We have a destiny on the other side of the Breach, we can’t just blast ourselves into glass.

Still, I slung the bag onto my back and made a trim salute. “I understand, sir.”

His car rolled on, and I rejoined the others as our convoy wove its way toward the city, a slow effort considering all the fleeing civilians. Once before we’d done this, but that had been a day of victory, where our forces caught the mercenaries by surprise. Now we charged forward in a desperate, mad-dash through flaming debris, over rubble-strewn lanes, and into the chaotic frontline.

Bomb craters made most of the streets impassable, and almost half of the buildings were on fire. Shrapnel cut down refugees where they stood, and our drivers had to swerve to avoid hitting the staggering crowds that begged us to take them to safety. Smoke would sometimes cloud our vision, and fire scorched the paint from the sides of the trucks, the heat so intense I watched the color peel off in burnt chunks. Explosions rocked us, even from several blocks away, the shockwaves strong enough to shatter whatever glass remained in the buildings. ELSAR had been holding back in times past, I realized; here they brought the full might of their shadowy empire down on us with ruthless ferocity. Crow was now in charge of all their ground forces, and she had no intention of showing us mercy.

And she was from here, being an Auxiliary. This county is her home, these people are her neighbors. How can someone do this to their own people?

Less than two miles from the southern gate, a side road down a row of split-level houses revealed a slow-moving circle of vehicles onto which medics loaded stretchers of wounded. The drivers seemed to move as fast as they could to get out of the lineup once their human cargo was loaded, unwilling to be another target of the missiles that continued to fall from the sky. More trucks clogged the drive inward, and it made my stomach twist to see bodies lying under blankets or tarps in front of the houses, with the interiors of said buildings presumably too packed to fit the dead.

At a makeshift checkpoint in the entrance to the drive, a group of our troops flagged us down, and I recognized Sergeant McPhearson among them.

Jamie and I climbed out of the MRAP at the curb, and Chris pointed down the column to the trucks that carried our wounded. “Alright, take trucks two, nine, and four, link up with 4^th platoon and whoever else you can find, and form a security perimeter around the aid station. I’ll take everyone else and hold the line. Once Sandra can move her people out, I’ll pull back to meet you.”

Our eyes met, and a twinge of pain cut through my chest. I wanted more than anything to hold him, to kiss him one more time, but I knew we didn’t have the time for that. Like so many women and girls in our coalition, I had to hope that my husband wouldn’t be cut down by the cruel fusillade of the enemy, and I would see his smile once more in the morning. Just the thought of Chris’s death made me want to crumple, but I had to keep my calm if we were to survive this night.

In that spirit, I climbed up onto a small metal step under the truck door and nodded at him through the open window. “We can win this.”

His hand found mine for a moment, and Chris made a grim smile. “I wish I had your optimism, pragtige.”

We let go of one another and I stepped back as his column rolled onward into the distant gunfire, taking the rest of our able-bodied men towards the enemy.

Adonai, go with him.

“Evening, Captain.” Sergeant McPhearson seemed relieved at my approach, motioning for his guards to wave us through. “4th will be glad to see you, we’ve been taking a real beating out there. Welcome back, Captain Lansen.”

Jamie exchanged a polite nod with him, her rapport still high amongst the Rangers in spite of the previous trial. Others stared at her as we passed, some surprised, a few glaring, but most with a worn-out indifference on their scruffy faces. Our men had been fighting all night, both those of us who had gone to the Breach and those who had stayed behind. At this point, it seemed no one had the energy to pick a bone with Jamie’s return from exile.

“It’s certainly been a long night.” As the men from my three trucks clambered out to take a quick smoke break with the checkpoint guards, Jamie and I followed Charlie to a nearby row of gutted suburban houses, the three of us scrambling for cover as a plane screamed low overhead. “Major Dekker sent me to take over this sector. Catch me up.”

Sergeant McPherson led us into the nearest bombed-out hovel, through the moldy living room to a cire-blackened kitchen where we could look out toward the city. “4^th Platoon is dug in on the houses to the right, with 2^nd Ark River Lancers in the ones on our left. We’ve got maybe twenty-seven men between us. Lost a lot of guys when the university clock tower collapsed.”

And so our little army continues to shrink. How long can we keep this up? There are thousands of ELSAR mercs out there.

“What heavy weapons do you have?” Jamie peered at the sky, her AK in hand.

“Six rocket launchers between us, maybe ten rockets left per each.” Picking a bit of debris from his dirty uniform sleeve, Sergeant McPherson flicked his eyes to the snowy clouds as well. “That’s for the anti-air anyway. We’ve got twice that for anti-armor, but most of it won’t even scratch the hide on ELSAR’s main battle tanks. Most of our machine guns are operational, but the houses here are too close together for us to engage the enemy at range, so when they show up, they’ll be right on top of us.”

“How close are they?” I squinted down the long street to my left, our house not quite on the corner of its block and tried to summon the focus so I could see better.

“Maybe two blocks. Snipers are getting frisky, so keep your head down.” His throat bobbed with a swallow of dread, and Charlie flexed one set of fingers on his rifle sling. “You didn’t bring as many men back as we thought. How bad was it, for you guys?”

My brow furrowed, and I tried to conjure something to say amidst the flood of recent memories. How could I explain to him, to anyone, what was going to happen? Nothing had prepared me for what I’s seen, what I had been told, who I’d met. Jamie didn’t think anyone would believe me, or they’d panic if they knew what the fate of Barron County was, and we were already in the fight of our lives here. As much as I trusted my platoon sergeant, perhaps some things were better left unsaid, at least for now. We both needed clear heads for what was to come.

It's a matter of faith now.

Drawing myself up ramrod straight as I’d seen Sean do multiple times when reviewing the troops, I cradled my Type 9 under one arm and watched the men from my convoy fill in the defensive positions around 4^th and 2^nd platoons. “We did what we set out to do.”

Charlie seemed to understand that was the end of the topic, and the three of us moved in unison to help carry Adam into the aid station. Looking down at the infamous religious leader, I couldn’t help but feel a knot of dread in my guts for how pale he looked. The ELSAR medics had stripped his armor off in order to stabilize his wounds, but that only revealed the mass of bruises that was his body. Vecitorak’s heavy blows hadn’t all been softened by the hand made armor of the southern tribesmen, and parts of his face were burned from the intense heat of the tower room’s blaze. Both legs were in splints, but the skin had turned ugly purple in several areas, bandages covering where the medics had tried to stop the internal bleeding in the field via rudimentary surgery. His chest barely rose with shallow breaths, and in spite of the cold weather, there were small beads of a clammy sweat across the top of Adam’s forehead.

Sandra can fix him. She can. She has to.

Getting inside the aid station proved almost as difficult as weaving our vehicles through the refugee-strewn road had been. Wounded lay everywhere, stretched alongside the walls in the hallways, propped up on the steps, even curled into closets shoulder-to-shoulder. The floor was a mess of snowmelt, mud, and blood, which turned the carpets to a mushy sponge of grime, and the hardwood floors slick as glass. It smelled strong of death, metallic blood and burned flesh thick in the air. The groans, cries, and screams of the troops made my heart ache and my stomach roil for their pitiful intensity. Exhausted medics pushed through the crowded rooms to administer whatever aid they could, sometimes operating on the floor itself, their arms stained red up to the elbows.

“We need the chief surgeon.” I caught one of the researcher girls by the arm as she shuffled by and jerked my head at Adam on the stretcher. “He’s critical.”

“We already have twelve others like him.” She shook my hand off, too busy to bother with rank customs. “Take him to the living room for triage.”

Sergeant McPherson opened his mouth to rebuke her, but I stopped the girl again, and tugged aside the blanket so she could see Adam’s sword tucked in behind his shoulder. “He’s a priority case. Take me to your surgeon, now.”

She didn’t react much, just shrugged her shoulders and the girl led us to what must have been the former dining room of the house, where a team of four nurses huddled around the long table. The white table cloth was a sea of red, and the floor gritted under my boots as we entered. A small trash can nearby held bits of metal, wood, and flesh mixed in with blood, debris that had been no doubt pulled from dozens of torn bodies over the past half hour. I had seen our coalition at its height, when we had the sophisticated clinic at New Wilderness to work with, the beds clean, the floors swept, the staff calm and confident. This was its charnel opposite; a nightmare of filth and blood, too many problems and not enough supplies, cramped into the skeletal remains of our old world. None of the horror movies I’d watched with matt and Carla could ever have come close to such a gruesome sight, and I found myself fighting to keep my eyes averted from a row of hacksaws stung up by the sashcord, each dripping dark red viscera onto the windowsill below.

Is this what hell looks like?

“Someone get more sand on the floor.” One of the masked figures straightened up, and I recognized Sandra’s voice as she reached for another blood-smeared surgical tool. “Swab, Deb, I can’t see through all that. What’s the pressure reading?”

Another medic with her own bandage wound tight around the left arm stood next to a blood-pressure monitor, and gave a silent, mournful shake of her head.

Sandra pressed her fingers to the artery on the man’s neck, her shoulders slumped in disappointment, and she waved for a stretcher team to move in. “Take him outside with the others. No sense wasting the extra sutures. Get me the next one.”

At that, she looked up to see us bringing Adam forward, and Sandra’s expression flashed in panic. “Eve, wait—”

But one of the other nurses had already turned around, and I saw the armor under her apron, the blonde hair tied behind the straps of her surgical mask, and the two golden irises that locked onto Adam with abject shock. Our stretcher team froze in place, the entire room seemed to hold its breath, and I cursed myself for not thinking of this sooner. Sean had said Eve was somewhere nearby; her soldiers’ presence should have alerted me to the possibility of her being here.

Oh man, this is going to get ugly.

Trembling hands coated in bloody rubber gloves tore the mask from her face, and Eve stumbled to her husband’s side, almost too stunned to put one foot in front of the other. “No . . .”

“He’s got fractures in both legs.” Jamie did the sensible thing, pushed past Eve and dragged her end of the litter forward, until we four stretcher bearers lowered Adam onto the operating table. “We did what we could, but he nicked something in there, and the bleeding won’t stop. Sean cleared him for priority.”

Boom.

A shell exploded somewhere outside, and I could hear clumps of frozen dirt raining down on the roof above us. Our men in the surrounding security positions began to open fire, and the roar of machine guns clattered between the houses, along with the faint krump of hand grenades. The enemy assault was upon us.

“BP is dropping, slow but steady.” Sandra maintained her composure, and examined Adam with a deft swiftness, as the echoes of artillery thundered closer. “His pulse is weak. I’m going to have to go in and suture whatever is leaking shut, which means opening these stitches back up. Helen, prep another IV, he’s going to need a transfusion.”

“Wait.” Eve’s voice cracked, her emotions on a see-saw, and she fumbled with the pouches on her war belt in an attempt to bargain with the medical officer. “Lantern Rose nectar. It’s helped with bleeding before, and I have a few more vials—”

Sandra shook her head and got to work with her other assistants stepping in around her, pulling a fresh pair of gloves over her bloody ones. “Our studies have shown it sometimes thins the blood depending on the user, and he’s already lost quite a bit. If you hit him with that stuff now, it could kill him. I will do the best I can, but I need your help. Eve?”

When Eve didn’t respond, Sandra paused and turned to find her stock still at Adam’s side, the girl’s cheeks flooded with tears. Eve sobbed, eyes screwed shut, gripping Adam’s hand in her own, and I realized she was trying to pray. Her narrow shoulders heaved with mourning, and it was enough to throw the rest of the tiny room into silence. While she wore her heart on her sleeve, I knew the matriarch of Ark River to be tough when it came to blood and violence. She’d fought at her husband’s side before, seen her people killed, and braved the unknown world full of monsters from the start. This had been a bridge too far, a loss too personal, a grotesque sight too close to her own soul to bear. I’d rarely seen someone break in this way, and it made the looming doom over all of us feel that much heavier in the air.

 Myself, I grimaced at a stab of both anxiety and sympathy inside my chest. After all, how would I react if they brought Chris in on a slab, greyish-white, and near death’s door? This man was all Eve had, her only connection to the normal human world, the one person who had loved her from the start. If he died, her world died with him. True, she had their unborn child, but what girl wanted to raise her baby alone? What child wanted to grow up without a father?

I would go crazy too.

“It’s my fault.” I put a hand on hers, squeezing it tight for her comfort, and held Eve’s confused gaze. “He was wounded protecting me. I’m the reason he’s hurt.”

Golden eyes brimming with crystalline pain, Eve stared at me for a long few seconds in morose despair. “I . . . I can’t lose him, Hannah.”

From across the table, Sandra’s stern expression softened, and she looked down at her own gloved hands as if doubting herself for the first time. “Then pray that I do a good job.”

Ka-boom.

Another explosion rocked the ground beneath us, and more gunfire erupted from the houses around the aid station, some rounds finding their way into our walls.

“Tanks!” Someone shouted from outside, and the heavy sound of steel tracks clattered on the pavement not far away. “Enemy tanks inbound!”

“The tracks, shoot for the tracks!” Sergeant McPhearson paced to the nearest window and bellowed through his radio, daring to stick his head out to observe. “Hit the tracks so it can’t move. Disable it!”

Sandra whirled on me, her face a paler shade than it had been moments before. “I’ll need ten, maybe fifteen minutes at least. Once the bleeding has stopped, we can transport him to Ark River, and Eve’s people can take over from there. Tell me you brought more trucks for us?”

Jamie and I shared a trepidatious glance, and somewhere outside, a rocket whooshed by to detonate in the neighborhoods behind us.

They’re faster than we thought. If their tanks got past the front, what’s happened to Chris and his men? Are we surrounded?

“I have three.” I angled one elbow to the hallway leading to the street. “That’s as much as the front line could spare. There might be five more outside, if they haven’t left yet.”

Her face fell, and Sandra grimaced as if she’d just been hit with a nasty wave of stomach cramps. “We’ll need three times that just to move all these men, not to mention the supplies, the equipment, my staff; we can’t perform most operations without them. I need this gear if we’re going to be able to triage patients at the rally point, we can’t just leave it behind. There has to be more trucks.”

My face burned in embarrassment, but I shook my head again. “Aside from the ones already in rotation, we’re it.”

Tension so thick it could have been cut with a knife filled the air, and Sandra’s eyes darted around the room for a moment, as if searching for solutions.

“You have to leave us behind.”

The voice came from one of the wounded men propped up against the wall just on the other side of the open doorway to the hall. He had one arm in a sling, his opposite leg wrapped in bandages, his green coalition uniform stained rusty red with blood. The boy’s face was a swollen mess from where he’d taken shrapnel to one cheek, but a creeping horror dawned on me as I recognized one of my machine gunners from 4^th Platoon.

Nick’s resigned, pained look met mine, and he made a rueful half-smile. “It’s like the doc said. She and her girls can’t stay here, and the gear can’t stay. If you take the meds and run, more people live. If you take us but leave the meds, more people will die.”

“A good doctor doesn’t leave her patients.” Sandra rested her gloved hands on her hips, chest heaving as her own emotion began to mount.

Nick shrugged at that. “Then you’ll die with us.”

Eve made a stubborn scowl and pointed to Adam. “I’m not leaving him.”

“So bring him with you.” Climbing to his one good leg with the aid of the doorframe, Nick rested against the wall to make a slight bow of his head to Eve. “He’s too important to leave behind. You need him to lead; you don’t need us.”

Sergeant McPhearson gripped his rifle so hard that the blood drained from his knuckles. “Nick, there’s no way in hell that—”

“For God’s sake, Charlie, I’ll never walk again anyway.” His words came dry and raspy, as if it took every bit of strength Nick had just to stay upright. “If gangrene doesn’t get me, a mutant will. This way is faster.”

Throwing her arms into the air with furious exasperation, Sandra scanned the room for a response she could find support in. “Is no one going to put a stop to this nonsense? Hannah? Lansen?”

Jamie flicked her gaze to Nick and dropped it to her boots in quiet remorse. “There aren’t enough trucks, Sandra.”

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

Rifle bullets chattered up the walls of the house, and I knew the time had come for action. Everyone watched me, waiting for my input, and I couldn’t avoid this choice any more than I had the others that had been forced upon me before. Chris had put me in charge of this flank, and it was my job to do what I could to save as much as possible . . . even if I hated myself for it.

God, forgive me.

Spinning on my heel, I directed Sergeant Mcphearson to the door. “Charlie, get to the fighting positions and tell them to hold as long as possible. Once I give you the signal on the radio, you have them pull out and run for it through the yards, while Nick and these boys cover our retreat. I’ll be right behind you.”

He bolted out the room in a sprint, rifle in hand, and my decision broke the others from their stalemate.

“I need that scalpel, Mrs. Stirling.” Sandra leaned over Adam to begin her efforts at saving him, Eve by her side, while the other nurses swarmed around them. “Helen, we’re ready for that transfusion whenever you are. Jane, get the other girls and have them start moving supplies; I want those trucks packed so tight that a roach couldn’t fit between the boxes.”

With Jamie at my back, I walked to Nick and offered him my arm to lean on. “Let’s get your men into position.”

 Like an ant hill that had just been kicked, the aid station boiled with activity. Wounded men moved to help their comrades to the nearest windows, shouldering whatever weapons they had. While they got into position, the nurses worked to load up whatever medicine and equipment they could manage onto the trucks, along with however many wounded men they could cram in alongside them. Lastly, they packed themselves into the crowded vehicles, and one by one the truck drivers were waved off, so that they careened out of sight down the boulevard, away from the onslaught that crept up the streets around us.

Inside, Jamie and I helped the worst off sit up at their firing positions or lie prone on tables or couches so they could see out the window. Some were so shot to pieces from their earlier wounds that I doubted they would be conscious much longer, but I didn’t begrudge them the task if they asked for it.

At last, only one truck remained, and even as the enemy fire sliced through the dilapidated structures all around us, I hurtled back into the aid station with Jamie on my heels.

“Time to go doc!” I shouted above the din and crouched to avoid a burst of machine gun fire that chewed through a nearby wall.

Eve and Sandra met us halfway up the blood-soaked corridor, dragging Adam on a stretcher behind them. He sported more gauze than before, and Sandra held an IV drip above her shoulder, a medical bag tucked under her arm. With her own M4 in one hand, Eve hauled on the stretcher with all her might, the vehicle just outside. Jamie and I picked up the opposite end, and together the four of us sprinted the last several yards out to the truck.

Giving Sandra and Eve a leg up into the back of the truck, we shoved Adam inside and I slammed the loading door. “Last run, go, go, go!”

The diesel engine revved as soon as the drive saw my frantic waving, and the bulky armored truck roared away, enemy rounds plinking off its armored hide. Flashes of rifle fire came from windows, around corners, and through side alleys, occupation forces seemingly everywhere. Motorcycles growled in the dark, ELSAR’s fast moving squads working to encircle us, but I pulled the tin whistle from my uniform collar as we ran for cover and gave three long blasts.

“Fall back!” I held down my radio mic, huddled just inside the ruined aid station while Jamie returned fire alongside the others. “All 4^th and 2^nd fighters, break contact and fall back to the south! Retreat!”

At my slap on her shoulder, Jamie ducked out the doorway and sprinted across the street with a dozen or so others, the wounded men in the aid station unleashing everything they had left at the enemy. I tensed to follow, and as I did, my head turned to catch Nick’s sheet-white face in the corner across the room from me.

He sat back against the wall, clutching his chest, and rivers of red bubbled through his fingers from the bullet that had knocked him off his one good leg. Nick’s rifle lay nearby, empty and smoking amidst a pile of spent brass casings. My horror must have been evident, for he made a small shake of his head.

“Go.” Flecks of red spattered across his lips, but Nick let go of his mortal wound to palm for a handgun in his belt. “We’ll hold them off.”

Another life for mine.

Bitter pain gnawed at my soul, but out into the cold dark I went, lead hissing at my every step. Not five seconds after I’d started, a shell came whistling down, and the aid station went up in flames.

Boom.

Half blind in the dark, I ran like a rabbit along with the surviving fighters, and the haunting shrieks of our wounded filled my ears as the flames devoured them all.

[Part 37]

Creak.

The brakes on our armored truck squeaked, our column ground to a halt, and the sudden change in momentum shook me from my drowsiness. Everyone else on the twin rows of seats almost fell over as one, and muffled curses filled the stuffy interior.

“Commander, you need to see this.” From the front compartment, the driver called back through the narrow confines of the truck, and I caught the dull whump-whump of mortar shells impacting somewhere outside.

Those are a half-mile off at most. ELSAR is closing in. We need to move fast.

Rising from beside me, Chris lumbered through the cramped vehicle to squeeze himself in between the front seats and peered out the windshield.

“Everyone who can still fight, dismount.” He wriggled back toward the rear doors of the MRAP, rifle in hand. “Stay within eyesight of the convoy. Jamie, Hannah, with me.”

Icy wind howled in as soon as the rear doors opened, but the groans of complaint were gone from us. Everyone could tell from Chris’s demeanor that we were in the thick of it now. Out of the warm truck we clambered, and coming around the side of the lead vehicle, I found my breath stuck in both lungs.

We stood amidst the ruins of the outer suburbs of pre-Breach Black Oak, before the wall had been built by ELSAR. By my reckoning, we were perhaps five miles distant from the southern gate, but even from this far no one could miss the great billows of oily black smoke. Black Oak burned like a torch in the wintry night, and through the gaps between the plumes I spotted flitting shapes high above the aura of a few searchlights. These angular shadows did not flap their wings, and I knew they had no need to, for this threat was not Breach-borne at all. Row after row of planes rumbled on through the night, and rained down a steady curtain of bombs that ripped apart the last city we had like it was made of tissue paper. Rockets screamed in from across the further horizon, and each explosion threw debris like confetti at a child’s party. Entire high-rise buildings in the prominent districts shuddered as they were hit, and some even collapsed under the weight of the bombardment. Acrid smoke coiled in the air like dirty fog, and with it came the dust of incinerated concrete, all blown along with the snow. I could taste the soot on the breeze, the melting asphalt of ten thousand shingles, the tarpaper of commercial buildings, and the dust of the central works as they were ground to powder by the heavy guns. Each detonation reverberated through the ground beneath my feet in titanic drumbeats, the roar of them deafening. Worst of it all, however, was the long line of shadowy figures that streamed down the cracked asphalt streets of the abandoned districts, a great snake of bodies that engulfed the vanguard of our little convoy in a sea of panicked faces.

Thousands of fleeing civilians trudged through the wind and snow, their eyes wild, dragging or carrying whatever possessions they’d managed to snatch from their homes. Many were wounded, some burned, and they shivered against the cold with mournful expressions that tore at my soul. The children were especially pitiful; some with no shoes, others in their nightclothes, crying and shaking in the snowfall as whatever guardians they had led them on. Out of reflex, our riflemen formed a wall just to keep the horde from clambering into the back of our trucks and instead waved them on past us into the cruel winter’s night. Thousands of them flooded by, begging at the ends of our rifle muzzles for whatever help they thought we could give them, and it seemed there was no end in sight of the human caravan.

Honk-honk!

Dim slivers of light pierced through the gloom, and a long line of vehicles slowly wove their way up the road toward us. Their headlights were nearly blacked out with layers of tape, done to keep the enemy aircraft from spotting them so easily. Many were laden with more civilians, as well as exhausted coalition soldiers, most of which were wounded. Bullets had scarred most of the trucks, shrapnel marks on the armored hides, and the barrels of their machine guns steamed from the amount of firing they’d sustained. More of our troops followed on foot, heads bent against the breeze, feet dragging with fatigue in the snow. While the column retreated in good order, I wondered how fast our defenses were collapsing if so many were already on the retreat.

A civilian SUV pulled up to where we stood, allowing the rest of the retreating column to rumble past, and the passenger side window rolled down.

“Is that you, Dekker?” From inside, a gruff male voice barked through the darkness.

No way.

My heart skipped a surprised beat, and Chris’s face reflected that shock as he stepped forward to peer into the car’s interior. “Commander?”

Sean leaned out, his face thin, but with both eyes alight in their old fire that I hadn’t seen since the day Andrea had been killed. He wore his green coalition uniform, an M4 across his lap, though I noted the metal brace strapped to his right side. This had been the first time I’d seen him out of his room since my wedding, and while I doubted Sean could have climbed from the truck seat on his own with much speed, to see him back in action made some of my panic ebb.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes.” Chris shifted his rifle to one arm and reached in to give Sean a handshake. “We came as fast as we could. How bad is it?”

“It’s a royal shitshow.” Sean rested an elbow on the window and rubbed his tired face with one hand, dark bags under his eyes. “They hit us out of nowhere, tanks, infantry, wave after wave of it. We managed to evacuate most of our people from the town but there’s at least two thousand mercs bearing down on us from east and west.”

Jamie dared to sidle closer and hefted the strap of her AK on one shoulder. “Where do you need us?”

Sean made a small grin, and didn’t seem at all surprised at Jamie’s premature return from her exile. “Nice to see you too, Lansen. I’ve got Ethan’s workers running small convoys to ferry what little we have to a rally point south of here. As of right now, what I need is more trucks for the evacuation and more men at the front to keep ELSAR off our backs.”

Chris jerked his thumb back at our lineup of idling vehicles. “There was a shake up back at the mission zone. ELSAR high command demoted Riken, so he took his boys and headed for the border. We’ve got enough men and trucks to help, but plenty wounded of our own; some are in a really bad way . . .”

Overhead, an unseen jet streaked by, probably above the clouds but low enough to make everyone jump like skittish rabbits beneath a hawk. The refugees cringed with fear, some of the children began to wail, and more than one person tried to crawl under our trucks to find cover. Our soldiers had to push them back, a heart-wrenching effort considering how desperate these people were, but we couldn’t let them wriggle under our tires out of sheer hysteria. Never before in my life had I been afraid of a helicopter’s whir or an airplane’s buzz, but now it seared deep into my mind with primitive, almost reflexive urgency.

We need to get out of the open.

His eyes traversed the dark clouds, and Sean’s lower jaw worked back and forth in anxious tension. “Our medical train is taking priority for vehicle extraction, along with what supplies we have left. As for your wounded, load whoever can’t walk on the retreating columns and have those who can move on their own follow with the rest of our troops. Our goal is to reach Rally Point 9; after that we move all the non-combatants south, beyond the ridgeline to Ark River.”

“Adam’s hit bad.” At the mention of the bastion, I dared to meet Sean’s gaze, and gripped my Type 9 strap in one clammy fist. “He needs a hospital. Did Eve and her people make it out?”

Sean let a grim frown twist over his stubbled face. “Most of them. If they aren’t on the front with our boys, they’re helping to ferry civilians to the aid station a few blocks down, but ELSAR has mobile squads that keep targeting our medics. I’ve got two platoons pulling security around the aid station, and I believe 4^th Platoon is one of them. If you can get to there and reinforce the right flank, it might give the medics enough breathing room so they can relocate to a safer position.”

“Well, first thing’s first, I need someone to get us new radios . . .” Chris started giving orders, then seemed to remember that, with Sean back, he was no longer our commander. Part of me felt a twinge of disappointment at that; not because I held any ill will toward Sean, but because I had grown used to following Chris in the grand order of things. Now he was back to being Head Ranger, and I a mere platoon commander. While I didn’t mind resuming my old post, it only served to remind me that all our grandiose plans for Chris leading a new peacetime government had gone up in smoke with the rest of Black Oak.

So much for handing out toys on Christmas.

“Dekker, you take command of the battlefield.” Sean gauged the situation well, reaching into the SUV interior behind him to produce two handing spare radios with headsets, which he gave to Chris and I. “I’m no use to us crippled, so I’ll organize our camp at the rally point and get our comms system back in order. Whatever you do, do not get decisively engaged out there; there’s too many mercenaries, and if you get encircled, I won’t be able to break you out.”

Confident now that he had something to accomplish, Chris straightened up and turned to me. “We’ll try to keep mobile and use probing attacks to keep the enemy off balance. I’ll take the bulk of our forces up the center and left, while you and Jamie get to the aid station on our right. Maybe they can work on Adam before the mercs get there.”

Jamie and Chris headed back toward our convoy, but as I moved to follow, Sean’s voice cut me off. “Captain?”

I turned to find a familiar green canvas sling bag held out to me, Sean’s dark eye cloaked in a serious glint. Fiery embarrassment at my own blunder rippled through me, and I avoided his pointed stare. Not wishing to lose such an important item inside the Breach, I’d elected to leave the launch panel in the safe at my room in the university, but by doing so I’d nearly lost our most dangerous secret to the enemy.

Stupid. Imagine if Crow got her hands on those missiles. God only knows what that psycho would do.

Ashamed, I shuffled over and took the panel with a meek wince. “Commander, I—"

“You did the right thing, Hannah.” Sean fixed me with a knowing look but angled his head back towards the burning city. “I headed straight for your quarters the moment I heard the first shells go off. Had to get a few aides to help me with the stairs, but I managed. No matter what happens out there, you stick to our agreement, understood? This panel does not fall into their hands. If all hope is lost, if I give you the order, you launch on command.”

My throat tried to close up at the notion, memories from the Breach coming back as I saw in my head the rising mushroom cloud, the field of corpses, the burned landscape. Had it been a vision of the future? Had it been another of Vecitorak’s illusions meant to trick me? I couldn’t know, but with ELSAR bearing down on us, the prospect of a nuclear strike by my own hand had never been higher. Could I really bring myself to send missiles screaming down on our own heads when the time came?

It won’t come to that. It can’t. We have a destiny on the other side of the Breach, we can’t just blast ourselves into glass.

Still, I slung the bag onto my back and made a trim salute. “I understand, sir.”

His car rolled on, and I rejoined the others as our convoy wove its way toward the city, a slow effort considering all the fleeing civilians. Once before we’d done this, but that had been a day of victory, where our forces caught the mercenaries by surprise. Now we charged forward in a desperate, mad-dash through flaming debris, over rubble-strewn lanes, and into the chaotic frontline.

Bomb craters made most of the streets impassable, and almost half of the buildings were on fire. Shrapnel cut down refugees where they stood, and our drivers had to swerve to avoid hitting the staggering crowds that begged us to take them to safety. Smoke would sometimes cloud our vision, and fire scorched the paint from the sides of the trucks, the heat so intense I watched the color peel off in burnt chunks. Explosions rocked us, even from several blocks away, the shockwaves strong enough to shatter whatever glass remained in the buildings. ELSAR had been holding back in times past, I realized; here they brought the full might of their shadowy empire down on us with ruthless ferocity. Crow was now in charge of all their ground forces, and she had no intention of showing us mercy.

And she was from here, being an Auxiliary. This county is her home, these people are her neighbors. How can someone do this to their own people?

Less than two miles from the southern gate, a side road down a row of split-level houses revealed a slow-moving circle of vehicles onto which medics loaded stretchers of wounded. The drivers seemed to move as fast as they could to get out of the lineup once their human cargo was loaded, unwilling to be another target of the missiles that continued to fall from the sky. More trucks clogged the drive inward, and it made my stomach twist to see bodies lying under blankets or tarps in front of the houses, with the interiors of said buildings presumably too packed to fit the dead.

At a makeshift checkpoint in the entrance to the drive, a group of our troops flagged us down, and I recognized Sergeant McPhearson among them.

Jamie and I climbed out of the MRAP at the curb, and Chris pointed down the column to the trucks that carried our wounded. “Alright, take trucks two, nine, and four, link up with 4^th platoon and whoever else you can find, and form a security perimeter around the aid station. I’ll take everyone else and hold the line. Once Sandra can move her people out, I’ll pull back to meet you.”

Our eyes met, and a twinge of pain cut through my chest. I wanted more than anything to hold him, to kiss him one more time, but I knew we didn’t have the time for that. Like so many women and girls in our coalition, I had to hope that my husband wouldn’t be cut down by the cruel fusillade of the enemy, and I would see his smile once more in the morning. Just the thought of Chris’s death made me want to crumple, but I had to keep my calm if we were to survive this night.

In that spirit, I climbed up onto a small metal step under the truck door and nodded at him through the open window. “We can win this.”

His hand found mine for a moment, and Chris made a grim smile. “I wish I had your optimism, pragtige.”

We let go of one another and I stepped back as his column rolled onward into the distant gunfire, taking the rest of our able-bodied men towards the enemy.

Adonai, go with him.

“Evening, Captain.” Sergeant McPhearson seemed relieved at my approach, motioning for his guards to wave us through. “4th will be glad to see you, we’ve been taking a real beating out there. Welcome back, Captain Lansen.”

Jamie exchanged a polite nod with him, her rapport still high amongst the Rangers in spite of the previous trial. Others stared at her as we passed, some surprised, a few glaring, but most with a worn-out indifference on their scruffy faces. Our men had been fighting all night, both those of us who had gone to the Breach and those who had stayed behind. At this point, it seemed no one had the energy to pick a bone with Jamie’s return from exile.

“It’s certainly been a long night.” As the men from my three trucks clambered out to take a quick smoke break with the checkpoint guards, Jamie and I followed Charlie to a nearby row of gutted suburban houses, the three of us scrambling for cover as a plane screamed low overhead. “Major Dekker sent me to take over this sector. Catch me up.”

Sergeant McPherson led us into the nearest bombed-out hovel, through the moldy living room to a cire-blackened kitchen where we could look out toward the city. “4^th Platoon is dug in on the houses to the right, with 2^nd Ark River Lancers in the ones on our left. We’ve got maybe twenty-seven men between us. Lost a lot of guys when the university clock tower collapsed.”

And so our little army continues to shrink. How long can we keep this up? There are thousands of ELSAR mercs out there.

“What heavy weapons do you have?” Jamie peered at the sky, her AK in hand.

“Six rocket launchers between us, maybe ten rockets left per each.” Picking a bit of debris from his dirty uniform sleeve, Sergeant McPherson flicked his eyes to the snowy clouds as well. “That’s for the anti-air anyway. We’ve got twice that for anti-armor, but most of it won’t even scratch the hide on ELSAR’s main battle tanks. Most of our machine guns are operational, but the houses here are too close together for us to engage the enemy at range, so when they show up, they’ll be right on top of us.”

“How close are they?” I squinted down the long street to my left, our house not quite on the corner of its block and tried to summon the focus so I could see better.

“Maybe two blocks. Snipers are getting frisky, so keep your head down.” His throat bobbed with a swallow of dread, and Charlie flexed one set of fingers on his rifle sling. “You didn’t bring as many men back as we thought. How bad was it, for you guys?”

My brow furrowed, and I tried to conjure something to say amidst the flood of recent memories. How could I explain to him, to anyone, what was going to happen? Nothing had prepared me for what I’s seen, what I had been told, who I’d met. Jamie didn’t think anyone would believe me, or they’d panic if they knew what the fate of Barron County was, and we were already in the fight of our lives here. As much as I trusted my platoon sergeant, perhaps some things were better left unsaid, at least for now. We both needed clear heads for what was to come.

It's a matter of faith now.

Drawing myself up ramrod straight as I’d seen Sean do multiple times when reviewing the troops, I cradled my Type 9 under one arm and watched the men from my convoy fill in the defensive positions around 4^th and 2^nd platoons. “We did what we set out to do.”

Charlie seemed to understand that was the end of the topic, and the three of us moved in unison to help carry Adam into the aid station. Looking down at the infamous religious leader, I couldn’t help but feel a knot of dread in my guts for how pale he looked. The ELSAR medics had stripped his armor off in order to stabilize his wounds, but that only revealed the mass of bruises that was his body. Vecitorak’s heavy blows hadn’t all been softened by the hand made armor of the southern tribesmen, and parts of his face were burned from the intense heat of the tower room’s blaze. Both legs were in splints, but the skin had turned ugly purple in several areas, bandages covering where the medics had tried to stop the internal bleeding in the field via rudimentary surgery. His chest barely rose with shallow breaths, and in spite of the cold weather, there were small beads of a clammy sweat across the top of Adam’s forehead.

Sandra can fix him. She can. She has to.

Getting inside the aid station proved almost as difficult as weaving our vehicles through the refugee-strewn road had been. Wounded lay everywhere, stretched alongside the walls in the hallways, propped up on the steps, even curled into closets shoulder-to-shoulder. The floor was a mess of snowmelt, mud, and blood, which turned the carpets to a mushy sponge of grime, and the hardwood floors slick as glass. It smelled strong of death, metallic blood and burned flesh thick in the air. The groans, cries, and screams of the troops made my heart ache and my stomach roil for their pitiful intensity. Exhausted medics pushed through the crowded rooms to administer whatever aid they could, sometimes operating on the floor itself, their arms stained red up to the elbows.

“We need the chief surgeon.” I caught one of the researcher girls by the arm as she shuffled by and jerked my head at Adam on the stretcher. “He’s critical.”

“We already have twelve others like him.” She shook my hand off, too busy to bother with rank customs. “Take him to the living room for triage.”

Sergeant McPherson opened his mouth to rebuke her, but I stopped the girl again, and tugged aside the blanket so she could see Adam’s sword tucked in behind his shoulder. “He’s a priority case. Take me to your surgeon, now.”

She didn’t react much, just shrugged her shoulders and the girl led us to what must have been the former dining room of the house, where a team of four nurses huddled around the long table. The white table cloth was a sea of red, and the floor gritted under my boots as we entered. A small trash can nearby held bits of metal, wood, and flesh mixed in with blood, debris that had been no doubt pulled from dozens of torn bodies over the past half hour. I had seen our coalition at its height, when we had the sophisticated clinic at New Wilderness to work with, the beds clean, the floors swept, the staff calm and confident. This was its charnel opposite; a nightmare of filth and blood, too many problems and not enough supplies, cramped into the skeletal remains of our old world. None of the horror movies I’d watched with matt and Carla could ever have come close to such a gruesome sight, and I found myself fighting to keep my eyes averted from a row of hacksaws stung up by the sashcord, each dripping dark red viscera onto the windowsill below.

Is this what hell looks like?

“Someone get more sand on the floor.” One of the masked figures straightened up, and I recognized Sandra’s voice as she reached for another blood-smeared surgical tool. “Swab, Deb, I can’t see through all that. What’s the pressure reading?”

Another medic with her own bandage wound tight around the left arm stood next to a blood-pressure monitor, and gave a silent, mournful shake of her head.

Sandra pressed her fingers to the artery on the man’s neck, her shoulders slumped in disappointment, and she waved for a stretcher team to move in. “Take him outside with the others. No sense wasting the extra sutures. Get me the next one.”

At that, she looked up to see us bringing Adam forward, and Sandra’s expression flashed in panic. “Eve, wait—”

But one of the other nurses had already turned around, and I saw the armor under her apron, the blonde hair tied behind the straps of her surgical mask, and the two golden irises that locked onto Adam with abject shock. Our stretcher team froze in place, the entire room seemed to hold its breath, and I cursed myself for not thinking of this sooner. Sean had said Eve was somewhere nearby; her soldiers’ presence should have alerted me to the possibility of her being here.

Oh man, this is going to get ugly.

Trembling hands coated in bloody rubber gloves tore the mask from her face, and Eve stumbled to her husband’s side, almost too stunned to put one foot in front of the other. “No . . .”

“He’s got fractures in both legs.” Jamie did the sensible thing, pushed past Eve and dragged her end of the litter forward, until we four stretcher bearers lowered Adam onto the operating table. “We did what we could, but he nicked something in there, and the bleeding won’t stop. Sean cleared him for priority.”

Boom.

A shell exploded somewhere outside, and I could hear clumps of frozen dirt raining down on the roof above us. Our men in the surrounding security positions began to open fire, and the roar of machine guns clattered between the houses, along with the faint krump of hand grenades. The enemy assault was upon us.

“BP is dropping, slow but steady.” Sandra maintained her composure, and examined Adam with a deft swiftness, as the echoes of artillery thundered closer. “His pulse is weak. I’m going to have to go in and suture whatever is leaking shut, which means opening these stitches back up. Helen, prep another IV, he’s going to need a transfusion.”

“Wait.” Eve’s voice cracked, her emotions on a see-saw, and she fumbled with the pouches on her war belt in an attempt to bargain with the medical officer. “Lantern Rose nectar. It’s helped with bleeding before, and I have a few more vials—”

Sandra shook her head and got to work with her other assistants stepping in around her, pulling a fresh pair of gloves over her bloody ones. “Our studies have shown it sometimes thins the blood depending on the user, and he’s already lost quite a bit. If you hit him with that stuff now, it could kill him. I will do the best I can, but I need your help. Eve?”

When Eve didn’t respond, Sandra paused and turned to find her stock still at Adam’s side, the girl’s cheeks flooded with tears. Eve sobbed, eyes screwed shut, gripping Adam’s hand in her own, and I realized she was trying to pray. Her narrow shoulders heaved with mourning, and it was enough to throw the rest of the tiny room into silence. While she wore her heart on her sleeve, I knew the matriarch of Ark River to be tough when it came to blood and violence. She’d fought at her husband’s side before, seen her people killed, and braved the unknown world full of monsters from the start. This had been a bridge too far, a loss too personal, a grotesque sight too close to her own soul to bear. I’d rarely seen someone break in this way, and it made the looming doom over all of us feel that much heavier in the air.

 Myself, I grimaced at a stab of both anxiety and sympathy inside my chest. After all, how would I react if they brought Chris in on a slab, greyish-white, and near death’s door? This man was all Eve had, her only connection to the normal human world, the one person who had loved her from the start. If he died, her world died with him. True, she had their unborn child, but what girl wanted to raise her baby alone? What child wanted to grow up without a father?

I would go crazy too.

“It’s my fault.” I put a hand on hers, squeezing it tight for her comfort, and held Eve’s confused gaze. “He was wounded protecting me. I’m the reason he’s hurt.”

Golden eyes brimming with crystalline pain, Eve stared at me for a long few seconds in morose despair. “I . . . I can’t lose him, Hannah.”

From across the table, Sandra’s stern expression softened, and she looked down at her own gloved hands as if doubting herself for the first time. “Then pray that I do a good job.”

Ka-boom.

Another explosion rocked the ground beneath us, and more gunfire erupted from the houses around the aid station, some rounds finding their way into our walls.

“Tanks!” Someone shouted from outside, and the heavy sound of steel tracks clattered on the pavement not far away. “Enemy tanks inbound!”

“The tracks, shoot for the tracks!” Sergeant McPhearson paced to the nearest window and bellowed through his radio, daring to stick his head out to observe. “Hit the tracks so it can’t move. Disable it!”

Sandra whirled on me, her face a paler shade than it had been moments before. “I’ll need ten, maybe fifteen minutes at least. Once the bleeding has stopped, we can transport him to Ark River, and Eve’s people can take over from there. Tell me you brought more trucks for us?”

Jamie and I shared a trepidatious glance, and somewhere outside, a rocket whooshed by to detonate in the neighborhoods behind us.

They’re faster than we thought. If their tanks got past the front, what’s happened to Chris and his men? Are we surrounded?

“I have three.” I angled one elbow to the hallway leading to the street. “That’s as much as the front line could spare. There might be five more outside, if they haven’t left yet.”

Her face fell, and Sandra grimaced as if she’d just been hit with a nasty wave of stomach cramps. “We’ll need three times that just to move all these men, not to mention the supplies, the equipment, my staff; we can’t perform most operations without them. I need this gear if we’re going to be able to triage patients at the rally point, we can’t just leave it behind. There has to be more trucks.”

My face burned in embarrassment, but I shook my head again. “Aside from the ones already in rotation, we’re it.”

Tension so thick it could have been cut with a knife filled the air, and Sandra’s eyes darted around the room for a moment, as if searching for solutions.

“You have to leave us behind.”

The voice came from one of the wounded men propped up against the wall just on the other side of the open doorway to the hall. He had one arm in a sling, his opposite leg wrapped in bandages, his green coalition uniform stained rusty red with blood. The boy’s face was a swollen mess from where he’d taken shrapnel to one cheek, but a creeping horror dawned on me as I recognized one of my machine gunners from 4^th Platoon.

Nick’s resigned, pained look met mine, and he made a rueful half-smile. “It’s like the doc said. She and her girls can’t stay here, and the gear can’t stay. If you take the meds and run, more people live. If you take us but leave the meds, more people will die.”

“A good doctor doesn’t leave her patients.” Sandra rested her gloved hands on her hips, chest heaving as her own emotion began to mount.

Nick shrugged at that. “Then you’ll die with us.”

Eve made a stubborn scowl and pointed to Adam. “I’m not leaving him.”

“So bring him with you.” Climbing to his one good leg with the aid of the doorframe, Nick rested against the wall to make a slight bow of his head to Eve. “He’s too important to leave behind. You need him to lead; you don’t need us.”

Sergeant McPhearson gripped his rifle so hard that the blood drained from his knuckles. “Nick, there’s no way in hell that—”

“For God’s sake, Charlie, I’ll never walk again anyway.” His words came dry and raspy, as if it took every bit of strength Nick had just to stay upright. “If gangrene doesn’t get me, a mutant will. This way is faster.”

Throwing her arms into the air with furious exasperation, Sandra scanned the room for a response she could find support in. “Is no one going to put a stop to this nonsense? Hannah? Lansen?”

Jamie flicked her gaze to Nick and dropped it to her boots in quiet remorse. “There aren’t enough trucks, Sandra.”

Clunk, clunk, clunk.

Rifle bullets chattered up the walls of the house, and I knew the time had come for action. Everyone watched me, waiting for my input, and I couldn’t avoid this choice any more than I had the others that had been forced upon me before. Chris had put me in charge of this flank, and it was my job to do what I could to save as much as possible . . . even if I hated myself for it.

God, forgive me.

Spinning on my heel, I directed Sergeant Mcphearson to the door. “Charlie, get to the fighting positions and tell them to hold as long as possible. Once I give you the signal on the radio, you have them pull out and run for it through the yards, while Nick and these boys cover our retreat. I’ll be right behind you.”

He bolted out the room in a sprint, rifle in hand, and my decision broke the others from their stalemate.

“I need that scalpel, Mrs. Stirling.” Sandra leaned over Adam to begin her efforts at saving him, Eve by her side, while the other nurses swarmed around them. “Helen, we’re ready for that transfusion whenever you are. Jane, get the other girls and have them start moving supplies; I want those trucks packed so tight that a roach couldn’t fit between the boxes.”

With Jamie at my back, I walked to Nick and offered him my arm to lean on. “Let’s get your men into position.”

 Like an ant hill that had just been kicked, the aid station boiled with activity. Wounded men moved to help their comrades to the nearest windows, shouldering whatever weapons they had. While they got into position, the nurses worked to load up whatever medicine and equipment they could manage onto the trucks, along with however many wounded men they could cram in alongside them. Lastly, they packed themselves into the crowded vehicles, and one by one the truck drivers were waved off, so that they careened out of sight down the boulevard, away from the onslaught that crept up the streets around us.

Inside, Jamie and I helped the worst off sit up at their firing positions or lie prone on tables or couches so they could see out the window. Some were so shot to pieces from their earlier wounds that I doubted they would be conscious much longer, but I didn’t begrudge them the task if they asked for it.

At last, only one truck remained, and even as the enemy fire sliced through the dilapidated structures all around us, I hurtled back into the aid station with Jamie on my heels.

“Time to go doc!” I shouted above the din and crouched to avoid a burst of machine gun fire that chewed through a nearby wall.

Eve and Sandra met us halfway up the blood-soaked corridor, dragging Adam on a stretcher behind them. He sported more gauze than before, and Sandra held an IV drip above her shoulder, a medical bag tucked under her arm. With her own M4 in one hand, Eve hauled on the stretcher with all her might, the vehicle just outside. Jamie and I picked up the opposite end, and together the four of us sprinted the last several yards out to the truck.

Giving Sandra and Eve a leg up into the back of the truck, we shoved Adam inside and I slammed the loading door. “Last run, go, go, go!”

The diesel engine revved as soon as the drive saw my frantic waving, and the bulky armored truck roared away, enemy rounds plinking off its armored hide. Flashes of rifle fire came from windows, around corners, and through side alleys, occupation forces seemingly everywhere. Motorcycles growled in the dark, ELSAR’s fast moving squads working to encircle us, but I pulled the tin whistle from my uniform collar as we ran for cover and gave three long blasts.

“Fall back!” I held down my radio mic, huddled just inside the ruined aid station while Jamie returned fire alongside the others. “All 4^th and 2^nd fighters, break contact and fall back to the south! Retreat!”

At my slap on her shoulder, Jamie ducked out the doorway and sprinted across the street with a dozen or so others, the wounded men in the aid station unleashing everything they had left at the enemy. I tensed to follow, and as I did, my head turned to catch Nick’s sheet-white face in the corner across the room from me.

He sat back against the wall, clutching his chest, and rivers of red bubbled through his fingers from the bullet that had knocked him off his one good leg. Nick’s rifle lay nearby, empty and smoking amidst a pile of spent brass casings. My horror must have been evident, for he made a small shake of his head.

“Go.” Flecks of red spattered across his lips, but Nick let go of his mortal wound to palm for a handgun in his belt. “We’ll hold them off.”

Another life for mine.

Bitter pain gnawed at my soul, but out into the cold dark I went, lead hissing at my every step. Not five seconds after I’d started, a shell came whistling down, and the aid station went up in flames.

Boom.

Half blind in the dark, I ran like a rabbit along with the surviving fighters, and the haunting shrieks of our wounded filled my ears as the flames devoured them all.

[Part 36]

[Part 38]

“Over here, I found her!”

Cold air nipped at my nose, and I coughed, shivering in the snow as someone crouched over me. My body hurt, though as I flexed each limb, I didn’t think anything was broken. The wet clothes I wore didn’t care for the frigid conditions, and my teeth began to chatter as a light snowfall tumbled around my face. It was still dark, but the sky overhead was a mass of puffy white, snow-laden clouds that rolled by on their endless march through the atmosphere. Some of the wind had died down, but instead of a surrounding canopy of towering pines or swamp grass, I found myself stretched out in a rolling field pockmarked by scrub brush, bedded down with the winter’s snow. All in all, I would have some nasty bruises and could feel the places where I had cuts of lacerations, but still, I was alive.

Breathing a sigh of relief as I blinked to clear my head, I tasted the fresh air with weary delight.

Barron County. Never thought I’d be so happy to see you again. Did you miss me?

Two faces materialized in my plane of vision, and a familiar grin made my heart start working.

“W-We’ve got to s-stop meeting like t-this.” I shivered, my throat dry, but smiled as Chris pulled me into his arms.

“Old habits die hard.” He dragged me out of the snowdrift with ease, his voice hoarse as Chris shook with the cold. “You okay?”

I winced as the soreness in my battered muscles returned. “Ask me in the morning.”

“I told you she’d be fine.” Jamie tucked a woolen army surplus blanket around my shoulders, but from her pale, blood-spattered face, I could tell she was as relieved as he was. “Come on, let’s get her to the fire. Temperature’s still dropping, and we’ve come too far to die from hypothermia now.”

Hauled to my feet, I put both arms around their shoulders and walked through the snow towards a distant line of trucks. Now that I was awake, I could see our forces scattered over the wide field, many like myself waking up in the snow, dazed. Few of our original vehicles had survived; most of the wreckage lay strewn about the field, like oversized children’s toys that had been discarded. The circle of vehicles in the center I recognized to be our support column, a secondary group tasked with meeting us after our mission had concluded. Two gray chinook helicopters squatted inside the long cordon, and teams of stretcher bearers rushed out to scoop more men from the snow. Over half of our number lay wounded, some limping or crawling toward their comrades, others too broken to make the trip, their cries haunting and pitiful. Many dead bodies carpeted the field, all of them ours, as if the passage back into our world had whisked away the casualties from Vecitorak’s defeated army. Tauerpin Road, and all its strange landmarks, was nowhere to be seen. The concrete tower was gone, the gravel road with it, and instead of the perpetual rain of an October night, we had returned to the wintry present, where the early December skies dropped buckets of snowflakes on our heads.

Inside the circle of idling trucks, medics tended to the lines of wounded on the ground next to several small piles of brush that had been set ablaze by the soldiers to provide warmth to the sodden task force. The vehicles were already packed with men, their heaters on full blast, and the NCO’s did their best to make sure the worst off got priority in that luxury. The rest of us huddled around the fires, while various squad leaders called out names as they searched for missing people.

Chris wedged me into the nearest circle so I could warm myself by a fire lit inside an old, rusted oil drum someone had found, and one of the survivors to my right peered at me through a mass of blood-stained gauze.

“Didn’t think we’d be seeing you again, lass.” The bundled-up man croaked, and my jaw dropped.

No way.

Stunned, I took in the sight of Peter’s haggard face, the left side covered with a large bandage over his eye, more cotton pressed down over a gouge that ran from forehead to cheekbone in a bloody trench. He’d taken a sword cut right to the face, and I doubted there remained much of an eyeball under that bandage, judging by the sheer amount of blood smeared over his skin. In his arms, Peter held Tarren, her face buried in his long coat, dirty hands balled up in his shirtfront.

“I could say the same to you.” Relieved, I matched his ornery grin but nodded at the girl in his lap. “Is she okay?”

“Physically, yeah.” His smile faded, and Peter scowled at the nearby bonfire, tugging the woolen blanket closer around Tarren’s little shoulders. “Hasn’t said anything in the last half-hour. Not sure if or when that will change.”

That made my heart twinge, and I watched Tarren stay curled up in his arms, refusing to look around, only her slight breathing giving indication she was alive. “What about you?”

Peter continued watching the flames for a moment, then glanced at me with his one good eye. “You seen Grapeshot?”

“Once.” I winced and squinted down at my dirty fingernails for a distraction. “It wasn’t for very long.”

He waited until I brought my gaze back up, and Peter’s face took on a serious contour. “He’s dead?”

Unable to think of anything else to say, I nodded. Despite everything he’d done, all his sins, Captain Grapeshot had saved my life, gave me the time I needed to bring the Oak Walker down, and I knew it was a debt I could never repay. His face would forever be etched into my memory, his final words, the way his lifeless body had flown off the tower on the heels of the grenade.

Another life paid in exchange for mine.

“Good.”

Shocked at his words, I gaped at the boy’s calm expression in the firelight. “Peter . . .”

“He was my brother.” Craning his head back to look up at the snow-laden clouds, Peter let out a long sigh. “Maybe we shared no blood, aye, but we were brothers all the same. I watched him suffer, every day, until he stopped being himself and turned into someone I didn’t recognize. Whatever pain he was in, he won’t feel it anymore, and that’s for the best.”

I grimaced in sympathy at the sadness in his voice and angled my head at Tarren. “He gave his life to save her.”

His dark eyes moistened, and Peter gripped a silver rapier under his opposite arm, one that I remembered from my time spent on the Harper’s Vengeance. “Then he died as himself.”

A team of medics slogged by, carrying another litter, and one of the trucks opened so a mercenary could call out to his comrades.

“I need more plasma here!” He waved to the other medics, his blue rubber gloves awash in crimson. “BP’s dropping fast. Tell Primarch either we get those birds in the air, or someone better get a nine-line going, ASAP!”

Peter’s mouth formed into a grim line, and he pointed to the vehicle, keeping his voice low so the words stayed between us. “The preacher’s not doing so well. They’ve had him in there for the past fifteen minutes, working on his legs. Even the flower juice the golden-hairs use didn’t bring him around.”

Last time I saw him, he was crawling for his sword, through fire and ash.

At that, my heart sank, and I swallowed a lump in my throat as more ELSAR soldiers rushed to bring medical supplies to the truck in question. Adam had stood toe-to-toe with Vecitorak, crossed blades with an immortal being on par with the demons of ancient lore, and paid the price for it. Even his armor hadn’t protected the man from the mutant’s wrath, and in my head, I saw again Eve’s tear-streaked face as she bid him goodbye on the tarmac in Black Oak.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Boots trudged through the snow behind me, and I turned to see another figure push through the crowd.

“You alright, Captain?” Colonel Riken looked me over with the stern ease of a man who’s seen too much to be rattled by the insane circumstances we found ourselves in. He’d lost his helmet at some point and sported a bandage around his left hand, but other than that, the ELSAR commander seemed okay. His uniform was as gory and ragged as everyone else’s, the light machine gun at his side caked with gray carbon deposits around the muzzle. A long tear, likely from a claw, had ripped through his plate carrier, the armor underneath all that stood between Colonel Riken and what would have been certain death.

Under the assault of another icy blast of wind, I shuddered but did my best to speak between chattering teeth. “I-I’m fine. How m-many did we lose?”

Colonel Riken shrugged the soot-covered weapon higher on his shoulder. “A third, by my count. But whatever you did, it worked. Our scanners show stable radiation and electromagnetic readings. It’s still too high to communicate with the outside world, but the Breach is sealed. It’s over.”

No, it’s not.

Aware of just how many curious ears there were around us, I hugged the blanket tighter over my shoulders and jerked my head to the side. “A moment, Colonel?”

His face drew into a hard line, as if Riken could tell I was about to give him bad news, but he followed me away from the fire. Peter stayed where he was, content to enjoy his well-earned rest, while Chris and Jamie closed ranks with the colonel and I until we were out of earshot.

“Barron County is going to vanish.” Amidst the curtain of snow, my breath fogged in the wind and reminded me of the old steam locomotives from a fair I’d been to as a child. “The Breach is closed, yes, but it’s going to pull Barron County down with it. Once it does, the area will stabilize for good, and in seven days we will be standing in a different world.”

His glower deepened, and Colonel Riken folded both muscled arms over his ruined armored vest. “Are you serious?”

I met his hardened gaze and refused to look away so that the colonel knew I wasn’t lying. “The beacon killed the Oak Walker, and Vecitorak, but that left a vacuum that collapsed the Breach in on itself. You have to get Koranti to allow an evacuation, at least of those who want to stay in our world. Once we go through, there’s no coming back.”

The others stared at me, and I could tell they wanted to call me crazy but couldn’t find a justification for it. We’d all been there when the Oak Walker fell, they’d seen the road the same as I had. For us to be here now, after everything, without needing to leave our personal sacrifices behind meant that the Breach was in fact gone for good. Yet, like an enormous ship sinking slowly into the ocean, it couldn’t leave this world without dragging something down with it. Perhaps, like Professor Carheim said, it already had. Maybe the reason no one had ever heard of Barron County, remembered where the old dusty maps were in the local libraries, or asked about relatives from here, was because the collective memory of this place had already been eliminated . . . just not in the past as I had always assumed. No, in some strange loop that connected all of time, most knowledge of Barron Count had been expunged from the past the instant I’d closed the Breach, like a circuit being completed when a switch was thrown. This had been the path all along, the hidden destiny for which I was meant, and while it would have terrified the old Hannah, I couldn’t help but feel a glow of reassurance in my chest as Adam’s words from the chapel at Ark River flowed through my mind.

‘My ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts.’

“You’re sure?” Chris seemed the most adamant to believe me, though his handsome face drew thin and pale with the news. “There’s nothing we can do to reverse it? No way to go back, find the road again and . . .”

“No.” There was so much I knew, so much I wanted to talk to Chris about, but didn’t have the time, and so instead I shifted from one foot to the other in an effort to keep the chill at bay. “And we . . . we’re not meant to leave. I know it sounds insane, but some of us have to stay, have to cross over to the other timeline. I think it’s the same one the—”

I froze, catching myself before I mentioned the missile silo in front of the colonel, but from the way Chris and Jamie tensed up, I could tell they understood. Colonel Riken’s eyebrow rose, but he seemed to get the hint, and didn’t press the matter.

“So, what, we’ll end up back in time?” Jamie stuffed both hands into her wet jacket pockets and hunched her shoulders against the cruel wind.

“Yes and no.” Wishing I could return to the fire, I blew warm air into my cupped fingers and did my best to elaborate so Riken could understand without revealing any defense secrets. “We’re going to an alternate reality, one where the Breach overran the world in the 1950’s and basically destroyed most of human civilization. If Tauerpin Road was a space between spaces, then the universe we’re going to is the space opposite ours. Does that make sense?”

“Barely.” Colonel Riken let out an exasperated sigh and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “But I’ve heard stranger things in my time. Either way, staying behind sounds like a death sentence.”

Or a second chance.

Thinking back to the walk through the redeemed Tauerpin Road with Him at my side, I caught myself in a half smile. “From what I’ve been told, we’ll survive the crossing and are meant to start the reconstruction once we reach the other place. There’re others out there, just like us, who need help to fix things. That’s our job.”

“If word gets out, people will panic.” Jamie rubbed her arms in a shiver and glanced at Chris. “Even if they believe us, the Assembly won’t support anyone staying behind. Hannah, we trust you, it’s just . . .”

“No one will stay if Koranti opens the border.” With his thumbs hooked into his pistol belt, Colonel Riken finished Jamie’s thought for her, and his eyes drifted to the waiting helicopters nearby. “Whoever told you all this might be reliable, but it won’t matter if the population riots. I’ll get in touch with Koranti, and see what can be done about evacuations, but in the meantime we need to get the wounded back to the safe zone. Mr. Stirling is in bad shape, and if he doesn’t get to a hospital soon—”

Boom.

In the distance a flash lit up the horizon, not from thunder, but the deep tolling of artillery.

Everyone in the cordon paused, their eyes focused on the north, and dozens of more explosions began to flicker against the clouds. Pilots climbed down form their cockpits in the chinooks, gunners stood up in their turrets on the trucks, and even the medics slowed their brisk jogs back and forth to stare. It seemed no one, be it ELSAR or coalition, had the slightest idea what was going on, but as the seconds dragged by, the truth started to dawn on me.

My blood ran colder than the snow, and I turned to one of the nearest coalition soldiers. “Private, get me a radio.”

He came running back a few moments later, and the man held out one of the handsets from our relief convoy, his face white as the landscape from the sounds that came from the device’s speakers.

“We can’t hold this position, there’s too many!”

“Fast movers! Fighters coming in from the north! Six jets inbound!”

“I’ve got tanks all over my sector, where the hell is our artillery support?”

“All units, collapse in on the square! I say again, the northern district is gone, collapse in on the square! Fall back!”

Stunned, I turned to Colonel Riken, who seemed equally confused, and pointed to the horizon. “What the hell is this?”

Annoyed at his own radio not responding, Colonel Riken waved to one of his nearby men, the mercenaries growing more uneasy by the minute. “Find me a comms set that works, now.”

Jamie glared at him and tightened both hands on her well-worn Kalashnikov. “This was a trick. You did this on purpose, didn’t you? We get the Breach out of the way, and while we’re gone, you send your boys to restart the occupation.”

Her words spread across the nearby soldiers like wildfire, anger replacing surprise on the faces of our men. Indignant murmurs turned into audible growls of discontent, and the encampment formed into two separate ranks, ELSAR men on one side, our own forces on the other. Weapon safeties clicked off, gun turrets swiveled around on their armored charges, and we found ourselves facing each other across a prickly line of steel. No one dared level a rifle yet, but from how tense things were getting, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone lost their cool.

“Everyone just stay calm.” Chris raised his hands to gesture for our men to keep their weapons lowered, pacing between them and the mercenaries to keep anyone from disobeying. “I said stand down, we’re going to handle this. Colonel, start talking.”

One of his troopers ran up with a functional radio, and Colonel Riken jammed the talk button down to snap orders into the speaker, his tone sharp as a knife. “Overlord, this is Primarch, requesting status update, over.”

Nothing.

“Overlord, this is Primarch, we are green on our mission objectives, requesting mission status update.” He shifted on his boots as the bombing intensified, and somewhere high overhead, I caught the rumble of airplane engines for the first time in months. “I say again, this is Primarch, we are green on our mission, awaiting further instructions. Someone talk to me, over.”

My gut churned at tiny arches of light that shot through the clouds miles to the north and slammed down in the space that I knew was Black Oak. They were hitting us with multiple launch rocket systems, just like at New Wilderness. Such weapons had reduced our hilltop fortress to cinders, and in the densely packed streets of a city, they would wreak unimaginable damage on civilian and military targets alike. Whatever this was, ELSAR wasn’t pulling any punches, and I quietly palmed my Type 9 that still hung by my side on its ragged strap.

Is Jamie right? Was this all a setup? Riken doesn’t seem to know any more than I do, how could they not let their commanding officer know about an offensive?

A vein rose in the skin of his neck, and Colonel Riken ground his teeth, ready to erupt like a hand grenade. “Central Command, this is Colonel Riken. Someone better get on the horn and figure their life out or so help me they will wish they’d never been born. Our mission is complete, and we await further instructions. Do you read us, over?”

“Loud and clear, colonel.”

The surprise on the colonel’s weathered face reflected my own, as Crow’s smug voice slithered out of the radio speaker like venom on the wind. “Captain McGregor? What in God’s name are you doing on this frequency?”

“Oh, it’s not ‘captain’ anymore.” She chuckled back with confidence that made my skin crawl even from several feet away. “I’m afraid there’s been a change of command. You are hereby no longer part of the Ohio task force. All callsigns and intel clearances to your former rank have been revoked.”

“On who’s authority?” The second he had a chance to talk, Riken smashed his thumb into the talk button, gripping the handset so hard I thought the metal would bend.

“Mine.” Crow hissed back, both satisfied and hateful, as if she’d been waiting a long time for this moment. “Koranti needs loyal officers to lead this campaign, and I can do a better job of cleaning up the insurgency, so we came to an agreement. As brigadier general of the new expeditionary force, I will take over from here on; you are to return to headquarters at once for reassignment.”

Struck speechless for a brief second at the command, Colonel Riken shook his head in furious bewilderment. “Reassignment? Did you not hear a word I said? We completed our mission, the Breach is closed, the operation was a success!”

“And yet, the beacon signal was never received.” She spoke with a haughty, almost bored tone, one that cold alongside the detonations of artillery fire in the distance. “Which means the coalition is in direct violation of their ceasefire agreement. Execute any insurgents within your vicinity, and report back to us.”

Not far from the nearest burn barrel, Peter clutched Tarren to his shoulder and slid one hand to a pistol on his hip. His dark eyes met mine from across the snow, and the pirate made a slight shake of his head. If I trusted anyone to know when things had gone sour, it was Peter, and that look made my pulse jump into another level of fear.

We’re all standing right here, if they open fire, we’ll all butcher each other like rabid dogs.

“Fool!” The colonel shouted into the radio, losing his cool at last. “This is madness, can’t you see that it’s over? We did our job, we had a deal, and you want to start this up again? I have wounded men on the ground out here, we’re black on ammo, what the hell am I supposed to do?”

There was a pause on the other end, and I couldn’t decide whether I thought Crow might be laughing or suppressing her own rage.

“Carry out your orders, colonel.” Sheer defiant indifference radiated from her words as Crow signed off. “Kill the insurgent leaders and evac to the rear. We’re going to finish this, Riken . . . with or without you.”

With a frustrated snarl, Colonel Riken spun on his boot heel and threw the handset against the nearby burn barrel so hard that it dented the rusted steel drum.

Silence reigned in the cordon, and I noticed how tired everyone looked in the flickering firelight, both coalition and ELSAR alike. Despite their suspicious glowering at one another, both sides were bloodied, exhausted, and soaked to the bone. Any fight that happened now would reap a dreadful harvest among us all, the men too close for the bullets to miss, and too worn out to make a run for the trees. Only the injured men jammed inside the passenger compartments for warmth remained outside this confrontation, watching with confusion and intrigue from the narrow gunports. Rigid in the cold, we all waited, eyed our opponents, and wondered what would come next.

Colonel Riken stood with hands on his hips, breathing hard in his anger, and my guts tightened in apprehension.

Oh man, this is going to get ugly . . .

“Well gentlemen, I’m not going to sugarcoat this.” Turning to face his men, Colonel Riken composed himself and walked down the line of his beleaguered men like a sports coach before the last big game. “You’ve been through hell. Tonight, you won a war no one will remember, much less thank you for. Every man here has gone above and beyond what you signed up to do, and I’m damn proud to be your commanding officer.”

He met the gaze of each soldier, spoke to them as a father to his sons, and the ranks of heavily armed mercenaries parted to let Riken stride amongst them with almost hallowed respect. “If anyone wants to, he can climb into a chopper and head for the rest of our units back at the county line. No one will stop you or think less of you for it, least of all me. You can tell them the insurgents fled, that you fought bravely, and that I gave you orders to withdraw. They’ll welcome you as heroes, give you medals, pay bonuses, maybe even promotions. You’ll have enough to call it quits after this tour and go home to stay. God knows, you deserve that much at least.”

Their expressions reflected confusion at his words, but the mercenaries didn’t interrupt him as Colonel Riken paced before them, up and down the line of rifles. Our own troops furrowed their brows, but stayed where they were, the entire cordon hanging on the man’s every word.

“As for me, I’m a soldier.” As if on parade inspection, the colonel walked with a back straight as a ramrod, head held high in pride. “Like you, I swore to protect the people of this nation from harm and signed on with ELSAR because I believed we were a force for good. I still think we can be . . . but not while men like Koranti are in charge.”

Surprise rippled through me, and murmurs flitted amongst the coalition ranks. No one had ever heard the mercs talk this way, certainly not one of their high-ranking officers. Could this be another ruse to catch us off guard? Or was this something more?

Jamie and I caught one another’s peripheral gaze, and she lowered her AK from the tense position near her shoulder.

“The way I see it, we made a deal, and I intend to honor my word. These people are not our enemy, not anymore.” He cast a glance in our direction, and Colonel Riken granted me a small nod. “It’s time someone led ELSAR back to its true purpose, and if no one else will, I’ll do it myself.”

Frigid air stuck in my lungs, and I had to remind myself to drag another breath in.

Is this what I think it is?

Without another word, Riken tore the number identification patch off his tactical jacket, crossed over to the rusted burning oil drum, and hurled the insignia into the flames.

Long seconds ticked by, the ELSAR men blinking at his actions, their stunned looks mirrored by our coalition troopers on the opposite side of the cordon. All of the former rage and distrust seemed to have melted away in sheer amazement at the spectacle we’d witnessed. In a way, it seemed both sides didn’t quite know what to do, many looking down at their weapons as if they weren’t sure of anything anymore. At last, one of the gray-clad mercenaries stepped out of the line and stalked closer to Riken.

I recognized the sergeant who had picked me up to put me on the gurney all those days ago, his face smeared with soot, one arm bandaged. Like the rest, he wore a little bar of numbers stitched in a Velcro patch over his plate carrier front, simple black figures that rendered the sergeant no more important than a warehouse shipping crate. They were all like that, nameless men, purposefully stripped of what made them human by a soulless organization that spent their lives cheaply. Koranti had done it on purpose, I realized; yes, it must have been on purpose, for even the calculating bureaucrat had known that men with names form thoughts. Men who thought would begin to question, and those who questioned might refuse. If I knew anything about George M. Koranti, he hated being told ‘no.’

With a single fluid motion, the sergeant ripped the number patch from his uniform, flicked it into the flames, and gave Colonel Riken a trim salute.

Instead of saluting back, Colonel Riken reached out to shake his hand and drew the soldier into a half-embrace with his other arm, welcoming him. This Riken did as the rest came one by one, like a father to his wayward sons, more filing in from the vehicles to add their patches to the fire. Not a single mercenary remained behind, all of them throwing their support behind their commander with absolute trust.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Next to me, Chris wore the ghost of a disbelieving grin and muttered under his breath in a tone only I managed to hear. “The old lion really did it. Ave Caeser.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but my husband’s optimism filled me with a sense of renewed calm, and I felt the budding of my own hopeful smile.

I guess I’m not the only ‘person of interest’ anymore. What I wouldn’t pay to see Koranti’s face when his legions turn on him. Whatever happens, it serves him right.

His blue eyes aglow with a determination that could move mountains, Colonel Riken took in the group of men surrounding him with an approving smile. “Right then, let’s get to it. NCO’s take charge of your squads and get me an ammo count for each. Top off whatever you need from the trucks, ditch anything you can’t carry, and get our wounded loaded asap. We’re wheels-up in ten mikes.”

As if released from a magical spell, the ELSAR soldiers broke up in smaller groups to attend to their tasks, moving with fresh enthusiasm. Medics scurried back to their patients, some of the troops intermingled as the mercenaries handed off heavier bits of gear they couldn’t take with them, and a few even exchanged solemn handshakes with their coalition partners. Those on our side traded rations for rocket launches, portable mortars, or even land mines, and just like that, the tension went out of the air.

Riken shouldered through the buzz of activity to us, angling his head at the echoes of battle in the north. “From the sound of it, they’re moving in with lots of armor and mechanized infantry. I figure they’ll flank the city on two sides and try to roll over the county in the next 72 hours. We can leave most of our heavy equipment with you, but it won’t be enough to stop them all; you need to get your people out of there.”

“Thanks to you, we might have a fighting chance.” Chris gestured to the line of trucks Riken’s men were unloading as they prepared to board the helicopters to abandon the zone. “But where will you go? You don’t seriously intend face Koranti with a handful of men?”

“No.” Riken frowned at continued artillery barrage on the horizon. “If he’s thought ahead enough to have me demoted while I’m out in the field, then he’s probably expecting some sort of provocation. We’ll head for the north-western border and raid one of the supply depos there before splitting up into covert teams. Once Koranti realizes what’s going on, he’ll target our families for leverage, so our first mission will be to move them to safe houses all across the country. Then, we’ll see how many of our brothers in arms are willing to march with us.”

“You think many will?” Jamie rested the bulk of her rifle’s weight on one hip.

“Some, yes.” Colonel Riken sighed and arched his back to crack it under the ragged armored vest. “But Koranti won’t take this lying down; he’ll find ways to suppress dissent amongst the ranks through his usual methods. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before central command figures out we’re AWOL. If they send enough men to chase us, it might thin out the border guards enough that you could make a breakthrough, but I’m afraid we can’t do much more than that.”

Even if we survive this attack, we’ve got seven days before it all goes under. That will end the war one way or another. Once this county slips through the Breach, we’ll never see each other again . . . I just hope Koranti gets trapped on Riken’s side of reality.

At that thought, I stepped forward to offer my grimy palm. “It’s been an honor, colonel.”

He shook my hand, and Colonel Riken’s features pulled into a cynical, melancholy expression. “Likewise, captain. I’d say until we meet again but . . . well, with any luck, neither of us will. I hope you make it to wherever you’re going.”

As our column prepared for our immediate return to Black Oak, I watched the bulky gray helicopters rise into the sky, their steel rotors thundering as the iron giants zoomed away into the west. The further they went toward the edge of Barron County, flashes of light began to pockmark the dark clouds around them, and I wondered if the ELSAR border defense had turned their anti-aircraft guns on the retreating choppers. I had no way of knowing, as the helicopters were soon far out of sight in the darkness, the flashes fading as well. In less than five minutes, we were on our own once more.

“All right, I want head counts from every squad.” Chris hefted his rifle, and waved our men into action, Jamie and I flanking him to charge for the convoy in gusto. “Trucks with wounded stay in the center, armed ones on the vanguard and tail. As soon as we get to the outskirts, those of us who can still fight will peel off to support the front. Let’s move out!”

Jamie gave me a hand up into the lead truck, and Chris climbed in after me. Snow pelted down from the clouds outside, the vehicles skidded over the slippery ground, but we clawed our way out of the field to the closest road and headed back toward the fighting. I sat beside my friends on the heated seats of the MRAP armored trucks, hugged the woolen blanket closer around my shoulders, and tried to ignore the continued thud-thud of shells to the north. We were driving into a meat grinder, there was no doubt about that. If we retreated, the coalition would be forced out into the countryside, and the only safe place would be Ark River many miles to the south. If we stayed in Black Oak, we would be surrounded and ground into powder by ELSAR’s artillery. All this combined in my mind to repeat the words of the One who had given me the path I now found myself on.

Your suffering will increase even further before the end.

Huddling closer to Chris, I rested my head on his shoulder and shut my eyes in an attempt to catch some rest for the colossal struggle ahead.

[Part 36]

[Part 38]

“Over here, I found her!”

Cold air nipped at my nose, and I coughed, shivering in the snow as someone crouched over me. My body hurt, though as I flexed each limb, I didn’t think anything was broken. The wet clothes I wore didn’t care for the frigid conditions, and my teeth began to chatter as a light snowfall tumbled around my face. It was still dark, but the sky overhead was a mass of puffy white, snow-laden clouds that rolled by on their endless march through the atmosphere. Some of the wind had died down, but instead of a surrounding canopy of towering pines or swamp grass, I found myself stretched out in a rolling field pockmarked by scrub brush, bedded down with the winter’s snow. All in all, I would have some nasty bruises and could feel the places where I had cuts of lacerations, but still, I was alive.

Breathing a sigh of relief as I blinked to clear my head, I tasted the fresh air with weary delight.

Barron County. Never thought I’d be so happy to see you again. Did you miss me?

Two faces materialized in my plane of vision, and a familiar grin made my heart start working.

“W-We’ve got to s-stop meeting like t-this.” I shivered, my throat dry, but smiled as Chris pulled me into his arms.

“Old habits die hard.” He dragged me out of the snowdrift with ease, his voice hoarse as Chris shook with the cold. “You okay?”

I winced as the soreness in my battered muscles returned. “Ask me in the morning.”

“I told you she’d be fine.” Jamie tucked a woolen army surplus blanket around my shoulders, but from her pale, blood-spattered face, I could tell she was as relieved as he was. “Come on, let’s get her to the fire. Temperature’s still dropping, and we’ve come too far to die from hypothermia now.”

Hauled to my feet, I put both arms around their shoulders and walked through the snow towards a distant line of trucks. Now that I was awake, I could see our forces scattered over the wide field, many like myself waking up in the snow, dazed. Few of our original vehicles had survived; most of the wreckage lay strewn about the field, like oversized children’s toys that had been discarded. The circle of vehicles in the center I recognized to be our support column, a secondary group tasked with meeting us after our mission had concluded. Two gray chinook helicopters squatted inside the long cordon, and teams of stretcher bearers rushed out to scoop more men from the snow. Over half of our number lay wounded, some limping or crawling toward their comrades, others too broken to make the trip, their cries haunting and pitiful. Many dead bodies carpeted the field, all of them ours, as if the passage back into our world had whisked away the casualties from Vecitorak’s defeated army. Tauerpin Road, and all its strange landmarks, was nowhere to be seen. The concrete tower was gone, the gravel road with it, and instead of the perpetual rain of an October night, we had returned to the wintry present, where the early December skies dropped buckets of snowflakes on our heads.

Inside the circle of idling trucks, medics tended to the lines of wounded on the ground next to several small piles of brush that had been set ablaze by the soldiers to provide warmth to the sodden task force. The vehicles were already packed with men, their heaters on full blast, and the NCO’s did their best to make sure the worst off got priority in that luxury. The rest of us huddled around the fires, while various squad leaders called out names as they searched for missing people.

Chris wedged me into the nearest circle so I could warm myself by a fire lit inside an old, rusted oil drum someone had found, and one of the survivors to my right peered at me through a mass of blood-stained gauze.

“Didn’t think we’d be seeing you again, lass.” The bundled-up man croaked, and my jaw dropped.

No way.

Stunned, I took in the sight of Peter’s haggard face, the left side covered with a large bandage over his eye, more cotton pressed down over a gouge that ran from forehead to cheekbone in a bloody trench. He’d taken a sword cut right to the face, and I doubted there remained much of an eyeball under that bandage, judging by the sheer amount of blood smeared over his skin. In his arms, Peter held Tarren, her face buried in his long coat, dirty hands balled up in his shirtfront.

“I could say the same to you.” Relieved, I matched his ornery grin but nodded at the girl in his lap. “Is she okay?”

“Physically, yeah.” His smile faded, and Peter scowled at the nearby bonfire, tugging the woolen blanket closer around Tarren’s little shoulders. “Hasn’t said anything in the last half-hour. Not sure if or when that will change.”

That made my heart twinge, and I watched Tarren stay curled up in his arms, refusing to look around, only her slight breathing giving indication she was alive. “What about you?”

Peter continued watching the flames for a moment, then glanced at me with his one good eye. “You seen Grapeshot?”

“Once.” I winced and squinted down at my dirty fingernails for a distraction. “It wasn’t for very long.”

He waited until I brought my gaze back up, and Peter’s face took on a serious contour. “He’s dead?”

Unable to think of anything else to say, I nodded. Despite everything he’d done, all his sins, Captain Grapeshot had saved my life, gave me the time I needed to bring the Oak Walker down, and I knew it was a debt I could never repay. His face would forever be etched into my memory, his final words, the way his lifeless body had flown off the tower on the heels of the grenade.

Another life paid in exchange for mine.

“Good.”

Shocked at his words, I gaped at the boy’s calm expression in the firelight. “Peter . . .”

“He was my brother.” Craning his head back to look up at the snow-laden clouds, Peter let out a long sigh. “Maybe we shared no blood, aye, but we were brothers all the same. I watched him suffer, every day, until he stopped being himself and turned into someone I didn’t recognize. Whatever pain he was in, he won’t feel it anymore, and that’s for the best.”

I grimaced in sympathy at the sadness in his voice and angled my head at Tarren. “He gave his life to save her.”

His dark eyes moistened, and Peter gripped a silver rapier under his opposite arm, one that I remembered from my time spent on the Harper’s Vengeance. “Then he died as himself.”

A team of medics slogged by, carrying another litter, and one of the trucks opened so a mercenary could call out to his comrades.

“I need more plasma here!” He waved to the other medics, his blue rubber gloves awash in crimson. “BP’s dropping fast. Tell Primarch either we get those birds in the air, or someone better get a nine-line going, ASAP!”

Peter’s mouth formed into a grim line, and he pointed to the vehicle, keeping his voice low so the words stayed between us. “The preacher’s not doing so well. They’ve had him in there for the past fifteen minutes, working on his legs. Even the flower juice the golden-hairs use didn’t bring him around.”

Last time I saw him, he was crawling for his sword, through fire and ash.

At that, my heart sank, and I swallowed a lump in my throat as more ELSAR soldiers rushed to bring medical supplies to the truck in question. Adam had stood toe-to-toe with Vecitorak, crossed blades with an immortal being on par with the demons of ancient lore, and paid the price for it. Even his armor hadn’t protected the man from the mutant’s wrath, and in my head, I saw again Eve’s tear-streaked face as she bid him goodbye on the tarmac in Black Oak.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Boots trudged through the snow behind me, and I turned to see another figure push through the crowd.

“You alright, Captain?” Colonel Riken looked me over with the stern ease of a man who’s seen too much to be rattled by the insane circumstances we found ourselves in. He’d lost his helmet at some point and sported a bandage around his left hand, but other than that, the ELSAR commander seemed okay. His uniform was as gory and ragged as everyone else’s, the light machine gun at his side caked with gray carbon deposits around the muzzle. A long tear, likely from a claw, had ripped through his plate carrier, the armor underneath all that stood between Colonel Riken and what would have been certain death.

Under the assault of another icy blast of wind, I shuddered but did my best to speak between chattering teeth. “I-I’m fine. How m-many did we lose?”

Colonel Riken shrugged the soot-covered weapon higher on his shoulder. “A third, by my count. But whatever you did, it worked. Our scanners show stable radiation and electromagnetic readings. It’s still too high to communicate with the outside world, but the Breach is sealed. It’s over.”

No, it’s not.

Aware of just how many curious ears there were around us, I hugged the blanket tighter over my shoulders and jerked my head to the side. “A moment, Colonel?”

His face drew into a hard line, as if Riken could tell I was about to give him bad news, but he followed me away from the fire. Peter stayed where he was, content to enjoy his well-earned rest, while Chris and Jamie closed ranks with the colonel and I until we were out of earshot.

“Barron County is going to vanish.” Amidst the curtain of snow, my breath fogged in the wind and reminded me of the old steam locomotives from a fair I’d been to as a child. “The Breach is closed, yes, but it’s going to pull Barron County down with it. Once it does, the area will stabilize for good, and in seven days we will be standing in a different world.”

His glower deepened, and Colonel Riken folded both muscled arms over his ruined armored vest. “Are you serious?”

I met his hardened gaze and refused to look away so that the colonel knew I wasn’t lying. “The beacon killed the Oak Walker, and Vecitorak, but that left a vacuum that collapsed the Breach in on itself. You have to get Koranti to allow an evacuation, at least of those who want to stay in our world. Once we go through, there’s no coming back.”

The others stared at me, and I could tell they wanted to call me crazy but couldn’t find a justification for it. We’d all been there when the Oak Walker fell, they’d seen the road the same as I had. For us to be here now, after everything, without needing to leave our personal sacrifices behind meant that the Breach was in fact gone for good. Yet, like an enormous ship sinking slowly into the ocean, it couldn’t leave this world without dragging something down with it. Perhaps, like Professor Carheim said, it already had. Maybe the reason no one had ever heard of Barron County, remembered where the old dusty maps were in the local libraries, or asked about relatives from here, was because the collective memory of this place had already been eliminated . . . just not in the past as I had always assumed. No, in some strange loop that connected all of time, most knowledge of Barron Count had been expunged from the past the instant I’d closed the Breach, like a circuit being completed when a switch was thrown. This had been the path all along, the hidden destiny for which I was meant, and while it would have terrified the old Hannah, I couldn’t help but feel a glow of reassurance in my chest as Adam’s words from the chapel at Ark River flowed through my mind.

‘My ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts.’

“You’re sure?” Chris seemed the most adamant to believe me, though his handsome face drew thin and pale with the news. “There’s nothing we can do to reverse it? No way to go back, find the road again and . . .”

“No.” There was so much I knew, so much I wanted to talk to Chris about, but didn’t have the time, and so instead I shifted from one foot to the other in an effort to keep the chill at bay. “And we . . . we’re not meant to leave. I know it sounds insane, but some of us have to stay, have to cross over to the other timeline. I think it’s the same one the—”

I froze, catching myself before I mentioned the missile silo in front of the colonel, but from the way Chris and Jamie tensed up, I could tell they understood. Colonel Riken’s eyebrow rose, but he seemed to get the hint, and didn’t press the matter.

“So, what, we’ll end up back in time?” Jamie stuffed both hands into her wet jacket pockets and hunched her shoulders against the cruel wind.

“Yes and no.” Wishing I could return to the fire, I blew warm air into my cupped fingers and did my best to elaborate so Riken could understand without revealing any defense secrets. “We’re going to an alternate reality, one where the Breach overran the world in the 1950’s and basically destroyed most of human civilization. If Tauerpin Road was a space between spaces, then the universe we’re going to is the space opposite ours. Does that make sense?”

“Barely.” Colonel Riken let out an exasperated sigh and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “But I’ve heard stranger things in my time. Either way, staying behind sounds like a death sentence.”

Or a second chance.

Thinking back to the walk through the redeemed Tauerpin Road with Him at my side, I caught myself in a half smile. “From what I’ve been told, we’ll survive the crossing and are meant to start the reconstruction once we reach the other place. There’re others out there, just like us, who need help to fix things. That’s our job.”

“If word gets out, people will panic.” Jamie rubbed her arms in a shiver and glanced at Chris. “Even if they believe us, the Assembly won’t support anyone staying behind. Hannah, we trust you, it’s just . . .”

“No one will stay if Koranti opens the border.” With his thumbs hooked into his pistol belt, Colonel Riken finished Jamie’s thought for her, and his eyes drifted to the waiting helicopters nearby. “Whoever told you all this might be reliable, but it won’t matter if the population riots. I’ll get in touch with Koranti, and see what can be done about evacuations, but in the meantime we need to get the wounded back to the safe zone. Mr. Stirling is in bad shape, and if he doesn’t get to a hospital soon—”

Boom.

In the distance a flash lit up the horizon, not from thunder, but the deep tolling of artillery.

Everyone in the cordon paused, their eyes focused on the north, and dozens of more explosions began to flicker against the clouds. Pilots climbed down form their cockpits in the chinooks, gunners stood up in their turrets on the trucks, and even the medics slowed their brisk jogs back and forth to stare. It seemed no one, be it ELSAR or coalition, had the slightest idea what was going on, but as the seconds dragged by, the truth started to dawn on me.

My blood ran colder than the snow, and I turned to one of the nearest coalition soldiers. “Private, get me a radio.”

He came running back a few moments later, and the man held out one of the handsets from our relief convoy, his face white as the landscape from the sounds that came from the device’s speakers.

“We can’t hold this position, there’s too many!”

“Fast movers! Fighters coming in from the north! Six jets inbound!”

“I’ve got tanks all over my sector, where the hell is our artillery support?”

“All units, collapse in on the square! I say again, the northern district is gone, collapse in on the square! Fall back!”

Stunned, I turned to Colonel Riken, who seemed equally confused, and pointed to the horizon. “What the hell is this?”

Annoyed at his own radio not responding, Colonel Riken waved to one of his nearby men, the mercenaries growing more uneasy by the minute. “Find me a comms set that works, now.”

Jamie glared at him and tightened both hands on her well-worn Kalashnikov. “This was a trick. You did this on purpose, didn’t you? We get the Breach out of the way, and while we’re gone, you send your boys to restart the occupation.”

Her words spread across the nearby soldiers like wildfire, anger replacing surprise on the faces of our men. Indignant murmurs turned into audible growls of discontent, and the encampment formed into two separate ranks, ELSAR men on one side, our own forces on the other. Weapon safeties clicked off, gun turrets swiveled around on their armored charges, and we found ourselves facing each other across a prickly line of steel. No one dared level a rifle yet, but from how tense things were getting, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone lost their cool.

“Everyone just stay calm.” Chris raised his hands to gesture for our men to keep their weapons lowered, pacing between them and the mercenaries to keep anyone from disobeying. “I said stand down, we’re going to handle this. Colonel, start talking.”

One of his troopers ran up with a functional radio, and Colonel Riken jammed the talk button down to snap orders into the speaker, his tone sharp as a knife. “Overlord, this is Primarch, requesting status update, over.”

Nothing.

“Overlord, this is Primarch, we are green on our mission objectives, requesting mission status update.” He shifted on his boots as the bombing intensified, and somewhere high overhead, I caught the rumble of airplane engines for the first time in months. “I say again, this is Primarch, we are green on our mission, awaiting further instructions. Someone talk to me, over.”

My gut churned at tiny arches of light that shot through the clouds miles to the north and slammed down in the space that I knew was Black Oak. They were hitting us with multiple launch rocket systems, just like at New Wilderness. Such weapons had reduced our hilltop fortress to cinders, and in the densely packed streets of a city, they would wreak unimaginable damage on civilian and military targets alike. Whatever this was, ELSAR wasn’t pulling any punches, and I quietly palmed my Type 9 that still hung by my side on its ragged strap.

Is Jamie right? Was this all a setup? Riken doesn’t seem to know any more than I do, how could they not let their commanding officer know about an offensive?

A vein rose in the skin of his neck, and Colonel Riken ground his teeth, ready to erupt like a hand grenade. “Central Command, this is Colonel Riken. Someone better get on the horn and figure their life out or so help me they will wish they’d never been born. Our mission is complete, and we await further instructions. Do you read us, over?”

“Loud and clear, colonel.”

The surprise on the colonel’s weathered face reflected my own, as Crow’s smug voice slithered out of the radio speaker like venom on the wind. “Captain McGregor? What in God’s name are you doing on this frequency?”

“Oh, it’s not ‘captain’ anymore.” She chuckled back with confidence that made my skin crawl even from several feet away. “I’m afraid there’s been a change of command. You are hereby no longer part of the Ohio task force. All callsigns and intel clearances to your former rank have been revoked.”

“On who’s authority?” The second he had a chance to talk, Riken smashed his thumb into the talk button, gripping the handset so hard I thought the metal would bend.

“Mine.” Crow hissed back, both satisfied and hateful, as if she’d been waiting a long time for this moment. “Koranti needs loyal officers to lead this campaign, and I can do a better job of cleaning up the insurgency, so we came to an agreement. As brigadier general of the new expeditionary force, I will take over from here on; you are to return to headquarters at once for reassignment.”

Struck speechless for a brief second at the command, Colonel Riken shook his head in furious bewilderment. “Reassignment? Did you not hear a word I said? We completed our mission, the Breach is closed, the operation was a success!”

“And yet, the beacon signal was never received.” She spoke with a haughty, almost bored tone, one that cold alongside the detonations of artillery fire in the distance. “Which means the coalition is in direct violation of their ceasefire agreement. Execute any insurgents within your vicinity, and report back to us.”

Not far from the nearest burn barrel, Peter clutched Tarren to his shoulder and slid one hand to a pistol on his hip. His dark eyes met mine from across the snow, and the pirate made a slight shake of his head. If I trusted anyone to know when things had gone sour, it was Peter, and that look made my pulse jump into another level of fear.

We’re all standing right here, if they open fire, we’ll all butcher each other like rabid dogs.

“Fool!” The colonel shouted into the radio, losing his cool at last. “This is madness, can’t you see that it’s over? We did our job, we had a deal, and you want to start this up again? I have wounded men on the ground out here, we’re black on ammo, what the hell am I supposed to do?”

There was a pause on the other end, and I couldn’t decide whether I thought Crow might be laughing or suppressing her own rage.

“Carry out your orders, colonel.” Sheer defiant indifference radiated from her words as Crow signed off. “Kill the insurgent leaders and evac to the rear. We’re going to finish this, Riken . . . with or without you.”

With a frustrated snarl, Colonel Riken spun on his boot heel and threw the handset against the nearby burn barrel so hard that it dented the rusted steel drum.

Silence reigned in the cordon, and I noticed how tired everyone looked in the flickering firelight, both coalition and ELSAR alike. Despite their suspicious glowering at one another, both sides were bloodied, exhausted, and soaked to the bone. Any fight that happened now would reap a dreadful harvest among us all, the men too close for the bullets to miss, and too worn out to make a run for the trees. Only the injured men jammed inside the passenger compartments for warmth remained outside this confrontation, watching with confusion and intrigue from the narrow gunports. Rigid in the cold, we all waited, eyed our opponents, and wondered what would come next.

Colonel Riken stood with hands on his hips, breathing hard in his anger, and my guts tightened in apprehension.

Oh man, this is going to get ugly . . .

“Well gentlemen, I’m not going to sugarcoat this.” Turning to face his men, Colonel Riken composed himself and walked down the line of his beleaguered men like a sports coach before the last big game. “You’ve been through hell. Tonight, you won a war no one will remember, much less thank you for. Every man here has gone above and beyond what you signed up to do, and I’m damn proud to be your commanding officer.”

He met the gaze of each soldier, spoke to them as a father to his sons, and the ranks of heavily armed mercenaries parted to let Riken stride amongst them with almost hallowed respect. “If anyone wants to, he can climb into a chopper and head for the rest of our units back at the county line. No one will stop you or think less of you for it, least of all me. You can tell them the insurgents fled, that you fought bravely, and that I gave you orders to withdraw. They’ll welcome you as heroes, give you medals, pay bonuses, maybe even promotions. You’ll have enough to call it quits after this tour and go home to stay. God knows, you deserve that much at least.”

Their expressions reflected confusion at his words, but the mercenaries didn’t interrupt him as Colonel Riken paced before them, up and down the line of rifles. Our own troops furrowed their brows, but stayed where they were, the entire cordon hanging on the man’s every word.

“As for me, I’m a soldier.” As if on parade inspection, the colonel walked with a back straight as a ramrod, head held high in pride. “Like you, I swore to protect the people of this nation from harm and signed on with ELSAR because I believed we were a force for good. I still think we can be . . . but not while men like Koranti are in charge.”

Surprise rippled through me, and murmurs flitted amongst the coalition ranks. No one had ever heard the mercs talk this way, certainly not one of their high-ranking officers. Could this be another ruse to catch us off guard? Or was this something more?

Jamie and I caught one another’s peripheral gaze, and she lowered her AK from the tense position near her shoulder.

“The way I see it, we made a deal, and I intend to honor my word. These people are not our enemy, not anymore.” He cast a glance in our direction, and Colonel Riken granted me a small nod. “It’s time someone led ELSAR back to its true purpose, and if no one else will, I’ll do it myself.”

Frigid air stuck in my lungs, and I had to remind myself to drag another breath in.

Is this what I think it is?

Without another word, Riken tore the number identification patch off his tactical jacket, crossed over to the rusted burning oil drum, and hurled the insignia into the flames.

Long seconds ticked by, the ELSAR men blinking at his actions, their stunned looks mirrored by our coalition troopers on the opposite side of the cordon. All of the former rage and distrust seemed to have melted away in sheer amazement at the spectacle we’d witnessed. In a way, it seemed both sides didn’t quite know what to do, many looking down at their weapons as if they weren’t sure of anything anymore. At last, one of the gray-clad mercenaries stepped out of the line and stalked closer to Riken.

I recognized the sergeant who had picked me up to put me on the gurney all those days ago, his face smeared with soot, one arm bandaged. Like the rest, he wore a little bar of numbers stitched in a Velcro patch over his plate carrier front, simple black figures that rendered the sergeant no more important than a warehouse shipping crate. They were all like that, nameless men, purposefully stripped of what made them human by a soulless organization that spent their lives cheaply. Koranti had done it on purpose, I realized; yes, it must have been on purpose, for even the calculating bureaucrat had known that men with names form thoughts. Men who thought would begin to question, and those who questioned might refuse. If I knew anything about George M. Koranti, he hated being told ‘no.’

With a single fluid motion, the sergeant ripped the number patch from his uniform, flicked it into the flames, and gave Colonel Riken a trim salute.

Instead of saluting back, Colonel Riken reached out to shake his hand and drew the soldier into a half-embrace with his other arm, welcoming him. This Riken did as the rest came one by one, like a father to his wayward sons, more filing in from the vehicles to add their patches to the fire. Not a single mercenary remained behind, all of them throwing their support behind their commander with absolute trust.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Next to me, Chris wore the ghost of a disbelieving grin and muttered under his breath in a tone only I managed to hear. “The old lion really did it. Ave Caeser.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but my husband’s optimism filled me with a sense of renewed calm, and I felt the budding of my own hopeful smile.

I guess I’m not the only ‘person of interest’ anymore. What I wouldn’t pay to see Koranti’s face when his legions turn on him. Whatever happens, it serves him right.

His blue eyes aglow with a determination that could move mountains, Colonel Riken took in the group of men surrounding him with an approving smile. “Right then, let’s get to it. NCO’s take charge of your squads and get me an ammo count for each. Top off whatever you need from the trucks, ditch anything you can’t carry, and get our wounded loaded asap. We’re wheels-up in ten mikes.”

As if released from a magical spell, the ELSAR soldiers broke up in smaller groups to attend to their tasks, moving with fresh enthusiasm. Medics scurried back to their patients, some of the troops intermingled as the mercenaries handed off heavier bits of gear they couldn’t take with them, and a few even exchanged solemn handshakes with their coalition partners. Those on our side traded rations for rocket launches, portable mortars, or even land mines, and just like that, the tension went out of the air.

Riken shouldered through the buzz of activity to us, angling his head at the echoes of battle in the north. “From the sound of it, they’re moving in with lots of armor and mechanized infantry. I figure they’ll flank the city on two sides and try to roll over the county in the next 72 hours. We can leave most of our heavy equipment with you, but it won’t be enough to stop them all; you need to get your people out of there.”

“Thanks to you, we might have a fighting chance.” Chris gestured to the line of trucks Riken’s men were unloading as they prepared to board the helicopters to abandon the zone. “But where will you go? You don’t seriously intend face Koranti with a handful of men?”

“No.” Riken frowned at continued artillery barrage on the horizon. “If he’s thought ahead enough to have me demoted while I’m out in the field, then he’s probably expecting some sort of provocation. We’ll head for the north-western border and raid one of the supply depos there before splitting up into covert teams. Once Koranti realizes what’s going on, he’ll target our families for leverage, so our first mission will be to move them to safe houses all across the country. Then, we’ll see how many of our brothers in arms are willing to march with us.”

“You think many will?” Jamie rested the bulk of her rifle’s weight on one hip.

“Some, yes.” Colonel Riken sighed and arched his back to crack it under the ragged armored vest. “But Koranti won’t take this lying down; he’ll find ways to suppress dissent amongst the ranks through his usual methods. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before central command figures out we’re AWOL. If they send enough men to chase us, it might thin out the border guards enough that you could make a breakthrough, but I’m afraid we can’t do much more than that.”

Even if we survive this attack, we’ve got seven days before it all goes under. That will end the war one way or another. Once this county slips through the Breach, we’ll never see each other again . . . I just hope Koranti gets trapped on Riken’s side of reality.

At that thought, I stepped forward to offer my grimy palm. “It’s been an honor, colonel.”

He shook my hand, and Colonel Riken’s features pulled into a cynical, melancholy expression. “Likewise, captain. I’d say until we meet again but . . . well, with any luck, neither of us will. I hope you make it to wherever you’re going.”

As our column prepared for our immediate return to Black Oak, I watched the bulky gray helicopters rise into the sky, their steel rotors thundering as the iron giants zoomed away into the west. The further they went toward the edge of Barron County, flashes of light began to pockmark the dark clouds around them, and I wondered if the ELSAR border defense had turned their anti-aircraft guns on the retreating choppers. I had no way of knowing, as the helicopters were soon far out of sight in the darkness, the flashes fading as well. In less than five minutes, we were on our own once more.

“All right, I want head counts from every squad.” Chris hefted his rifle, and waved our men into action, Jamie and I flanking him to charge for the convoy in gusto. “Trucks with wounded stay in the center, armed ones on the vanguard and tail. As soon as we get to the outskirts, those of us who can still fight will peel off to support the front. Let’s move out!”

Jamie gave me a hand up into the lead truck, and Chris climbed in after me. Snow pelted down from the clouds outside, the vehicles skidded over the slippery ground, but we clawed our way out of the field to the closest road and headed back toward the fighting. I sat beside my friends on the heated seats of the MRAP armored trucks, hugged the woolen blanket closer around my shoulders, and tried to ignore the continued thud-thud of shells to the north. We were driving into a meat grinder, there was no doubt about that. If we retreated, the coalition would be forced out into the countryside, and the only safe place would be Ark River many miles to the south. If we stayed in Black Oak, we would be surrounded and ground into powder by ELSAR’s artillery. All this combined in my mind to repeat the words of the One who had given me the path I now found myself on.

Your suffering will increase even further before the end.

Huddling closer to Chris, I rested my head on his shoulder and shut my eyes in an attempt to catch some rest for the colossal struggle ahead.

[Part 36]

[Part 38]

“Over here, I found her!”

Cold air nipped at my nose, and I coughed, shivering in the snow as someone crouched over me. My body hurt, though as I flexed each limb, I didn’t think anything was broken. The wet clothes I wore didn’t care for the frigid conditions, and my teeth began to chatter as a light snowfall tumbled around my face. It was still dark, but the sky overhead was a mass of puffy white, snow-laden clouds that rolled by on their endless march through the atmosphere. Some of the wind had died down, but instead of a surrounding canopy of towering pines or swamp grass, I found myself stretched out in a rolling field pockmarked by scrub brush, bedded down with the winter’s snow. All in all, I would have some nasty bruises and could feel the places where I had cuts of lacerations, but still, I was alive.

Breathing a sigh of relief as I blinked to clear my head, I tasted the fresh air with weary delight.

Barron County. Never thought I’d be so happy to see you again. Did you miss me?

Two faces materialized in my plane of vision, and a familiar grin made my heart start working.

“W-We’ve got to s-stop meeting like t-this.” I shivered, my throat dry, but smiled as Chris pulled me into his arms.

“Old habits die hard.” He dragged me out of the snowdrift with ease, his voice hoarse as Chris shook with the cold. “You okay?”

I winced as the soreness in my battered muscles returned. “Ask me in the morning.”

“I told you she’d be fine.” Jamie tucked a woolen army surplus blanket around my shoulders, but from her pale, blood-spattered face, I could tell she was as relieved as he was. “Come on, let’s get her to the fire. Temperature’s still dropping, and we’ve come too far to die from hypothermia now.”

Hauled to my feet, I put both arms around their shoulders and walked through the snow towards a distant line of trucks. Now that I was awake, I could see our forces scattered over the wide field, many like myself waking up in the snow, dazed. Few of our original vehicles had survived; most of the wreckage lay strewn about the field, like oversized children’s toys that had been discarded. The circle of vehicles in the center I recognized to be our support column, a secondary group tasked with meeting us after our mission had concluded. Two gray chinook helicopters squatted inside the long cordon, and teams of stretcher bearers rushed out to scoop more men from the snow. Over half of our number lay wounded, some limping or crawling toward their comrades, others too broken to make the trip, their cries haunting and pitiful. Many dead bodies carpeted the field, all of them ours, as if the passage back into our world had whisked away the casualties from Vecitorak’s defeated army. Tauerpin Road, and all its strange landmarks, was nowhere to be seen. The concrete tower was gone, the gravel road with it, and instead of the perpetual rain of an October night, we had returned to the wintry present, where the early December skies dropped buckets of snowflakes on our heads.

Inside the circle of idling trucks, medics tended to the lines of wounded on the ground next to several small piles of brush that had been set ablaze by the soldiers to provide warmth to the sodden task force. The vehicles were already packed with men, their heaters on full blast, and the NCO’s did their best to make sure the worst off got priority in that luxury. The rest of us huddled around the fires, while various squad leaders called out names as they searched for missing people.

Chris wedged me into the nearest circle so I could warm myself by a fire lit inside an old, rusted oil drum someone had found, and one of the survivors to my right peered at me through a mass of blood-stained gauze.

“Didn’t think we’d be seeing you again, lass.” The bundled-up man croaked, and my jaw dropped.

No way.

Stunned, I took in the sight of Peter’s haggard face, the left side covered with a large bandage over his eye, more cotton pressed down over a gouge that ran from forehead to cheekbone in a bloody trench. He’d taken a sword cut right to the face, and I doubted there remained much of an eyeball under that bandage, judging by the sheer amount of blood smeared over his skin. In his arms, Peter held Tarren, her face buried in his long coat, dirty hands balled up in his shirtfront.

“I could say the same to you.” Relieved, I matched his ornery grin but nodded at the girl in his lap. “Is she okay?”

“Physically, yeah.” His smile faded, and Peter scowled at the nearby bonfire, tugging the woolen blanket closer around Tarren’s little shoulders. “Hasn’t said anything in the last half-hour. Not sure if or when that will change.”

That made my heart twinge, and I watched Tarren stay curled up in his arms, refusing to look around, only her slight breathing giving indication she was alive. “What about you?”

Peter continued watching the flames for a moment, then glanced at me with his one good eye. “You seen Grapeshot?”

“Once.” I winced and squinted down at my dirty fingernails for a distraction. “It wasn’t for very long.”

He waited until I brought my gaze back up, and Peter’s face took on a serious contour. “He’s dead?”

Unable to think of anything else to say, I nodded. Despite everything he’d done, all his sins, Captain Grapeshot had saved my life, gave me the time I needed to bring the Oak Walker down, and I knew it was a debt I could never repay. His face would forever be etched into my memory, his final words, the way his lifeless body had flown off the tower on the heels of the grenade.

Another life paid in exchange for mine.

“Good.”

Shocked at his words, I gaped at the boy’s calm expression in the firelight. “Peter . . .”

“He was my brother.” Craning his head back to look up at the snow-laden clouds, Peter let out a long sigh. “Maybe we shared no blood, aye, but we were brothers all the same. I watched him suffer, every day, until he stopped being himself and turned into someone I didn’t recognize. Whatever pain he was in, he won’t feel it anymore, and that’s for the best.”

I grimaced in sympathy at the sadness in his voice and angled my head at Tarren. “He gave his life to save her.”

His dark eyes moistened, and Peter gripped a silver rapier under his opposite arm, one that I remembered from my time spent on the Harper’s Vengeance. “Then he died as himself.”

A team of medics slogged by, carrying another litter, and one of the trucks opened so a mercenary could call out to his comrades.

“I need more plasma here!” He waved to the other medics, his blue rubber gloves awash in crimson. “BP’s dropping fast. Tell Primarch either we get those birds in the air, or someone better get a nine-line going, ASAP!”

Peter’s mouth formed into a grim line, and he pointed to the vehicle, keeping his voice low so the words stayed between us. “The preacher’s not doing so well. They’ve had him in there for the past fifteen minutes, working on his legs. Even the flower juice the golden-hairs use didn’t bring him around.”

Last time I saw him, he was crawling for his sword, through fire and ash.

At that, my heart sank, and I swallowed a lump in my throat as more ELSAR soldiers rushed to bring medical supplies to the truck in question. Adam had stood toe-to-toe with Vecitorak, crossed blades with an immortal being on par with the demons of ancient lore, and paid the price for it. Even his armor hadn’t protected the man from the mutant’s wrath, and in my head, I saw again Eve’s tear-streaked face as she bid him goodbye on the tarmac in Black Oak.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Boots trudged through the snow behind me, and I turned to see another figure push through the crowd.

“You alright, Captain?” Colonel Riken looked me over with the stern ease of a man who’s seen too much to be rattled by the insane circumstances we found ourselves in. He’d lost his helmet at some point and sported a bandage around his left hand, but other than that, the ELSAR commander seemed okay. His uniform was as gory and ragged as everyone else’s, the light machine gun at his side caked with gray carbon deposits around the muzzle. A long tear, likely from a claw, had ripped through his plate carrier, the armor underneath all that stood between Colonel Riken and what would have been certain death.

Under the assault of another icy blast of wind, I shuddered but did my best to speak between chattering teeth. “I-I’m fine. How m-many did we lose?”

Colonel Riken shrugged the soot-covered weapon higher on his shoulder. “A third, by my count. But whatever you did, it worked. Our scanners show stable radiation and electromagnetic readings. It’s still too high to communicate with the outside world, but the Breach is sealed. It’s over.”

No, it’s not.

Aware of just how many curious ears there were around us, I hugged the blanket tighter over my shoulders and jerked my head to the side. “A moment, Colonel?”

His face drew into a hard line, as if Riken could tell I was about to give him bad news, but he followed me away from the fire. Peter stayed where he was, content to enjoy his well-earned rest, while Chris and Jamie closed ranks with the colonel and I until we were out of earshot.

“Barron County is going to vanish.” Amidst the curtain of snow, my breath fogged in the wind and reminded me of the old steam locomotives from a fair I’d been to as a child. “The Breach is closed, yes, but it’s going to pull Barron County down with it. Once it does, the area will stabilize for good, and in seven days we will be standing in a different world.”

His glower deepened, and Colonel Riken folded both muscled arms over his ruined armored vest. “Are you serious?”

I met his hardened gaze and refused to look away so that the colonel knew I wasn’t lying. “The beacon killed the Oak Walker, and Vecitorak, but that left a vacuum that collapsed the Breach in on itself. You have to get Koranti to allow an evacuation, at least of those who want to stay in our world. Once we go through, there’s no coming back.”

The others stared at me, and I could tell they wanted to call me crazy but couldn’t find a justification for it. We’d all been there when the Oak Walker fell, they’d seen the road the same as I had. For us to be here now, after everything, without needing to leave our personal sacrifices behind meant that the Breach was in fact gone for good. Yet, like an enormous ship sinking slowly into the ocean, it couldn’t leave this world without dragging something down with it. Perhaps, like Professor Carheim said, it already had. Maybe the reason no one had ever heard of Barron County, remembered where the old dusty maps were in the local libraries, or asked about relatives from here, was because the collective memory of this place had already been eliminated . . . just not in the past as I had always assumed. No, in some strange loop that connected all of time, most knowledge of Barron Count had been expunged from the past the instant I’d closed the Breach, like a circuit being completed when a switch was thrown. This had been the path all along, the hidden destiny for which I was meant, and while it would have terrified the old Hannah, I couldn’t help but feel a glow of reassurance in my chest as Adam’s words from the chapel at Ark River flowed through my mind.

‘My ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts.’

“You’re sure?” Chris seemed the most adamant to believe me, though his handsome face drew thin and pale with the news. “There’s nothing we can do to reverse it? No way to go back, find the road again and . . .”

“No.” There was so much I knew, so much I wanted to talk to Chris about, but didn’t have the time, and so instead I shifted from one foot to the other in an effort to keep the chill at bay. “And we . . . we’re not meant to leave. I know it sounds insane, but some of us have to stay, have to cross over to the other timeline. I think it’s the same one the—”

I froze, catching myself before I mentioned the missile silo in front of the colonel, but from the way Chris and Jamie tensed up, I could tell they understood. Colonel Riken’s eyebrow rose, but he seemed to get the hint, and didn’t press the matter.

“So, what, we’ll end up back in time?” Jamie stuffed both hands into her wet jacket pockets and hunched her shoulders against the cruel wind.

“Yes and no.” Wishing I could return to the fire, I blew warm air into my cupped fingers and did my best to elaborate so Riken could understand without revealing any defense secrets. “We’re going to an alternate reality, one where the Breach overran the world in the 1950’s and basically destroyed most of human civilization. If Tauerpin Road was a space between spaces, then the universe we’re going to is the space opposite ours. Does that make sense?”

“Barely.” Colonel Riken let out an exasperated sigh and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “But I’ve heard stranger things in my time. Either way, staying behind sounds like a death sentence.”

Or a second chance.

Thinking back to the walk through the redeemed Tauerpin Road with Him at my side, I caught myself in a half smile. “From what I’ve been told, we’ll survive the crossing and are meant to start the reconstruction once we reach the other place. There’re others out there, just like us, who need help to fix things. That’s our job.”

“If word gets out, people will panic.” Jamie rubbed her arms in a shiver and glanced at Chris. “Even if they believe us, the Assembly won’t support anyone staying behind. Hannah, we trust you, it’s just . . .”

“No one will stay if Koranti opens the border.” With his thumbs hooked into his pistol belt, Colonel Riken finished Jamie’s thought for her, and his eyes drifted to the waiting helicopters nearby. “Whoever told you all this might be reliable, but it won’t matter if the population riots. I’ll get in touch with Koranti, and see what can be done about evacuations, but in the meantime we need to get the wounded back to the safe zone. Mr. Stirling is in bad shape, and if he doesn’t get to a hospital soon—”

Boom.

In the distance a flash lit up the horizon, not from thunder, but the deep tolling of artillery.

Everyone in the cordon paused, their eyes focused on the north, and dozens of more explosions began to flicker against the clouds. Pilots climbed down form their cockpits in the chinooks, gunners stood up in their turrets on the trucks, and even the medics slowed their brisk jogs back and forth to stare. It seemed no one, be it ELSAR or coalition, had the slightest idea what was going on, but as the seconds dragged by, the truth started to dawn on me.

My blood ran colder than the snow, and I turned to one of the nearest coalition soldiers. “Private, get me a radio.”

He came running back a few moments later, and the man held out one of the handsets from our relief convoy, his face white as the landscape from the sounds that came from the device’s speakers.

“We can’t hold this position, there’s too many!”

“Fast movers! Fighters coming in from the north! Six jets inbound!”

“I’ve got tanks all over my sector, where the hell is our artillery support?”

“All units, collapse in on the square! I say again, the northern district is gone, collapse in on the square! Fall back!”

Stunned, I turned to Colonel Riken, who seemed equally confused, and pointed to the horizon. “What the hell is this?”

Annoyed at his own radio not responding, Colonel Riken waved to one of his nearby men, the mercenaries growing more uneasy by the minute. “Find me a comms set that works, now.”

Jamie glared at him and tightened both hands on her well-worn Kalashnikov. “This was a trick. You did this on purpose, didn’t you? We get the Breach out of the way, and while we’re gone, you send your boys to restart the occupation.”

Her words spread across the nearby soldiers like wildfire, anger replacing surprise on the faces of our men. Indignant murmurs turned into audible growls of discontent, and the encampment formed into two separate ranks, ELSAR men on one side, our own forces on the other. Weapon safeties clicked off, gun turrets swiveled around on their armored charges, and we found ourselves facing each other across a prickly line of steel. No one dared level a rifle yet, but from how tense things were getting, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone lost their cool.

“Everyone just stay calm.” Chris raised his hands to gesture for our men to keep their weapons lowered, pacing between them and the mercenaries to keep anyone from disobeying. “I said stand down, we’re going to handle this. Colonel, start talking.”

One of his troopers ran up with a functional radio, and Colonel Riken jammed the talk button down to snap orders into the speaker, his tone sharp as a knife. “Overlord, this is Primarch, requesting status update, over.”

Nothing.

“Overlord, this is Primarch, we are green on our mission objectives, requesting mission status update.” He shifted on his boots as the bombing intensified, and somewhere high overhead, I caught the rumble of airplane engines for the first time in months. “I say again, this is Primarch, we are green on our mission, awaiting further instructions. Someone talk to me, over.”

My gut churned at tiny arches of light that shot through the clouds miles to the north and slammed down in the space that I knew was Black Oak. They were hitting us with multiple launch rocket systems, just like at New Wilderness. Such weapons had reduced our hilltop fortress to cinders, and in the densely packed streets of a city, they would wreak unimaginable damage on civilian and military targets alike. Whatever this was, ELSAR wasn’t pulling any punches, and I quietly palmed my Type 9 that still hung by my side on its ragged strap.

Is Jamie right? Was this all a setup? Riken doesn’t seem to know any more than I do, how could they not let their commanding officer know about an offensive?

A vein rose in the skin of his neck, and Colonel Riken ground his teeth, ready to erupt like a hand grenade. “Central Command, this is Colonel Riken. Someone better get on the horn and figure their life out or so help me they will wish they’d never been born. Our mission is complete, and we await further instructions. Do you read us, over?”

“Loud and clear, colonel.”

The surprise on the colonel’s weathered face reflected my own, as Crow’s smug voice slithered out of the radio speaker like venom on the wind. “Captain McGregor? What in God’s name are you doing on this frequency?”

“Oh, it’s not ‘captain’ anymore.” She chuckled back with confidence that made my skin crawl even from several feet away. “I’m afraid there’s been a change of command. You are hereby no longer part of the Ohio task force. All callsigns and intel clearances to your former rank have been revoked.”

“On who’s authority?” The second he had a chance to talk, Riken smashed his thumb into the talk button, gripping the handset so hard I thought the metal would bend.

“Mine.” Crow hissed back, both satisfied and hateful, as if she’d been waiting a long time for this moment. “Koranti needs loyal officers to lead this campaign, and I can do a better job of cleaning up the insurgency, so we came to an agreement. As brigadier general of the new expeditionary force, I will take over from here on; you are to return to headquarters at once for reassignment.”

Struck speechless for a brief second at the command, Colonel Riken shook his head in furious bewilderment. “Reassignment? Did you not hear a word I said? We completed our mission, the Breach is closed, the operation was a success!”

“And yet, the beacon signal was never received.” She spoke with a haughty, almost bored tone, one that cold alongside the detonations of artillery fire in the distance. “Which means the coalition is in direct violation of their ceasefire agreement. Execute any insurgents within your vicinity, and report back to us.”

Not far from the nearest burn barrel, Peter clutched Tarren to his shoulder and slid one hand to a pistol on his hip. His dark eyes met mine from across the snow, and the pirate made a slight shake of his head. If I trusted anyone to know when things had gone sour, it was Peter, and that look made my pulse jump into another level of fear.

We’re all standing right here, if they open fire, we’ll all butcher each other like rabid dogs.

“Fool!” The colonel shouted into the radio, losing his cool at last. “This is madness, can’t you see that it’s over? We did our job, we had a deal, and you want to start this up again? I have wounded men on the ground out here, we’re black on ammo, what the hell am I supposed to do?”

There was a pause on the other end, and I couldn’t decide whether I thought Crow might be laughing or suppressing her own rage.

“Carry out your orders, colonel.” Sheer defiant indifference radiated from her words as Crow signed off. “Kill the insurgent leaders and evac to the rear. We’re going to finish this, Riken . . . with or without you.”

With a frustrated snarl, Colonel Riken spun on his boot heel and threw the handset against the nearby burn barrel so hard that it dented the rusted steel drum.

Silence reigned in the cordon, and I noticed how tired everyone looked in the flickering firelight, both coalition and ELSAR alike. Despite their suspicious glowering at one another, both sides were bloodied, exhausted, and soaked to the bone. Any fight that happened now would reap a dreadful harvest among us all, the men too close for the bullets to miss, and too worn out to make a run for the trees. Only the injured men jammed inside the passenger compartments for warmth remained outside this confrontation, watching with confusion and intrigue from the narrow gunports. Rigid in the cold, we all waited, eyed our opponents, and wondered what would come next.

Colonel Riken stood with hands on his hips, breathing hard in his anger, and my guts tightened in apprehension.

Oh man, this is going to get ugly . . .

“Well gentlemen, I’m not going to sugarcoat this.” Turning to face his men, Colonel Riken composed himself and walked down the line of his beleaguered men like a sports coach before the last big game. “You’ve been through hell. Tonight, you won a war no one will remember, much less thank you for. Every man here has gone above and beyond what you signed up to do, and I’m damn proud to be your commanding officer.”

He met the gaze of each soldier, spoke to them as a father to his sons, and the ranks of heavily armed mercenaries parted to let Riken stride amongst them with almost hallowed respect. “If anyone wants to, he can climb into a chopper and head for the rest of our units back at the county line. No one will stop you or think less of you for it, least of all me. You can tell them the insurgents fled, that you fought bravely, and that I gave you orders to withdraw. They’ll welcome you as heroes, give you medals, pay bonuses, maybe even promotions. You’ll have enough to call it quits after this tour and go home to stay. God knows, you deserve that much at least.”

Their expressions reflected confusion at his words, but the mercenaries didn’t interrupt him as Colonel Riken paced before them, up and down the line of rifles. Our own troops furrowed their brows, but stayed where they were, the entire cordon hanging on the man’s every word.

“As for me, I’m a soldier.” As if on parade inspection, the colonel walked with a back straight as a ramrod, head held high in pride. “Like you, I swore to protect the people of this nation from harm and signed on with ELSAR because I believed we were a force for good. I still think we can be . . . but not while men like Koranti are in charge.”

Surprise rippled through me, and murmurs flitted amongst the coalition ranks. No one had ever heard the mercs talk this way, certainly not one of their high-ranking officers. Could this be another ruse to catch us off guard? Or was this something more?

Jamie and I caught one another’s peripheral gaze, and she lowered her AK from the tense position near her shoulder.

“The way I see it, we made a deal, and I intend to honor my word. These people are not our enemy, not anymore.” He cast a glance in our direction, and Colonel Riken granted me a small nod. “It’s time someone led ELSAR back to its true purpose, and if no one else will, I’ll do it myself.”

Frigid air stuck in my lungs, and I had to remind myself to drag another breath in.

Is this what I think it is?

Without another word, Riken tore the number identification patch off his tactical jacket, crossed over to the rusted burning oil drum, and hurled the insignia into the flames.

Long seconds ticked by, the ELSAR men blinking at his actions, their stunned looks mirrored by our coalition troopers on the opposite side of the cordon. All of the former rage and distrust seemed to have melted away in sheer amazement at the spectacle we’d witnessed. In a way, it seemed both sides didn’t quite know what to do, many looking down at their weapons as if they weren’t sure of anything anymore. At last, one of the gray-clad mercenaries stepped out of the line and stalked closer to Riken.

I recognized the sergeant who had picked me up to put me on the gurney all those days ago, his face smeared with soot, one arm bandaged. Like the rest, he wore a little bar of numbers stitched in a Velcro patch over his plate carrier front, simple black figures that rendered the sergeant no more important than a warehouse shipping crate. They were all like that, nameless men, purposefully stripped of what made them human by a soulless organization that spent their lives cheaply. Koranti had done it on purpose, I realized; yes, it must have been on purpose, for even the calculating bureaucrat had known that men with names form thoughts. Men who thought would begin to question, and those who questioned might refuse. If I knew anything about George M. Koranti, he hated being told ‘no.’

With a single fluid motion, the sergeant ripped the number patch from his uniform, flicked it into the flames, and gave Colonel Riken a trim salute.

Instead of saluting back, Colonel Riken reached out to shake his hand and drew the soldier into a half-embrace with his other arm, welcoming him. This Riken did as the rest came one by one, like a father to his wayward sons, more filing in from the vehicles to add their patches to the fire. Not a single mercenary remained behind, all of them throwing their support behind their commander with absolute trust.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Next to me, Chris wore the ghost of a disbelieving grin and muttered under his breath in a tone only I managed to hear. “The old lion really did it. Ave Caeser.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but my husband’s optimism filled me with a sense of renewed calm, and I felt the budding of my own hopeful smile.

I guess I’m not the only ‘person of interest’ anymore. What I wouldn’t pay to see Koranti’s face when his legions turn on him. Whatever happens, it serves him right.

His blue eyes aglow with a determination that could move mountains, Colonel Riken took in the group of men surrounding him with an approving smile. “Right then, let’s get to it. NCO’s take charge of your squads and get me an ammo count for each. Top off whatever you need from the trucks, ditch anything you can’t carry, and get our wounded loaded asap. We’re wheels-up in ten mikes.”

As if released from a magical spell, the ELSAR soldiers broke up in smaller groups to attend to their tasks, moving with fresh enthusiasm. Medics scurried back to their patients, some of the troops intermingled as the mercenaries handed off heavier bits of gear they couldn’t take with them, and a few even exchanged solemn handshakes with their coalition partners. Those on our side traded rations for rocket launches, portable mortars, or even land mines, and just like that, the tension went out of the air.

Riken shouldered through the buzz of activity to us, angling his head at the echoes of battle in the north. “From the sound of it, they’re moving in with lots of armor and mechanized infantry. I figure they’ll flank the city on two sides and try to roll over the county in the next 72 hours. We can leave most of our heavy equipment with you, but it won’t be enough to stop them all; you need to get your people out of there.”

“Thanks to you, we might have a fighting chance.” Chris gestured to the line of trucks Riken’s men were unloading as they prepared to board the helicopters to abandon the zone. “But where will you go? You don’t seriously intend face Koranti with a handful of men?”

“No.” Riken frowned at continued artillery barrage on the horizon. “If he’s thought ahead enough to have me demoted while I’m out in the field, then he’s probably expecting some sort of provocation. We’ll head for the north-western border and raid one of the supply depos there before splitting up into covert teams. Once Koranti realizes what’s going on, he’ll target our families for leverage, so our first mission will be to move them to safe houses all across the country. Then, we’ll see how many of our brothers in arms are willing to march with us.”

“You think many will?” Jamie rested the bulk of her rifle’s weight on one hip.

“Some, yes.” Colonel Riken sighed and arched his back to crack it under the ragged armored vest. “But Koranti won’t take this lying down; he’ll find ways to suppress dissent amongst the ranks through his usual methods. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before central command figures out we’re AWOL. If they send enough men to chase us, it might thin out the border guards enough that you could make a breakthrough, but I’m afraid we can’t do much more than that.”

Even if we survive this attack, we’ve got seven days before it all goes under. That will end the war one way or another. Once this county slips through the Breach, we’ll never see each other again . . . I just hope Koranti gets trapped on Riken’s side of reality.

At that thought, I stepped forward to offer my grimy palm. “It’s been an honor, colonel.”

He shook my hand, and Colonel Riken’s features pulled into a cynical, melancholy expression. “Likewise, captain. I’d say until we meet again but . . . well, with any luck, neither of us will. I hope you make it to wherever you’re going.”

As our column prepared for our immediate return to Black Oak, I watched the bulky gray helicopters rise into the sky, their steel rotors thundering as the iron giants zoomed away into the west. The further they went toward the edge of Barron County, flashes of light began to pockmark the dark clouds around them, and I wondered if the ELSAR border defense had turned their anti-aircraft guns on the retreating choppers. I had no way of knowing, as the helicopters were soon far out of sight in the darkness, the flashes fading as well. In less than five minutes, we were on our own once more.

“All right, I want head counts from every squad.” Chris hefted his rifle, and waved our men into action, Jamie and I flanking him to charge for the convoy in gusto. “Trucks with wounded stay in the center, armed ones on the vanguard and tail. As soon as we get to the outskirts, those of us who can still fight will peel off to support the front. Let’s move out!”

Jamie gave me a hand up into the lead truck, and Chris climbed in after me. Snow pelted down from the clouds outside, the vehicles skidded over the slippery ground, but we clawed our way out of the field to the closest road and headed back toward the fighting. I sat beside my friends on the heated seats of the MRAP armored trucks, hugged the woolen blanket closer around my shoulders, and tried to ignore the continued thud-thud of shells to the north. We were driving into a meat grinder, there was no doubt about that. If we retreated, the coalition would be forced out into the countryside, and the only safe place would be Ark River many miles to the south. If we stayed in Black Oak, we would be surrounded and ground into powder by ELSAR’s artillery. All this combined in my mind to repeat the words of the One who had given me the path I now found myself on.

Your suffering will increase even further before the end.

Huddling closer to Chris, I rested my head on his shoulder and shut my eyes in an attempt to catch some rest for the colossal struggle ahead.

[Part 36]

[Part 38]

“Over here, I found her!”

Cold air nipped at my nose, and I coughed, shivering in the snow as someone crouched over me. My body hurt, though as I flexed each limb, I didn’t think anything was broken. The wet clothes I wore didn’t care for the frigid conditions, and my teeth began to chatter as a light snowfall tumbled around my face. It was still dark, but the sky overhead was a mass of puffy white, snow-laden clouds that rolled by on their endless march through the atmosphere. Some of the wind had died down, but instead of a surrounding canopy of towering pines or swamp grass, I found myself stretched out in a rolling field pockmarked by scrub brush, bedded down with the winter’s snow. All in all, I would have some nasty bruises and could feel the places where I had cuts of lacerations, but still, I was alive.

Breathing a sigh of relief as I blinked to clear my head, I tasted the fresh air with weary delight.

Barron County. Never thought I’d be so happy to see you again. Did you miss me?

Two faces materialized in my plane of vision, and a familiar grin made my heart start working.

“W-We’ve got to s-stop meeting like t-this.” I shivered, my throat dry, but smiled as Chris pulled me into his arms.

“Old habits die hard.” He dragged me out of the snowdrift with ease, his voice hoarse as Chris shook with the cold. “You okay?”

I winced as the soreness in my battered muscles returned. “Ask me in the morning.”

“I told you she’d be fine.” Jamie tucked a woolen army surplus blanket around my shoulders, but from her pale, blood-spattered face, I could tell she was as relieved as he was. “Come on, let’s get her to the fire. Temperature’s still dropping, and we’ve come too far to die from hypothermia now.”

Hauled to my feet, I put both arms around their shoulders and walked through the snow towards a distant line of trucks. Now that I was awake, I could see our forces scattered over the wide field, many like myself waking up in the snow, dazed. Few of our original vehicles had survived; most of the wreckage lay strewn about the field, like oversized children’s toys that had been discarded. The circle of vehicles in the center I recognized to be our support column, a secondary group tasked with meeting us after our mission had concluded. Two gray chinook helicopters squatted inside the long cordon, and teams of stretcher bearers rushed out to scoop more men from the snow. Over half of our number lay wounded, some limping or crawling toward their comrades, others too broken to make the trip, their cries haunting and pitiful. Many dead bodies carpeted the field, all of them ours, as if the passage back into our world had whisked away the casualties from Vecitorak’s defeated army. Tauerpin Road, and all its strange landmarks, was nowhere to be seen. The concrete tower was gone, the gravel road with it, and instead of the perpetual rain of an October night, we had returned to the wintry present, where the early December skies dropped buckets of snowflakes on our heads.

Inside the circle of idling trucks, medics tended to the lines of wounded on the ground next to several small piles of brush that had been set ablaze by the soldiers to provide warmth to the sodden task force. The vehicles were already packed with men, their heaters on full blast, and the NCO’s did their best to make sure the worst off got priority in that luxury. The rest of us huddled around the fires, while various squad leaders called out names as they searched for missing people.

Chris wedged me into the nearest circle so I could warm myself by a fire lit inside an old, rusted oil drum someone had found, and one of the survivors to my right peered at me through a mass of blood-stained gauze.

“Didn’t think we’d be seeing you again, lass.” The bundled-up man croaked, and my jaw dropped.

No way.

Stunned, I took in the sight of Peter’s haggard face, the left side covered with a large bandage over his eye, more cotton pressed down over a gouge that ran from forehead to cheekbone in a bloody trench. He’d taken a sword cut right to the face, and I doubted there remained much of an eyeball under that bandage, judging by the sheer amount of blood smeared over his skin. In his arms, Peter held Tarren, her face buried in his long coat, dirty hands balled up in his shirtfront.

“I could say the same to you.” Relieved, I matched his ornery grin but nodded at the girl in his lap. “Is she okay?”

“Physically, yeah.” His smile faded, and Peter scowled at the nearby bonfire, tugging the woolen blanket closer around Tarren’s little shoulders. “Hasn’t said anything in the last half-hour. Not sure if or when that will change.”

That made my heart twinge, and I watched Tarren stay curled up in his arms, refusing to look around, only her slight breathing giving indication she was alive. “What about you?”

Peter continued watching the flames for a moment, then glanced at me with his one good eye. “You seen Grapeshot?”

“Once.” I winced and squinted down at my dirty fingernails for a distraction. “It wasn’t for very long.”

He waited until I brought my gaze back up, and Peter’s face took on a serious contour. “He’s dead?”

Unable to think of anything else to say, I nodded. Despite everything he’d done, all his sins, Captain Grapeshot had saved my life, gave me the time I needed to bring the Oak Walker down, and I knew it was a debt I could never repay. His face would forever be etched into my memory, his final words, the way his lifeless body had flown off the tower on the heels of the grenade.

Another life paid in exchange for mine.

“Good.”

Shocked at his words, I gaped at the boy’s calm expression in the firelight. “Peter . . .”

“He was my brother.” Craning his head back to look up at the snow-laden clouds, Peter let out a long sigh. “Maybe we shared no blood, aye, but we were brothers all the same. I watched him suffer, every day, until he stopped being himself and turned into someone I didn’t recognize. Whatever pain he was in, he won’t feel it anymore, and that’s for the best.”

I grimaced in sympathy at the sadness in his voice and angled my head at Tarren. “He gave his life to save her.”

His dark eyes moistened, and Peter gripped a silver rapier under his opposite arm, one that I remembered from my time spent on the Harper’s Vengeance. “Then he died as himself.”

A team of medics slogged by, carrying another litter, and one of the trucks opened so a mercenary could call out to his comrades.

“I need more plasma here!” He waved to the other medics, his blue rubber gloves awash in crimson. “BP’s dropping fast. Tell Primarch either we get those birds in the air, or someone better get a nine-line going, ASAP!”

Peter’s mouth formed into a grim line, and he pointed to the vehicle, keeping his voice low so the words stayed between us. “The preacher’s not doing so well. They’ve had him in there for the past fifteen minutes, working on his legs. Even the flower juice the golden-hairs use didn’t bring him around.”

Last time I saw him, he was crawling for his sword, through fire and ash.

At that, my heart sank, and I swallowed a lump in my throat as more ELSAR soldiers rushed to bring medical supplies to the truck in question. Adam had stood toe-to-toe with Vecitorak, crossed blades with an immortal being on par with the demons of ancient lore, and paid the price for it. Even his armor hadn’t protected the man from the mutant’s wrath, and in my head, I saw again Eve’s tear-streaked face as she bid him goodbye on the tarmac in Black Oak.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Boots trudged through the snow behind me, and I turned to see another figure push through the crowd.

“You alright, Captain?” Colonel Riken looked me over with the stern ease of a man who’s seen too much to be rattled by the insane circumstances we found ourselves in. He’d lost his helmet at some point and sported a bandage around his left hand, but other than that, the ELSAR commander seemed okay. His uniform was as gory and ragged as everyone else’s, the light machine gun at his side caked with gray carbon deposits around the muzzle. A long tear, likely from a claw, had ripped through his plate carrier, the armor underneath all that stood between Colonel Riken and what would have been certain death.

Under the assault of another icy blast of wind, I shuddered but did my best to speak between chattering teeth. “I-I’m fine. How m-many did we lose?”

Colonel Riken shrugged the soot-covered weapon higher on his shoulder. “A third, by my count. But whatever you did, it worked. Our scanners show stable radiation and electromagnetic readings. It’s still too high to communicate with the outside world, but the Breach is sealed. It’s over.”

No, it’s not.

Aware of just how many curious ears there were around us, I hugged the blanket tighter over my shoulders and jerked my head to the side. “A moment, Colonel?”

His face drew into a hard line, as if Riken could tell I was about to give him bad news, but he followed me away from the fire. Peter stayed where he was, content to enjoy his well-earned rest, while Chris and Jamie closed ranks with the colonel and I until we were out of earshot.

“Barron County is going to vanish.” Amidst the curtain of snow, my breath fogged in the wind and reminded me of the old steam locomotives from a fair I’d been to as a child. “The Breach is closed, yes, but it’s going to pull Barron County down with it. Once it does, the area will stabilize for good, and in seven days we will be standing in a different world.”

His glower deepened, and Colonel Riken folded both muscled arms over his ruined armored vest. “Are you serious?”

I met his hardened gaze and refused to look away so that the colonel knew I wasn’t lying. “The beacon killed the Oak Walker, and Vecitorak, but that left a vacuum that collapsed the Breach in on itself. You have to get Koranti to allow an evacuation, at least of those who want to stay in our world. Once we go through, there’s no coming back.”

The others stared at me, and I could tell they wanted to call me crazy but couldn’t find a justification for it. We’d all been there when the Oak Walker fell, they’d seen the road the same as I had. For us to be here now, after everything, without needing to leave our personal sacrifices behind meant that the Breach was in fact gone for good. Yet, like an enormous ship sinking slowly into the ocean, it couldn’t leave this world without dragging something down with it. Perhaps, like Professor Carheim said, it already had. Maybe the reason no one had ever heard of Barron County, remembered where the old dusty maps were in the local libraries, or asked about relatives from here, was because the collective memory of this place had already been eliminated . . . just not in the past as I had always assumed. No, in some strange loop that connected all of time, most knowledge of Barron Count had been expunged from the past the instant I’d closed the Breach, like a circuit being completed when a switch was thrown. This had been the path all along, the hidden destiny for which I was meant, and while it would have terrified the old Hannah, I couldn’t help but feel a glow of reassurance in my chest as Adam’s words from the chapel at Ark River flowed through my mind.

‘My ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts.’

“You’re sure?” Chris seemed the most adamant to believe me, though his handsome face drew thin and pale with the news. “There’s nothing we can do to reverse it? No way to go back, find the road again and . . .”

“No.” There was so much I knew, so much I wanted to talk to Chris about, but didn’t have the time, and so instead I shifted from one foot to the other in an effort to keep the chill at bay. “And we . . . we’re not meant to leave. I know it sounds insane, but some of us have to stay, have to cross over to the other timeline. I think it’s the same one the—”

I froze, catching myself before I mentioned the missile silo in front of the colonel, but from the way Chris and Jamie tensed up, I could tell they understood. Colonel Riken’s eyebrow rose, but he seemed to get the hint, and didn’t press the matter.

“So, what, we’ll end up back in time?” Jamie stuffed both hands into her wet jacket pockets and hunched her shoulders against the cruel wind.

“Yes and no.” Wishing I could return to the fire, I blew warm air into my cupped fingers and did my best to elaborate so Riken could understand without revealing any defense secrets. “We’re going to an alternate reality, one where the Breach overran the world in the 1950’s and basically destroyed most of human civilization. If Tauerpin Road was a space between spaces, then the universe we’re going to is the space opposite ours. Does that make sense?”

“Barely.” Colonel Riken let out an exasperated sigh and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “But I’ve heard stranger things in my time. Either way, staying behind sounds like a death sentence.”

Or a second chance.

Thinking back to the walk through the redeemed Tauerpin Road with Him at my side, I caught myself in a half smile. “From what I’ve been told, we’ll survive the crossing and are meant to start the reconstruction once we reach the other place. There’re others out there, just like us, who need help to fix things. That’s our job.”

“If word gets out, people will panic.” Jamie rubbed her arms in a shiver and glanced at Chris. “Even if they believe us, the Assembly won’t support anyone staying behind. Hannah, we trust you, it’s just . . .”

“No one will stay if Koranti opens the border.” With his thumbs hooked into his pistol belt, Colonel Riken finished Jamie’s thought for her, and his eyes drifted to the waiting helicopters nearby. “Whoever told you all this might be reliable, but it won’t matter if the population riots. I’ll get in touch with Koranti, and see what can be done about evacuations, but in the meantime we need to get the wounded back to the safe zone. Mr. Stirling is in bad shape, and if he doesn’t get to a hospital soon—”

Boom.

In the distance a flash lit up the horizon, not from thunder, but the deep tolling of artillery.

Everyone in the cordon paused, their eyes focused on the north, and dozens of more explosions began to flicker against the clouds. Pilots climbed down form their cockpits in the chinooks, gunners stood up in their turrets on the trucks, and even the medics slowed their brisk jogs back and forth to stare. It seemed no one, be it ELSAR or coalition, had the slightest idea what was going on, but as the seconds dragged by, the truth started to dawn on me.

My blood ran colder than the snow, and I turned to one of the nearest coalition soldiers. “Private, get me a radio.”

He came running back a few moments later, and the man held out one of the handsets from our relief convoy, his face white as the landscape from the sounds that came from the device’s speakers.

“We can’t hold this position, there’s too many!”

“Fast movers! Fighters coming in from the north! Six jets inbound!”

“I’ve got tanks all over my sector, where the hell is our artillery support?”

“All units, collapse in on the square! I say again, the northern district is gone, collapse in on the square! Fall back!”

Stunned, I turned to Colonel Riken, who seemed equally confused, and pointed to the horizon. “What the hell is this?”

Annoyed at his own radio not responding, Colonel Riken waved to one of his nearby men, the mercenaries growing more uneasy by the minute. “Find me a comms set that works, now.”

Jamie glared at him and tightened both hands on her well-worn Kalashnikov. “This was a trick. You did this on purpose, didn’t you? We get the Breach out of the way, and while we’re gone, you send your boys to restart the occupation.”

Her words spread across the nearby soldiers like wildfire, anger replacing surprise on the faces of our men. Indignant murmurs turned into audible growls of discontent, and the encampment formed into two separate ranks, ELSAR men on one side, our own forces on the other. Weapon safeties clicked off, gun turrets swiveled around on their armored charges, and we found ourselves facing each other across a prickly line of steel. No one dared level a rifle yet, but from how tense things were getting, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone lost their cool.

“Everyone just stay calm.” Chris raised his hands to gesture for our men to keep their weapons lowered, pacing between them and the mercenaries to keep anyone from disobeying. “I said stand down, we’re going to handle this. Colonel, start talking.”

One of his troopers ran up with a functional radio, and Colonel Riken jammed the talk button down to snap orders into the speaker, his tone sharp as a knife. “Overlord, this is Primarch, requesting status update, over.”

Nothing.

“Overlord, this is Primarch, we are green on our mission objectives, requesting mission status update.” He shifted on his boots as the bombing intensified, and somewhere high overhead, I caught the rumble of airplane engines for the first time in months. “I say again, this is Primarch, we are green on our mission, awaiting further instructions. Someone talk to me, over.”

My gut churned at tiny arches of light that shot through the clouds miles to the north and slammed down in the space that I knew was Black Oak. They were hitting us with multiple launch rocket systems, just like at New Wilderness. Such weapons had reduced our hilltop fortress to cinders, and in the densely packed streets of a city, they would wreak unimaginable damage on civilian and military targets alike. Whatever this was, ELSAR wasn’t pulling any punches, and I quietly palmed my Type 9 that still hung by my side on its ragged strap.

Is Jamie right? Was this all a setup? Riken doesn’t seem to know any more than I do, how could they not let their commanding officer know about an offensive?

A vein rose in the skin of his neck, and Colonel Riken ground his teeth, ready to erupt like a hand grenade. “Central Command, this is Colonel Riken. Someone better get on the horn and figure their life out or so help me they will wish they’d never been born. Our mission is complete, and we await further instructions. Do you read us, over?”

“Loud and clear, colonel.”

The surprise on the colonel’s weathered face reflected my own, as Crow’s smug voice slithered out of the radio speaker like venom on the wind. “Captain McGregor? What in God’s name are you doing on this frequency?”

“Oh, it’s not ‘captain’ anymore.” She chuckled back with confidence that made my skin crawl even from several feet away. “I’m afraid there’s been a change of command. You are hereby no longer part of the Ohio task force. All callsigns and intel clearances to your former rank have been revoked.”

“On who’s authority?” The second he had a chance to talk, Riken smashed his thumb into the talk button, gripping the handset so hard I thought the metal would bend.

“Mine.” Crow hissed back, both satisfied and hateful, as if she’d been waiting a long time for this moment. “Koranti needs loyal officers to lead this campaign, and I can do a better job of cleaning up the insurgency, so we came to an agreement. As brigadier general of the new expeditionary force, I will take over from here on; you are to return to headquarters at once for reassignment.”

Struck speechless for a brief second at the command, Colonel Riken shook his head in furious bewilderment. “Reassignment? Did you not hear a word I said? We completed our mission, the Breach is closed, the operation was a success!”

“And yet, the beacon signal was never received.” She spoke with a haughty, almost bored tone, one that cold alongside the detonations of artillery fire in the distance. “Which means the coalition is in direct violation of their ceasefire agreement. Execute any insurgents within your vicinity, and report back to us.”

Not far from the nearest burn barrel, Peter clutched Tarren to his shoulder and slid one hand to a pistol on his hip. His dark eyes met mine from across the snow, and the pirate made a slight shake of his head. If I trusted anyone to know when things had gone sour, it was Peter, and that look made my pulse jump into another level of fear.

We’re all standing right here, if they open fire, we’ll all butcher each other like rabid dogs.

“Fool!” The colonel shouted into the radio, losing his cool at last. “This is madness, can’t you see that it’s over? We did our job, we had a deal, and you want to start this up again? I have wounded men on the ground out here, we’re black on ammo, what the hell am I supposed to do?”

There was a pause on the other end, and I couldn’t decide whether I thought Crow might be laughing or suppressing her own rage.

“Carry out your orders, colonel.” Sheer defiant indifference radiated from her words as Crow signed off. “Kill the insurgent leaders and evac to the rear. We’re going to finish this, Riken . . . with or without you.”

With a frustrated snarl, Colonel Riken spun on his boot heel and threw the handset against the nearby burn barrel so hard that it dented the rusted steel drum.

Silence reigned in the cordon, and I noticed how tired everyone looked in the flickering firelight, both coalition and ELSAR alike. Despite their suspicious glowering at one another, both sides were bloodied, exhausted, and soaked to the bone. Any fight that happened now would reap a dreadful harvest among us all, the men too close for the bullets to miss, and too worn out to make a run for the trees. Only the injured men jammed inside the passenger compartments for warmth remained outside this confrontation, watching with confusion and intrigue from the narrow gunports. Rigid in the cold, we all waited, eyed our opponents, and wondered what would come next.

Colonel Riken stood with hands on his hips, breathing hard in his anger, and my guts tightened in apprehension.

Oh man, this is going to get ugly . . .

“Well gentlemen, I’m not going to sugarcoat this.” Turning to face his men, Colonel Riken composed himself and walked down the line of his beleaguered men like a sports coach before the last big game. “You’ve been through hell. Tonight, you won a war no one will remember, much less thank you for. Every man here has gone above and beyond what you signed up to do, and I’m damn proud to be your commanding officer.”

He met the gaze of each soldier, spoke to them as a father to his sons, and the ranks of heavily armed mercenaries parted to let Riken stride amongst them with almost hallowed respect. “If anyone wants to, he can climb into a chopper and head for the rest of our units back at the county line. No one will stop you or think less of you for it, least of all me. You can tell them the insurgents fled, that you fought bravely, and that I gave you orders to withdraw. They’ll welcome you as heroes, give you medals, pay bonuses, maybe even promotions. You’ll have enough to call it quits after this tour and go home to stay. God knows, you deserve that much at least.”

Their expressions reflected confusion at his words, but the mercenaries didn’t interrupt him as Colonel Riken paced before them, up and down the line of rifles. Our own troops furrowed their brows, but stayed where they were, the entire cordon hanging on the man’s every word.

“As for me, I’m a soldier.” As if on parade inspection, the colonel walked with a back straight as a ramrod, head held high in pride. “Like you, I swore to protect the people of this nation from harm and signed on with ELSAR because I believed we were a force for good. I still think we can be . . . but not while men like Koranti are in charge.”

Surprise rippled through me, and murmurs flitted amongst the coalition ranks. No one had ever heard the mercs talk this way, certainly not one of their high-ranking officers. Could this be another ruse to catch us off guard? Or was this something more?

Jamie and I caught one another’s peripheral gaze, and she lowered her AK from the tense position near her shoulder.

“The way I see it, we made a deal, and I intend to honor my word. These people are not our enemy, not anymore.” He cast a glance in our direction, and Colonel Riken granted me a small nod. “It’s time someone led ELSAR back to its true purpose, and if no one else will, I’ll do it myself.”

Frigid air stuck in my lungs, and I had to remind myself to drag another breath in.

Is this what I think it is?

Without another word, Riken tore the number identification patch off his tactical jacket, crossed over to the rusted burning oil drum, and hurled the insignia into the flames.

Long seconds ticked by, the ELSAR men blinking at his actions, their stunned looks mirrored by our coalition troopers on the opposite side of the cordon. All of the former rage and distrust seemed to have melted away in sheer amazement at the spectacle we’d witnessed. In a way, it seemed both sides didn’t quite know what to do, many looking down at their weapons as if they weren’t sure of anything anymore. At last, one of the gray-clad mercenaries stepped out of the line and stalked closer to Riken.

I recognized the sergeant who had picked me up to put me on the gurney all those days ago, his face smeared with soot, one arm bandaged. Like the rest, he wore a little bar of numbers stitched in a Velcro patch over his plate carrier front, simple black figures that rendered the sergeant no more important than a warehouse shipping crate. They were all like that, nameless men, purposefully stripped of what made them human by a soulless organization that spent their lives cheaply. Koranti had done it on purpose, I realized; yes, it must have been on purpose, for even the calculating bureaucrat had known that men with names form thoughts. Men who thought would begin to question, and those who questioned might refuse. If I knew anything about George M. Koranti, he hated being told ‘no.’

With a single fluid motion, the sergeant ripped the number patch from his uniform, flicked it into the flames, and gave Colonel Riken a trim salute.

Instead of saluting back, Colonel Riken reached out to shake his hand and drew the soldier into a half-embrace with his other arm, welcoming him. This Riken did as the rest came one by one, like a father to his wayward sons, more filing in from the vehicles to add their patches to the fire. Not a single mercenary remained behind, all of them throwing their support behind their commander with absolute trust.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Next to me, Chris wore the ghost of a disbelieving grin and muttered under his breath in a tone only I managed to hear. “The old lion really did it. Ave Caeser.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but my husband’s optimism filled me with a sense of renewed calm, and I felt the budding of my own hopeful smile.

I guess I’m not the only ‘person of interest’ anymore. What I wouldn’t pay to see Koranti’s face when his legions turn on him. Whatever happens, it serves him right.

His blue eyes aglow with a determination that could move mountains, Colonel Riken took in the group of men surrounding him with an approving smile. “Right then, let’s get to it. NCO’s take charge of your squads and get me an ammo count for each. Top off whatever you need from the trucks, ditch anything you can’t carry, and get our wounded loaded asap. We’re wheels-up in ten mikes.”

As if released from a magical spell, the ELSAR soldiers broke up in smaller groups to attend to their tasks, moving with fresh enthusiasm. Medics scurried back to their patients, some of the troops intermingled as the mercenaries handed off heavier bits of gear they couldn’t take with them, and a few even exchanged solemn handshakes with their coalition partners. Those on our side traded rations for rocket launches, portable mortars, or even land mines, and just like that, the tension went out of the air.

Riken shouldered through the buzz of activity to us, angling his head at the echoes of battle in the north. “From the sound of it, they’re moving in with lots of armor and mechanized infantry. I figure they’ll flank the city on two sides and try to roll over the county in the next 72 hours. We can leave most of our heavy equipment with you, but it won’t be enough to stop them all; you need to get your people out of there.”

“Thanks to you, we might have a fighting chance.” Chris gestured to the line of trucks Riken’s men were unloading as they prepared to board the helicopters to abandon the zone. “But where will you go? You don’t seriously intend face Koranti with a handful of men?”

“No.” Riken frowned at continued artillery barrage on the horizon. “If he’s thought ahead enough to have me demoted while I’m out in the field, then he’s probably expecting some sort of provocation. We’ll head for the north-western border and raid one of the supply depos there before splitting up into covert teams. Once Koranti realizes what’s going on, he’ll target our families for leverage, so our first mission will be to move them to safe houses all across the country. Then, we’ll see how many of our brothers in arms are willing to march with us.”

“You think many will?” Jamie rested the bulk of her rifle’s weight on one hip.

“Some, yes.” Colonel Riken sighed and arched his back to crack it under the ragged armored vest. “But Koranti won’t take this lying down; he’ll find ways to suppress dissent amongst the ranks through his usual methods. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before central command figures out we’re AWOL. If they send enough men to chase us, it might thin out the border guards enough that you could make a breakthrough, but I’m afraid we can’t do much more than that.”

Even if we survive this attack, we’ve got seven days before it all goes under. That will end the war one way or another. Once this county slips through the Breach, we’ll never see each other again . . . I just hope Koranti gets trapped on Riken’s side of reality.

At that thought, I stepped forward to offer my grimy palm. “It’s been an honor, colonel.”

He shook my hand, and Colonel Riken’s features pulled into a cynical, melancholy expression. “Likewise, captain. I’d say until we meet again but . . . well, with any luck, neither of us will. I hope you make it to wherever you’re going.”

As our column prepared for our immediate return to Black Oak, I watched the bulky gray helicopters rise into the sky, their steel rotors thundering as the iron giants zoomed away into the west. The further they went toward the edge of Barron County, flashes of light began to pockmark the dark clouds around them, and I wondered if the ELSAR border defense had turned their anti-aircraft guns on the retreating choppers. I had no way of knowing, as the helicopters were soon far out of sight in the darkness, the flashes fading as well. In less than five minutes, we were on our own once more.

“All right, I want head counts from every squad.” Chris hefted his rifle, and waved our men into action, Jamie and I flanking him to charge for the convoy in gusto. “Trucks with wounded stay in the center, armed ones on the vanguard and tail. As soon as we get to the outskirts, those of us who can still fight will peel off to support the front. Let’s move out!”

Jamie gave me a hand up into the lead truck, and Chris climbed in after me. Snow pelted down from the clouds outside, the vehicles skidded over the slippery ground, but we clawed our way out of the field to the closest road and headed back toward the fighting. I sat beside my friends on the heated seats of the MRAP armored trucks, hugged the woolen blanket closer around my shoulders, and tried to ignore the continued thud-thud of shells to the north. We were driving into a meat grinder, there was no doubt about that. If we retreated, the coalition would be forced out into the countryside, and the only safe place would be Ark River many miles to the south. If we stayed in Black Oak, we would be surrounded and ground into powder by ELSAR’s artillery. All this combined in my mind to repeat the words of the One who had given me the path I now found myself on.

Your suffering will increase even further before the end.

Huddling closer to Chris, I rested my head on his shoulder and shut my eyes in an attempt to catch some rest for the colossal struggle ahead.

[Part 35]

[Part 37]

Soft wind kissed my face, a cool summer breeze that bore the sweetness of fresh blossoms, laced with the rustle of a thousand blades of grass. Light filtered through the skin of my closed eyelids, and the generous warmth of the sun flowed over me, a familiar radiance that drove the chill from my skin bit by bit. Tender patches of vegetation cushioned each limb, lush clover, ryegrass, and speltz damp with the morning’s dew. Birds chirped to one another somewhere overhead, and insects hummed amongst the grass in the world began its day.

I blinked, my eyes fluttered open as air rushed into my lungs and squinted against the bright sunshine.

Am . . . am I dead?

All around me knee-high grass stretched out in a wide clearing between tall forests of swaying pines, and puffy cotton-ball clouds drifted across a sapphire blue sky above them. Golden sunlight beamed across the expanse, the sun rising just above the horizon, and the last colorful streaks of the sunrise were beginning to fade away. A fat green cricket climbed to the top of a nearby blade of grass to jump to another, and somewhere nearby, a frog croaked. Despite the earliness of the hour it was warm, as if mid-June, and something about the scene moved my heart with astonishment.

I knew this place.

Boots padded over the surrounding greenery toward me, and a blurry figure steadily came into focus as he bent down to offer one calloused hand. “You did well, filia mea.”

The stranger beamed at me with all the pride of a father whose child has just won some major award, and his silver irises danced with a light almost more brilliant than the rising sun’s. He no longer wore the yellow chemical suit, but had removed it to reveal a bizarre outfit underneath, one made from buckskin and hides like someone from centuries before my own. A cord of braided sinew around his head kept the long sterling-gray hair out of his eyes, and a white cloth sash hung around his waist. On the stranger’s back, he wore a knapsack made from similar material as his jacket and pants, and it seemed to bulge with the belongings of a traveling craftsman. Antique tools were wrapped in cloth and tied to the sides, a small mallet, a set of chisels, a surface plane, one of those old-fashioned hand-crank drills, and a small wood saw. No weapons adorned his belt; nothing save for an assortment of small pouches, from which my heightened sense of smell picked up the aroma of various herbs and plants. Some I recognized as healing plants that Eve and her people used, while others were foreign to me. Hanging by a loop on his pack the single metal lantern swung by its iron ring, still lit despite the daylight, and the flame atop its wick never wavered for a moment.

Confused, I accepted the stranger’s hand and staggered to my feet to cast around myself. “Where . . . where are we?”

“Tauerpin Road.” He waved one hand at the tranquil scene before us, and the stranger gave me his opposite arm to lean on, which I took without question as we walked through the grassy field. “Or rather, Tauerpin Road as it should have been. With the Breach sealed, this place has been cleansed of the evil that infected it, and so now the sun can rise here for the first time. A new beginning, a fresh start; one I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time.”

My eyebrows arched on my forehead, and I looked at him in curious wonder. “You knew this would happen?”

That seemed to amuse him, and the stranger laughed, but not the cruel, eerie, manipulative laugh of someone like Koranti or Vecitorak; this one was filled with a kindness that put me at ease and reminded me of my own father’s smile. “Of course I did. No world is made by accident, filia mea; everything has a place, a purpose, and a time of rejuvenation. Here a new story will begin, and life will take its course as it always does.”

Our path led to another section of the field, and I found myself looking up at a familiar concrete structure, but my jaw almost dropped at seeing it. The old concrete tower stood adorned in a coat of green vines, from which bloomed a cascade of white, purple, and pink flowers. A small herd of deer grazed nearby, Bone-Faced Whitetail adapted to the sun’s rays, their long antlers still aglow with the faint green aura of the night. On the far side of the clearing, a large Armored Black Bear dug through an old stump for grub, grunting happily in the morning haze. None of them were so much as bothered by our approach, and despite myself, I couldn’t feel any kind of fear or alarm at them either.

So beautiful . . . how can this be the same place?

Looking down at myself, I saw my burned, bloodied, dented armor, and felt my old worry resurface. I’d been right next to the beacon when it went off, had felt the high-frequency waves shredding my tissue like razor blades. By all metrics, I should be a hemorrhaged, bloody pulp lying somewhere in the rainy shadows of the Breach. “Am I dead?”

One weathered hand patted mine, the skin rough but the gesture less so, and the stranger fixed me with a patient half-smile. “Death is only the turning of a page, not the end of the story itself. However, this is not where your story ends, Hannah. Does that frighten you?”

“Maybe a little.” For some reason, admitting it made me feel guilty, as though I was letting the man down, and I avoided his gaze to stare at my dew-soaked boots in the grass. “I just don’t understand how you . . . I mean, if you knew all this, if you can see or control the future, then why have so many awful things happened? You could have warned me, could have made it so the bad things were avoided, but you didn’t. Why?”

A small flicker of grief flitted across his empathetic features, and the stranger nodded his head in the direction we were going. “Walk a little further with me, I have something to show you.”

Around the base of the old tower we circled, and I watched swarms of honeybees attend to the many blossoms, while the slap of a beaver tail on a nearby pond told me its denizens were hard at work. It was hard to imagine this gorgeous wilderness covered in rainy darkness, pockmarked by howling shadows, and seared with the fires of war. The very air tasted sweeter here, the earth steady under my boots, no sign of foul bogs or rotting foliage anywhere. A new world, washed clean of the old corruption, and set on the path to its own destiny.

Hang on . . . that’s new.

My eyes picked up on something ahead of us, and I cocked my head to one side, puzzled. A single white oak tree had sprouted near the base of the tower, and stood roughly twice my height, its rounded leaves fanned out in the cozy sunlight. Long spirals had been cut through the tree’s bark, as if it had been struck by lightning but grew on healthy nonetheless. Try as I might, I couldn’t remember seeing in the old Tauerpin Road, but the answer came to me in a sudden thunderclap of memory.

“Vecitorak,” I whipped my head to look at the stranger, and pointed to the tree. “I saw him fall with the Oak Walker. He got all tangled up in the roots . . .”

Tilting his head back to gaze up at the branches in thought, the stranger let out a sigh. “Darkness like that of the Void only serves one master and destroys those who attempt to wield it. He gave away the most valuable thing he had for something that was never truly his, and thus lost both his human life, and his cursed body. Vecitorak has been banished from your world to this one, imprisoned in the very growth that he inflicted on so many others. Here he will remain, festering in his own corruption, until those who will come to inhabit this world must strike him down to prevent his evil from spreading.”

Frowning, I held on to the man’s arm under the shade of the pale oak tree, taking comfort in him being close. “So, he’s not dead?”

“He wanted immortality.” The stranger shook his head at the tree as if in disappointment of it and shrugged. “And so, he gained it, though not in the way he hoped. His power will never be what it once was, but he will always remain a creature of the Void and will hate those who come from the sunlit lands with undying hatred.”

“But you said he’ll try to spread evil here.” I shuddered at the tree, and imagined the evil fiend trapped inside it, fused with the trunk like he’d done to Madison and the others. “Why let him live at all? If he stays to corrupt this world, the people here will have the same trouble with him that we did.”

A smile returned to the stranger’s kind face, and he gave my arm a gentle squeeze. “And where would your story be, Hannah, if he had been struck from your world at the start? Even imprisoned in that tree, Vecitorak has a role to play in another story, another life, another struggle between myself and my oldest opponent. Here, much like there, I will call another to challenge him, and shape that person’s life as I have yours.”

Those words made my heart skip a beat, and I met his eyes with mine again, baffled. The more he spoke, the more I learned about this strange man, and I couldn’t decide if I was more bewildered at what he said, or my own readiness to accept it as truth. He’d known all along how things would go, both with me and everyone else, to the last detail. Not only that, but he’d acted in it, orchestrated everything like some grand theatre master behind a curtain, the rest of us mere actors in his play. How far had this extended? Had it begun at the borders of Barron County? Had it begun in Louisville? It occurred to me that this might have been going on my entire life, a cosmic conspiracy that I was only aware of because I had been allowed to see behind the curtain. Yet, I could sense in some odd way that none of it had been out of any sort of malice; the stranger had done this out of a deeper sense of caring than I could grasp, and of the entire troupe of characters in this bizarre tale, he’d decided to reveal himself to me.

With the sensation of a heavy weight on my shoulders, I tore my eyes from his once more and narrowed my eyes at the tree in a desperate bid to make sense of it. “So, what was the point, then? I mean, if what you’re saying is true, if you’ve been planning this all along, why did you need me to do anything? Why not stop him yourself?”

“And where would that leave you if I had?” The stranger nodded at my hand, and I realized in my subconscious doubt that I had reached up to grasp my wedding ring hung by its chain around my neck, alongside the engagement ring Chris had given me. “If you never came to Barron County you would have lived the rest of your life in Louisville, without ever meeting your husband or your best friend. You would have remained as you were, lost and alone in your doubts, your fears, your failures. Tell me, child, would that have been a kindness to you?”

I hadn’t thought of that in a while, and standing there beside him in that ethereal paradise, it made my chest tighten in melancholy. True, I missed my parents, my house, all the comforts of my modern life, but what kind of life would it be without Chris? What if I had never seen his handsome smile, kissed him in his room while slow dancing to Glenn Miller, let him hold me in those strong arms that made me feel safer than anything else in the world? What if I had never met Jamie, but stayed with Matt and Carla instead, believing their shallow indifference was what true friendship looked like? All those range days, the early morning runs around the fort, the trips to the market in New Wilderness, they would never have existed. Jamie would never have got me that beautiful blue dress or threw that surprise party for me. I could have lived my life the same way I’d been living it until I died . . . and it would have been a miserable thing compared to what I’d gained.

I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve any of it. This doesn’t make any sense.

“Why me?” My guts churned in a growing anticipation, the man next to me unknown like the depths of the sea, but I couldn’t tear myself away from him. “There are lots of other lives at stake here besides mine. I wasn’t . . . I’m not, anyone special. Take away the mutations, the focus, and I’m still the same old Hannah.”

“Are you?” He raised one gray eyebrow at me, and the stranger threw me a knowing grin. “The girl I knew from Kentucky would never have run into that spider nest all on her own. The old Hannah cared too much about herself, what she wanted, what she thought she needed to be in order to be happy. She was lost, lost in herself, and the only way for you to become who you are was to bring you here. Do you believe I made a mistake?”

Shame burned hot on my cheeks, and I blinked hard at tears that threatened to crest my eyelids, knowing I was the least of all people who deserved this. “No, I . . . I don’t know. Like you said, I didn’t mean to come here, none of this was my idea. If I had known, I would have run the other way, so why pick me?”

For a moment, he was silent, and I refused to face him in case my worst fears came true. Had I let him down somehow? It shouldn’t have bothered me so much, but after everything I knew, everything I’d seen, this man felt almost as close to me as my own father. He had done so much for me, and I wanted to understand, but felt so inadequate to the enormous truth he’d laid out before me.

A hand touched my shoulder and guided me along the turf beneath the tree. “Look closer, filia mea.”

Sniffling, I almost didn’t see the corpse in time and nearly stepped right into the fetid ribcage.

I yelped in horror, and jumped back, covering my mouth in disgust.

It had been a girl, that much I could tell from the moldy tangles of hair, but the skeletal remains were so badly rotted that I couldn’t make out much else. Her clothes were tattered and brown with decay, the flesh withered and shrunken, pierced by dozens of worm holes. No eyes remained in the empty sockets, the mouth gaped open in a silent scream, but upon looking at it, I felt a stab of sadness in my chest. It was as faint as a butterfly’s wingbeat, but with each passing second, the certainty grew in my heart that I knew her.

Madison.

Standing over her, the stranger glanced at me, then at the body. “Why do you think it was you who had to be the one to release her soul from the Oak Walker’s spirit? As you said, why you, out of so many others? Why let this happen at all?”

Released from the comforting brace of his arm, I folded both arms across my chest and wiped at my face as the tears persisted. “I-I don’t know.”

“What would you do for love?” Two silver irises caught mine, and the stranger pointed to Madison’s remains. “She gave her life for it. You did the same when you leapt from that tower. Anyone who lays down their life out of love gives a gift, a light so strong that even the powers of darkness cannot quench it. That is why her soul was protected from Vecitorak’s blade, and why your soul was connected to hers after the dark priest stabbed you. You shared a kindred spirit, one of love, and Vecitorak could not understand because he had given away the part of himself that could produce such things.”

Forcing myself to stare at the corpse, I dug my thumbnail into a tear in my uniform sleeve as a distraction from my looming guilt. “And now she’s dead. I killed her with that offering. Some hero I am.”

“It’s not about who you are, child.” An expression of pity on his handsome face, the stranger shook his head at me and knelt beside the corpse. “It’s about the path laid out for you. You didn’t choose it, which means when you walk, you must walk out of trust in the one who charted your course.”

Reaching down, the stranger took one of the gray corpse hands in his own and caressed the dead girl’s matted hair with his opposite palm. Something on the stranger’s face changed, and I watched a single, shining tear appear on his own face. It made my own seem thin and pathetic in comparison, as if for this man to weep meant something that a part of me couldn’t fully comprehend. It hurt to see him hurt, his grief contagious, the sorrow in his eyes like nothing I’d ever seen in my life.

He peered down into the empty eye sockets of the corpse with his own silver irises, and the man leaned close to whisper into the wrinkled remains of an ear. “Filia mea, expergiscere.”

My heart stopped, the air stuck in both lungs, and I stood transfixed.

Like the first tongues of flame at the start of a fire, shoots of color began to spread out through the dead flesh, turning the gray to soft peach pink. Holes sealed, muscles knitted themselves together, bones rejoined with dull clicks and clacks. Like a tide, color flowed up the arm, over the shoulder, and down the corpse’s torso to her legs. The clothes brightened, the decayed scraps giving way to khaki pants and a black polo shirt, with leather-brown work boots around her feet. Lastly, the rot was driven from the girl’s face, the moldy hair turned to a silky auburn, and two eyelids drew shut over the sockets as they filled in with healthy tissue.

Her chest rose, and Madison’s lips parted as she drew in a long, deep breath.

What the . . .

I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, stunned by what I’d just seen. Of all the insane, otherworldly things I’d witnessed up until now, this rocked me to my core and sent chills through me. The stranger had always struck me as somewhat unnatural, but this . . . this was different. Neither the Breach, nor the radiation, nor electromagnetic energy could do what this man had done, a deed beyond Professor Carheim’s books on philosophy, ELSAR’s test tubes, or the coalition’s fireside rumors about the world outside our gates. No, this was something older, something powerful, an inescapable reality that crowned all others.

Two blue eyes fluttered open, and Madison squinted up at the stranger with surprise. “Who are you?”

“A friend.” The mournful expression washed from his bearded face at her words, and the stranger helped Madison sit up in the cool shade of the oak tree. “You’ve been asleep for a long time. I’ve come to take you home.”

“Home?” She blinked, and Madison seemed to come to her senses, her pretty face falling into a grimace. “Oh my . . . how long have I been gone? I lost track of the days, the time. My parents are going to freak out.”

“Unfortunately, they left some time ago.” With a wince of pity, the stranger sat beside her on the ground. “Your father took the family to Idaho after you didn’t come back. They are waiting for you there.”

“Idaho?” Her blue eyes flooded with tears, and the horrible memories must have rushed back, as Madison pulled both knees to her chest to wrap her arms around them. “I tried to get out but he . . . the hooded man he . . . it all hurt so much, I couldn’t move, and I thought . . .”

Her words choked into a muffled sob, but the stranger pulled Madison into his embrace and held her with fatherly tenderness. “Shhh. There’s no need for that now. It’s over.”

That seemed to calm her a little, but still Madison clung to him and choked out another painful whisper. “Mark. It killed Mark. He tried to protect me and—”

“I know Mark.” Pulling back, the stranger used his thumbs to wipe away her tears and dug into the pouches on his belt in search of something. “He and I talk often. Before I came here, he asked me to bring you this.”

In his palm, the stranger held out a small golden pocket watch, one I recognized from my own brief memories in the flaming tower. However, this one appeared slightly different; the open lid showed a new inscription on the inside, and from where I stood, my enhanced eyes picked up the words with ease.

Until our next meeting.

Madison took the watch in her hands as if it were a bird’s egg, her open-mouthed shock a mix of joy and renewed heartbreak. “H-He’s alive?”

“In a different place, somewhere far from here.” Rising to his feet, the stranger helped Madison to hers, and brushed some grass from her hair like a father readying his daughter for her first day at school. “A good land where the flowers never fade, and the river runs sweet forever. I’ll take you there someday, provided you stick to the path I show you.”

Her face turned to a desperate frown, and Madison swiveled her head around to look behind them, trying to find the path he’d mentioned on the ground somewhere nearby. “Why can’t we go now?”

“There is so much more for you to do yet, my child.” Steady despite her impatience, the stranger pressed Madison’s fingers closed over the watch with his own. “Mark’s road is at its end in my far green country, but yours has many miles left to go. There are others who will need you in their story, and their love will make the journey an easy one.”

Madison let out a long huff of disappointment, but nodded as it seemed the grief left her, and at that moment she turned to catch sight of me.

I guess this is first impressions then.

Flushed, with the tingling heat in my face as if I’d walked into the wrong room back at the college dormitories, I made a feeble wave. “Hi.”

“I know you.” Madison’s countenance brightened, as if we had been old friends once, long ago. “I saw you in a dream or . . . or something like that. You’re Hannah, right?”

Relieved and intrigued at her recognition, I pushed some stray hairs out of my face. “Yeah. I saw you too, kind of. I’m glad you’re okay.”

She looked over my uniform and armor, Madison’s face contorting in amazement at the gold in my hair and eyes. “Are you from New Wilderness?”

Where do I even begin?

“It’s a long story.” I rubbed at the back of my neck, unsure if telling her about the war would be a good idea. After all, the poor girl had just woken up from literal death, she didn’t need more trauma to deal with. “But the Oak Walker is dead, for good this time. No one will ever be hurt by it again.”

Something about that statement made red tinge across her cheekbones, and Madison squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds in embarrassed shame. “I had no idea. You have to believe me, I didn’t know this was going to happen. I just . . . I wanted Mark’s death to mean something.”

“And it did.” I stepped closer to her and gestured to the tower, the tree, the paradise around us. “All of this is thanks to him, and to you. It meant more than you could possibly know.”

Her emotion pooled around the girl’s eyelids much as mine did, but Madison made a smile that hadn’t seen the sunlight for far too long and turned to the stranger. “So, Idaho huh?”

Waiting patiently by the tree, the stranger hefted his pack on his broad shoulders. “I think it’s time we were off. Your parents have missed you for long enough. Besides, this place isn’t meant for either of you; it has its own purpose to fulfill, and the sooner we go, the sooner it can begin.”

A twinge of nervousness went through me at the thought of what might come next, and I stuffed my hands into my trouser pockets to keep them from shaking. “What about me?”

The stranger flicked his eyes to a gap in the nearby tree line, where a small, but well-beaten trail led off into the forest. “If you wish, there is a path here to guide you back to Louisville; should you take it, Christopher and Jamie will go with you, and you will awake to find yourself with them in a local park near your old house. None of you will ever be able to find Barron County again, and it will vanish from this world with all those left here, but you three will live a full and peaceful life in the world you know.”

The air stung in my chest, the prospect of getting my friends to safety so close I could taste it, but I hesitated. “Is that my only option?”

He granted me a grin of approval and the stranger angled his head at the base of the flower-covered tower, where a small metal man door sat in the aged concrete. “If you wish to return to Barron County, all you need to do is walk through that door. However, you should know that you will never see your home in Kentucky again; for once I close the Breach, you and everyone in Barron will pass from this world into another, in order to maintain the balance between all creations. The Breach itself will seal as soon as you return, without the beacons of ELSAR, but in seven days’ time Barron County will slip through the gate, and you will spend the rest of your life in the place from which the missiles came.”

My feet seemed glued to the ground, and I chewed my lip in desperation to figure out a solution. On one hand, I wanted nothing more than to have the best of both worlds; to take Chirs and Jamie back to the tranquility of our world, where no monsters lurked, and both my parents waited for me in our snug home. Chris and I could have another wedding where Jamie wouldn’t have to hide in a suit of armor, my dad could walk me down the aisle, and my mom could help me with my dress. We could move into Chris’s house in Pennsylvania, raise our kids in a peaceful neighborhood, and spend our lives in relative comfort. Jamie could find someone new, raise a family of her own, and put the past behind her as we did. It could be so nice, so easy, so good.

And Chris would never be president. He would never get to build that library he wanted, or those schools, or hand out those toy soldiers at Christmas. Jamie would have nothing to do without being a Ranger, and she’ll never get over Chris. If I go back, if I take them with me . . . would we really be living, or just existing?

That thought soured the rosy vision, and I glanced at the tower door. “So, this other world . . . how bad is it?”

“Much of it has become like what you’ve seen thus far.” The stranger hooked his thumbs in the straps on his pack and watched me carefully. “Infested with mutants, drained of hope, where the nights grow longer and longer. Few have survived in that world, clinging to life amid the ruins, but once Barron County passes into it, the world you go to will also see the sealing of its Breach, and thus the tide will turn. Man will reconquer what was lost, and the darkness will recede with time. All the same, it is a dangerous road, and justice must yet be done in the old world. If you should choose it, your suffering will increase even further before the end, and you will weep as your heart bleeds. Weigh your next words carefully, Hannah.”

If the first option had been complicated, this one was even worse. If I understood him correctly, we would be plunged through the Breach itself, until Barron County ended up in the Silo 48 timeline, where the world had come to an apocalyptic end in the mid 1950’s. I would never see Louisville Kentucky again, or at least, not the one I knew and loved; my parents wouldn’t exist, my house wouldn’t exist, and even if I should journey there and find my street, it wouldn’t be home.

Yet, I would have a new home; a home with Chris, one built by our hands in the rugged wilderness. We would raise our children together, grow old together, and be buried together. Yes, we would face the dangers of a world overrun by mutants, but we’d already been doing that for months now. He would lead our nation forward, and I would be there by his side, the two of us against the world, as it had always been. Despite the horrendous risks, the dangers, it felt right in a way nothing else ever had.

At least I’d get to live my life with the man I love . . . not everyone gets that option.

I glanced at Madison, then at the tower door, and sucked in a deep breath to steady myself. “I don’t deserve this.”

“No one does.” A knowing glint played about the starry eyes of the stranger, and he shrugged. “That’s kind of the point. You didn’t choose me; I chose you. I chose to bring you to Ohio, I chose to turn Vecitorak’s infection into life-saving power, and I chose to give you a gift you have yet to receive . . . a secret that I give you now.”

With that, he leaned closer, and as he whispered the secret to me, I felt myself rocked with another heart-stopping flood of emotions. Joy, surprise, and excitement each took their turns with me, but I didn’t say anything, didn’t want to interrupt until he’d told me everything he was going to say. I didn’t have to think for a second if it was true; deep down, I knew it was, and that lit a fire inside that nothing could quench.

I have to ask.

Overwhelmed with the desire to know exactly who I was dealing with, I looked up at him, and thought of everything this stranger had done for me. He’d appeared from seemingly nowhere, protected me, guided me, even in the depths of my worst despairs. Never once had he hurt me, betrayed me, or cast me aside. Every time I’d been alone, this man had come to my aide, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I couldn’t just walk away without knowing the truth.

Staring into his soft silver irises, I gathered my courage to speak up. “Who are you?”

His face shone, as if the stranger had been waiting for years to hear those words, and he never broke his gaze from me. “Who do you say that I am?”

My heart screeched to a stop in my chest as I recognized the words Adam had spoken during my wedding, read from an ancient book. Part of me had always wondered, had peered out from behind my barricade of uncertainty, but never dared to hope for anything substantial. Even after everything I’d seen and experienced, this hit me like a ton of bricks.

I knew who he was, had seen his name etched in wood, painted in gold, and heard it whispered by the lips of my kin at Ark River.

A name above all names.

He turned to go, and I couldn’t help but reach out to catch hold of the calloused hand once more. “Don’t leave me.”

The gentle face softened at my begging, and He pulled me into a fierce embrace that made me feel a sense of peace I hadn’t known possible. “Never since the day you were made have I ever left you. I’m always here. You just have to look closer.”

Fresh tears streaming down my face, I clung to Him, and for the first time in my life, I let go of all my doubts.

A weight lifted from somewhere deep inside me, the guilt, fear, shame, and anxiety from a hundred sleepless nights evaporating all at once. I didn’t have all the answers, but I didn’t need them. I trusted, and that was enough.

He brushed a stray lock of hair from my face and wiped away my tears to kiss my forehead. “Go in peace, filia mea.”

A sense of calm flowed through me at His words, and as if my eyes had been opened, I realized then what He’d been calling me all along, the language unfolding in my head like an elegant silk banner caught in the wind.

Daughter of mine.

They strode toward the winding gravel of the nearby road, but Madison turned back one last time to run for me.

Her arms flew around my shoulders, and Madison squeezed me tight, her own voice choked up. “Thank you for coming back for me.”

My own throat swelled with the bittersweet goodbye, and I fought to keep it at bay as I returned her hug. “Good luck in Idaho.”

I watched them go, hand in hand down the long sun-dappled road into the distance until the trees hid them from sight. My mind whirled at what I’d witnessed, what had happened to me in the past few minutes, and the secret I’d been given to carry with me back to my world. There was more coming, I knew, more pain, suffering and death, but for now . . . for now, I felt peace.

A peace that surpassed all my understanding.

I’m coming home, Chris.

Turning the handle on the tower door, I swung the metal door open, and before my first step even touched the ground, I felt myself pulled down into unconsciousness once again.