The Lunar Guardsman

Ruthus was gone.

No sound. No sign. No nothing.

The radio crackled ominously as the grim-faced sergeant brought his rifle to bear with Jackie following suit. He slowly rotated around, Jackie covering his six.

The minuscule radio garbled as loud as thunder. “One, this is Two. Lost contact with Nine. No visual of hostiles.”

He signed for Jackie to search the ground.

Kneeling, Jackie took off a glove and pressed her naked palm against the ground. It was cold. Hard. She dragged her fingers, collecting dead leaves, pebbles, and twigs. They crinkled softly. She had heard no such sound coming from behind them or their side, nothing apart from their own. Even if they had been talking—

But had she been hearing just their own? Had there been an echo that didn’t belong to the forest?

Their own steps were clearly laid out if she looked for them, but no others.

“Anything?”

“Nothing yet,” she shook her head, briefly digging into an almost emptied pouch on her side. She lit one of the flares she had saved, bathing the area in red light.

“No tracks yet,” the sergeant reported. “No, we didn’t hear anything. He just vanished, sir. Permission to—Yes, sir. We’ll wait for you.” He glanced briefly at Jackie. “Now ain’t the time, girly.”

“If something took Ruthus it already knows we’re here,” she replied absent-mindedly.

She spared a glance at the sergeant. She spotted his agitation on his concave lips. The sergeant was a large powerful man. Large powerful men don’t deal well with feeling powerless. For herself, everything suddenly slipped back into place. She had clear objectives, where shades of gray, white, or black, didn’t matter anymore. No hard questions that tore her apart, not even whether Ruthus was alive. It didn’t matter to the job she had to do. She was… focused.

Under different circumstances Seargeant Darry’s mutter of, “Stupid magic voodoo horseshit…” would make her chuckle.

She didn’t believe it was magic. She’d seen magic, even if from a distance, and this… this felt otherwise.

Jackie was vividly reminded of her ninth birthday. Her parents took her and her best friends at the time—what were their names?—to a magic show. The magician pulled Jackie up along with one of her friends. He counted cards and gave them to her, telling her to keep them tight. He did the same with her friend.

Then he swished and swooshed, speaking magic words and making her parents laugh. He asked for the cards back, telling Jackie to count hers back.

She ended up with more cards that she originally had, her friend with less.

Everyone applauded the “magic.” To a nine year old, it was simultaneously miraculous and mundane. Yet she hadn’t liked the swooshing. If it was magic, why did he have to wave his hands like that?

Because it was a diversion, of course. The magician made everyone think the magic happened before the end. But the trick had happened long before. When he counted the cards, doing his funny prattle. When he didn’t give her the cards he had counted that they’d never noticed. The trick was set before the magic happened.

Ruthus’ disappearance felt like that. A trick had been pulled on them. But when had it been set?

And where did the cards go?

“We shouldn't move off too far, Jackie.” The sergeant broke her out of her thoughts. Looking back she saw he was following. “Wait for the Captain if you do find something. Strength in numbers.”

Strength in numbers when they had been split up on purpose. Why was even the Captain leading the rest of the team here? Jackie thought. The purpose of a rearguard was meant to keep the main body safe, not the other way around. Why spread them out only to come running at the first sign of trouble?

She followed their own tracks, two sets of disturbed and cracked leaves, highly visible if you knew exactly where to look.

She soon found the third set of tracks. They reached up to a tree, and then stopped.

She ran the tip of her finger across a rock, feeling a fresh scratch.

Ruthus weighed, what, seventy kilograms? And that was without his gear. If something managed to drag him off without a sound then it had to be big. But even a large tiger would be unable to drag him off with no tracks. Some of those things in there had been smart, but this smart? And strong enough to take down and carry Ruthus quietly?

Her search was interrupted a few tense minutes later when the majority of the team—vanguard notwithstanding—was with them. The captives were kept in the middle. Slowly, never losing direct eyesight of each other, the team expanded out, looking for tracks in the darkness, the flare having burned out.

“You heard nothing?” the Captain asked Jackie and his sergeant as their teammates passed them by.

“No, sir,” they chorused.

“Nothing approaching? No hint that he walked away? No… magic whoosh?”

“We call out even when we take a piss, so we all know he didn’t just walk away. Ruthus was on the right flank, about five to six meters away from us. Sergeant Darry walked next to me, between me and Ruthus. Sergeant’s a big man, so he did block my view, and I was mostly focused on our left flank and back. Still, Ruthus was there, he was practically right next to us. Then he… wasn’t.”

“We were talking, Captain. We let ourselves be distracted. I fucked up.”

“Find Ruthus, not who’s to blame. There’ll be time for that later,” the Captain said with an angry frown.

Jackie nodded towards Liam and Victor. “They’re looking in the wrong direction.”

The two men frowned questioningly.

“Monster or pursuer, that way would lead back to their village or back to the darker forest. Can you think of a better place to start?” Sergeant Darry commented.

She pointed in the opposite direction.

“The tracks stop by this tree,” she said, tapping the trunk. “Anything heading west or north we’d’ve seen.… But, if you use the trunk to block immediate line of sight for those couple of seconds, even if you make the slightest noise from where it would have been Ruthus slacking a step or two behind…”

“Then you head away from their nest,” the Captain finished.

“Away from where we’d expect them to go.”

“And if it was, say, a spider that grabbed him and took him into the trees? Or magic?”

“Then there would be no tracks and we’d be wasting our time. But if there are tracks…”

The Captain turned to the sergeant. “Makes sense to me.”

“If it was a critter, it would take a real smart one to do all that,” Sergeant Darry responded.

“They got Ruthus without a peep. They’re smart enough.” The Captain scratched at his chin. He turned to Liam and Victor who had stopped. “What are you waiting for? Didn’t you hear her? That way. Find him.”

Two minutes later Victor called out.

He had found tracks.

“What do we have?” The Captain asked.

Sergeant Darry’s black finger, almost invisible in the darkness, pointed a shallow gouge on the ground. “See those drag marks? From our own boots. You can see the sharp imprint at the end.”

“Way more this way.” Miny rose up holding a few broken twigs. “Whatever took him was clumsy.”

“It wasn’t clumsy when it grabbed him,” Jackie pointed out, frowning.

“Masks on,” the Captain ordered. “Keep an eye out for lights, weird patterns, and for heaven’s sake, if you smell anything, call it out. Same for strange or very loud thoughts. And keep an eye on each other for suspicious behavior.”

Liam shouldered Jackie. “My last filter’s out. Do you…”

Jackie handed over one of her last three, watching the quiet man replace the thin disk wafer in his mask before putting it on, the seamless connection made secure on his helmet with the lightest of clicks. She checked his lining for holes and he did the same for her.

As the world constricted, her breath echoed in her ears like a wave heard from underwater. The darkness became more oppressive, as if the light feared to tread through the lenses. She inhaled, and the smells of the forest―bark, sap, and cold night air―were gone.

They formed a rough circle, keeping the prisoners safe in the middle, Jackie and Victor at the front.

They followed a trail that became distrustingly obvious as they went on for over a hundred meters until Jackie raised her fist.

Jackie kept staring. It might have been only a play of the shadows, but she could swear, the tree she was looking at… had it been as thick before? Or was it just her mind playing tricks on her, turning branches into fingers?

But at the next blink it was just a normal tree again, naked branches waving in the stiff night breeze. She signed for the group to continue.

They walked on, even more on their guard and with hairs prickling on the back of their necks, until she motioned again. The prisoners were moved further back, and they walked the last few meters forward to finally find their lost companion.

He was standing up, his forehead resting against a tree. He looked as if he were playing hide and seek, ready to finish counting down at any moment and turn around.

The blackened puddle at his feet proved otherwise. His rifle had fallen from his grip, soaked through, the safety still on.

The Captain reached for his shoulder and shook it gently. Ruthus rocked in place, his boots slipping from where they stood, yet without causing him to fall. A rictus of grief clouded the Captain’s face for a moment before he masked it with an expression of grim determination. He took hold of Ruthus’ head, a palm resting on each temple, and pulled.

Once he dragged his eye socket out of the branch that propped him up, he gently laid him down with Miny’s help.

Ruthus’ neck was broken. It could have happened when his throat was ripped out. The left edge of the wound was cut, the sharp serration of teeth evident, but the rest of the flesh had simply been pulled away by force.

Liam had sat at the base of a tree, dropping his weapon and covering his face. Curry, following the sergeant’s nod, knelt beside him, gently cajoling him to stand again.

The rhyme that Liam kept chanting was foreboding and creepy enough of its own. Eight and One and Two, something’s gotten through... It brought a chill to the spine, telling of graves and butchered cities.

Whoever had come up with this as a rhyme for children was hopefully shot before Liam’s world met its unfortunate end.

“Victor, Mark, eyes on the trees. The rest of you, ground circle linesights,” Sergeant Darry ordered.

“Some kind of feline or canine?” the sergeant suggested to Curry, pointing at the torn throat.

“Too small of a wound. It carried him unnoticed. Another kind of spider would be my guess. The pincers are small respective to their size. Maybe. This is a mess. It might be a claw wound the way it’s all mangled,” Curry retorted. He squeezed the body’s lower spine. “I think his back was broken. The skull’s sunk in as well. I can’t tell what it was that killed him.”

Jackie pictured a spider. Not like the ones before, but bigger and more lithe. Hairless, with a black carapace and with sharp edges, long legs poised to cradle its victim. She could almost see it slithering down a strand, a breath’s distance from her, and grabbing Ruthus. It could have just as easily been her.

But what was really taking her attention was the trail they had followed. It stopped dead here, and fuck the pun.

Once again, there was no sign of anything.

The Captain didn’t care for the trail. He was busy gazing at the dead body, silently rubbing his own palm.

“Captain?” Sergeant Darry said softly, placing his large palm on the Captain’s shoulder. “Are you alright, sir?”

The Captain’s head shook as if stirred awake. He glanced at the sergeant’s hand and sighed. “I’m… thinking.”

“We should figure out our next move,” Curry suggested quietly.

“Hmmm…” The Captain turned his attention back to their fallen comrade. He weakly raised a hand towards the grisly scene. “Someone gather Ruthus’ personal effects,” the Captain said at large.

Sergeant Darry approached him. “My money’s on a critter, sir.”

“Mine’s not. Magic, no magic, the world plunged in night, the Dragon’s here and yet no Dragon to be seen, and a good man wasted for… One of my men is dead by what you think is a ‘critter’ that’s smart enough to do what exactly? Does anything make sense to you?”

The sergeant shook his head. “None. But like you said, sir, if it was the Dragon or the locals, that’s not what they’d do. I’m telling you, it’s an opportunistic freak. It probably got scared and dropped Ruthus when Jackie lit that flare up, dragged him here, then scampered off when we got too close.”

“Fine guesswork is still guesswork.”

“I want to take it down. It might come after us again, and it’s not a distraction we want—”

“Don’t bullshit me, Darry.”

The sergeant huffed a tired sigh. “It killed one of our men, sir. Can you blame me?”

The Captain pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes. What killed Ruthus wasn’t it.” He let out a frustrated breath. “What do you want to do?”

“Just take a walk. All on my lonesome, I’ll bet I’ll make for a juicy looking prize. But I’ll be waiting for it this time.”

“And if I say no?”

“Your decision, sir. It’s what I think is best, that’s all.”

The Captain considered for a few seconds. “I’ll give you a half hour, forty minutes max. If the Dragon is truly on this world then every second counts.” He activated the radio. “Eight, this is One. We’re about two hundred meters south of the rearguard's last stop. Find a place for us to hunker down. I want some clear space if possible. Quick as you can, please.” He swivelled back to look at the corpse. “Watch your six, understand?” He said to the sergeant.

The sergeant nodded. “I’ll keep my radio on your personal channel, sir. I’ll find a good place to hunker myself and get it first. I’ll bring back its head.” He left with big impatient strides, quickly vanishing through the dead foliage.

“Heavens, please give me this one,” The Captain whispered to himself. He raised his hand to his ear again. “This is One. Location? Two five north east of stop? Yours or ours, Eight? Alright. Sounds like it will do, Eight. We will be there shortly. Make preparations and safeguard the area. Watch the trees and keep visual with Seven at all times,” he warned the radio. “One out.”

The Captain stepped away, leaving them to sort through the corpse.

Jackie swivelled her head to the north as she caught the... feeling of a sound rather than actual noise. The sergeant on his hunt, surely, making sure nothing was around the perimeter first. She looked, but all she saw was more dead trees, weak short branches hugging a trunk like fingers. He was… stealthier than she remembered.

Across her, Miny unclasped Ruthus’ tags and carefully went through his personal belongings, few that they were: an engagement ring that he wasn’t wearing; a folded bucket list he kept sealed in plastic―a list he had proudly declared unfinished and ever growing on more than one night around a fire; a few more bits and ends he kept at his pocket that meant nothing to anyone but him; a button; a rock with carved initials; and a photo of a man he kept printing anew before each excursion beyond the Gate.

For her part, Jackie was busy examining the corpse that her mind very carefully referred to as such and not Ruthus.

The back of the heels were scratched, yet not as high as she’d expect. Whatever dragged him did so from a high enough fulcrum that the corpse’s heels were dragged on a steep angle.

A glove was missing. A pouch seemed to have been torn off and gone. The radio in his ear was nowhere to be found. His pistol had lost its magazine. Buttons had vanished, and other bits and pieces had disappeared as well.

Victims of a brief struggle or a violent hastened trudge through the forest, that’s what one would normally think. Yet, how come they hadn’t actually run across any of them on the trail?

Miny stared at the photograph, her legs crossed and her other hand rubbing the ring. “Does anyone know whose ring this is?” she asked.

Curry turned his face away. He had been close friends with Ruthus. Jackie was very careful in keeping her face set as stone.

Jackie had never asked. Yet even so, everyone had been almost desperate to tell the newbie the secrets and treasures they should have kept close to their heart. They’d corner her every few weeks, one by one, and talk and talk. She listened, but she had never been sure what to do with what they told her.

I’m going to ask her out this time, just as soon as we’re back. I’ll charm her boots off. Me and her, across the worlds. It’s fate, you see? And one day I’ll give her this. And I’ll say, “I knew you were the one for me since I first laid eyes on you!” And she’ll be so impressed at how romantic I am, she’ll say yes. Maybe we will take one last mission, and when we find a good place we’ll desert and stay there. Be together forever. Till death do us part, and it won’t do us part for a long, long time. She will say yes. She will. She will, won’t she, Jackie? Jackie, why are you laughing? That’s romantic, right?

“He thought it’d make a good luck charm,”Curry said.

“He was a kid at heart, wasn’t he?” Miny lamented as she passed her fingers across Ruthus’ eyes, closing them for good. “Damn idiot…”she murmured, her voice tight. She clutched the ring and the photo for a second, and then passed them to Mark who folded them in a piece of cloth.

The white alien female on William’s back patted the sad man’s shoulder and whispered gentle sounds. The grief in her large eyes, grief for the loss of those who hurt her, was almost enough to make Jackie discount any possibility of her people being responsible.

They couldn’t afford the time to bury Ruthus or set a pyre. They laid him in a more dignified position, his head covered with dried leaves and leafless branches over his body.

The previous order no longer had any meaning; No signs of them should be left behind. They all knew the body would be disposed of soon by the forest’s denizens, but there would be remains, pieces of cloth and others. They stripped him naked and burned it all, a feeling of robbing the dead of their dignity covering them.

Jackie apologized fervently to the dead man as she helped lift his legs. She should have…

Done what? she mourned. She found him. She did her part. They were colleagues, not friends.

And perhaps that was what the sergeant had been hinting at. The fault she had. Yet she’d always choose this way. She’d never bury a friend if she didn’t have to.

Someone would have said a few words before leaving if the distant shooting north of them hadn’t set them on a frenzy of motion, the Captain shouting for the vanguard to answer while they ran for their position, prisoners on their backs and rifles at the ready.

There had been only three shots.

And no answer on the radio.

“Eight, this is One! Respond! Seven, respond! Troy, Anthony! Anthony, fucking answer! Two, what’s your position? Did you hear the gunfire? Two? Two, this is One! Two, respond! Damnit! Two, I don’t care about damn radio silence, respond! Two! Two! Heaven’s damn you, Two, don’t fucking do this to me now!”

Jackie paused next to an exceptionally large trunk. The Captain’s body language was controlled and precise despite his hurried language, and his head swivelled from side to side, taking in everything. A gesture and a word would hurriedly restructure their line, keeping them all in each other’s line of sight, their positions flowing chaotically yet without leaving an opening.

The same vanishing trick wouldn’t work again under the Captain’s direct command.

“Marker from Eight,” Miny called out. “It points the same direction.”

“Verify it’s not been tampered with,” the Captain instructed. “Look for Seven’s verification marker. Jacqueline, it should be in your area.”

Jackie traced the ground with her eyes, finally spotting a pair of fletched sticks positioned randomly in a very precise way. “Seven confirmed,” she answered back.

“Ten meter advance. Move the prisoners to the back left flank. William, how is she?”

“They’ve all been pretty quiet since poor Ruthus.”

“Fuckers know exactly what killed three of us and they ain’t talking,” Victor growled. His brows behind the visor of his mask were angled in rage. “We’re trampling into the unknown instead of—”

“Instead of what, man?” Curry interrupted him. “The boy can barely speak a few words.”

“That dragon might be faking it. Vaya tela. If we didn’t spend our time showering it in candy and actually got it to spill…” He spoke through gnashed teeth, loud enough for everyone near him to hear him clearly.

“I see where this is going and you better shut your goddamn mouth before I put a bullet in your ass for implying what I think you’re implying,” Curry hissed.

Victor shook his head. “I’m being realistic. To think Ruthus called you a friend,” he said contemptuously.

“You shut your fucking mouth!”

Ignore him and do your job, Jackie told herself. Her heart was thumping wildly. She was on the rightmost edge, and she wasn’t going to lose her focus and be another man’s death any time soon. She scanned everything around her, every loose pebble, every root, every gnarled tree-trunk. Everything was knives and teeth. Every sharp turn of her head made her stomach leap to her throat as she expected to see a pit of fire burning inside a huge maw. Every branch above was a spider’s leg. Every shadow hid an assassin of smoke and pale white blades.

She was as shaken as everyone else was. It’s one thing to believe you have at least a semi-handle on events, that fuck-ups might happen but ultimately you and your team would be on top. It’s an entirely completely different beast when you’re unsupported in the middle of enemy territory, your teammates dropping left and right, and you still have no idea what is happening. Panic hadn’t settled in yet. It probably wouldn’t, they were trained, they were soldiers, but it was making a nice comfy groove to perch on and watch from.

The whole time she felt eyes on her. Like a panther was watching her from the trees, patiently awaiting the moment the back of her neck would be in its maw. She should call it in. There was something, a presence. But it was less than a shadow. Just a feeling. A dread. A sense of doom.

Miny kept glancing back. Victor’s head swivelled sharply from side to side as if he had been trying to catch sight of something. The Captain would pause and intently stare at the shadows.

Everyone felt the same. No one voiced it or called it out. If they started doing it they’d only trample in the forest for hours.

The wariness of the absolute unknown made her senses blurry. It was a miracle she saw it.

Even as her brain dismissed it as sap, she leaned closer to inspect the torn bark in case of it being another trailmark. Then she spotted the eyelid, a drop of blood clinging on the eyelashes.

She tore the breather off her face, fell on her knees, and threw up.

“Breach! Breach!” someone yelled. She was too busy puking until she was dry-heaving to pay attention to who it was. Hands tried to pull her up by the armpits and she fought them off, pointing towards the offensive sight.

“Not gas,” she retched, and pointed. “This. This…”

“Holy shit…”

“Is that—Jesus, is that a fucking face?”

“Christ, they used the tree like a cheese grater—”

“Get the kids back for fuck’s sake! William, wake the fuck up!”

“Everybody back in order! Victor, Miny, Jackie, Mark, search the area. Keep line of sight with me. Find them, find their tracks, find who did this. Jacqueline, I need you to stand up and work, girl. We need everybody.”

“Y-Yes, sir,” she stammered. She was empty and every joint ached, pulsing to the beat of the Gates. God, that wasn’t a good way to go. That wasn’t a good way to go at all. Poor… Troy. Or Anthony. Neither of them deserved that.

Her face itched.

“W-We should run…” Liam stammered. He hunched in place, making himself small. “We should all run.”

“Back in position, Liam,” the Captain commanded harshly.

Jackie put her hand on a rock on the side to push herself up. She closed her eyes. Oh, fuck me, please don’t tell me this is what I think it is… She raised her suddenly wet hand, ignoring the handprint she left on the rock.

“We could just hunker down right here, that might not be a bad idea…”

“We can’t ‘hunker down.’ What if there’s someone after us?”

“Bitch, have you been paying attention?”

“It’s him!” Liam said, his voice rising above everyone’s else. “The Reaper is here! He’s hunting us!”

The Captain put his arm on the man’s shoulder. “Liam, this isn’t the Reaper. It’s not him. If there was an Ender after us we would be dead already. This isn’t the first time we have lost someone. It sucks, but it’s part of our job. We’re almost at the finish line, hold it together.”

Jackie’s hand was smeared with liquid that was tarrish black under the starlight. Traces of yellowish fat floated in the drowned canals of her handprint.

“Captain’s right,” Mark said. “I wish it was the Reaper, Liam. We can deal with a guy.”

The stone was large. Jackie would find it impossible to lift, let alone use it as a weapon. But something did. It was covered in gore. Not just blood, but the thick ichors and oils that laid beneath a man’s fat layer. There were minuscule white fragments, and she could only falsely believe they were broken parts of teeth like the one she was looking at.

Liam frantically swivelled in place, screaming from one masked face to another. “He isn’t just a guy! He’s been here the whole time! You think you can pretend he’s not? You can feel him! It all goes wrong! You make a wall to-to defend yourself and he uses it to trap you. This is what he does! He made the song, he has been among us for years. God, why do you think he left Ruthus like that? Why do you think he tore… fucking tore and left for us to find—”

Curry placed his arm around Liam’s shoulders as the man crumbled, sobbing like a child. He threw off his mask without care, and sunk his face into Curry’s shoulder.

Jackie saw them clearly. Two shallow trenches, dug by dragged bodies side by side. Dead bodies. She wasn’t going to let a fool’s hope blossom. The mud on the ground that hadn’t seen rain for days spoke all too loud.

She pointed, feeling something of what Liam had claimed. That it was all going to go wrong if she spoke up. That it was all going to go wrong if she didn’t.

There was a hint in the air. The presence of a smell, putrid and unclean. Of a body washed in the spoils of the dead, coppery and abhorrently sweet.

“Tracks,” Jackie said. She was heard, despite being barely louder than a whisper.

The Captain stepped in the lead, removing and replacing his magazine after a short showy inspection of how many bullets it held. The full thirty plus one in the chamber. Magic or not, Ender or not, they had quite some high-caliber firepower on their side.

And whatever killed their brothers was near.

“We find our people. Then we head for the Gate. This is just terror tactics. Soul-wrenching and despicable, but in the end nothing but a veil to hide weakness. To make us think they could take us even if we all stand together. I reckon we will all stand together. That we will lose no one else. That the tables are about to turn, and quite harshly at that. You want to stick around or are we going to go home already?”

Jackie stood up.

Mark straightened up.

William nodded.

Miny held her weapon ready.

Victor pounded his chest twice.

Curry stepped up.

Liam followed behind him after a moment’s hesitation, fiddling with his weapon’s strap. “I’m sorry for losing it there, sir,” he said meekly, not raising his head.

The Captain gave him a gentle smile. “Nothing wrong with fear as long as it doesn’t guide you. Form up. Keep the prisoners in the rear.”

For a moment they dared to hope.

Antony was on his knees against a wall of rocks, cradling Troy. Antony’s head dipped low, almost forehead to forehead with him. His hands surrounded him, and Troy held onto Anthony with equal fervor.

William’s disjointed movement to dash to the front to check on them halted in its tracks. He pulled back and bent down, pulling the two children close and covering their eyes, the adult alien at his back speaking in calm tones.

What laid before them was a mere puppet, its face pulverised. It hung onto another corpse with no will of its own but the thick branches that had been pierced through his wrists like nails. Troy’s head was backwards, his neck a mess of lacerated flesh and shredded bone. Two rifles laid crossed before them, like a marker.

It was a desecration, a mockery, a message.

"Joder!"

Victor’s loud swear made Jackie jump. The man screamed a train of profanities as he kicked the ground, launching loose dirt and pebbles like a shotgun. He was left to peter out on his own, his outrage a communal cleansing for all of them.

“Not an animal or monster then, for sure,” Curry said, asserting a definition that Jackie didn’t agree with.

Victor had put his forearm and head against a tree, breathing heavily. “Now what, boss?” he asked, his muffled voice still pulsing with anger.

“We lay them down properly,” the Captain said. “And then we move on.”

“Move on?” Victor came close and spat at the Captain’s face. “What, no more splitting us like bait?”

The Captain turned his back to the man's bile, directing Miny and Mark forward.

Victor’s hand grasped Mark’s with the speed of a lunging cobra. “He was my friend. I’ll do it.”

Jackie turned away when the first wooden stake was pulled out. God knew she wasn’t squeamish and she had seen more than her fair share of stomach-churning things, but that was when it wasn’t people she knew. People she liked. Because when it was… it was no longer easy to pretend that the torrent inside her was anything other than a howling mourn.

She focused on other things instead, trying to drown out the squelching noises with a flood of visual details. She examined the guns instead. She picked up Antony’s rifle, noting that it had been his that fired. She could smell it on the barrel and feel the feather-like diminishment of its weight. She passed it to Mark, taking up Troy’s rifle. This one hadn’t been fired, and yet the barrel was damaged, bent slightly as if it had been used like a club. The grip—The grip was covered in old stained leather, like the hilt of a sword.

This… This wasn’t Troy’s rifle.

This was Sergeant Darry’s rifle.

He made the song, I know he did. God, why do you think he left Ruthus like that?

Sergeant Darry had thought he knew how whatever killed Ruthus hunted. He was confident he could kill it. Because… if you know the patterns of your prey, it’s easier to hunt. That’s what a hunter does. Observe your target, learn its behaviours. Know how to strike. Know when to strike.

And what did this particular team of the Janus Division do when they came across a dead member?

Miny and Victor pulled Troy’s body away from Anthony’s, tugging at an unseen string that had been tying the bodies together. A small pin made of black metal sparkled in the starlight as it shot off from between the two bodies.

“Bomb!” Jackie yelled at the top of her lungs.

Jackie closed her eyes as she tackled Victor and Miny away from the bodies and down the shallow trench.

There was a click.

And the world was bathed in the blinding light and noise of a flashbang.

A flashbang, otherwise known as a stun grenade, is a non-lethal explosive device, a designation which doesn’t demerit its use in lethal engagements. On detonation it releases over seven million candela units of light, blinding everyone in range for a period of five seconds or more. The strong flash doesn’t require the victims to look straight at it.

The crack of thunder was almost instantly followed by a wet splash, like a wave crashed down on Jackie’s side. Her tongue tasted a few drops, pungent and alarm-invoking.

Jackie’s attempt to throw herself over her comrades ended with her lighter frame bouncing and her falling on her back. Or so she… She couldn’t tell. There was no sight, no sound, she was lost in a ghost realm of white grain. She felt stone shatter near her, too near. She made herself as small a target as possible. Her rifle was useless; she had no idea who was shooting. For fuck’s sake who’s shooting? Friendly fire, friendly fire! butsomeone was already shooting and everyone else might be dead already, she didn’t know, someone was shooting, and she was blind and defenceless!

The noise a flashbang produces is no less incapacitating. At over 170 decibels, it temporarily deafens nearby victims. Moreover, the “bang” disturbs the perilymph in the inner ear, causing loss of balance.

A bullet found Jackie.

Her armor, the glorious, itchy, complain-about-but-don’t-remove armor saved her life. It didn’t save her rib, and it replaced her breath with agony. Jackie gasped once, then twice as her belly almost caved in—a couple of centimeters higher and it would have gone through the gap and she’d be ten grams heavier right now. She wheezed in the white blindness, praying no more bullets would come and tear through her shattered armor.

Fuck this, she thought.

The hazy outline of a boulder became her cover. Bullets ricocheted off it, sparks flying. She waited patiently for an eternity that lasted less than three seconds. The relentless hail ceased for a moment, and she grasped the window she was given. Jackie fired back at the darkness, shouting warnings for her counterfire as she let loose.

She caught a glimpse of something stirring in the darkness beyond the wood scraps her bullets teared off the trees. The moonlight reflected on a strip of metal, vanishing as Victor and Miny added their own blind yet devastating fury.

The trees bled sap. Fresh kindling covered the forest floor.

There was no hostile to be seen, dead or alive. The prisoners were gone as well.

Mark’s perforated body lay still atop a growing blanket of blood. William had fallen on his back, sputtering blood from his mouth, soaking his beard. A black dahlia bloomed in his stomach.

Curry’s forearm was leaking; everything below the elbow was simply gone. The man was blindly tying off the horrid stump as he huddled behind a tree. Liam was at the other side, similarly taking cover, keeping pressure on his neck at the edge of his shoulder, his uniform slowly reddening, his face like ashes and his eyes unblinking like a man caught in his own nightmare.

The Captain was down, a deformed bullet embedded in his helmet.

“Move up,” Jackie whispered through dry lips, quiet enough that she couldn’t hear her own words over the existing ringing in her ears. Military objectives and goal markers ran through her brain in lieu of conscious thought. Identify the enemy force. Secure the perimeter. Triage the wounded.

“Move up!” she yelled loud enough to be heard by the two people at her side. She didn’t know what hit them, with their own weapons no less—where did that flashbang come from, no one carried one—, but there were wounded out in the open.

They leapfrogged their way forward, one person moving, two covering. Miny ventured to rush to Curry’s side, but the man shook his head as he tightened the improvised tourniquet, nodding towards William instead. Miny fervently unloaded the meager remains of her medpack around the large man as she knelt by his side.

Curry directed Victor and Jackie forward past him, his remaining hand laboring to hold up the rifle. “Get the bastard,” he rasped.

Victor and Jackie moved carefully, each step revealing another danger-filled half-meter of darkness to them. Step. Step. Step.

Before they covered more than a couple of meters, faster than they could react, a rifle’s stock swung at Curry’s head, pulping it between the solid steel and the tree.

He slid to the ground, instantly dead.

Jackie and Victor bolted around the tree. Jackie from the left, stepping over the cadaver—refusing to think of it as Curry anymore—Victor from the right, triggers almost squeezed.

She saw nothing.

“Contact!” Victor yelled, his rifle bursting into action.

Swiveling, Jackie saw it and added her own firepower. A glaze of drab colors recoiled from the multiple rounds piercing it. It grew larger, then smaller as it was brought down.

It snagged on a branch and stopped moving.

Jackie dashed in front of Victor and grabbed it. It was a large piece of fabric, torn and shredded even without the scorched bullet holes, made up of different pieces in earthy hues. A horrid scent reeked behind the stronger sweeter smells of dirt and sap.

Another magic trick, Jackie thought, giving a grudging moment of respect to the misdirection.

Victor’s grunt of pain didn’t surprise her. She expected it the moment she had the cloth in her fist.

She spun, bringing the rifle up.

A giant armored demon loomed over her. It’d tower over Victor if he wasn’t on the ground, dead to the world. It’d even tower over the sergeant if he were here. It was clad in twisted, blackened armor, crusted blood covering the tortured metal. A hellish stench permeated the air around it—rotten sweetness and a putrid foulness.

Her heart thumped harder at the sight of this living nightmare.

It tore the rifle out of her hands and tossed it aside as if her grip was made of gossamer. It pulled its right arm back, wielding a rifle by its barrel like a club.

Desperately, she threw herself on her back, just fast enough to feel the near miss cross the tip of her nose.

Jackie’s lungs deflated on impact. Before she could inhale she saw the gun axe through the air straight for her chest. She rolled sideways, barely escaping the chop that bore into the grass.

Desperately, she kicked the side of the giant’s knee in response. The armored clad giant grunted and almost buckled, falling on one knee over her. She kicked at the ground, hastening to move away, reaching for her sidearm at the same time.

The holster was empty.

The monstrosity threw a jab.

Her nose exploded in pain, broken. Her mouth filled with blood from her lips and tongue, cutting themselves against her teeth. Her body was shocked to stillness.

The giant gripped the rifle like a javelin over its head, rearing to bring it down on her sternum.

Miny leaped on the giant from the side. Immensely smaller she might have been, but her momentum was enough to bring the giant down sideways as she fell upon his upper torso. They rolled on broken leaves, Miny managing to lock her legs around the throat. She caught its right forearm in an armbar, pulling at it to immobilize the limb.

Miny should have been able to dislocate the arm at least. Break it, even. She started twisting.

Jackie saw her handgun lying a couple meters away from her. It must have gotten loose while she was rolling on the ground. The moon shone like a beacon on the steel.

The armored giant brought the captured arm to its chest, reversing the direction Miny expected resistance from. In one smooth move it reversed directions again, spreading its arm out as it rose up to its legs. It brought its arm, and Miny’s back, against a tree with tremendous force.

Jackie’s mad crawl almost had her handgun in reach.

Miny lay gasping on the ground. The giant’s right arm was limp, hanging low and dead.

Almost there. Almost. She’d grab it. Turn around. Shoot. The bullets would perforate the metal armor easily from this distance. Almost there!

A grip tightened around her ankle. She got yanked back in a quick pull, her ankle twisting painfully. She grabbed hold of a piece of wood and tightened her grip around it as she was dragged backward.

She added the speed of the creature in the strength of her own arms and shoulders. The end of the makeshift club landed squarely on the dark helmet’s side. The giant staggered and loosened its grip.

Hard breaths echoed from inside that helmet. Ragged, hurried. Exhausted. The exhaustion was visible all over the giant’s form. The sunken shoulders. The bent back. The legs that had to work twice as hard for solid footing. Its body language spoke of being near ruin.

Behind it, Miny was strenuously lifting herself up. Jackie quickly got up on her feet and struck again. The wood landed with a hard thump squarely on the giant’s palm. It pulled at it, seemingly feeling no pain, and Jackie let it have it.

The giant wielded the heavy weight as if it was a rolled-up newspaper and Jackie was the fly. Its swings were massive, each with enough force behind them to pulverize her.

If it wasn’t for that, she’d laugh at how easy it was to avoid them. The speed of each swing was impressive enough, but the way it pulled back telegraphed where and when it would strike. A small jump back, a nimble sidestep, a swift bow, that was all it took as the strikes kept on coming, each one slower than the next, each breath louder from the metal helmet.

Each step inching her closer to the dropped handgun once more.

“Now!” Jackie yelled when she was almost on top of the weapon.

Miny stomped the back of the giant’s knee at Jackie’s behest, forcing it down again. Jackie dove away, rolling on the ground and grabbing her sidearm. As she took aim the giant’s left hand grabbed her arm holding the gun from below the wrist.

It snapped her forearm like a twig.

Her raw scream of pain was cut short by its palm on her face. It thrusted her, comically similarly to how it wielded the makeshift club just moments before, until the back of Jackie’s head met a solidly planted tree.

The pain-filled stars she was seeing turned to black.

A sudden harsh cough of her lungs brought her back to reality. She had lost consciousness for a few seconds. Her broken arm screamed at her. Next to her, something was tapping rhythmically.

She turned her head, the effort almost herculean.

The armored devil held Miny by the scruff of her neck. It pulled her back, almost lifting her, the woman dead to the world and her face puffy and red. It brought her forward again, smashing her against a bloodied tree trunk. Up. Down. Up. Down.

Each time Miny’s battered arms trailed limply behind her.

“Stop…” Jackie said.

Slam.

“Stop!” she said louder.

Crunch.

She forced her knees to work.

Splat.

She lifted herself a bit, mostly by pushing her back against the tree behind her. “Stop!”

Miny flopped to the ground. A red bubble popped on her ruined nose. Still breathing. She was still alive. Maybe.

The devil came for her.

Jackie’s unbroken arm crawled for her belt, for her knife, and held it in an icepick grip. She still had a chance. She drew and pounced, scrounging up what strength she had remaining.

The blade’s tip met the thick breastplate straight on.

And slid off, not leaving even a scratch.

A vicious knee to her stomach doubled her over. She had never become so much aware of her intestines and how bruised they could feel. Her cracked ribs vied for attention as well. Her helmet was ripped off and thrown aside.

Suddenly, her face was plastered to a tree, the rough bark biting at her right cheek. She heard the demonic giant adjust its footing on the grass, then its hold on her shifted. The elbow locked above her head, ready to push her downward and against the bark—

Hewing her face to shreds.

Jackie’s eyes widening, her breath shivering, the face of the broken helmet loomed into view, and her brown, frightful eyes saw into the black visor.

It did nothing for a beat.

It looked back at Miny. Back at Jackie. It leaned closer.

“Let your last thought be this: you were weak, and all your friends perished for it.”

The voice was hoarse and rugged. There was a small hesitancy, as if the language came unaccustomed to his tongue.

She knew then, as she was staring at the little dragon’s father, it never had been the Dragon coming after them. How and why all their reactions were for naught, how all their actions were deftly confounded. That Ruthus’ radio had never been accidentally lost. It had been a person, a human, all along!

Jackie’s working hand gripped the man’s wrist. “Wait. Please, wait!” She vainly tried to pull his arm away.

The helmet tilted. For a moment, the man behind it seemed to hesitate. He took a deep breath, as if to steady himself. “It won’t hurt for lo—” He stopped.

Violently, he pulled Jackie off the tree and onto him, spinning around in one smooth move. His mammoth hand moved to her neck, the thick gloved thumb and fingers pinching her larynx. Jackie’s maimed arm smacked against the steel the giant man wore, eliciting one more unwelcome scream from her.

She felt him—her sight seeing nothing but black spots of pain thanks to the abrupt maneuver—haltingly sidestep towards the mass of the tree next to them.

“Not one step further,” said the Captain’s voice.

Jackie gulped the pain and blinked until her eyesight returned. She saw the Captain barely standing, propping himself up against a tree with a free arm. The other one held his own sidearm, the one she had felt pressed on her waist only hours ago. His helmet was missing, and his blonde hair was crusted with blood. But his old eyes were furious and his outstretched arm didn’t waver.

“Let the girl go. Put your hands where I can see them, hug the ground and maybe I won’t blow your brains out.”

The grip on Jackie’s throat tightened. She was forced on the tip of her toes as the giant figure hid as much of its mass as possible behind her.

“I know you’re getting every word. Last warning.” The Captain adjusted his aim.

“Take the shot,” the gruff voice said over Jackie’s surprised ear, speaking the words she’d have said if she could have pulled in the breath to form them.

“You think I’m bluffing?” the Captain roared. “Let her go!”

“No.”

“You think I’ll miss the barn for the chicken?” the Captain said almost incredulously.

Hey, now, Jackie irrationally thought. No need for that. She was certain of what was going to happen, and she didn’t want to think or dwell on it.

“Maybe you don’t see as well as you pretend to. Maybe you think that I could rip her tiny throat out the moment you fire.” The man’s voice had lowered to tones of velvet cream mixed with gravel. “But you won’t. That’s not what your kind does.”

The grip was almost suffocating her now.

“But if you drop your gun, maybe I’ll come for you instead. Rush in before you can pick it back up. Maybe the girl will run off and live, or I could throw her at you and I’ll run. That’s the heroic thing to do, isn’t it?” the man growled.

The pistol’s muzzle wavered.

The fingers on Jackie’s throat curled even tighter, the leather tips digging deep.

“John?”

The fury in the Captain had been replaced by old grief.

The pressure eased at once. Her feet touched the ground solidly again.

“...Scipio?” the man asked.